Saturday routine

It's my third Saturday doing the following:

Waking up late, eyes puffy with sleep, feeling thankful I now have glasses to tone down the puffy.

Walking with a slow and easy gait in my new comfortable sneakers four blocks to the Saturday morning Hudson Farmer's Market.

What I bring home each Saturday:
1) A dozen local eggs (brown, green, ecru).
2) A bunch of kale from the guy with the baseball hat and the radishes (even though I always have some left at home, it's so beautiful I can't resist; plus, I'm just happy all these farmers are here selling their goods).
3) My favorite and the most expensive transaction: a bouquet of wildflowers from the flower lady and her sweet teenage son.

Today I upped the ante and bought a $12 bouquet (versus the regular $10). I'm horrible with names of flowers...but here it is...

Gorgeous, huh?
For three weeks I have had flowers all over my apartment. It's been suprisingly therapeutic.

I've spent too many weekends wishing there was someone in my life to buy me flowers; three weeks ago, I saw them at the market and thought: well, if no one is going to buy them for me then...

I spent some time this morning shaking old petals off of last week's into a glass bowl, salvaging the few blooms still alive and floating them in another bowl for my night stand, and then letting the vases soak to ready them for this week's arrangement.

The irony? I got a call from a florist in Hudson saying they had a delivery for me, but no address. It won't arrive until after 2pm is what the lady at the Crazy Daisy said. I'm guessing it's from my friend who was supposed to take me on a date last night (a first date) and called to see if, for reasons I won't go into, could we make it 9pm instead. To which I replied, not so warmly, "let's just do it another time" (as any girl in her right mind would?). He said he was sorry, but I couldn't bring myself to say "that's okay." But if the flowers are from him, I may give it a try.

With me, my right mind, and my available single self, I sauntered off with my girlfriends to see Sex and the City instead, and had a blast. The movie, in another twist of irony, was chock full of flowers and "I'm sorry"s. Weird.

That's today's report....

The Blogging of Now

Tomorrow will be an official 30 days since I've written anything here. I had a bit of an existential blog crisis: What am I doing here? What's my purpose? What do I write next? What do I want out of this? Where am I headed? What is there to look forward to? Etc.

But I've been reading The Power of Now again and Eckhart tells me that this kind of crisis is what happens when you realize in a deep way that fulfillment isn't "on the way," isn't somewhere else, is in simply Being in the power of Now.

So I've decided, just for today to Blog in the Now.

Right now, I'm drinking my coffee--I bought the grounds at the French cafe in town. I was desperate. Everything else was closed. It was one of those air-tight bricks from Europe. When I opened it up, I knew I was in trouble... LIGHT BROWN grounds! No matter how strong I make this stuff, it still tastes like coffee-flavored water. But I continue to drink it, and continue every morning to say "bleck" after I take my first sip and reminisce about the old days of French Roast and coffee I could chew.

I'm sure I could tie this in with the power of now, but I'll refrain.

My (experimental?)nonfiction piece will be coming out in Post Road in July...upon which I'll be e-mailing everyone I know (even those folks I haven't e-mailed in a long, long time) to let them know, and to tell them to order the issue, or even subscribe, since literary magazines--the generous venues of the work of unknown writers like me--need money and subscribers so they can continue to publish us. Plus, Post Road rocks. So this isn't the end of this matter.

The sun on the horizon?: June 20, McCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn, NY. Me, J., K., and my pops for another Gogol Bordello extravaganza....

until another now,
L

National Poetry Month: Leroi Jones/Amira Baraka

This is the last poem, tho technically not on the last day of April.

It was a good idea, this daily posting for a month, and while I didn't live up to the task I set before myself, I did post some pretty great poetry.

Here's a last, by Leroi Jones, a.k.a. Amiri Baraka:









Ballad of the Morning Streets

The magic of the day is the morning
I want to say the day is morning high
and sweet, good
morning.

The ballad of the morning streets, sweet
voices turns
of cool warm weather
high around the early windows grey to blue
and down again amongst the kids and
broken signs, is pure love magic, sweet day
come into me, let me live with you
and dig your blazing