Under the Stinkwood Tree

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Mia!

2012-02-13T17:32:00.001-08:00

My daughter C is interested in lucid dreaming, a state like yoga nidra in which you are asleep but aware that you are dreaming. As soon as she wakes up, she says, she scrambles out of bed and scribbles as fast as she can to capture her dream before it dissipates. The more you practice, the more dreams you can capture.

As C was talking, I suddenly remembered a period in my childhood when I had a serial dream that I continued from one night to the next for several months, perhaps a year. It was such a pleasurable dream that I would plan out my night’s adventures before I fell asleep.

“What was your dream about?” C asked.

“I was Super Mia, flying to rescue people in distress,” I said.

“Mom, you were such a nerd!” said C. “You were such a good person even then!”

The truth is, it wasn’t the do-gooding that I relished. It was the flying!

Don't steal this idea!

2012-02-11T03:19:00.000-08:00

I have a funny idea for a children's game: a version of D & D with Hindu gods instead of the conventional action figures. The Hindu gods have multiple personalities, or avatars, and special weapons and abilities, or super powers, and there are already zillions of little figurines already on shelves across the yogasphere. It could work! Or do Hindu children already play this game?

Afloat in the world

2012-02-11T03:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had the most marvelous experience in yoga. Although I don’t need to actually touch the wall to get into headstand, I’ve always been uneasy about doing it in the middle of the room—nervous about rolling over my hands and crushing my fingers or flailing and wrenching my wretched back. But here at the ashram, the wall is not allowed. Yesterday, without thinking, I felt my legs effortlessly float into the air. It was as easy as breathing. Oh, wait, that probably had something to do with it!

They were singing my song, and I missed a beat

2012-02-09T08:29:00.001-08:00

Today the ashram celebrated Noma. A fire was lit in the temple, the priest incanted and fluttered his fingers. The swami’s wife began playing the harmonium and singing a paeon to Ganesha, the elephant god made from his mother’s scurf who is revered as the Overcomer of Obstacles. And the devotees were invited to silently request help overcoming one of their own obstacles, cast a stick of incense into the fire—which is supposed to deliver the prayer to the gods—dribble some ghee into the flames, toss some rose petals into a basket nearby, bow down and exit.

Wow! I thought. They’re playing my song. Ganesha is sort of my patron saint, the god whose hymn of praise I was assigned as a mantra a couple of years ago. I haven’t been very successful as a mantra chanter or as a meditator. Still, I thought, this is auspicious. So I got in line, received my stick of incense, was about to cast it into the fire along with my request to the gods—and I froze. Just as I can never think of a suitable wish before I blow out my birthday candles, so I could not think of a single specific obstacle I wanted help with. God knows I have my share of obstacles and a poor disposition for overcoming them. But asked to name one, I couldn’t. So, lamely, I asked for help overcoming ALL my obstacles. Alas, I’m sure that diluted any help I could possibly secure for any single one.

Good thing I’m an atheist!

Hanging out in Paradise

2012-02-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

Hammock lolling often seems more an idea than an actuality. You get your book and your glasses and your hat, and you get yourself hunkered down just right in all the webbing without getting flipped over—and then the phone rings or you remember you’re hungry or a fly starts to harass you. But today I had a perfect hammock experience. I got my book and my glasses and my hat and a sarong to keep the flies off, and I swiveled myself crosswise and positioned myself exactly—and fell asleep for an hour! And there were three other people cocooned right along with me.

Two hundred stories

2012-02-08T02:04:00.001-08:00

This place reminds me of the old trope about New York City: There are 8 million stories in the naked city. At yoga camp, there are only about 200 people, but all of them have a story. They’re mourning or dealing with an illness or coming to terms with a childhood trauma or … Everyone’s dealing with something the whole world over, of course, but at yoga camp strangers sit with strangers at dinner and talk freely over the vegetable goulash, and the details emerge quickly.

Signs of the times in Nassau

2012-02-08T01:52:00.001-08:00

Our daily bread

2012-02-06T17:12:00.000-08:00

View from the picnic table where I eat breakfast

2012-02-06T08:32:00.001-08:00

Om front

2012-02-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

Feeling right at om

2012-02-06T08:27:00.001-08:00

Nobody makes fun of you for wearing Crocs here, and there are hammocks!

Om is everywhere

2012-02-05T09:04:00.001-08:00

Beach bloom

2012-02-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

Dear Guru

2012-02-05T08:54:00.000-08:00

Mostly meditation here is eerily quiet: 200 people jammed into a tiny temple and you can't even hear anyone breathe or shift around or rustle papers. But once in a while someone snores. My question is, Should I wake the person up?

Dear Guru

2012-02-04T16:21:00.001-08:00

Is it o.k. to do kegels during meditation?

It's better in the Bahamas

2012-02-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's just me, but I think Bahamian pigeons are nicer than American ones.

Monkey mine

2012-02-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

So it occurred to me today that my blog serves as a repository of my monkey mind. In yoga, your monkey mind is all the distracting thoughts that flit in and out of your consciousness as you’re trying to meditate. So I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I actually write down all that ape shit.

Om again, Om again

2012-02-03T10:45:00.000-08:00

I had been nervous about being at yoga camp, afraid I’d be either bored or lonely. The boredom part has been assuaged by a gentle sense of newness. Stepping off the boat onto the dock felt like coming home, but coming home after my cleaning lady has just left after subtly rearranging things as she worked. Last time I was here, the bedding was dingy and flattened. This time, the mattresses have a little (a very little) bounce! And the old ratty, rough towels have been replaced with ones that feel hotel luxe. Last time the toilets were often stopped up. This time they may stop up eventually, but the shower looks newly tiled. Last time I paid for my half of a double and had to share it (which was a disappointment but turned out o.k. because my young roommate was a delight). This time I paid for my half of a double and ended up with it all to myself, at least for the first six nights.

The conviviality I remembered from previous visits remains. I had feared that no one would want to sit next to the gray-haired lady. But gray-haired ladies predominate, at least until tomorrow, when a new class of teacher trainees arrives.

One thing I had forgotten. At almost any given moment, someone somewhere is chanting Om. And even if there’s a momentary lapse in the constant Oming, the ocean breeze soughs an Omish song. It can get confusing. In Sivananda yoga, you take a little rest, called savasana, or corpse pose, between sequences. To rouse you from your relaxation, the teacher Oms. Yesterday I couldn’t distinguished the teacher’s Om from the wind’s Om., and was constantly jumping up. I didn’t get a lot of rest. Today I put myself right at the front of the class, where I could tell the difference.

Back in the NYC

2012-01-24T17:17:00.000-08:00

You know how happy you feel when you give a gift to someone and the person uses it? A few days ago, my daughter took an old Snuggie and a pilled fleece blanket from our cupboard and draped them over a homeless man sleeping on our block. Now when I walk by him, I get double happiness from seeing him using them and knowing that my daughter was the donor.

One more thing to worry about

2012-01-17T14:08:00.000-08:00

Posted to a tree on Polk St.:

"Aerial Spraying in San Francisco

"I am a resident in the lower Russian Hill Neighborhood.

