Running very little very often

I have a photo of myself and my son that became instantly beloved to me the moment I saw it.

He’s on his bike and I’m chasing after him, in a bid to keep up with him -- and keep an eye on him. We’ve come to the Beltline, the rails-to-trails economic development project that’s remaking Atlanta, where we once lived.

I’m dressed in tight jeans and black sandals with hard wooden soles; my hands are gripping my pocketbook and a cell phone. I’m not, in other words, dressed to run. But I am running full-on -- and reveling in the moment.

We’re a blur in motion, we’re laughing, we're alive; need I say more? The photo means more than the plaque I received at a 5K race in my neighborhood after finishing second in my age group.

As the mother of an elementary school-aged boy, I probably run more now than ever before. Running isn’t something I do occasionally – it’s woven now, in small doses, into my life.

My go-to sport and exercise regimen leans more toward lap swimming, and I love simply to walk. I also sometimes bike and paddleboard. But running is so simple, so low on equipment and preparation, that for me it’s like the exercise you pull out of your back pocket as needed. In a new city? Go for a run to map the place out. Can’t get to the gym? Run around the block a few times. Trapped in a cycle of insomnia because you’ve moved cross-country to start a new life in Connecticut? Run in circles behind your house, in the cool, green fields of a private school on your new street. (For example).

I don't run great distances. I don't even run not-so-great distances. I run very short distances.

But it doesn’t mean I’m not serious about running. I am serious about keeping running a constant, if not huge, part of my life. If for no other reason than it makes me feel like I am six years old again, and being six has a lot to recommend for itself.

Often when I’ve run over the past five years, it’s behind my son’s bike, like the scene in the photo. I have to keep up with him, and I relish a chance to be with him while also exercising.

No, it’s not like training for a 5K, or a half-marathon and it certainly isn’t elegant. But it’s running in its pure form, which is to say how we first learned to run as children. Their bodies start moving rapidly without any reason, without checking if they have the right gear on, and in a few seconds, they are engulfed by the euphoria running seems to singlehandedly bestow. My son and his friends run because they want to arrive at the next moment, at the next opportunity for joy, at the next post in life, as soon as possible. What better reason to run? So I copy them – because I, too, want in on this surefire path to smiles and laughter and joy.

As for races, they’re constantly being staged on a spontaneous basic. A few months ago, my son challenged me to a series of races in the school fields behind our house. Each race was a little bit longer – and one race was designated a “jogging-only” course. Do I let him win? I often do but not before running flat-out my fastest (then easing up). I mean, I am sprinting across that field like I am trying out for the Olympics.

I began doing that five years ago when my son turned five and his running sped up. He challenged me to a race on the sidewalk in front of our lilac Victorian in Atlanta, and all of a sudden, I was pouring on the power in a way I hadn’t in decades. I was back at my Long Island elementary school, competing in the 50-yard dash near the end of the school year, and I was joyfully passing classmates even while huffing and puffing around the makeshift track.

I cannot say what my neighbors might have thought, seeing me sprint across the sidewalk toward the corner. I wasn’t play-jogging as many parents do. I was in it to win it. And it felt glorious.

There have been so many days like that since he was born. Days where the highlights come when I’m getting some exercise with my son. I competed in gymnastics growing up and exercise somewhat regularly, but I have never been a jock. Nonetheless I’d always intuited, even if I didn’t fully exploit the notion, that exercise can change our days, and our lives -- literally. Now I try to work up a sweat when I can, including kicking the soccer ball around our small yard over and over (it’s running, just with a ball). And I don’t care how I look or who sees me or where I am when I begin running. With a son who runs at the drop of a hat, it’s not hard to do.

Some of this shift reflects the changes all parents have to make – and the underreported transformation that parenthood conveys. You get a do-over. Looking down after that first sprint with Leo, I suddenly thought, “I feel like a kid.” And it’s all because now I have a kid. Parenthood does that to you. You become the person you were when you were a child. You are given a chance to wipe the slate clean. Got bad habits? Don’t worry -- you won’t have as much time to indulge them. Never an early riser? You can be one now. Want to run around and burn off the frustration of adulthood? You’ll have plenty of opportunities now.

