Speaking for Sarah

I opened the Times today to the Op-Ed page and was startled to see the oddly familiar-seeming photo accompanying this essay.

Make sure to click on the photo to enlarge it.

It's a sad, odd day here in Manhattan. Lots of tourists downtown, more than usual. There are Mennonites singing about Jesus and cops leaning against blue sawhorses, yawning. The mundane mixed with the reminders that today is different. I want to remember and I don't want to remember.

Meant, in my last post, to link to Joy rather than Jodi, as I mistakenly did. Hi to all in any case.

Sorry excuse for a whole post, I know, but wanted to correct the error. Gotta run, more another time.

It's late here, almost 1:00 a.m., and I'm experiencing what must be the archetypal essence of that Sunday-night anxiety before the work week starts even though it's Monday night. It's the end of Labor Day weekend, and of a week off for me, in which I have been (I'll admit it) sleeping away most of the mornings and consequently staying up late. Tomorrow, of course, it's back to getting up early for work, so my intention was to get to sleep early. Not so successful, obviously. Partly because it's HOT here. Unofficial end of summer and all that, but still 85 degrees today outside, and in the unairconditioned apartment, things don't cool down all that well at night. Next year, I swear, if the wiring is not in place for AC, I am moving. You heard it here.

Not just back to work this week, as in back to my editorial job, but back to teaching at night. Lots of anxiety dreams about both jobs: in the ones related to the editorial job, I am trying to straighten out some impossible prose and failing miserably; in the teaching ones, I am, yes, you can guess, trying to teach something I know nothing about.

I feel not quite ready for all of this. I want more beach time, more sitting by the ocean and listening to waves, more digging my feet into damp sand.

But, as we know, it doesn't pay to look back, only forward, and there are some good things coming up.

If only I could get to sleep.

Here's a picture, soothingly geometric, for you to ponder while I try again to drop off. I'll take guesses as to what it is, or where it was taken from, in general or specifically.





Back to words for a minute, I meant to say, also, that today was a good day. Picnic in local park with my brother, father, sister. My 86-year-old father showed that he is still sharp enough to beat both of his daughters at Scrabble, and my brother, wheelchair bound since his stroke four years ago and without speech though he is, enjoyed the whole spectacle, enjoyed the park and the soft breeze under the trees and the food and drink and the familiar companionship of our family.