"For four months, I have been recording aerial spraying above our neighborhood and the entire city of San Francisco. Unmarked, jet planes put down grids, X's, parallel lines, and recently, someone sent me a photo where they recorded small circles sprayed above the lower Polk Street area. This photo was taken last week, January 12, 2012 around 1:00 P.M.

"Since discovering the spraying, I have been paying close attention to our sky. I have found that we are being sprayed almost everyday in some manner. Sometimes the spraying is heavier and more obvious, other times the spray is not as thick and spreads out into a haze which stays above our heads, at times, all day.

"I contacted our local officials with my photos of grids in our neighborhood four months ago. At first, they tried explaining these away as contrails, but once I sent them the obvious photos, they did not speak with me at all for several weeks. Now they are realizing they cannot hide this.

"We need to ask our officials what they are spraying us with. I have spoken with some of our neighbors who state this has been going on for years, but they say over the past year the spraying has become very aggressive, as you can see in this photo from last week.

"ASK QUESTIONS/DEMAND ANSWERS

"I hope we can discover the reason for this blatant infringement on our rights as citizens. Most importantly, I hope we can stop this spraying until we know what its purpose is, what is in the aerosol and how we can protect ourselves on spray days."

Elderly parents, elderly food

2012-01-17T06:26:00.001-08:00

Here’s a conundrum: If you’re making a great quantity of, say, tamale pie so you can freeze some for your elderly parents to defrost and dine on after you’ve departed, how do you gauge its freshness if one of the ingredients is way past its sell-by date?

Most of the ingredients are canned, like tomatoes, or staples, like cornmeal (though I’m pretty sure the 10-year-old stuff I’m using has lost any nutritional value even if it’s not actually dangerous). But the recipe requires ground meat. So my dad and I plunged into the deep freeze and surfaced with a package that had a 2010 sell-by date. “That’s the sell-by date, not the use-by date” my dad said, overriding my objections. O.K., but then what’s the use-by date for the completed dish?

That deep freeze is really a cryo-crypt. I’m pretty sure there are chunks of animals in there that date back to the last ice age. And there’s probably a portion or two of a previous tamale pie from the ‘50s.

In the closet

2012-01-16T21:32:00.000-08:00

So I’m in SF visiting my parents, and my daughter C is at home in New York on winter break. I got a panicked call tonight: “Mom, everyone else goes into their mother’s closet to find something to wear for their first job interview. But when I went into your closet, all I could find were a bunch of long velvet skirts. What am I going to do?” And I know exactly how she feels. I’ve looked in my closet too and wondered how on earth I was going to find something to actually wear in there. So I just give up and put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans again. I don't know what I'd do in her shoes. Or in my shoes for that matter.

Walking in the Marina

2012-01-16T18:21:00.001-08:00

$#*! My Dad Says

2012-01-16T05:17:00.001-08:00

My dad sums up the wisdom of trickle-down economics: If you want the sparrows to eat, you have to feed the horses.

Home truths

2012-01-08T17:55:00.001-08:00

Charles Stringham, in A Buyer’s Market: “Parents … are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfill the promise of their early years.”

Aargh!

2012-01-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

As soon as I saw the title in the Times, I knew I was going to get really irritated not just with the article but with the inevitable I-told-you-so’s from those who read it. The title: “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body: Popped ribs, brain injuries, blinding pain. Are the healing rewards worth the risks?”

Yes.

The problem is that many practitioners can’t resist the urge to go for the max. I know firsthand. I’m one of those maxers, and I’ve suffered injuries that have chagrined me and changed my practice. I have to constantly remind myself to focus on the journey, not the destination.

But yoga is not all about the mat. The mat’s my favorite part, but it’s really a trivial element in the overall philosophy of yoga, and it’s beneficial only if it’s approached with the other aspects well in mind.

As with any physical undertaking, yoga asanas have their risks. But the risks of doing nothing are far greater.

A dog's life

2012-01-03T11:28:00.000-08:00

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." —T.S. Eliot ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")

As Other nears retirement, he has begun to measure his remaining years not in coffee spoons but in concrete terms nonetheless. When we replace our 25-year-old deck next year, for instance, it will be our last, he points out. We have one and a half cats to go (if you measure a cat's life as 15 years and count them end to end). Or a couple of dogs (at 10 years apiece). Or four overcoats (five years each). Or 10 health-club memberships (two years).

For the birds

2012-01-03T05:15:00.000-08:00

So many things about my daughter’s life seem unfamiliar. But sometimes a fad arises like a phoenix straight out of my own youth. The latest: dry shampoo.

It took a good deal of effort and time to stretch my kinky hair over orange-juice cans or wrap it around my head with clippies, then cook it smooth under a hooded dryer. To space out the ordeal by a day or so, on the third day I would sprinkle my roots with baby powder, let it absorb the oil, then brush it through. The final effect was a little gross: the fragrance of dirty hair and baby powder, the dusty look of fine dandruff. But it kind of worked at controlling the exuberant oiliness of adolescence.

My daughter’s standards are far higher than mine ever were, so even though contemporary tools are more sophisticated—high-tech unguents, professional straightening irons, specialized brushes—the process still eats up time. So she’s tried corn starch, baby powder and, now, a commercial line of dry shampoos.

But here’s the thing: the notion of dry shampooing has been around for centuries, but it always get abandoned, because it doesn’t do the job as well as the real thing. Unless of course you’re a bird.

Doesn't this make you want to own a laundromat?

2011-12-31T14:11:00.000-08:00

Second Avenue beween Fifth and Sixth: All it lacks is cocktails, crudites and dip.

Why the young hate the old

2011-12-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

So on Christmas, I asked my kids why young people hate old people. The consensus: Old people have no sex appeal. When they squint, it makes them look mean. They fumble with their change in the checkout line.

They're right. I'm hateful.

Sloth in the first degree

2011-12-26T13:49:00.001-08:00

My friend S told a funny story that will resonate with any parent of a teen. S’s cousin accidentally left her door open. The open door prompted a visit by police, who entered the house and filed a report that one room appeared to have been “ransacked.”

Not ransacked, it turns out. Just the usual condition of her teenager’s lair.

Bamboo outside the bathroom

2011-12-26T06:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes beauty can be found in unexpected places. The bamboo on our deck serves as a surprisingly lovely screen

I think I'm a stegnersaur

2011-12-25T06:26:00.000-08:00

Most novels are about love or betrayal or both. So it has been refreshing to read Wallace Stegner these past few months. I picked him up because he’d been a neighbor of ours decades ago when we lived in Silicon Valley, and my dad had mentioned that one of his novels featured an incident involving a houseguest of my parents’. I wanted something to talk with my parents about besides doctor visits and groceries and politics—the first two because they’re objectifying and the third because I can’t keep up.

But reading Stegner has had intrinsic pleasures too. I know much of the geographical terrain of “All the Little Live Things” (Los Altos Hills) and “The Spectator Bird” (Denmark). And I know some of the emotional terrain of “Crossing to Safety,” a fictional memoir of friendship and marriage, and I can vouch for their authenticity.

And—uniquely, in my reading experience—they skirt sex almost entirely. Other says sex is the driving force behind every human activity. And judging from popular culture, he’s got a lot of company. I disagree. Call me prim and old-fashioned, but I feel driven by other forces. And it’s comforting to have so strong an ally in Stegner, who explores intergenerational friendship, intellectual fanaticism, and long and loyal marriages, and finds in them as much drama as the tawdriest tale.

Streep smarts

2011-12-24T07:06:00.000-08:00

The opening paragraphs from an article in the L.A. Times:

Meryl Streep shuffles down a London street wearing a kerchief, a drab beige overcoat and enough prosthetic wrinkles to pass as an octogenarian in the opening scene of her new movie about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, "The Iron Lady." For Streep, shooting the sequence provided a jarring taste of a specific kind of invisibility.

"There is no more dismissible figure on the street than an old woman," Streep said over a mid-December lunch with her "Iron Lady" director, Phyllida Lloyd, in a cavernous suite at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel. "I would search for people's eyes, and I would look people full in the face, and they would assiduously avert their gaze. It was really interesting. You represent everything that is terrifying."

That's how I feel every day.

Valley girls

2011-12-24T06:49:00.001-08:00

I was reading Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner, this morning and came across a passage about a craze for pet tortoises, and I suddenly remembered an exotic fad from my junior high days.

In my little town in Silicon Valley, many girls wore Pendleton skirts and Peter Pan collars decorated with circle pins. But the fashion forward bejeweled themselves with chameleons yoked with tiny gold rings and tethered to their blouses with fine gold chains. The girls claimed the lizards changed colors, a prelude I guess to mood rings, which came a bit later. Looking back, I wonder how these elite girls felt about the need to feed their finery with live prey. Or perhaps they didn’t do it. It was a passing fancy, as I recall.

Mussels vs. muscles

2011-12-19T06:57:00.001-08:00

A family dinner at a nice restaurant—anyone would find that a treat, no?

No, not I. I realized that last night as I sat on a hard wooden bench with a vertical back in the boit-du-jour Joe’s Grocery. It wasn’t just that the seating was uncomfortable or that the air was ringing with overloud voices or that the menu was pricey or that the food was overflavored and meaty or that the presentation was pretentiously unpretentious or that the conversation at our table was tinged with an air of judgment about people’s culinary tastes. I’m just not that into eating out.

But then, what amounts to a special treat for me would be a chore or a snore for my family. A great yoga class, a long walk, a good read. I was just mulling this over when I clicked on the New York Times app on my iPod this morning and read that sweatworking is the new networking. Businesspeople are wooing clients by inviting them to spin classes and the like.

I’m so before my time.

This is the way it's supposed to be?

2011-12-16T05:40:00.001-08:00

By the time my cancer treatment was completed, I had been transformed from a youngish-looking middle-aged woman into an elderly-looking crone. I’ve whined about it often enough: the hair that grew back after chemo was thin and gray instead of the thick mass I’d had before; my skin was left sallow and speckled with age spots; my figure, once reasonably good, became peculiarly bottom-heavy with the removal of my breasts; and my once remarkable strength and flexibility became a little less remarkable.

But the thing is, cancer struck me at menopause. And a lot of shit happens to ALL women around that time. O.K., most women hang on to their breasts. But hair thins, skin loses its luster, bodies sag, joints age.

I attend a weekly yoga class with a lot of women my age and older. And lately I’ve been noticing that doughty as they are, they look a lot like me. Maybe this is what I’m supposed to look like?

Eat the poor

2011-12-16T05:29:00.001-08:00

One of the things I admired about Occupy Wall Street was its effort to exemplify the value it placed on inclusiveness. It made an attempt to represent the entire 99%, including the long-term homeless who, understandably, jumped aboard for the freebies: the donated food, clothing, tents, sleeping bags and so forth. The effort was not entirely successful, because many of the long-term homeless have problems beyond poverty—substance abuse, mental illness, criminal behavior—but it was made in good faith.

I remember hearing from my parents that in 1989, after the last Big One in San Francisco, which caused structural damage to many of the luxury buildings of the Marina neighborhood, the city set up special shelters for the flossy residents. Trouble was, the long-term homeless got wind of the comfier quarters and a whiff of the yummier food and tried to move in on a good thing. So the city was left in the awkward position of trying to weed the truly needy from the not-really-needy and give the goodies to the latter.

I was reminded of that earlier this week, when a new Pret-a-Manger appeared in my neck of the woods. I was chatting with the manager the evening before it opened, and he told me that I should come the next day because Pret would be giving everything away—completely free—as long as the food lasted. I left scratching my head. My neighborhood, the Bowery, is a curious mix of the fabulously wealthy and the destitute. I suspected he was going to be inundated with the destitute, not his desired customer base. I don’t know how it all turned out, because I’ve been at work all week.

But it’s not the first time I’ve noticed the tendency in this country, from the government on down, to give the goodies to the rich and withhold them from the poor.

A timely death

2011-12-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

My mother left a message on my voicemail yesterday saying she had "such a funny story" to tell me. When I called back, it turned out that the funny story was the news that the wife of my dad's old engineering partner had died at the age of 99. Now that is a little bit funny, but only because this woman had the misfortune to look as if she were 99 years old her whole life. Her husband was a handsome fellow with glossy hair and a charming smile. But she was as ancient-looking and stooped as a fairy-tale witch as long as I have known her, which must be 50-odd years.

Indeed, she was so crone-like that people remarked upon it with wonder. "How old is she?" they would whisper to each other. He was so robust and ruddy, and she was so crabbed and gray, she looked like his mother, not his wife.

So the funny thing is that she outlived her husband and all her contemporaries and finally died when she got to be as old as she looked.

All the little broken things

2011-12-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

If you had asked me a week ago how things were, I would have burst into tears and sobbed that everything—everything!—was broken. The expensive dryer that we bought two years ago was dribbling and clanking. The new boiler that we installed this fall was clogged with sludge and making a noise like bombs exploding. Even the damn cable remote, which had never worked properly, had clicked its last. It felt as if the material world was saying, "Die, old lady, die!"

But I didn't die, and Other and I have beaten back the demons of destruction and entropy that afflict all modern things. The dryer weirdly started working again on its own. The boiler was examined by the installer, the manufacturer and our own plumber, and in a miracle I can attribute only to some kind of mechanical placebo effect quieted down—and, more miraculous, the boiler-insurance company (yes, there is such an entity) has agreed to pay the full cost of the new boiler, which replaces one that was 70 years old. As for the remote, well, I trudged up to Time Warner Cable prepared to wait in line for hours and was whisked to a window where I was handed a new remote, no questions asked.

Too good to be true, no?

Tales from the hood

2011-12-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

There are 8 million stories in the naked city. Some of them involve bare feet apparently.

Low-maintenance woman aims higher

2011-12-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been trying to become a high-maintenance woman. It is a difficult undertaking. I’m so oblivious that I’ve put my yoga pants on backward—and worn them that way. Last week I put my underpants on inside out, which wouldn’t matter except that they have a decorative button—and it got snagged.

At the urging of my born-to-the-luxe-life daughter, I got my eyebrows threaded. The procedure made a surprisingly loud scraping sound and hurt more than I had expected. Nobody noticed. Even I can’t tell the difference, and I've looked long and hard at my brows.

I got a facial. Blood vessels broke along the side of my nose. They look like grog blossoms, but I don’t drink.

Yesterday I went to the high-end hair stylist my daughter found for me. I was supposed to get cut and colored. But the day before, I had an anxiety attack about the color part. I couldn’t face the questions. I couldn't face the little girls downstairs saying "I liked you better the way you looked before" or the woman who said baldly, "It looks terrible." I couldn’t face the silence that says “It is so awful I don’t want to embarrass you by mentioning it.” I couldn’t face the toxic feeling of a foreign substance on my scalp. I couldn't face poring over the statistics linking breast cancer and long-term use of hair dye among women over 50. I couldn’t face the monthly touch-ups.

I canceled the color but kept the cut. And when I walked into the salon, I realized that maybe I AM high-maintenance after all. My hair stylist did a double-take and said, “Hey, look who’s had her eyebrows done!”

My brilliant friend S

2011-12-04T11:42:00.000-08:00

My friend S was trying to decide whether she should sublet her apartment or let someone use it free in exchange for cat care when S visits her boyfriend in the country. “I couldn't charge very much because it’s kind of funky,” S said, “I mean, I store stuff in the stove.”

Wow! I thought. What a great idea! And ever since then I’ve been eyeing MY stove with a newfound sense of possibilities. Think of all the things I could put in that oven! My 40-year-old college textbooks that I’ve been saving in case I decide to go to grad school and need to study for the GREs. My old tax records. The ergonomic keyboard from the dark ages of the computer era. My 50 fake pashminas that I pick through every day for the one that feels perfect. My 50 batiqued sarongs, too out of date to wear, too beautiful to toss. My dozen pairs of Crocs, which everyone ridicules so that I can’t actually put them on my feet and go outside—though they are hands-down my most comfortable shoes.

I could even acquire more stuff!

How brilliant S was, I thought. The other day, I saw S again. “Just out of curiosity,” I asked, “what do you store in your stove?” Turns out she stores … pots and pans. Which has its own quiet brilliance—and the advantage of being something Other would actually let me do.

Stegnerians

2011-11-27T05:15:00.003-08:00

Wallace Stegner was a friend of my parents’, not a close friend but a neighbor and fellow traveler in progressive circles. So in the spirit of having something to talk with my parents about besides their health, or lack thereof, I’ve been reading Stegner’s novels about growing old in Los Altos Hills, where I grew up. My parents no longer live in the hills. They long ago moved to San Francisco. Still, there are passages that remind me of their current circumstances:

“I am just killing time till time gets around to killing me.”

“It is something—it can be everything—to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below; a fellow bird whom you can look after and find bugs and seeds for; one who will patch your bruises and straighten your ruffled feathers and mourn over your hurts when you accidentally fly into something you can’t handle.”

Simple words, stunning truths

2011-11-21T06:22:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while someone states the obvious—but in a way that turns it into a revelation. So yesterday I was talking with a friend about some parental concerns that are giving me a good deal of anxiety. And she said, “You know, I think all parents have something about their child they worry about. No one’s children are perfect.” That simple remark just blew me away with its stunning truth.

I Woman

2011-11-19T03:26:00.000-08:00

The trouble with living in New York, or perhaps anywhere in the 21^st century, is that if there’s anything you want to do, 8 million other people want to do it too. So I waited quite a while before strolling across the street from my office to see the De Kooning retrospective at MOMA. But I guess I didn’t wait long enough, because I still had to crane my neck to see even the big paintings or step aside in response to dirty looks and mutters from people behind me.

But since the paintings have a certain amount of aggression built into them, the experience felt all of a piece. And aren’t there days when you’ve felt precisely like this?

IOU OWS

2011-11-14T05:57:00.001-08:00

I know everyone else has already visited or taken up residence at Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Square, but I didn’t make it down there till yesterday. I was surprised by what a small encampment it is. I had assumed there were thousands of people pitching tents. After all, the OWS effect has spread around the world. In fact, however, there are—maybe—a couple hundred people there. It’s a grubby but industrious little enclave. It reminded me of a scene from the civil war: lots of dreaded hair, bare feet, blankets worn as outerwear.

For all its modesty, it’s a remarkable gathering. It has managed to keep its message pure and clean and uncluttered and consistent. And perhaps more exemplary, it has become the community it wants the world to be: it uses sustainable energy like solar and bicycles, provides protective housing for women, embraces all levels of humanity including the long-term homeless, polices itself humanely, engages in spirited debate that leaves no one out. And best of all, it’s still there. Yes, it’s been a mild fall, but no, it’s no picnic sleeping on the ground and living without plumbing. I felt a surge of gratitude to these young people who are making a statement for us all.

Roots with pustules, Laguardia Place

2011-11-02T17:06:00.001-07:00

East Fourth Street at 6:30 a.m.

2011-11-02T17:04:00.001-07:00

Iggy and Ivy

2011-10-30T06:00:00.001-07:00

My so-called life report

2011-10-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

David Brooks, a New York Times op-ed columnist, called on 70-somethings to send in a “life report” evaluating their mistakes and accomplishments. He got his idea from the alumni life reports published by Yale at 25 and 50 years after graduation. He remarks, “The most common lament in this collection is from people who worked at the same company all their lives and now realize how boring they must seem. These people passively let their lives happen to them.”

I’m not 70 yet, but Brooks’ contempt for ordinary working slobs rankled me. Yes, those of us who have worked for the same company our whole life probably do worry that we seem boring—to people like Brooks. But my steadiness under pressure, even the pressure of boredom, is what I feel proudest of. I took on the scary challenges of adulthood and never (or rarely) backed down. I got up every morning and went to work, even when the job was tedious—or intimidating. I was modest in my consumption, resisting the temptation to splurge on luxuries, and I put away savings for my children’s education. I paid my taxes and never cheated. I bought a home and took good care of it. I helped my friends when they needed it. I tried my best to be a good parent, staying awake worrying so often that my friends mocked me. I handled horrible illnesses—my own and those of relatives—not gladly but with care and concern. I showed up when I was supposed to, and always tried to do the right thing.

And yes, there are moments when I feel my life has been a modest one of the sort that Brooks would dismiss as a passively led one. And yes, I wince at the idea of swapping life stories with my more illustrious classmates at a college reunion. But sometimes the biggest challenge is to act like a grownup and do the boring thing.

Troubling information

2011-10-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who owns a country house in New England told me an interesting fact the other night. He said that you can haul away all the boulders and rocks in your fields, but more will appear. As water seeps into the earth and freezes, it pushes stones to the surface. Hey, I thought Mother Earth was on our side.

Pumpkins in Union Square

2011-10-24T15:29:00.001-07:00

What do pumpkin carvers do the rest of the year?

Whimsy on Broadway

2011-10-24T06:02:00.001-07:00

Step away from the edge

2011-10-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

In my yoga teacher training, I was encouraged to “play the edge,” to stay just inside the limit of my strength and flexibility. As I get older and deal with more injuries, perhaps incurred by adhering to this maximalist approach, I’m finding that I get way more benefit if I “play the middle.”