I love it when my son runs to retrieve something. Something he could have simply walked to get. My partner will tease him, by saying under his breath, “Must run everywhere.” And I think, “Shhhh!” I think, Please don’t let him realize the adult world ceased running as a matter of course a long time ago -- because the adult world sleepwalks through life. He aims toward adult life – it’s the natural trajectory of all humans. But let us imitate him – at the very least by moving our bodies often, without care.

Children who are my son’s age naturally belong to The United Republic of Running. No one is wearing expensive workout tights. No one has sponsorships But they are comparing their performances, contrasting the pros and the cons – and ready to race at any time. No excuses like you hear from adults. One day, when his friend heard that Leo and I raced, he challenged me to a race outside their school. Once again, I went full-on, and he cackled the whole race because he couldn’t believe there was a mom keeping pace with him (or openly acting so wacky) along that sidewalk.

For serious runners, this “baby-step” approach (quite literally) may gall. But it aims at a revolution: Running, running often, out of pure joy, and staying alive.

 -30-

His first step was right here

Lost diary entry archive (Atlanta)

I was tidying Leo’s room last night and a vision appeared in my mind, a quick cloud of remember-when ... where I was entering Leo’s room in the middle of the night and comforting him because he was crying. And I realized – or really the point was just crystalized – that if we move (WHEN we move), we will move away from the rooms where those moments happened. 

We will leave behind the love seat where I nursed Leo every night for a year, or at the very least the room where the love seat now sits. And so the love seat -- even in a new house -- will be shorn of its context, its purpose. Shoot, it might even end up neglected in a basement. And oh mercy, mercy mercy me, that is so wrong. I might even be willing to stay here if I begin to be convinced that leaving Atlanta will somehow alter the legacy or my memory of the most important year of my life, the most pivotal, the most blessed.

So many memories – I mean, should I go around and take pictures of the rooms?! Take a picture, say, of the spot on the carpet – it's by his crib, mind you – where he took his first tentative step. 

Maybe.

(Editor's note: We moved. And the moment of where he took his first step lives on only in my mind -- and this blog post. The love seat? It's in the sun room in the new house. Shorn of its context, just like I thought. I guess that's life. But for a memoirist like me, whoa it's a blow to the head. Remembrance of things past, ahhh).

-30-

Leaving Atlanta (redux)

Just before we left Atlanta for good in 2017, I found myself standing in the kitchen, convulsing from ‘the tornado of change that is tearing through my life,’ a phrase I'd bracketed in quotes in my journal ... Am I quoting someone? Myself? Who knows.

And then: 

"I am writing on a kitchen counter that's cluttered with all the things that were removed from end tables that have also since been removed – the house is empty and I think we are, too. 

"We are for all intents and purposes departed – most of the goodbyes have already been said, personal effects carted away – but we are lingering in a skeleton of a home so we can clean a bit. 

"Stranger to think I don’t like goodbyes since with all of these cross-country moves, I’m saying them much more often than the average person. 

"How do I feel? Well, I am listening to Steve Winwood’s album 'Cigano.'"

Which meant the song that should be called "What My Father Said" on repeat in the car. My go-to album when I want to indulge way too much feeling. 

"And I dipped into Van Morrison yesterday (“St. Dominic’s Preview”)..."

That song embodies such intense longing for me and I don't even know why. Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen have that uncanny ability to make me long for a past that's not mine. I've probably mangled the meaning but I imagine the song title to refer to a place in Belfast, where Van was born, or at the least somewhere in Van's childhood that he couldn't forget even if memories could be stomped to death.

"...so I am courting the ache," I reported to my journal. "Plus all the reporting for Delta Sky magazine and the AJC personal journeys essay. 

"I am stewing in nostalgia, by choice, as if to throw a bucket of cold water on my face: You’re leaving, you’re leaving, you’re really doing it."

We really did it. We really left Atlanta, after two tours of duty totaling 12 years. 

"Homeward we go. Toward something as yet undefined but which we think will mitigate the fact that it’s been 'all downhill' since we left Florence, so many years ago."

