CITY LISTENING

This city of bricks and asphalt and concrete, trees and birds and many, many people; this city, this city. I was going to write about how I can't write here, but that isn't the case. Once I settle in to listen, the stone sighs and gives up its secrets. The banging trucks and continual murmur of noise, overheard conversations and fragments, don't kill it for me, although they aren't "the country," peace and quiet and nature. I can co-exist with the man-made soundscape outside. I sit here listening to layer upon layer of random noise: a plane buzzing overhead, traffic whoosh backdrop, pipes creaking,louder traffic; a lone chirping bird in one of the "One Million Trees," the creak of my upstairs neighbor moving about, and closest of all the high-pitched buzz inside my own ear tubes. So much for hearing. What fills the eye is: traffic, bricks, a sliver of sky, traffic, shop windows, clogged sidewalks, clogged streets. And a never-ending flow of peacocks; I'm in love with them all. Their store-bought and self-made finery; vivid portrayals of themselves, creative to the bone. New Yorkers. I haven't got a wild imagination. The world inside my head is no cornucopia of fervid day or night dreams. Maybe I should have found an apartment on a higher floor, with a view over rooftops to inspire me and not so much ground noise. But here I sit, at the base of a man-made canyon. And I am beginning to get my bearings. Feel my city heart beat. Sitting quietly and listening, I get reoriented in surprisingly short order. All places are different from one another, but inside myself is the same. For the writer, writing brings clarity because in order to write one must first stop talking and listen closely to the outside and then the inside.

Birds in Winter

Winter white punctuated by toned-down tree trunks, scruff stubble showing through thin snow, birds scrabbling for birdseed, and the occasional brilliant cardinal. Rare red on a bland palette: noticeable, heart-stopping color. I try not to notice, like conspicuously ignoring a raving beauty who's wandered into my line of vision. Not fair to the rest of us, this eye-grabbing, heart-stopping richness. Yesterday two big black crows (or ravens?) purposefully, and unusually, doing something near mouth of driveway. They are pursuing a hapless vole, and no doubt succeed in eating it, two on one. Nature. Tiny snowflakes drift down, an afterthought, everything frozen. Yesterday, thinking about the earth below the snow, which is very thin but very frozen, compassion for this difficult season, and joy to think of land at rest, briefly, and how it will wake up in the spring. Followed the tracks of a four-footed creature with roundish paws that had criss-crossed the yard. Looking for something. Hope it hasn't nested in the bales of straw I didn't use as mulch. Last year friends lost entire crops to hedgehogs and porcupines that nested up close. To live up here, you must enjoy winters, and I do. (Pax well-working furnace.) Reading: short stories by the writer who wrote "Bringing up the Bodies." A mixed bag. Viewing: Last week, all of "Mozart in the Jungle," new Amazon series; terrific. This week, "Parade's End" mini-series written by Tom Stoppard based on Ford Maddox Ford novels; terrific. "Parade's End" has a destructive character, the good aristocrat's glamorous wife, played by Rebecca Hall, who can't do anything without causing mayhem. Helps me wrap my mind around this phenomenon--the destructive narcissist--so hard to comprehend in a close family member. We're supposed to love them. The more we love, the more they hurt us. Lovely little gray bird on a twig, its buff under-fluff puffed out beyond the breast.