Springtime in PA and NY
Updates, in no particular order: Angie is visiting from Germany! Central Park has become beautiful. And my beloved great-aunt Mary passed away.
Regarding Aunt Mary: she was the most loving person the world has ever known, despite going through some extremely difficult things, and her spirit will be an inspiration and example to me forever. Also, she was 95 (beat that!). I drove to central PA and back (10 hours) yesterday for the funeral, but the scenery was lovely and I sang songs the entire drive. I got to see estranged second cousins and stop at WaWa. Here are some photos, also in no particular order.
NYC post-gym
sent from a device
seven years and one falafel
going through my personal poetry archives tonight. most are really old, but i think this one is from 2011.
seven years and one falafel
You come around the corner from out of a time machine. A few hairs on your beard have gone white but otherwise the only thing that has changed is the presidency and my teeth. Also you are wearing new glasses. Perhaps you don’t remember the time you put me in a headlock and I instinctively punched you in the face, my fist backwards, the way you’d taught me. Pieces of glass fell in triangles at our feet. I notice them now between the concrete and futility between us. I was so proud of my strength back then. I still am.
Watch Tilda Swinton lead a conga line at Ebertfest and restore your faith in humanity
This is who I want to be when I grow up. I have a Google alert set for her next appearance at MoMA so I can run down there and throw myself at her glass coffin and cry.
Ebertfest 2013 Dance Along from Ebertfest on Vimeo.
Focus on the beautiful
I’m a big fan of Ari Seth Cohen’s Advanced Style blog. He posted this video of one of his regular muses talking about the power of positive thinking. Since I agree with everything she says, I thought I’d repost.
Boston and Cambridge this week
Feeling rather ill this week over what’s been going on in the city where I spent more than half my life. First the marathon bombings, and now (as I write) a gunman on MIT campus, who has killed an officer and right now can’t be found. All my friends at MIT are on lockdown in their dorms and offices.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with MIT campus police, but they are an amazing group of people. Many are former secret service officers. They’re kind to students, understanding (and very lenient) about crazy technological/chemical/dangerous physical pranks/hacks by students, and work very hard to ensure the protection of the entire MIT community. To hear one of them has been killed right outside Stata (with his own gun) is chilling, especially in the face of our idiotic Senate’s ruling on, as a former student put it, “an extremely tame bill” imposing minimal measures for gun control. The MIT officer was killed with his own gun, grabbed by guy he was investigating, on this sidewalk outside Stata:
I took this in Jan ’12, just before moving to Germany.
All this has made for a very scary week. And yet it’s my responsibility, I feel, to keep my thoughts up – not merely to think generic “good thoughts” but to seriously pray about the situation, this very aggressive suggestion that bad things happen, bad people happen, and that is more powerful than anything good. It’s not true. That which is good is real and lasting. It’s where life comes from and what life is. You can’t kill it. Which is why the community has and continues to come together to help one another and look past these horrible events, and they will continue to do so – and THAT is real and lasting and powerful.
I wish I was at MIT now more than ever. I just feel like I SHOULD be there; I should support everyone at the Institute at this time…but I thank the students and staff and professors I know there for keeping me informed tonight, and for staying safe themselves. I hope this generation of MIT students goes on to tackle the endemic cultural problems of this era (gun culture, greed culture, “self” culture), which are societal as much as they are political.
And tonight, let’s send some love to the people who’ve been lost this week (including the MIT campus officer), and the Boston and MIT community.