See a previous post for how it initially worked out ("Is walking the cure?"). Then look at every post from the last three years to come to a final conclusion.The move was good. 

But as I concluded when I wrote the "Personal Journeys" essay piece for the AJC, while the decision we made was a good one – an investment in Leo’s future and in the lives of other people we love, the takeaway perhaps was this: "Adulthood means doing the right thing even though it doesn’t feel right – and won’t feel right for a very long time."

-30-

Is walking the cure?

I exhort my students -- and anyone who will listen -- to keep a journal, as you know by now. Jot things down. Keep notes. Pay attention, as the poet Mary Oliver might have said.

And sometimes my own little scribbled messages or entries in my digital diary work their way into published pieces. For example, recording Leo's early speech -- saying 'lello' instead of yellow and hangerburger for the meat you have with hotdogs -- was the subject of an essay I wrote for The New York Times about the "shooting star" of a child's early attempts at speech. And I was able to include bits of early dialogue that I'd recorded in my journal.

But one essay I wrote actually included a Google calendar alert. "Is walking the cure?"

I use the alerts for anything and everything. Even: "Take a shower." And sometimes I will use them to register a problem I am facing, if only to get me to face it.

The problem was insomnia, brought on by our rocky relocation to Connecticut. Within the space of three weeks, we'd left Atlanta, moved into a new house in Connecticut, enrolled Leo in kindergarten and resumed our work. In my case, resuming work meant doing something completely new -- namely teaching Italian while also earning a graduate degree in Italian literature.

(On a related note, I will say walking is miraculous! But I digress...)

I wrote about all of this for the AJC (Atlanta's main daily newspaper) after they published a longer essay I wrote about leaving Atlanta for good. Here's an excerpt:

The fall had been a long, hard slog. One recurring Google alert I had set for myself read: “Is walking the cure?” Google alerts, post-it notes, scraps of paper shoved in my pocket. Until earlier this year, it was how I managed my life in Atlanta, teaching, editing and writing whenever possible while also running after a five-year-old – my son, Leo. The reminders keep me on track with writing assignments, grant applications and groceries.

Not so with this note. “Is walking the cure?”

I was grasping at a solution because in the short time since leaving Atlanta last summer and moving to Connecticut for a new life up North, I’d suffered the worst insomnia in five years. I could log at best six hours of shut-eye night after night, despite putting in long hours as a new part-time professor of Italian at a college in Connecticut. In between lessons, I was trying to master dozens of new tasks, including the route to campus, my students’ names and staggered class schedules (Italian I, for example, met at 9:30, except Mondays when it met at 9:05).

But none of this frenzy of activity moved me to sleep more than six hours. I would jog around the field behind our house some mornings, making me energetic on the surface, exhausted just below.  

You can read the rest of the essay here (you'll have to scroll down a bit):

http://specials.myajc.com/pj-past-2017/

This is Atlanta

From the lost diary entry archive (Atlanta division)

Aug 31, 2016

I often invent little errands for myself so I can SEE. See something – that’s my aim but somewhere down deep I must know I will also feel something, and then I will begin writing in my head, and I will remember why I am so lucky.

And without fail it happened on a short walk to mail letters in Cabbagetown this morning. 

I dropped Leo off at his new school and then hoofed it a few streets over to the mailbox on Boulevard in front of the Southwestern restaurant. Not knowing what I would see, only knowing I love the Cabbagetown neighborhood, and honestly I think I love it twice as much now as I did this morning. 

I took a chance on seeking to enroll him at the C-town campus, only later remembering that one of my small Atlanta to-dos was walking around Cabbagetown more, like I did when we first moved back. Walking around Cabbagetown makes me think Atlanta is cool. It’s why we came back, even if much of our life is away from the kookiness of that tiny neighborhood to the north of us.

So what did I see? Just the usual: morning glories crawling up the utility pole, old corner grocery stores attached to homes and re-purposed as artist nooks, lightbulbs strung on decks and across driveways to create ambiance, flower boxes everywhere to the point of obscuring the homes behind them, a front lawn given over entirely to sunflowers as tall as the one-story house’s roof, a workman moving a large cement block who asks me, “Are you having fun yet?”

