light seed

How peaceful it is tonight. I sit on the deck upstairs as the sun sets, listening to music on my iPhone. Coltrane, The Band, Yo Yo Ma.

The breeze is cool and gentle, the horses are tranquil, there is no traffic on the road several acres away. I am content for the moment. I managed to get Ron out of the house for a few hours today and he did very well out in the real world. He is gradually getting better. Several times during the day I looked at the eulogy I will deliver on Sunday for my friend Charlie, at the Harwood Museum. I jot down notes, quotes, feelings. It's not easy to write something succinct for the public, about a friend who has passed on. I'm a little nervous about it, but I'm sure I'll survive. Don't we all.

I buy fresh figs at the organic market in town and eat as many as I want (I'm the one in the family who likes them). They seem to be the only seasonal fruit in markets where everything else is available all year long and that makes them special. I think they are my favorite food. So many stories written and told about figs, and love, and magic, and tradition. D.H. Lawrence wrote sensually about figs, as did Lorca. In southern CT where my daughter lives (in an Italian neighborhood where on Sunday mornings the smell of simmering tomato sauce permeates the air), there are fig trees in everyone's small back yard. In winter the trees are wrapped in burlap against the cold and topped with a galvanized bucket -- just as they were in the neighborhood I grew up in in the Bronx a very long time ago. Some things change, some things never change.

It's dark now as I write, a closed in feeling surrounds me and I look forward to slipping into that place where nothing else needs to be done and I can just let go. Let go of the feeling that dogged me all day -- an almost overwhelming just-leave-me-alone-cause-I-don't-want-to-do-anything-practical kind  of day. I'd just like to sit quietly, read or write poems or maybe, dance.

Do you think I know what I'm doing?
that for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next.
                     Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks)