Seeing Clearly: Downtown

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Downtown

The drizzle couldn't dampen my spirits as I headed downtown this morning. The farmer's market was humming despite the rain, with clusters of bright umbrellas moving up and down the walkway. I love the Windmill Restaurant and their delicious veggie omelets and divine homemade wheat toast. If you have never visited the Windmill, you must go and eat there. Although I preferred their old orange and maroon booths to the new, more muted tones, it is a warm and friendly place and usually bustling with locals and tourists alike. Downtown would not be the same without it. Another favorite place is The Bridge, staffed by volunteers and providing a place for artists from all over the world to sell their wares and for us to find beautiful, unique and affordable treasures. They sell fair trade coffee and other goods, beautiful handmade sweaters, lovely ceramics and wood carvings, fabulously ethnic jewelry and bags galore ( I love that word: galore.) I fall in love with things there, such as a tiny teapot from Vietnam, carved from soapstone, of an ox with a tiny man on the back with a book in his hand. One of a kind things. The Bridge's business is booming and this means good karma for Holland.

Another wonderful place is Reader's World, a place I have been frequenting for 38 years. When I was in college there was a great little counter in the back where you could get coffee.

I also got to see Karla today, and her good news is that she will be renting the back part of Treehouse books during Nov and Dec, so all of you Karla fans can buy her nifty stuff once again, just in time for Christmas. Her old shop is now occupied by Favorite Things, a great consignment shop with fab vintage stuff.

Recently I got some new glasses, the first since my my surgery. I walked into Globe Vision and was greeted by Bob Schultze, a lovely man who is not only warm, friendly and fun but also possessing a great eye. He helped me to find the fabulous frames you see in the picture and I just love them. This is a great place to go, full of not only beautiful frames, but art, music and the occasional offbeat customer who engages you in a rousing discussion of Buddhism and physics and then sends you a poem.... Michael, I promise to write you back someday. I have never recieved anything quite like that communication and I loved it.

Mike made some more adjustments on my eye, which was toeing in a little and making me look ever so slightly feeble...apparently as the socket heals it also changes in shape sometimes and this makes the prosthetic shift around. Mike told me that they are working on robotic eyes now...imagine.

more later....

love and peace and Obama to you.

claudia

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The Journey

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver.

a poem from TRAVELING MERCIES by Annie Lamott

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feeling we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--w.s. merwin

from Kabir, Indian mystic poet

Friend, hope for the truth while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!...

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you are alive,

do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten--

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with

an empty apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

Night Letter to theReader by Billy Collins

Night Letter to the Reader

I get up from the tangled bed and go outside,

a bird leaving the nest,

a snail taking a holiday from its shell,

but only to stand on the lawn,

an ordinary insomniac

amid the growth systems of garden and woods.

If I were younger, I might be thinking

about something I heard at a party,

about an unusual car,

or the press of Saturday night,

but as it is, I am simply conscious,

an animal in pajamas,

sensing only the pale humidity

of the night and the slight zephyrs

that stir the tops of the trees.

The dog has followed me out

and stands a little ahead,

her nose lifted as if she were inhaling

the tall white flowers,

visible tonight in the darkened garden,

and there was something else I wanted to tell you,

something about the warm orange light

in the windows of the house,

but now I am wondering if you were even listening

and why I bother to tell you these things

that will never make a difference,

flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice.

but this is what I want to do--

tell you that up in the woods

a few night birds were calling,

the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,

and that at one point, the moon,

looking like the top of Shakespeare's

famous forehead,

appeared, quite unexpectedly,

illuminating a band of moving clouds.

This poem does what all good art does-it makes my heart fill as I recognize myself in it, and I say, "yes! that is exactly it!" and I realize once again that I need to tell you so many things. I feel inspired. Alive.

There are not enough hours.

a note from Kevin Griffin, author and spritual leader from Shambhala