No two houses the same, but every house working its little heart out to tell you its story, and there is a story. Each porch beckons you – sit down, read a book, enjoy a cup of tea.

I love Cabbagetown. And I think to myself as I walk, ‘This is Atlanta.’ 

***
-30-

On leaving Atlanta

Aug. 8, 2017

I write on a kitchen counter cluttered with all the items that were removed from side tables that have also since been removed – the house is empty and I think we are, too. We are for all intents and purposes departed – most of the goodbyes have already been said, the personal effects carted away. But we are lingering in a skeleton of a home so we can clean. 

Strange to think I don’t like goodbyes since with all the moving about over the years, I say them much more often than the average person.

How do I feel? Well, I've dipped into Van Morrison (“St. Dominick’s Preview”) so I am courting the ache. Plus, all the reporting for Delta and the AJC Personal Journeys essay. I am stewing in nostalgia, by choice, as if to throw a bucket of cold water on my face: You’re leaving, you’re leaving, you’re really doing it, Jeanne. 

***
Lost diary entry

Dear Marie Kondo

Dear Marie Kondo,

I know that your book has helped many people pare down, and since a relocation has consumed me for much of 2017 – moving away from my Atlanta home of 9 years to begin a new life in Connecticut – I thought it might make sense to seek you out.

If I got it right, you tell people to ask -- as they inventory their things -- does it “spark joy”?

Except, Marie -- can I call you Marie? -- you don't understand how many things spark joy for me.

Or merely incite some kind of emotion inside.

Or, in the case of Elmo Peter Elson, represent a line in the sand. He’s my childhood teddy bear – and he’s dressed in my childhood clothes (a blue windbreaker with a faulty zipper and riotous 1970s toddler pants). I can’t throw him out now. (No, I don’t know why his name is Elmo Peter Elson.)

Elmo’s making the journey along with a cassette tape of U2’s “Boy” album that’s unspooled, and half-used notepads engraved with the name of my deceased uncle and a button for a failed political campaign where I volunteered 20 years ago, plus a vintage pin from Bayonne, N.J., my father’s hometown (because sometimes other people’s mementos, especially one’s parents, are even more potent than your own) and the pregnancy tester stick – positive! – that forget ‘changed my life’ – it gave me the life I didn’t know I was even craving. Also: bus, train and plane tickets, mainly to and from Italy, and a lot of Lira – Italy’s old currency -- that can no longer be used. But they’re like my bank statements from Cassa Di Risparmio di Firenze, which remind me that I was lucky enough to live long enough in the city of Dante to open up an account at the Florence Savings Bank. (I’ve also kept the Enrico Coveri scarf Melanie gave me and the plastic shopping bag she used to give it to me because while it is a relatively ordinary yellow and green plastic bag it is also instantly recognizable as a bag not produced in the US or used by a US retail establishment. Reason to keep it.)

Plus writing journals.

Lots and lots of journals, including ones from grammar school that I find unreadable (some thoughts should be kept inside, I’ve concluded.)

Lots of letters, too, including the one from a very dear friend that remains unopened and will likely stay in that virgin state until we die. You see, Marie, it’s a condolence card. Everything there was to know -- and everything we didn’t want to know -- is discernible on the outside of the card. Her careful handwriting, our names, the date stamp the week Mike’s father died -- without any need to open it. She is sorry and we are sorry and nothing can be done to erase the death that occasioned the card. To paraphrase the poet Donald Hall, the dead stay dead. So it’s still sealed but my God, Marie, how can I throw it out? Her kindness can’t be discarded.


I also still have Doug K.’s business card. In fact, I have two of them. I know what you're thinking -- who uses business cards anymore? Especially one for a man I last spoke to back in 2000. No, I don't need it. But you see, I do.

We named Doug Security Director of the Year in 2000, back when I was an editor on a trade pub that covered security systems and metal detectors and locks with audit trails.

