Vanishing Point

Two parallel lines
Recede behind my train and
converge into one.

How banal. But I love watching out the front or back of the train, being mesmerized as the tracks go by. It's rare these days to get to watch out the front; they've got the engineer boxed into his* private compartment and unless he's breaking the rules by leaving the door open, we can't look out. So the end car, the erstwhile caboose, offers a more consistent view, and a more wistful one: where we've been, not where we're going. It also offers, on straight track, a perfect illustration of the powers of perspective. The parallel tracks appear closer and closer together, until they might as well be one.

*Always male - I think I've never seen a female engineer on one of my commuter trains. Conductors, yes - but not the engineers.

Patterns

We spent the Fourth of July making a loop up the west side of the Hudson, and back down the east side. One of our stops was West Point, where we actually took the tour (because it’s now the only way to get onto the base - you used to be able to just drive through). The tour isn’t much more than a narrated bus ride, though we did get to go into the chapel, which is rather lovely.

It had that familiar smell of dust and incense, and all the hymnals and bibles were lined up along the backs of the pews just so, looking kind of like the sea of white tombstones at a military cemetery.


The organ console is astonishing - it's got more stops than I've ever seen on an organ, and is said to be the largest working church organ in the world.


We didn't get to hear the organ, alas, but we did hear and see the cadets march into lunch - three drums, one bugle and more than a thousand identically dressed impending soldiers marching like ants up the stairs into the mess hall. It was entrancing and transfixing, and heartrending too, the unison choreography of war.

I find myself drawn to patterns and textures - that sea of hymnals, the array of organ stops, the marching multitudes. I take pictures of moss, and of piles of vegetables. I don't wear clothes with prints, or fabrics with more than one color; my closet is a sea of solids distinguished by their textures. I'm partial to text-less magazine pages filled with pattern to their full-bleed edges - and I rip them out to use for collage or wrapping paper. I love an old brick wall, the bricks laid by hand, each a slightly different color from its neighbor.

I think there's something hard wired in me that wants to organize the world in a certain way. How about you? What would you have seen in that chapel?

Cultural Enrichment

Back in January, I realized - with a shock - that we were going to have to send the kid to camp - you know, so we could go to work? So I set about researching local day camps and found one that seemed good, came well recommended, was only an arm and a leg (as opposed to the ones that are two arms and both legs), and included door to door bus service.

The only thing that stuck in my heathen pagan atheist craw just a tiny little bit was that it's a Jewish camp, run by a local JCC. Don't get me wrong - it's not the Jewish part that gave me pause, it's the religious part. But I got over it and camp started last week. The kid is happy, she comes home filthy and tired, and she's supposedly learning how to swim.

On the third day, I got a text from my husband:

She came home with a metallic-blue yarmulke and a small plastic shofar. Retaliation for the ham sandwich?

Yeah, he sent her to camp with a ham sandwich. Oh well. At the parent orientation, they'd said "no pork, no shellfish", but "if your kid will only eat a ham sandwich, it's okay." I guess that's the kind of concession you have to make when half of your campers aren't Jewish.

Anyway, there'd been a band there, playing for the kids, and handing out yarmulkes and shofars - kind of like Lester Lanin tossing out beanies at debutante balls - so, no cause and effect between the ham sandwich and the yarmulke. The yarmulke has since had red yarn attached to it by the child, who's taken to tying it on and wearing it around the house as a "helmet". The wrong person is going to ring the doorbell one day and have a heart attack.

Today, we had the following conversation in the car on the way home from hiking in the woods.

Her: You know what we say at camp in the morning? Boker tov, Camp Disco.* That means hello.

Me: In what language?

(pause)

Her: Um, camp?

(Daddy nearly drives off the road.)

So, on the one hand, she's getting all kinds of cultural enrichment. On the other hand, she has no idea what any of it means. I guess that'll come. In the meantime, the amusement factor for her parents has been worth every penny.

* Pronounced "booker toe, camp dis-coe" with the emphasis on the toe and the coe.

Setting the Music Free

I'm cleaning house and giving away some music - all on CD, all by women.

There are three packages, each with a different artist; leave me a comment and tell me what (who) you want - I'll pick three winners on Wednesday the 8th.

1. One CD by Natalie Imbruglia

Left of the Middle

2. Two CDs by Eileen Ivers

Wild Blue
Traditional Irish Music

3. Three CDs by Regina Carter

Motor City Moments
Regina Carter
Something for Grace

My Country 'tis of Thee

Wishing you a happy Fourth of July, with coleslaw and fireworks and spirited renditions of all the great patriotic songs.



I've been teaching the girlie the true and correct version of "America The Beautiful":

O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above thy fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed her grace on thee
And crown thy good with sisterhood
From sea to shining sea!

After all, its words were written by Katharine Lee Bates, an 1880 graduate of Wellesley, and later head of Wellesley's English Department. Wellesley, as you may know, was and remains a women's college - and Bates had a long relationship with another Katharine. In my humble opinion, Bates undoubtedly would have used "sisterhood", had it been politically correct a century ago. In any case, it's the way the song is sung on the campus, and it's the version my girlie needs to know.

Sing out!

Suitable

I am kind of thrilled to hear that Vikram Seth is planning a sequel to A Suitable Boy. If you've never read it, it's a 1200 page Indian soap opera. I read it years ago, reading in little chunks every night before bed (because you do not want to be carrying a 1200 page hardcover on the subway, though come to think of it, a 1200 page book might be a good excuse for a Kindle), and when I was done, I was bereft. I missed them all. So yeah! In four years, they'll be back in my life.

I'm Looking Forward To Another Nap

I have a little free-floating anxiety on the cancer front.

Because both of my parents had polyps discovered via colonoscopy, I was considered a candidate for early scopes, that is, before turning 50. I had the first when I was just past 40, and I had another a couple of weeks ago.

I laid in a supply of peach jello and lemon drops, and drank my cocktail, gallons of salty viscous liquid, like bad Gatorade, gagging all the way. The preparation for the colonoscopy is AWFUL, but the procedure itself is nothing. I had it done in the hospital, and spent the waiting time pre- and post-procedure eyeballing the nurses and wondering which ones were the drug addicts. (I’d seen Nurse Jackie for the first time the night before – have you seen it?)

My doctor found a tiny polyp, and removed it, and a larger one, which he biopsied. A week later, his nurse called up and said breezily “it’s benign, but he wants to see you for a follow-up”. Oh sure.

It turns out that the larger polyp isn’t a polyp at all – but a sessile serrated adenoma – something half way between a polyp (which is simply benign) and an adenoma (which is possibly precancerous) – and in fact, it’s a category of growth that didn’t exist until pathologists decided it really was different a few years ago.

So it might be pre-cancerous, and I have to drink another six quarts of salty viscous liquid, and it has to come out.

But, the nap I had after I got home from the procedure? Was the best four hour nap EVER. I’m looking forward to another one of those.