I’ve always resisted props: chairs, blocks, straps, bolsters, folded blankets. They clutter the room and take away from the purity and beauty of the poses. But these days, I’m finding that using the damn props works better for me.

Playing the middle and using the damn props are allowing me not only to avoid injury but also to focus on form. Form used to be just a lot of blah-blah-blah to me, especially since I used to set up my sticky mat at the back of the room and didn’t actually hear the teacher’s precise instructions, taking my cues instead from watching the people in front of me. Now I’m inching closer to the front of the class so I can catch every word.

There have been times in the past few months when my injuries made me think I’d soon be rolling up my mat for the last time. But using the props, backing away from the edge and focusing on form—maybe there’s some stickum left in my life.

And where there's yoga, there's hope. Because one of the things I've always valued about yoga is its influence on other areas of my life. Work on strength-building poses, and suddenly I've got emotional fortitude. Work on flexibility in class, and suddenly I'm able to roll with the punches at work. So without yoga, I'd be a menace.

Magic words

2011-10-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

My dad has a favorite saying: “There are no heroes.” And lately I’ve been finding that it explains a lot. Example: Watching the George Harrison special, “Living in the Material World,” I felt perplexed by his contradictariness, his saint-abroad-devil-at-home aspect. (The secret to a long marriage, his widow said wryly, is not getting divorced.) Suddenly, the explanation came to me. “There are no heroes,” I said to myself. And immediately it all made sense. Ditto with cranky but otherwise sterling domestic partners and children, and cherished friends who let you down. Double ditto for charming cats with disgusting bathroom hygiene.

Try it. Next time you’re pissed at someone, let the words untangle your snarled brain: “There are no heroes.”

Urban oasis

2011-10-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

Oases in the desert are earthbound. In the city, they can be high or low:

Broadway, 9 a.m. Saturday

2011-10-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

There's a story here, but I don't know what it is:

Glug

2011-10-07T15:58:00.001-07:00

If only oatmeal were not so good for you, I wouldn't have to eat it all the time.

I don't like the new sculpture in Union Square

2011-10-03T14:50:00.001-07:00

Department of modern perils

2011-10-03T07:18:00.000-07:00

So I stopped by my hair salon to make an appointment to get my hair cut, and I noticed (how could I not?) that my stylist was wearing a gas mask to give a client a Brazilian straightening. And it got me to thinking. Shouldn't the client have been wearing a gas mask too? And maybe she needs to wear it for months, until the formaldehyde washes out entirely? And maybe any customer who walks in should be offered a gas mask as well? Maybe I'll just forget the haircut. Too dangerous.

Rule No. 1

2011-09-28T03:52:00.000-07:00

Don't sit where the cat slept.

The back of my nightgown:

Geezer memory

2011-09-26T09:26:00.001-07:00

My parents and I spent a good deal of the week discussing the arrival day and time of my brother and his wife. On Wednesday I spoke with my brother, and he said they’d be in San Francisco on Saturday at 12:30. So I told my mother and father and began to plan lunch around their arrival. On Saturday, my mother was upset when they didn’t show up at 11:30, and my dad was surprised they were coming at all and swore he hadn’t been told of their visit.

The weird thing about this is that I had spent the evening before listening to them reminisce about their youth. Not only did they remember the details of big events, but they also recalled with precision tiny throw-away lines from parties they attended 60 years ago. They both burst into laughter when my mom reminded my dad about a woman they had met at a party whose name was Ophelia. She was being wooed by a guy named Bob, but she didn’t want to marry him because then her name would be Ophelia Balsey, which she thought would be excruciatingly embarrassing. “Did she marry him?” I asked. “Oh, I don’t know,” my mom said. “We never saw her again.”

Geezing sucks

2011-09-24T19:11:00.001-07:00

There are so many things that suck about getting old that it’s hard to rank them. But this has got to be near No. 1: The other night, my mom slipped in the hallway (she was using her cane instead of her walker), and she couldn’t get off the floor. After lots of arguing about whether I should call an ambulance (sample retorts to my urging: Leave me alone! Mind your own business! Go away!), I ceased and desisted. Still there was the problem that she was on the floor and couldn’t get up. Her legs seemed fine, and her hips seemed fine, but her arm was too sore to put any weight on. So she kind of inched herself on her butt along the tiled hallway to one of the downstairs bedrooms. My dad got a carpet-covered bench, and somehow she managed to heave herself onto that and then onto the bed. From there she could kind of rock herself into a standing position and grab the walker, which we had set in front of her. I was shaking my head over this sad situation, and my dad said, “Oh, we do this all the time. I get dizzy a lot and fall and have to slide on my butt to get from one room to the other too.”

I lost a lot of sleep over my decision not to take her to the hospital. But I think I made the right choice. Even if her resistance was the result of dementia, it’s her arm, and she’s willing to live with pain rather than risk hospitalization. And in the end, three days later, she seems to be recovering her range of motion.

Still, now that I know that both of them spend a good deal of time perambulating around on their butts, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t get them padded pants.

Fog lifting

2011-09-24T08:10:00.001-07:00

For the past few days, the feet of the bridge have been buried in fog. Today the fog is lifting, and the "gates" are obscured.

San Francisco troll house

2011-09-24T07:12:00.001-07:00

View from my parents' dining room table

2011-09-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

The Golden Gate Bridge, the base smothered in fog. With sit-down views like this, who needs to leave the house? Except, beautiful as it is, it still gets old.

Oddities on oddities

2011-09-22T20:24:00.001-07:00

An odded addity: A prescription-glasses lens found on the floor that no one has laid claim to. This too is greeted as just an ordinary thing. May I say that I have never found a tooth or an eye on my floor in New York?

San Francisco dog droppings

2011-09-22T20:20:00.001-07:00

Box of rain

2011-09-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Ova and vas deferens

2011-09-21T21:07:00.001-07:00

There are always such odd things going on in this house. When I arrived on Sunday, my parents’ refrigerator held 76 fresh eggs. Well, not so fresh actually. Most had passed their sell-by dates by several weeks. Now how could two elderly people have decided that they needed so many eggs? What’s really odd is they seem to find my perplexity odd. After some strategic soufflé- and pastry-making, I’ve brought the total down to the high 60s, and we’re closing in on a carton with a sell-by date that’s only a week ago. We’ve decided that for a social event on Saturday we’ll make deviled eggs. By the time I leave on Sunday, I would guess that I could get the total down to the mid 50s. I’ve expended a good deal of energy and ingenuity on the egg issue, one that perturbs my parents not at all. As soon as I leave, I suspect, my dad will go out and buy more eggs.

And I always learn such odd things about the past. The other night at dinner, my dad mentioned that he had had a vasectomy. He did? Odd that I didn’t know. But odd, too, that I know now.

It's 2:45 a.m.

2011-09-21T02:45:00.000-07:00

And the foghorns are blasting like demented tubas practicing the world's longest whale song. Or like a slo-mo traffic jam with lots of horns. This is not quaint. Surely modern technology has a better way?

What would the DSM say about this?