He'd done such a bang-up job in his position as security director of -- wait for it -- the World Trade Center, that he won the annual contest that year. Security Director of the Year. In Doug’s case, it might as well have said ‘of the decade.’ His picture was on the cover and everything, with the two towers looming behind him. And then on Sept. 11 – you know the year -- I tried calling the number on the business card but I couldn't get through. You see what I mean, Marie? I've got to keep his business card. I need something to remember him by. Just like the page I ripped from an old calendar of New York. The last image I have of those Twin Towers. Where we went after we saw "Annie" on Broadway with Uncle Pat and Aunt Maureen, before they had children -- a thousand years ago, give or take.

Read Delta Sky Mag (& fly Delta jets!)

If you've flown Delta anytime this month, you might have read one of the stories I filed for Delta Sky Magazine about Atlanta!

If not, you can find there here.

I wrote a destination piece about Atlanta, centered around the Beltline rails-to-trails project (called "City in the Forest") and a snapshot of Atlanta's economy, which you can see in the photo here.

I also wrote a short profile of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed (where I compare him to a competitive athlete).

Thanks to all of my friends who snapped photos of the magazine while in the air!

As the sign at Hartsfield says, Fly Delta Jets!

-30-

Dear Leo: Happy Birthday!

Dear Leo,

Five years ago, I looked like the person in the photo -- I was that person.

Atlanta was gripped in a heat wave -- I learned at Fernbank the other day that we set a record of 106 degrees shortly before you were born! -- and I was gripped in a revolution. In the final days of my pregnancy, I had moments in which I almost felt as though I were going insane, unable to sleep and still unable to peer into the little face I so longed to see.

It wasn't all bad, though. Indeed "adventures in mind-expansion" is what I called the final month. As I wrote in the journal that would soon become my constant companion, "My mental acuity is sharpened if only in the sense that I seem more able or maybe just more willing to study all angles of a situation. At the same time, I appear keener to let minor annoyances or concerns go."

Atlanta's Italian film fest -- my pick: "La Scelta"

Every year I attend the Italian film festival in Atlanta (at the beloved Plaza Theater) and each year I mean to handicap the festival for Italophiles and folks who love Italian film....but half the time, I plan the post without ever writing it.

This year, I'm getting myself organized early, as you can see since it's still a month away.

I don't know how film festivals work but my guess is the answer is: not like Atlanta's Italian film festival. In other words, the movies at this "film festival" are not new (to wit, my recommendation, "La Scelta," came out in Italy in 2015), although they may be looking for foreign distributors.

In some ways, though, that critique is besides the point. The festival is most likely featuring films most of us have not seen. I mean, I love Italian film but don't really get a chance to see many movies, period, much less those from Il Bel Paese.

One other critique I have of the festival is that it now tends to favor comedies oriented around the lowest common denominator (in earlier iterations, it focused more on serious dramas).

Also, there's always a film missing from the lineup. This year, I would say it's "Perfetti Sconosciuti," ("Perfect Strangers") an interesting film about what secrets husbands and wives are hiding on their cell phones (texts from an old boyfriend, say).

OK, but this film appears to be worth seeing, "La Scelta" ("The Choice"), if for no other reason than Raoul Bova is in it. Longtime actor who happens also be bellissimo! Check it out!

More info at the link at the top of this post. See you next month al cinema!

When Bell'Italia publishes your letter to the editor

I still can't believe my favorite travel magazine, Bell'Italia, published my little ol' letter to the editor!

The magazine celebrated its 30th anniversary last year, and I wrote in to say I was celebrating my 20th anniversary of reading the magazine.

And lest the editors doubt my sincerity, look here and here to see all the times I've gushed over the magazine!

In addition to being a supremely beautiful magazine, Bell'Italia is also incredibly useful. The articles contain fairly detailed itineraries for city walks, hikes, visits to wineries, etc. To anyone wanting to get an idea of where to go in Italy -- even if you don't read Italian -- order yourself a copy online or pick one up when you travel abroad. It's like the ultimate insider's guide -- instructions on visiting places in Italy but... FOR ITALIANS.

