Spontaneous Musings

I ripped off the band-aid and got my hair cut. (Getting a hair cut involved hopping on the subway and going to my old nieghborhood, which is much busier, and far younger than current one. Also wearing a mask for about two hours (I know there are folks wearing them all day long six to seven days a week)and having another human touch me.

But I did it. And it was glorious. Nerve-wrecking at first - even though, technically I'm safer from the virus now than the last time I got my hair cut. The irony of that never fails to amuse. For those not keeping track - the last time I'd gotten my hair cut was February 29, 2020. A day before the first case was announced in NYC. By now, my hair was well past my shoulders, and the dye gone. (I did not get it re-dyed, mainly because I had no interest in sitting in a salon for three hours with a mask on, when it was pretty outside.)

The salon was spacious. It was just me and the stylist, the colorist was in the back. Only really three people in the salon, and it's not a small salon - it's big enough not to require partitions. The stylist wore a mask, and had received the first dose of the Pfizer, I'm fully vaccinated.

I didn't realize how much I missed human contact. To finally have a person that I knew touch my hair, wash it, and massage the skull, also to talk to...was a joy to behold. Also no waiting - since I picked the first slot. The stylist was apparently booked today - so I had wisely booked last week.
I'd gotten there before they were open, so I walked around a bit, and came back on the dot.

Below is a picture of the new haircut, on the subway ride home.



The stylist, Amber, who has tattoos up and down one of her arms, and a thick Southern Accent, she hails from Maryland, told me that she'd been unemployed for four months. The salon had been closed down. And now, that things were opening up again - NY had requested that she send back her unemployment payments. (Seriously??) But she had managed to start another business - making onesies for babies - via Etsy, and was doing rather well - also her husband is in construction, so that saved them.
( Read more... )
After I got my hair cut, I decided to walk to the Carroll Gardens subway station, as opposed to the Bergen Street one, which was closer. It was a pretty day and I wanted to stop by the wine store and Planted, to pick up CBD, and THC (if available).

The street that had been completely vacant prior to my appointment, was now bustling with people. Also the Bagel shop had even more people than before with folks waiting outside. (I wanted to get some Gluten Free Bagels - but it was impossible. Too many people. I fled.) I might, if it isn't raining tomorrow, venture to the Farmer's Market for them. If it is, I'll just make flat bread instead.


[Note the skyscrapers aren't Manhattan but Downtown Brooklyn.]

Outdoor dining in Brooklyn - this was brunch with two restaurants next to each other, and a line. I had to walk through the restaurants. Outdoor sidewalk dining is somewhat problematic because the restaurant has to work around the people who need to use the sidewalk to get by - now they have their outdoor bit in the street - where cars used to park.

The other problem is in some cases its not really outdoor dining at all - but little wood and plastic sheds on the sidewalk, with partitions and evenly spaced tables.

I'm grateful for my own residential area - that has very little of this, maybe four restaurants nearby if that.

( One next to the subway station )

( Pizza Place across the street from the subway )

( blue sheds for dining and drinking )

Street filled with outdoor dining sheds.



I did stop into the Wine Shop, and was able to pick up canned wine (which feels a little blasphemous to me - but the wine store folks didn't think it was at all. Saves the environment. They are moving away from corks now - and don't believe they are needed. ( Read more... )



The subway ride home was uneventful - and remarkably empty. Clean too. My experiences on the subway post pandemic have been pleasant - but also, when I think about it...worrisome, in that so few people are using the subway now. And that's going to hurt ridership. Prior to the pandemic we had over 6 million people using it, now it's barely a million.

I stopped by a table outside the Wallgreens, operated by four women of varying ages - providing information on supporting the "community food pantries" that had been set up around the neighborhood. There was community fridge, a pantry, and a wooden pantry set up on two different side streets. These are to feed whomever needs them. ( Read more... )



As you can see, the tulips are in full bloom.