2011-09-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

My brother and I have sometimes wondered whether my mother had Aspberger’s or autism. Perhaps all children wonder this about their parents. Or wonder, at least, what it is that makes them so difficult. In any case, my mother had acute hearing and eyesight, and small things out of order could enrage her. That sensory supersensitivity, combined with what seemed to us an emotional insensitivity to our feelings, is what got us to thinking. Add to that her language: she was hyperliterate but distant in her speech, as if she had learned to speak by reading translations rather than the original works.

Lately autism and Aspberger’s have been in the news, including a Time magazine article about why these disorders are increasingly common, along with a detailed description of each. “I think I have Aspberger’s!” my mom exclaimed the other day after reading the Time article. But here’s the thing: Doesn’t the level of self-awareness required to think you have Aspberger’s automatically disqualify you from having it?

The gnosic chronicles

2011-09-20T08:34:00.001-07:00

I was born with a very sensitive nose, and years of chronic sinus infections did not dim it—until one finally did. Suddenly, a couple years ago, it went dark. I was diagnosed with agnosia, or loss of the ability to smell. Time and medications restored just a ghost of its former wholeness. If a smell was really loud, I could pick it up, but a delicate melody was lost. I’m hard of hearing, so the metaphor is apt. I became resigned to a slightly duller olfactory life and made an effort to compensate with my other senses: using my eyes rather than my nose to check the litter box, the cake in the oven, the soles of my shoes when I came in from the street.

But suddenly it’s back! My nose knows again! Which is good but has its downside. It’s the downside that announced the return of my former acuity. There was the week, earlier this month, when I was tormented by a strong urine smell that emanated not from the litter box but from our kitchen or the adjacent hallway. I brought it to Other’s attention, but it didn’t bother him. I couldn’t stop sniffing around the house. Finally, I located the source: onions that had rotted to liquification in the pantry closet between the kitchen and the hallway. Then on the plane to San Francisco, a free-spirited young man sat in the center seat and released stink bombs of b.o. every time he rearranged himself, which was a lot. I pressed my nose against the window, but of course that did no good. Five hours of smelling someone else’s unwashed armpits! When I deplaned, I couldn’t resist asking the woman who had occupied the aisle seat whether she had been bothered by it. “I did notice an odd smell!” she said. “But I couldn’t quite place it.” And here I am in my parents’ house, and it seems the mildew that I thought I had eradicated is back. Or perhaps it never left and it is my nose that is back. Could there be hope for my hearing?

No news is bad news

2011-09-20T07:41:00.001-07:00

Thank god for the newspaper and the pleasure it brings my parents. Every day it arrives (or rather they arrive—the Chronicle and the Times) looking nearly the same as the day before: the big banner name the same, the march of vertical columns the same, the fold across the middle the same. But in the fine print, lies adventure. And every day, my parents eagerly pick it up and read it and clip it and argue about it. One will lose the section he or she was reading and accuse the other of taking it. And, oh, the joy, when it is found (though the recriminations continue)! The rustle and the crunch are the music of their lives. The sad sorting into recycling (how hard to let last Sunday’s edition go!) is the backbone of their calendar. And even before the daily reading is done, they look forward eagerly to the evening news on TV so they can relive it and savor it. Without the newspaper, I think they would die of boredom.

Wash day in Chinatown

2011-09-19T17:37:00.001-07:00

Life in the slow lane

2011-09-19T11:06:00.000-07:00

"Is this yours?" my dad asks my mom and me.

My mom and I do a quick tongue-check of our teeth. "Not mine," we both say.

"O.K.," says my dad and puts it into an old film canister for safekeeping. "I'll just hold onto it."

Now the weird thing isn't that my dad found a tooth on the floor. With three people 60 and over, there's bound to be a crown or a bridge or some kind of artificial tooth lying around. No, the weird thing is that no one seemed surprised that there was a tooth on the floor that didn't happen to belong to anyone.

A glimpse behind the mirror

2011-09-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

A cyber friend recently asked why bloggers like me use elementary-school photos for our profile pictures. I can't speak for anyone else, but here's my thinking:

I started this blog about four years ago as an experiment in daily writing. Among other things, I wanted to see how honest I could be without betraying anyone's privacy. One way to do that was to obscure my own identity and by extension that of "my daughter" or "my son," say.

So I used the pseudonym Mia. Since I was often writing about the experience of having cancer, Mia was appropriate. It's the name of the Amore microfiber wig I wore during chemo. Other Amore model names: Tatum, Brittanie, Parker, Holli, Kendall, Brandi. Don't they sound like the street names of prostitutes? I certainly felt like a prostitute when I wore Mia—battered, shut down, severed from ordinary society, discouraged from speaking about my cancer life. The name also meant "mine" and "missing in action," two notions that also seemed appropriate to me.

The choice of photo was based on a similar goal: to be myself without revealing the identity on my driver's license. I've always liked this picture of my 7-year-old self, with its impish smirk and its push-pull of shyness and directness. And there was another reason I used a childhood picture rather than a current one. A year out of treatment when I started this blog, I wasn't used to my real-life aged appearance: the sparse, short, gray hair; the mottled skin; the defeated eyes. It's still hard to face myself in the mirror. (But as my friend M says, "Stop looking in the mirror then!")

So "Mia" and the picture of myself at 7 are attempts to be honest without violating my own or anyone else's privacy. And in a funny way, these subterfuges allow me to be a bit more frank than I might otherwise. Behind the hedge of anonymity, I can let the wild things roam free.

How does he come up with these?

2011-09-05T05:34:00.000-07:00

The latest in Other's lexicon of ambiguous compliments:

Me [wearing a stretchy yoga top, with foam falsies where my boobs would go]: Does this look o.k.?

Other: Yeah, you look fine, if you don't mind looking like you're wearing a bullet-proof vest.

Channeling Susie Essman

2011-09-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

So yesterday morning, I got up as usual and fed the cats. As usual, the big one, Iggy, chased the little one, Ivy, away and ate her food as well as his.

"You fat fcuk!" I screamed at him, as usual. "You greedy asshole! Get the hell out of here!" And I shoved him out the door and slammed the door shut.

My daughter poked her head out of her bedroom: "Shhh." She had a friend spending the night.

(Don't you love Susie Essman's name?)

Washington Square at night

2011-09-04T05:02:00.001-07:00

Ides of September

2011-09-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

September is a loaded month—freighted with good things and bad.

Good: My daughter was born in September after I spent nearly a decade trying to conceive her.

Bad: On her 15^th birthday I found the tumor that sent me into nearly a year and a half of treatment, from which I emerged breastless and nearly hairless.

Good: September has become the date on which I measure my survival. This year is my sixth post-diagnosis September.

Bad: ERROR became TERROR within a few moments on a September morning 10 years ago—and every September since then has carried the threat of annihilation.

Good: Most of us are still here.

Next time

2011-09-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

I know this happens to everybody, but next time I’m determined to get it right. I’m going to say what I wish I’d said.

Earlier this summer, after years of making up my mind to do it, I dyed my gray hair, aiming for an unobtrusive brown. It came out a truly hideous tarry maroon. I was mortified and shed many tears. To me it felt as if every ugly strand was a sentence in my pathetic story: an insecure middle-aged woman tries to regain her former attractiveness on the cheap. And every stranger on the street could read my head like a book.

