I spent some time wandering the hills and pathways of Brooklyn’s Green-wood cemetery last week.  Aside from being one of the most serenely beautiful sites that I have explored in New York City, Green-wood holds an interesting history as one of the country’s first rural cemeteries, situated on 478 acres of land.

The site of the Revolutionary War’s “Battle of Long Island” and inspiration for the creation of both Central and Prospect Park, the landmark garnered half a million visitors per year in the late 1800s.

But, of course, I like it best because it is free and pretty.

And quiet.

Which may not be rare for a cemetery, but feels worth mentioning as a find in the city.

I have always loved the beginnings that September brings: the school year, the Jewish New Year, and my birthday all falling within days of one another.  The idea of second chances, or thirty-second chances. I still get excited by a new marble composition book, having always believed in the possibilities of a blank page.  This is the season of sermons in my home and invocations for reflection.  Though I have never had much trouble looking back.  In my twenties I took a Bach Flower tincture called “Honeysuckle,” for people who suffer from excess nostalgia (there is such a tincture, one, in fact, for every emotional affliction).

Too much rooted in the past, wistful for another time or place, my journals at the time filled with scrawlings of my romanticized college town, or home town, my last apartment or relationship recorded in some sort of other worldly glow.  All the things I’d do again, or another way, or not at all.

And this brought me to thinking about the difference between longing and longing with purpose, between regret and atonement.  Thought and action.

Earlier this week, I sat backwards on my train from Philadelphia to New York, slowly reversing from 30^th street station, the art museum, boat house row, the big balloon marking the Philadelphia zoo, the city skyline – taking in those touchstones without having to turn my head, the way one is instructed to back away from the wailing wall. To look so fully in one direction while moving forward in another felt kind of miraculous.

Wishing everyone meaningful reflection during these Days of Awe, while moving ahead, with purpose, into the New Year.

Woke up grateful for all thirty-one days in August, holding on a little longer to summer, listening to the latest Arcade Fire album, getting a last look at the leaves before they turn all marvelous orange.  The last two weeks brought me to oceans on the West and oceans on the East.  And they are far apart.  And they are both compelling.  And I have a foot on and a heart in each.

I always find a favorite read in Berkeley’s bookshops.  This one is called  Poetry in Person, edited by Alexander Neaubauer, and it captures conversations between Pearl London and dozens of poets, from interviews conducted at The New School between 1973 – 1996.  It is full of meaty details about process, person, and being a writer (poet) in the world.

I’d also suggest going to see The Tillman Story, Amir Bar Lev’s documentary about former Arizona football star turned lionized war hero Pat Tillman.  I found myself equally intrigued by the strong and quirky Tillman clan and the sad shocking cover up surrounding the details of Pat’s fratricide.  (I will admit that a film dealing with football and war did not initially appeal, but this surprised me and it is definitely worth seeing:  http://www.tillmanstory.com/)

Well, here’s to summer.  Caught some cold weather in California and some rain in New Jersey.   Saw some beautiful things in between.

Some vibrancy as the sky grows grey.  And a poem in the beautiful Dossier :

click: Interruptions

I stocked up on beeswax for winter sculpting from the Seven Stars shop (housed behind this beautiful tree)

and made my way to Kimberton Whole Foods, which we still call by it’s old title “The Farm Store,” and where, summers, I used to work the cash register and stock boysenberry spritzers.

New York feels like home heading into my 9th year here, but what a place to be able to return to.

An incredible poem by Jorge Luis Borges.   I had the last few lines committed to memory after reading this in a threadbare collection his work at the Chester Country library, over a decade ago.  But I could not remember the title, and spent years leafing through volumes of Borges  with no luck.  Now, (for better or worse) everything seems retrievable in a google search.  And, here it is:

Invocation to Joyce
Jorge Luis Borges

Scattered over scattered cities,
alone and many
we played at being that Adam
who gave names to all living things.
Down the long slopes of night
that border on the dawn,
we sought (I still remember) words
for the moon, for death, for the morning,
and for man’s other habits.
We were imagism, cubism,
the conventicles and sects
respected now by credulous universities.
We invented the omission of punctuation
and capital letters,
stanzas in the shape of a dove
from the libraries of Alexandria.
Ashes, the labor of our hands,
and a burning fire our faith.
You, all the while,
in cities of exile,
in that exile that was
your detested and chosen instrument,
the weapon of your craft,
erected your pathless labyrinths,
infinitesmal and infinite,
wondrously paltry,
more populous than history.
We shall die without sighting
the twofold beast or the rose
that are the center of your maze,
but memory holds the talismans,
its echoes of Virgil,
and so in the streets of night
your splendid hells survive,
so many of your cadences and metaphors,
the treasures of your darkness.
What does our cowardice matter if on this earth
there is one brave man,
what does sadness matter if in time past
somebody thought himself happy,
what does my lost generation matter,
that dim mirror,
if your books justify us?
I am the others. I am those
who have been rescued by your pains and care.
I am those unknown to you and saved by you.

Translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/nyregion/25coop.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

We read Joan Didion’s Goodbye to All That tonight.  Each semester – for the past six – I’ve had my students discuss Didion’s 1967 piece about her migration from the West Coast to New York City, which begins in love and ends in disillusionment.  And each time I encounter the same thing – one student admits that they hate this essay, then another and another.  Sure, they acknowledge that the author can turn a phrase, but her realization is, in their words, “ just too depressing.”

I usually start the semester with the personal essays, but this time I began with fiction, which shifts my syllabus; I have always taught Didion in the beginning – in late August or early February.  She has never fallen in mid-October.  And, it’s a funny thing how this makes a difference.   How in the sticky heat or chilling winter, I relate to her work more, (I admire the essay in any season) but feel I understand her most in those extremes.

Now, with so many pumpkins and leaves covering the steps of brownstones, Neil Young playing in the coffee shop where I drink my lavender tea, nights I can still go without a jacket, and days when a few blocks to the botanic garden reveals this view, well – I agree with my students -  October may be too optimistic a month to say goodbye to anything.

What gets me the most, though, is that decades after her published goodbye, Didion returned to New York, to the Upper East side, just a few blocks from where my basement classroom meets on 68th and Lexington.  Something so human and honest about that postscript.

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