Upon arrival to my apartment building, I ran into my new neighbor - apparently they've turned over that apartment again. ( Read more... )

My brother got the side-effects with the second Moderna Shot - per mother. ( Read more... )

While my niece is still doing brilliantly at school - yet another teacher wants to use a paper she wrote as an example on how to do a bibliography, or to write a research paper. (Making me wonder about the other kids going to her school? Apparently she was taught how and they weren't?)

I've discovered joy in a graveyard. My most peaceful and life-affirming moments are walking along the assorted paths of Greenwood Cemetery, among the trees, flowers and assorted headstones, monuments, mausoleums, and plaques. With robins hopping and tweeting, occasional herons, and a lone smiley face deflated balloon that someone left tied to a tombstone.

It's an odd-feeling walking there alone in the evening hours as the sun wanes in the sky...still bright but not quite so bright, mask just below my nostrils, until I hear voices rumbling in the distance, or see a walker coming towards me, eyes glued on their cell phone - and up the mask goes...And I find myself wondering why they are looking at their cell phones in such paradise? Is this why the pandemic strikes? Because we've grown so bored of the natural world - our eyes are glued to a screen - until that is literally all we see? I don't know. For myself, taking a break from the screens, the phones, and all of it - feels kind of like bricks falling off shoulders or a veil lifted from the eyes. Sure I raise my phone to capture images here and there - to share later on various social media platforms, this one among them, but that feels different somehow.

The breeze is crisp on the portion of the face uncovered by the mask. I'm like a bandit- only my eyes and the top of my nose are visible and barely underneath my sunglasses, which are slid quite close to my nostrils. This is to keep them from fogging up from the mask. My breath comes heavy against layers of cloth, a filter between them. Lowering the mask slightly beneath the nostrils when it becomes evident that I am alone, just me, the trees, and the birds, comes almost as a relief - but not quite enough of one to lower it all the way down.

The mask is a reminder of how fragile I am in this brave new world - where a disease could lurk in any or all human contact. The trees, the birds, the grass, the petals, the flowers, the graves are safe and my friends, but the lone human, potentially deadly. We circle around each other on the paths and sidewalks. Walking on grass or the street to avoid accidental contact. Some will see me - and go another direction or path if watching. If not, I'm the one who darts in another direction or path. On the way, a man with a handmade bandana mask, asks in a thick accent where Ocean Parkway is, he looks lost - and I point, stating it's right here, behind him.

They've opened more streets to pedestrian traffic. And established more bike lanes across the city. The neighbors are complaining about how - the streets are now crowded with teens and children, not their own, making a ruckus on skate-boards and scooters and bikes, treating it like their own personal playground. I tell this to my mother over the phone - in one of our daily phone chats - and she points out the obvious, the kids have no where else to play. I avoid the newest opened streets knowing that many will flock there and go instead to the far less crowded and peaceful grave yard - which alas, will only be packed this weekend - on Memorial day, when everyone makes time to visit the graves. And people have been visiting the graves. I see fresh leavings, tributes really, from the living to the dead - who I sense, while they do not, are no longer present. Merely the ghosts of long-shed or in the case of the newly dead, ever present grief lurks there now in the flags, balloons, plastic flowers, and crosses dotting the newly marked headstones and graves, alongside the ancient ones from a century past that sit faded, unremarked upon.

I wonder sometimes as I walk these pathways if this is my way of making peace with death?

The death of what I know. With my own mortality, and more importantly the death of those I love - which are a mere handful. I fear my own death less than theirs.

And death lurks in the shadows and the sunlight now (although less so the sunlight or so I'm told)..and in the unseen places, it's sting, invisible and deadly and closer than before. It lurks outside my doorway. In the steel furniture carrier that sits outside my neighbor's door, on the plastic bag of balloons welcoming a new life in big broad letters just beyond it, on the door handles of the front doors to my building, and on the mailboxes. On each piece of mail and every box delivered. On the innocent old black lady's face as she struggles with a cart down the street, mask less. Or the old man smoking outside the gas station wheezing between puffs of smoke, mask down below his chin. And finally on the woman and her family, walking her ever so slowly towards me on the sidewalk, none of which are wearing masks today.