Thanks to a fellow Italophile, John of Alpharetta (an Atlanta suburb), for alerting me to the letter!

Time for the Panettone

I've always thought about panettone at this time of the year, even back before you could find the little Italian Christmas loaves everywhere in America. And I'm reposting this essay -- about the ritual of going to buy a panettone in Florence -- from a few years back:

                      ********
I opened the panettone.

I wasn't going to. I bought it last week at the Whole Foods store on Ponce in Atlanta with the idea of bringing it somewhere as a special treat.

But then I thought, well, I would like a special treat. Right here, right now.

So I opened it, and still mulling over a long-awaited email I had received from a British friend this morning, I had a flashback to the days when I lived in Florence and I would buy a panettone to bring for Christmas dinner.

(Yes, a flashback to Florence -- what do you expect? Chalk it up to my living in Florence just after college. I think those early years of adulthood, no matter where you spend them, remain disproportionately impressed upon the brain, perhaps because it's then that we launch our own independent lives, with their own rhythms and routines, separate from Mommy and Daddy).

Specifically, I remembered going to order a homemade, artigianale panettone from a bakery on Borgo San Iacopo to bring to my British friend's family in Luxembourg.

They had invited me to spend Christmas with them that first year that I lived in Florence, and as I counted down the days until I boarded the overnight train from Santa Maria Novella station, I made the rounds of neighborhood stores to pick up treats and gifts.

I remember walking over to the bakery along the narrow, cobblestone streets on the other side of the Arno from the Duomo, and pausing a moment in front of the glass storefront.

You know the type -- either from movies or real-life.

It had a large front window through which you could see a display case full of Christmas delicacies and everyday pastries, I believe the baker had stuck his head out of the kitchen for a moment to share a laugh with the girl behind the counter, and condensation had formed on the window from the heat of the kitchen.

There was a clutch of older women, in their quilted jackets, identical grey, knee-length wool skirts, and sensible brown leather shoes; they were issuing, with authoritative tones and gestures, specific instructions about the items they wanted.

I felt at once integrated and assimilated -- fully in the stream of Italian life as I waited to place my order -- and forever locked out. I would never be like those women.

It all seemed so evocative of city or village life: the neighborhood bakery. Ever since, I've always wanted to live in neighborhoods that are anchored by a bakery, but alas it's not so easy in America.

And while I was cutting myself a piece of panettone this morning, I wondered why that chore had remained lodged deep inside my mind. Living in Italy, one would not find it unusual to buy a panettone.

But I think the idea of rushing around town, preparing for Christmas, crossing chores off your list -- it all constitutes such a fundamental activity that it almost seems like a scene out of Dickens.

Going to the neighborhood bakery and ordering a Christmas treat is as far as you can get from the suburban shopping mall or car traffic or the incessant intertwining of romance with the birth of Jesus (doesn't that seem a bit odd?).

And it was enough just to breathe in the scent of the panettone this morning to unearth this memory.

Now if you buy a panettone this Christmas, you won't remember the same thing, but you'll have the same sensation of enjoying a seasonal treat. And Lord knows, nothing is more Italian than eating a particular dish at a specific time of year -- and then not again until next year.

Autumn in Atlanta

'nuff said.

From the archives: "Do polar bears fly?"

In  light of the kind reception to my New York Times essay about recording audio snippets of Leo, I'm re-posting excerpts from what I call the "Leo Journal." This installment is intermixed with my normal "bits" journal, a diary of ideas and observations. Here it is:

*

November 2016
I only have to hear "eleventeen" once for it to instantly become my favorite number.

The best number that has never existed.

I've written about this topic before (notably here and here). And even if you love me, you may be blanching right now from boredom and pity (for me).

But, oh God, it is so awesome!

Is it the writer's equivalent of someone learning to walk? Run?

When Leo says "eleventeen," I don't correct him. (Probably not something I should admit.)

It's just so cute. Eight, nine, ten, eleventeen.

I do the same thing when he says "fi-ruh" (for the word fire). Ditto: lello, and hangerburger (to go with your hotdog).

It's the greatest blooper reel ever created, as far as I am concerned.

