Spring, spring, spring, where have you been? Our dear North Fork is dressing up for you, waking from silent winter to hear your voices. Gardens are shrugging off the burden of dark late afternoons. READ
When I arrived on this good earth, my father, mother and grandmother welcomed me with their love and joy. And they had a very precious gift for me at this first moment in my life: a “big brother” — my brother, Jean, 10 years of age when I was born. READ
Umbrellas. By itself it sounds like a somewhat strange word. But it “feels rainy” today under an uncertain sky, with clouds running away as if looking for shelter. A good sleepy day for human and dog. Do not go out. Let the umbrellas hang on doorknobs. READ
I am many miles away from my house in Orient. It’s a beautiful end-of-September day. Shouldn’t I be pulling up in my driveway? The sound of the tires hitting the bird’s-eye gravel. Each time we arrive, I can say we’re safe, we’re home. It’s a semicircular driveway. READ
I am a lucky guy: I have three vacuum cleaners. It took years for this achievement. A story of hope. Each machine promised a dust-free life. Just let the new cleaner run in the house. Sit back, watch and relax. What is dust anyway? I never got a clear answer. All I know is that you can write your name in it wherever it settles. Never makes a sound. A good companion in a way. It doesn’t ask for much except no dusting, please.
Is dust dirty? If you leave it alone it doesn’t move about. If you come with a duster, cruel instrument, then it will fly until it finds another landing patch. I’ve lived with it at times. Then a woman friend comes in, frowns, raises her voice, pulls a broom out of her tiny purse and says, “How can you live like this?” Never try to answer such questions.
The problem with three vacuum cleaners: It raises the issue of choice. Which one to use. A perilous moment. The one with the “long-haired” brush, the one that can climb walls or the cordless that needs recharging just when I want to press on.
Which reminds me: Many years ago I drove in the “Press on Regardless Rallye” in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We started early on bumpy roads and I’d like to report that my Renault won top prize. But it’s not true. We did finish in a cloud of dust, one of the last cars on the road.
“Press on Regardless,” when it involves pushing a recalcitrant vacuum machine around the obstacles scattered in the house, is not quite as noble as negotiating treacherous turns on a dirt road. Although in my house I seem to have done a pretty good job at replicating a Michigan road race. I wonder if some new invention, one day, will come along with a gadget that would swallow all the useless things that we manage to settle in our good homes. A machine that would have better intelligence than I to decide what can stay and what has to go. I classify myself as incompetent in this activity.
Perhaps I was born with a built-in incompetence. It seems that my brother Jean came into this world with an active filing system at his side. Where I stumble confused in search of answers he can pull out a file out of his well-organized cabinet and the answers to all questions are within reach. His speed of knowledge gives him authority. In a peaceful way. No need for loud demonstrations.
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I’m running. Late again. Last chance one Saturday in New York City. Gavin Brown’s Enterprise gallery. The first re-creation in the United States of Jannis Kounellis’s “Untitled (12 Horses.)” Twelve live horses. A church-like quiet. We don’t speak, we whisper. The horses, tied to walls, stand barely moving. Their magnificent, powerful bodies awaken a sense of peace. So unexpected. An experience of the spirit. At the end of the show, one by one they are taken to a trailer and driven away. The crowd is subdued, in a meditative mood. Not a word spoken. At times the sound of munching or a hoof unsettling the hay covering the floor.
Twelve horses, a work of art. No need for explanations. We just stand and listen to our own silence. So simple. Beautiful. All it takes, a gathering of horses at peace with the world.
Pierre Gazarian is a poet and a writer of one-act plays. Email: [email protected]
I’m not a dog. Just in case some of you might have thought … As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t want to come back as a dog. To be someone’s Chihuahua traveling in a woman’s purse or Great Dane to impress the neighbors’ hissing cat, no, no. If I do come back for a second try at life and happiness, let it be as a seagull, flying high and free over Long Island’s beaches and bays, yes, I’ll take that. As I am slaving away in my yard, I see the gulls gliding in sensuous abandon, carried by the wind, a mix of silent flight and piercing cries, ready to dive for that unfortunate fish or for a quick sweep by our picnic table left alone too long. (more…)
We, noble species, dreamers of cathedrals, little Mozarts, Shakespearean scholars, yes, but we do spend a precious part of our lives, not at the piano with little Mozart, but with brush and rags polishing the world around us. Oh, nothing lofty; shoes, for instance. If we don’t polish, we don’t exist. (more…)
Kara, who runs Hands Fuel in Orient along with her husband, Jeff, had called me in New York to report a problem. Two months after their previous oil delivery to my house they had tried to replenish the oil tank. Impossible: The tank was still full. It meant: Heating system not working. Big problem, I thought. I’d been away for a few weeks. A vision of broken pipes, debris and repairs I could ill-afford had suddenly disrupted a quiet time in the Big City. (more…)
(Credit: Barbaraellen Koch, file)
“I think, therefore I am.” French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) said so. In 2015 no doubt he’d have to say, “I shop, therefore I am.” What’s life without shopping malls and special deals and crowds rushing from their hastily parked cars into the welcoming doors of mega stores? Once inside, ah, you can breathe better in that air-conditioned bargain land. Aimless and down, now alive, hope in your heart. Anxiety, too. Better be early before anyone else grabs that shiny four-slice toaster on sale, today only.
Here comes January 2015. Seventeen degrees outside. Wind chill 12. Cold weather never bothered me much. But today it does. I’d rather stay inside, not move very much, become part of the couch, wrap myself in an old blanket, the pale blue one that’s been with me for years through good health and sickness, happy days and miserable ones, when it gave me refuge from the cold and from people I didn’t want to see. (more…)