A day or two later, I was approached by a colleague, who lambasted me in public: “What on earth have you done to your hair! It was nice before, and now it looks terrible! I stopped dying my hair when it began to fall out!”

My weak response: “Yes, I know. It looks terrible. I’ve certainly learned my lesson.”

Now, I think this woman meant well. She just believes in speaking her mind. She probably felt I was living in a world of illusion, and someone needed to be truthful. Or she may have regretted her words and wished she could take them back. Many, many people blunder over boundaries with every good intention. I’ve done it myself.

What could I have said to stop this marauding woman and save both of us from her cruelty?

1. “I know you’d be horrified to know how upset your words are making me”?

2. “This is not something I want to discuss right now”?

3. ???

Feeling the vapors

2011-09-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

For 10 years, I've been mulling over a detail from the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. According to news accounts, many bodies were never found because people were "vaporized" by the heat. I just keep thinking, What would it be like to be vaporized? There's something poetic about having your molecules unbound in an instant and dispersed.

For a good time, take the train

2011-09-01T13:42:00.000-07:00

If you're hard of hearing and too vain to wear hearing aids, chances are you'll hear people saying some surprising things. Typically, in mild deafness, vowels remain clear but consonants become indistinct. Today, on the subway platform, I was astonished to hear the announcer say, "For S&M service, go to the downtown platform ..." Oh, right, F and M service. Of course.

A sad sight

2011-08-28T16:34:00.001-07:00

The other day I passed a truly filthy homeless man washing himself all over—with a little bottle of hand sanitizer.

Strong-arming the FDA

2011-08-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

I lost 3 lb. this weekend. It wasn't a special kind of diet (I don't need to lose weight). It was a special kind of exercise that's rarely done these days: writing. You know, by hand.

A cyber-friend and sister cancer survivor, Jeanne Sather, is trying to get expanded access to the experimental drug T-DM1, which has put her metastatic breast cancer into remission. Expanded access would mean she could receive the drug in Seattle, her hometown, instead of spending $1,400 every three weeks to fly 900 miles to the study site in Southern California. She has run out of money and endurance for the three-day trip.

So I hand-wrote five letters to FDA officials involved in the decision to grant or withhold expanded access. It has been a long time since I hand-wrote anything longer than my signature on a credit-card receipt, and it was surprisingly strenuous—and time-consuming—to eke out these letters. My right arm was throbbing by the end! But it was a soreness to be savored. It isn't every weekend that I spend doing something righteous.

Here's the link to Jeanne's YouTube video about her predicament:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-nai8GCDP4

Here's the link to her blog: assertive cancerpatient.com

Here's my letter:

"If you could extend a person’s life without imperiling anyone else’s, you would do it, right? You can—by granting expanded access to Jeanne Sather for the experimental breast-cancer drug T-DM1.

"Jeanne was diagnosed with breast cancer 13 years ago, when she was 43. In the past 10 years, it has metastasized to her brain, bones and lungs. Through her own ingenuity and that of her doctors, she has repeatedly managed to block her cancer’s progression. About a year ago, she ran out of treatment options. Then she began a trial with the experimental drug T-DM1, which put her cancer into remission. Despite the drug’s miraculous effect, Jeanne may be forced to give up treatment. She has no more money to pay for the trips to and from Seattle, where she lives, and Southern California, where she has been receiving the drug. T-DM1 is available only at study sites, and there are no study sites in Washington State.

"Jeanne, who once earned her living as a journalist, now lives on Social Security Disability and is on the verge of losing her home and declaring bankruptcy. Despite her difficulties, she remains a towering figure in the cancer community. Her blog, The Assertive Cancer Patient, is an important emotional and informational resource for women enduring this deadly and terrifying disease. In the pink-ribbon fanfare that surrounds breast cancer, women with metastatic disease are often ignored. But Jeanne has insisted on being visible and documenting in unvarnished detail the reality of living with metastatic cancer. She has become a human switchboard in the cancer community. As a sister breast-cancer patient and a faithful reader of her blog, I take a selfish interest in the longevity of this most generous of women.

"Please help keep Jeanne alive by granting her expanded access to T-DM1 so that she can receive it in Seattle."

The secret to getting a job is an Electrolux vacuum cleaner

2011-08-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

Resumes, interviews, cover letters—they’re crucial to getting a good job in publishing, right? Nah.

I’ve worked in different positions in the same publishing company for nigh on 35 years. One of my daughter C’s friends recently asked me how I got my first job. Well, it was like this:

Back when Soho was thick with starving artists, before it had turned into a vast retail-therapy spa, I had a friend who lived in a loft in a building on Mercer Street that was actually occupied by artists, and she had a neighbor whose husband was a performance artist. He was putting on a piece in Central Park involving gigantic black weather balloons, and he was desperately seeking a vacuum cleaner that could blow air as well as suck it, so that he could hook it up to a generator and fill the balloons. He also needed about 20 volunteers to hold the balloons.

It happened that I had an old canister-style Electrolux that had reverse air flow. It also happened that my father was returning to San Francisco from Egypt, where he was using his engineering skills to design systems to protect the tombs in the Valley of the Kings from water damage, and would be stopping over in New York with a mass of English Egyptologists. He asked me if there was anything interesting for them to do on their layover. It was a beautiful day, the Electrolux did its thing, the English Egyptos were delighted to participate. And my friend’s neighbor was so appreciative of my role in helping pull it off that she put me up for a job as a night proofreader at the company where she worked.

(Side note: A later project by the same artist encountered difficulties. He installed himself in a cage in Washington Square with a bushel of tomatoes outside it and a sign that read “I DESERVE TO BE PUNISHED.” Police had to rescue him from an overenthusiastic crowd.)

I was telling the story of how I got my job to a friend of mine who recently retired after a long career at the same company. She said she got her first job there when she was an aspiring singer, and a belly dancer at the club where she worked told her about a proofreading position.

So I don’t really have a lot of advice for today’s young job seekers. I’d lend them my Electrolux, but it died long ago. And what with computers and spell-check, the proofreading positions at the company have all dried up.

Wisdom from my dad

2011-08-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

Over the many years (88!) of his life, my dad says he has winnowed all the wisdom he has heard and determined that two pieces are worthy:

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." —Yogi Berra

"We have found the enemy, and he is us." —Pogo

Homeless memorial

2011-08-09T16:28:00.000-07:00

The homeless are back. Perhaps they never went away but just hid in crevices for a few years. In any case, the old alkies and druggies and crazies and down-on-their-luckers are everywhere. They hover over half-eaten plates on the tables of the luxe outdoor café that now line Bowery and ask diners, “Are you going to eat that?”

And the younger set, known as crusties, are interspersed among the oldtimers, fighting for space on the pavement, staking out territory with flattened cardboard boxes and sprawling on them with their dogs.

When they move off, they leave behind graffiti and mysterious runes letting us know they’ve been there. This tableau, looking like a makeshift memorial, sat outside the building next door all Sunday.

The bad-hair month has ended

2011-08-05T06:01:00.000-07:00

It has been a rocky summer for me. And largely because of vanity.