And besides, why correct him when he says, "I want to swing very higher"?

Swinging "very higher" sounds like something I'd like to do, too.

March 17, 2016

From one of Leo's children's books: "Where do the months and years go when they're gone?"

April 15, 2016
6:33 a.m.

I have to think Atlanta is some kind of bird sanctuary. I’ve never heard so much birdsong or such loud tweets anywhere else. My God! Lots of red-feathered cardinals – the only bird I know to recognize.

*

It gets light so early these days. Which means SOMEONE wakes up early. Cutting severely into Mommy’s writing time. I put these words down to give a sense of my life, not really to complain. It’s the change of the seasons wrought into a specific detail: Here’s what early spring means to me…abbreviated writing sessions, and also one of the few times of the year when the morning darkness dissipates quickly here. 

Atlanta, city of darkness. Lately I’ve been tweeting that it’s a city of murals. And it really is. It’s one of the few distinguishing characteristics. I guess thanks in part to Living Walls. And maybe also the specific geography of Atlanta: lots of train tunnels. The Living Walls in Cabbagetown, after all, are along the train wall that leads to Krog Street Tunnel.

*

I hear a voice outside – which turns out to be cat – and I look over my shoulder to see the pinkening sky through the transom window. This image = my life in Atlanta. My early morning writing life in Atlanta. The pinkening sky, glimpsed briefly through the transom window.

April 26, 2016

Leo: “My head is so full of questions.”

He asks a fairly mundane question, and then says, “My other question is: do polar bears fly?”

No, but nice try.

Tonight in Atlanta! "MIA MADRE" - A film by Nanni Moretti

I don't go to the movies often -- I certainly don't go see Italian films often -- peccato! But tonight I'm going to see Nanni Moretti's latest film -- grande! The babysitter is booked and stasera, ladies and gentlemen, si va al cinema.

Pianos for Peace -- Atlanta edition

Pianos for Peace -- I don't know who you are, I don't know where you're based and I don't need to know. I only know Leo and I were wandering around Piedmont Park one warm summer afternoon recently and we stumbled upon this lovely red piano. We had no agenda that day and were looking for an adventure. For 15 minutes or so, Little Red Piano, you provided it.

Because not only did we sit down and try to play ourselves, we managed to entice others to try their hand at tinkling the ivories, as they say. People were intrigued, like us (can we really just sit down and play this piano? Um, yep, it would appear to be the case!). And taking chance, I prevailed upon a few good sports to see if they could remember their childhood piano lessons.

The man in the picture remembered something -- I think if he'd had more time, he would have remembered all kinds of songs. He was a bit shy, perhaps the way we all are when we remember a past love or a past hobby or some activity we gave up, which now seems lost to time, seemingly with no way to ever recover it.

I think there IS a way to recover it, in this case. Perhaps Pianos for Peace can help. I've since seen another piano that is part of the initiative, stationed under the Freedom Parkway overpass on the Beltline.

Hey Atlanta, if you're not already bothering fellow citizens with your recollection of "Chopsticks," get to it. This one is near the pool in Piedmont Park!

P.S. -- According to the link, the pianos will be around Atlanta until Sept. 18.

Reading poetry on the porch

Diary entry for Aug 7, 2016

Forgotten moments of pure joy: We arrive home one afternoon, Leo and I, to find a plastic bag twisted around the handle of the front door. 

It’s a slew of Poetry magazine issues from our 84-year-old neighbor, Art, the former chemist. Something Leo has become accustomed to seeing (Old issues of The New Yorker make up my part of the exchange with Art). 

So many issues (bound, as they are, like little books) that it appears to be a bounty we must explore immediately. And perhaps one member of the team is particularly snoozy and so we sit on the porch, he and I doubled up in one chair, reading poems from Poetry magazine, as we wait for Daddy to come home from work. 

And he sits so happily, so quietly, absorbing words of modern poetry, while I sit so happily, absorbing a scene of uncommon purity and joy, in my favorite spot in the house, feeling the press of his warm skin against mine, hearing the string of verse spooling out of my mouth and into his ears, and please God, into his conscience, into the part of his brain that forms his being.

