Greer Gilman's Blog, page 10

Ninespace

Things in Ninespace disappear.  Keys, glasses, phone, wallet, watch, books, tickets, puzzle pieces.  "But I had it in my hand," I wail, and havoc frantically.  Often whatever it is turns up somewhere like my bathrobe pocket—why?  Or nowhere.  Or is folded in a space-time wrinkle.  I once lost my beloved old wheelie iPod for like a year.  I could have sworn I dropped it on a walk in the Yard.  Rewalked where I'd been, reported it, replaced it sorrowfully—and then it turned up in the toe of one best shoe, under the bed. Couldn't find the other shoe, of course...

Then there was the time I had a taxi to the airport waiting, and I couldn't find my keys.  Can't go abroad and leave the door unlocked.  So I havocked all my pockets and my bags, unzipping, scrabbling, burrowing—and realized I had the keys, clenched firmly in my teeth.

You can't make this stuff up.

So I've been looking for my keys for days now.  I had them in my hand.  (These days, my teeth are masked.)  I'd long since given up on my new, very expensively engineered prismatic glasses, which I swear I'd lost either in a snowbank or the back of a car just before the first lockdown in March.  No, they can't just be reordered.  They took several fittings in a basement office a longish bus ride away, because if the line of the prism falls in the wrong place, they're worse than useless.  On the first attempt, the lensmakers put it in upside down.  Now that was weird.

So, all through the pandemic, I've been making do with my faithful old reading glasses and for distances, a series of older and older pairs of spectacles, each scratchier and crookeder and wobblier than the last.  They don't much help with my wonky vision. They fall off if I look down.  And as a mask with a nose wire and ear hooks feels a lot like metal-framed glasses, I don't sense when they're on my face, so I don't know when they've dropped off.  This makes looking for things even harder.

Late last night, I had yet another hunt for the keys, scrabbling under seat cushions, moving furniture, shifting piles of stuff.  I shone my flashlight under the blue armchair—and the long-lost glasses winked back.

Damn it all, I've vacuumed under that chair.  The glasses must have been swept along in the skirt of it, each time I shoved it back.  Or else they've been scuttling around the apartment on their little wire legs, hiding and giggling.

Bemusedly, I put them on and went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.  And there were the keys, lying baldly on the floor and winking, right in front of the fridge.  They can't have been there all this time.  I mean I stand there, how many times a day?  Often in my stocking feet.  How could I not have stepped right on them?  Had I shelved them in the butter thingy, in a fit of abstraction, and they'd tumbled out?

Wait, were they invisible until I put the magic glasses on?

Ninespace is the Twilight Zone.

Nine

   

Over the ice

The first shipments of vaccine are going out in the US, and I feel the old thrill at endeavor for the common good, stained and battered as it is by politics. I hope the neediest will be fairly served. After that, I'm hoping for my shots by spring. February-April is what's listed for my division (inessential worker, moderately elderly, fairly healthy for now, keyn ahora).

I so want to be out by the river for May Day 2021!

(And speaking of the rites of May, oursin  :  I have not forgotten that I owe you a rhubarb rhubarb post, but this weekend is somewhat crowded.)

Nine

Bruegel in Manhattan

Skating in Central Park (1934) by Agnes Tait for the Public Works of Art Project, gods bless 'em. We need a new New Deal.

As for these uncertain times, I find myself singing Tevye's tune with new words:  "Sedition, sedition..."

Nine

Cloud & Ashes

After the tempest on Monday, which I loved—the yellow leaves upwhirling through the thrash of trees, the nailstorm of rain—came a day of mackerel skies. I walked out to admire the puzzled view, the clouds raked up like hayfields into pooks.








I could feel a great sunset gathering, so I ran home to my roof, and came thundering up the stairs to this.



Heavens yes! But all that light was in the eastern sky, like an evening sunrise. To the westward—nothing. A faintly lemon-tinted pallor and some ashy dregs.



So whence came this reflected glory? Where's the sun hiding?



I love the neatly spaced parade of pageant cars.





Within five minutes, it went silvery-sublime, like series of ethereal Turners. You could fill the Tate Gallery with shows like this.







Nine

Feast of Fowls

I confess that my first uncensored feeling about this solitary Thanksgiving was "Whew, I'm off the hook."

If I'd been thinking properly, I would have ordered in Peking Duck and multiple desserts.  Then Louisa May Alcott took over, and insisted I cook something.  What I really would have loved was goose—but goose for one is both ludicrous and well beyond my culinary powers.  Ah well.  I made do with a solitary turkey thigh that appeared to be from a pteradon (chicken is much nicer), a winter squash of sorts with maple sugar, and some pretty nice celery root and cranberry slaw that I'd bought.  Much the nicest thing I did was an apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.

I wasn't about to break out the ancestral festal napery and china, much less polish the silver, but as my grandmother's little marble-top table in the living room doesn't have a puzzle on it just now, I set that.  I raise my glass to you.

Wishing all of you continued health and every scrap of happiness that can be harvested.  Let 's hope for a brighter 2021, with vaccinations all round and saner government.  Come Beltane, we can celebrate!

Nine

East of Sirius

I saw just one spectacular Leonid, sliding down the sky a little east of Sirius, and fleetingly brighter.  It was supposed to snow; then to be clouded over.  I was resigned.  But when I went up on my rooftop, I was met by Orion striding by the south, and I could see my beloved Pleiades, like a wisp of sleave-silk . With field-glasses, I could count them.

Damn, it was cold up there.  Too cold for long gazing:  but I'd seen my beauty and wished on it.

Nine

Paging Jon Singer

"Platypuses Glow Under Blacklight. We Have No Idea Why. What other secrets are they hiding?"

We need more headlines like this.

Nine

Anabasis

And after the end came the beginning.  I passionately hope that we do better than in 1918, that we find our way uphill.

Nine

"Orion wears a coat of sparks..."

Walked out a little while ago and met an old friend, striding to the south.



As is my wont, I started singing the ancient Briton's song from my Masque of Subtlety (written—good heavens!—nearly half a century ago).

Raw Courage sings:

Orion wears a coat of sparks
And starry galligaskins,
But men may see
What man I be
Without my first dismasking.

When Caesar and his clangy rout
Came o'er the Thames's margent,
I blued my cheeks
And cracked their breeks
As they were whelks of argent.

Then William and his swaddling band
Of knitted knights came paddling.
I slit their scales
From gills to tails
And roasted them like codlings.

Some died for vermeille Lancaster
Or the blanchéd rose of York—
I went in fine
As a sop in wine
And 'scaped the potting fork.

Now fashion is a wanton sport,
A nuisance without numbria
But Briton fights
In seamless tights,
Completely unencumbria.

Nine

Metamorphoses III

Books, rug, random ambience.












Nine