According to the COVID MAP OF DOOM which I've been consulting since I discovered it in late January, prior to that I was consulting the New York Times Map (which isn't as accurate)...there are now ( Read more... )

Around 1:30 or so, I decided to take a walk - to get rid of some nervous tension - mostly the result of looking at the news, and alas, chocolate.

Didn't know if I was going to Greenwood Cemetery or not, it's in the mid-forties, around 44 F or 6.667°C, according to some calculator that I found on the internet.
Depended on how crowded the streets were - last weekend was ridiculous - but it was also in the 70s last weekend, and people were out in droves. We've had an unusually cool spring, and a late one, due to it being cooler than usual, winter was unusually short and dry, and also warmer than usual.

Turns out I was in luck, few people were out and about. Probably too cold for them? The ones that I saw were in varying degrees of jackets, hats, boots, and scarves. It's not THAT cold, but people are odd. Also less bicycles - possibly due to the sharp breeze and it being colder.

Anyhow, here's the photos I took this round. I hope you can see them, since this is the only way I know of to post them.

( walk among the graves, trees, and flowers in Greenwood Cemetery )

I'll post the photos that I took on the way home and my attempt at taking a picture of a fussy robin, who did not want his picture taken, in a separate post.

[As an aside, My Little Novel That Could is doing quite well considering I only released it on May 5, and I had a bit of an interruption due to the fact that the publisher forgot to include the author bio and had to fix it. MD has decided to recommend it for her book club and they've agreed to do it. And asked if I'd like to attend. Yippee.]

Anywho...took lovely and meditative walk around Greenwood Cemetery, passed an Indian Bazarr on the way home, and got safely inside at least an hour prior to the encroaching thunderstorm. Greenwood Cemetery is a great place to walk around, only thing you have to worry about is the occasional motorist. It's quiet, filled with trees, and long idyllic pastures, plus lots of decorative tombstones dating back to the 1700s. The Indian Bazarr, or rather street fair but in Little Bangledash/Pakistan/India aka MacDonald Street, felt a bit like I'd suddenly traveled to another country. NYC is like that..you can at times feel like you've been transported to another country entirely.

I took pictures.

( Greenwood Cemetery )

( Street Fair )

[Hey, I finally figured out how everyone was doing html links. What I haven't figured out is why everyone isn't suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. Maybe you are? Just on morphine and not copting to it?]

Woke up clinging to my bed and not wanting to face the world, but kept to initial plan - showered, ate, dressed, dried hair, put on make-up and took off on a walk. A long ambling walk where my internal demons wrestled, eventually growing tired and taking in brief glimspes of the world around me.

I'll start with the last glimpse. A moment frozen. Standing on the opposite side of Smith street, just below the overgrown and funky transit garden with its blood red sunflowers and yellowing bushes, waiting for the light to change in order to enter my own tree bordered block, a children's mural behind me on the wall of the elevated subway track, I watch a monarch butterfly frozen in midair in the intersection, just above the roofs of the cars as if it is hanging by an invisible thread. It wavers for less than a second. Long enough for my eyes to see it. Direct in my sightline. Long enough for me to forget my own struggle. I watch it push against the wind that appears from my vantage point to propell it backwards. Away from its destination or towards its doom - the onrushing traffic below. But it succeeds. It pushes past the current and flutters safely to the other side to land momentarily on the edge of the wrought iron fence encompassing the garden that sits surrounded by concrete on all sides.

I stare at it for a few moments, even though the light has changed once again and I can walk to my own home across the boundary. Such a fragile thing really: The Monarch Butterfly . Its wings made of crepe paper and its thin body, not much thicker than a twig. Black and orange viened wings, gossamer wings, move back and forth as if it were breathing or sighing. Watching its struggle reminds me of my own. Fighting a current that wishes to thrust me backwards. The people in my life sitting underneath - an onrush of traffic, anxious to race past in a direction that is neither parallel nor in the same direction of my own, but crosses the path. And like the monarch butterfly, I rest upon the other side, just a moment, before fluttering upwards, in spiraling circles towards an unknown light.

The Changing Face of Brooklyn

( a ramble on my walk around my neighborhood that I felt compelled to write about for some reason. )