It feels a bit like grief (poem - “Summer’s Wake”)

It feels a bit like grief

The first warnings of fall

The sudden chill in the morning air when until yesterday,

There was nothing but heavy, humid, hot air mugging my every breath

I open the door to the front porch and something like a breeze comes toward me

I may even need a sweater, I think distractedly

The crickets are humming

Where have they been?

Hiding until this moment, this moment where the world signals

It will soon be coming to an end

(A fact forgotten while the days were frittered away)

Something else will begin, something equally wonderful

But what of it?

What we have, what we’ve failed to properly exploit

Is dissolving, vanishing, slipping away

What we’ve failed to properly exploit

That’s the source of the nagging feeling as

I follow the breeze's path across the porch, and across my body

The easy way I settle into the wicker chair

With the front door flung open, then left open

And the sudden desire to live my whole life on the porch

(My refuge, but one that goes on an uncanny hiatus during the summer months)

It’s a thought unfathomable just a few short days ago

It’s been so long

So long since that heavy, humid, hot air’s been molesting me

Not that I truly minded

I’ve learned to love the heat, the few moments ventured each day out of our precious AC

Like some last vital untamed element, savage and unapologetic

I’ve come to consider the heat summer’s blanket, 

Its birth mark

Its guarantee that every submersion in water will be a divine communion

A sign, perhaps, that I’ve assimilated

Into that other country, the South

Atlanta, my adult home

But that’s no consolation now that the chill is there every morning when I open the front door

To search for morning glories and the morning paper

Also of no help: Full knowledge of fall's thrilling rhythms

Not yet anyway

Childhood’s delineation of summer as fun and fall as funeral
Has me weeping silently into the breeze

"My other question is: do polar bears fly?"

I've been publishing excerpts here on the blog of my "Bits" journal, to borrow the expression, again, from poet and FSU writing professor David Kirby. Here's another excerpt below. It's just a collection of notebooks and computer files where I record everyday thoughts, inspirations, ideas for stories, etc. This one draws heavily from a 'sub-journal' -- the Leo Diary.

*

April 30, 2016

6:33 a.m.

I have to think Atlanta is some kind of bird sanctuary. I’ve never heard so much birdsong or such loud tweets anywhere else. My God! Lots of red-feathered cardinals – the only bird I know to recognize.

*

It gets light so early these days. Which means SOMEONE wakes up early, cutting severely into Mommy’s writing time. I put these words down to give a sense of my life, not really to complain. It’s the change of the seasons wrought into a specific detail: Here’s what early spring means to me…abbreviated writing sessions, and also one of the few times of the year when the morning darkness dissipates quickly here. 

Atlanta, city of darkness. Lately I’ve been tweeting that it’s a city of murals. And it really is. It’s one of the few distinguishing characteristics. I guess thanks in part to Living Walls. And maybe also the specific geography of Atlanta: lots of train tunnels. The Living Walls in Cabbagetown, after all, are along the train wall that leads to Krog Street Tunnel.

*

I hear a voice outside – which turns out to be cat – and I look over my shoulder to see the pinkening sky through the transom window. This image = my life in Atlanta. My early morning writing life in Atlanta. The pinkening sky, glimpsed briefly through the transom window.

April 27, 2016

The lyrics and the music to the song “Graceland” replay in my mind. ‘My traveling companion is 9 years old. She’s the child of my first marriage…. I have reason to believe we’ll both be received in Graceland….Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee…we’re going to Graceland.”

Songs of redemption.

April 26, 2016

Leo: “My head is so full of questions.”

He asks a fairly mundane question, and then says, “My other question is: do polar bears fly?”

No, but nice try.

Houses of Atlanta

In Cabbagetown.

I love taking photos of houses. And Atlanta offers a smorgasbord because the housing stock can sometimes change block to block or neighborhood to neighborhood. This is a project in search of a real photographer. I imagine an exhibit where the walls would be covered with photos of houses in Atlanta, as distinct as people's faces.

In Grant Park.

In Home Park.