I had been looking forward to wearing sleeveless shirts, revealing my last remaining asset: good arms. But suddenly a giant, tentacled keratosis surfaced on my left tricep. My dermatologist couldn't fit me in for a month. To avoid scaring small children, and amusing older ones, I had to hide it under long sleeves. Last week my dermo froze it off. Free at last!

To top off the grotesque, I accidentally dyed my hair an unpleasant shade of maroon a month ago. Yesterday, a very talented stylist cut my hair in such a way as to blend the coppery tones with the incoming gray. I don't know how he worked this particular brand of magic, but I look great!

Such humiliations shouldn't matter to a yogini. But they do to this one. I'm glad the punishment is over.

And as a lovely topping to this excellent day, my daughter's boyfriend made us dinner—fish tacos! Icelandic chocolate!

I never sleep well, and last night was no exception. But in the wee hours, as I lay awake yet again, instead of letting my mind wallow in my worries, I savored the pleasures of the day and woke up happy if not rested.

Womanhood 101

2011-08-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

I've never mastered the womanly arts. I do my best to wear matching shoes and right-side-out blouses—though sometimes I fail even these modest standards. This week I hit a new low, however.

In my effort to put breast cancer behind me, I've been wearing prosthetic breasts—or foobs, as they are called in certain circles—to work. Because bras rub me the wrong way, grating against my scars, I buy extra-large camisoles and fold them in half to form a pocket to hold the breast forms. This works great and makes me look much more like other women you might encounter.

Unless, of course, I happen to lie down on my side to take a nap on my couch and the forms slip and I fail to notice when I get up that I have two boobs on one side of my chest and none on the other. Then I look considerably less like other women.

Being a woman is hard!

Mouse tale

2011-08-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, a department head confided in a horrified tone that evidence of a mouse infestation had been spotted in the airwell of the skyscraper where we work. "It's because people eat at their desks," he sniffed. I feigned disapproval. But the truth is, I lunch at my desk every day, and I drop a lot of crumbs. And his revelation didn't faze me a bit. I'm secretly relieved there's any sign of life in this hideous old closed-up midtown monstrosity. I was afraid that breathing the air might be fatal.

A rat's tale

2011-07-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

There are 8 million stories in the naked city, and this is one of them:

My friend A was getting her oil changed, and the mechanic told her she had a rat's nest in her engine. Could he remove it? A asked. No, he told her. She had to go to a specialist in the Bronx who could wash the debris out of the engine with a high-pressure hose. The engine stank of urine and feces, and when it was hosed, bits of paper and old food and other nasties were flushed out. A had read that red pepper discouraged such infestations, so she sprinkled her newly sanitized engine with Tabasco. But here's the interesting thing: this is a common problem in New York. Many people get rat's nests in their car engines. And rat infestations can be destructive. Rats' teeth grow five inches a year, and to keep them filed down, rats chew on hard things like plastic, concrete, wire and so forth. So a car engine is just a giant emery board. The rat's-nest-in-the-engine specialist who hosed out A's nest advised her not to park near garbage. Good luck with that.

You CAN run away from your problems!

2011-07-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

You cannot run away from your problems, or so the old truism has it. But I'm here to tell you that you CAN! Depressed, insomniacal and way too hot, I escaped to Massachusetts for the weekend to visit my old friend Mingus (above) and his owner, J. I left my troubles behind and lived J's life (or at least the facsimile fashioned by her hospitality) for a couple of days—walking the dog, swimming, eating three squares a day and indulging in other simple pleasures. The first night out I slept nine hours—a huge relief after weeks of two- and three-hour nights. And I brought a little bit of J's life home in the form of a knitting project. It's only knitting and purling—a plain pattern—but doesn't all knitting consist of variations on knitting and purling? Like yoga, knitting lends itself to metaphors. It slows you down and turns your eye to the details, which gradually unspool into a greater fabric.

New York death trip

2011-07-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

While our bodies were in clear coastal Maine, our minds kept flying back to three riveting New York news stories: the shooting of our big-hearted plumber Paul Shay and his family, the naked Tappan Zee suicide leap of my daughter’s Bronx Science home-room teacher Alfa Choice, and the murder and dismemberment of an 8-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jewish boy named Leiby who made the mistake of thinking it was safe to speak to a stranger because the stranger was a fellow Jew.

Blue mood under blue skies

2011-07-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

The blue mood has lingered even under the blue skies of beautiful Maine. I’ve read that with PTSD, you continue to have all the resilience of a camel’s back: You can manage your daily load, but one additional straw sends you sagging into sadness.

But sadness didn’t prevent me from enjoying huge swaths of Maine. There’s something about the hardiness and fragility of Maine—resilience!—that makes every vista poignant: the abundance of green that pours out of the ground in the brief summer. But perhaps I’ve got it wrong thinking the summer is the living season and winter the dead. I asked a yoga teacher how she got herself through the long winter, and she said the cold months were the best, and she actually spent more time outside in winter than in summer. In Maine, she said, people throw vanity to the winds, pile on truly serviceable winter wear and get to know the snow.

Gyno cures the blues

2011-07-11T12:39:00.001-07:00

I'd been feeling blue for a few weeks and thought I might need a little tune-up from the psychologist who used to hypnotize me to be cheerful in the bad old cancer days. But on July 5 I had my annual checkup with my high-risk gyno. Her nurse asked me, "So how did you spend the Fourth?" and I told her I'd walked the High Line with a friend, then gone with her and Other to the Met to see the Alexander McQueen show and another exhibit, Room with a View, and then we'd run into neighbors who invited us to watch the fireworks from their roof, so we'd done that. And by the time I finished recounting how I spent the Fourth I was feeling pretty cheerful. And then the doctor came in and asked how I'd spent the Fourth, and I told her all over again. And by the time she'd finished all the nasty stuff she has to do, I had mentally canceled the appointment I'd been thinking ofmaking with my old shrink. And I've been reasonably cheerful ever since.

A curmudgeon walks

2011-07-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

The day after I saw Public Speaking, I ran into Fran Liberman in the street outside Whole Foods. I was startled. I had been mulling over the smart things she said, like how rich people make a city boring, and how there’s too much self-esteem in the world, making everyone feel overconfident and entitled to their say. So seeing her suddenly in 3-D instead of 2-D was quite weird. And I made the mistake of accosting her and telling her how much I enjoyed the movie. What did I expect? A gracious response? I got what I deserved, a cold shoulder from the curmudgeon. She was way more charming in 2-D.

A leak in my big-girl pants

2011-06-28T17:00:00.001-07:00

You’d think that after surviving a cancer diagnosis, a mastectomy, chemo and radiation, I’d have learned to wear my big-girl pants. But yesterday, I needed an adult diaper.

Translation for those who’ve lost their way in this messy metaphor: No, I didn't wet my pants. I had a bad day. And I cried a lot. And there’s nothing more embarrassing than being a big baby who’s 61 years old and 5 ft. 10 in.

It was a trifecta of misfortune that sent me into the slough of despond: hair, cat and computer. After a 12:45 emergency consultation with a colorist, a 1:30 emergency visit with my vet and a 4:30 meeting with an Apple genius, all is resolved except my hair, which remains a weird, tarry, brackish, near-black that I’ll have to live with till it grows out.

I know it all seems trivial, but it doesn’t FEEL trivial.