Still Sundays

August 28, 2011.

Perceptions that hula-hoop around reality: social media and beyond. Little boy who wouldn’t stop crying on bus. Walter from Verdi Square knows with certainty…

It’s truly a still Sunday here in New York City this morning. Not a sound from a dog, car, child…neither near nor from afar. Usually in order to capture this temperament of quietude I have to be up around 6:00 a.m. given by 9:00 a.m. the seal of stillness begins to pop, someone crunching a bag of potato chips in an empty hallway.

Yet somehow this is the least still it has ever been because of the tropical storm. The leaves are speaking loudly to the wind. I am not allowed to participate in the dialogue. The trees need a towel to dry and what I have to offer is not good enough. The torrential downpour from last night has finally turned down to a persistent drizzle. Throughout the night each raindrop came down like a bucket of water against the windshield of my ears and sounded like pellets against full metal jacket.

Even fake bullets hurt, like perceptions that hula-hoop around reality.

Here is a reality check.

Jamie told me last night: “there are approximately 700 million people on Facebook, approximately 250 million on Twitter, and approximately 25 million on G+, and many of those accounts are businesses or duplicates. G+ likely has the least amount of unique accounts, virtually all of them are duplicates from other networks, which means in actual fact their user base is 0. There are 7 BILLION people on this planet. Approximately about 975 million people on social networks is less than 14% of the population, and likely closer to 10% when you factor in businesses and duplicate accounts across networks. I still think it has its place and can be a great tool, but clearly there is hype at work and people are eating it up.”

Dance around that.

I don’t like big fishes. I don’t like small ponds. My creative skin is allergic to stagnant waters.

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I don’t understand sensational media pretending to be news reporting. The whole point of preparation is so as not to panic. I knew people in law school who panicked more because they had prepared more. I am sure there is some psychological explanation behind that and I will still not understand this behavior.

New Moon. Old Earth. Replaceable Us. We only care if earth impacts us. Earth isn’t attached to her past despite evidence of the mountains that were once under water, we are. We say we study to understand. What good is that knowledge if we can’t apply it to the now?

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Yesterday afternoon, after practicing yoga, I took a different bus home than I usually do. The public transportation system was going to be suspended shortly as a precautionary measure because of the hurricane so I just hopped on whichever bus was going the direction I needed. Besides I had forgotten my umbrella on a different bus on my way to yoga earlier that morning and now it was raining. I considered forgetting my sturdy umbrella for someone else to find as my good samaritan act of the day although I know unintentional acts are seldom as sweet as those intended and received well.

Once on the bus I was welcomed by the shrieking sounds of a baby boy who was approximately one year old. I decided I did not have to listen to this madness so I reached for my headphones and Ipod only to learn that my Ipod battery was dead. It was going to be a long ride, I accepted. This little boy was crying at the top of his little lungs with all the power they possessed and had to offer his own hurricane of angry tears. His legs were kicking the young woman who was holding him and she was trying to twist his body in any position so she could better control him. Behind this particular young woman was another girl who looked even younger and she too had a baby who looked a little older than the crying boy. They were all somehow related.

I, along with other passengers, tried my best to ignore the screeching cries of this boy who I decided was a monster. He was crying as if he had some great plan to exhale all life inside his lungs to fulfill some vendetta against all of us on the bus. I considered if walking in the rain would be a better option.

It was then I noticed the daggers of spiteful, awful glares everyone on the bus was shooting toward that young woman who clearly could not make this little boy stop crying lest she suffocate him with her own hands.  And by the look in her embarrassed young eyes I wondered if that thought had indeed crossed her mind.

I did the only thing I could think of doing which was to stand next to her and the baby and start rubbing his ears like our mother still rubs ours when we put our confused, tired adult selves near her shoulders. At first this backfired into louder crying but after 1 minute he was calmer and only whimpering. The young girl—17 at most—with tears in her eyes said, “It’s not even my damn baby.”  I told her it is not her fault and that babies are very sensitive to noise and weather, ignoring her blackberry which was equally occupying her attention and ignoring my feelings that somehow it was indeed her fault.

When I got off the stop the baby had fallen asleep in her lap.

I called my mother to complain about the entire bus ride and human condition in general which she quickly dismissed to say, “I wish more people understood that we can only help in the now. The now. So many people want to do this and that for children through donations, through gifts, through great plans that require a board and sponsors, when all children need is the now.”

I know of so many young children whose parents spend a good amount of money sending them to the top ballet programs, summer camps, cooking classes, and the list goes on. Those children cry for a real communication and connection although we neither see nor hear those tears until they have their own children and the cycle continues.

Mama says it all comes from thinking what you have to offer is somehow less than what another can offer.

I don’t think it applies just to raising children it applies to everything.

Help in the now.

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Some areas are indeed flooded by now. Sorry nature had to go through her process to cleanse and start for a new cycle and could care less about your expensive sofa in the basement and all the other furniture that cost half your monthly salary for months in order to own.

The ceiling on top of the main hallway in my apartment cracked and leaked and paint has chipped and parts fallen. And my brownstone is one of the newer ones compared to the others around and I am not in the targeted areas where they were expecting more flooding.

I was told yesterday on more than one occasion that I really needed to worry more about the hurricane, that don’t I know it is ‘always calm before the storm’. People who offer ‘it is always calm before the storm’ have never been through a real storm, personal or otherwise. What most people refer to as calm is simply lack of awareness. Nature doesn’t play mind games although the mysterious energies, both male and female, which encompass nature, are indeed full of surprises.

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Anything is possible.

What do you know with certainty?

On June 19th 2011 someone told me something he knew with certainty. I was appalled by the conviction in the certainty of what this person felt he knew.

That day I walked around New York City until I came across a group of people who live in a shelter home. I decided to ask them what they knew with certainty. Absolute certainty.

Most of them joked: I know my name is Joe, that’s about all I know and shoot that even may not be true … No body knows nuthin’ with certainty… I am not telling you, you work for the press!… How much will you pay me if I told you?…

Until I saw Walter. He was sitting next to a table with used books.

Walter looked me dead in the eye and said, “I know with certainty I can always rely on myself to do the best. That’s all I know with certainty. And frankly that’s all I need to know.”

There is something we all know with certainty regardless if we can articulate it with the ease that Walter did.

Robert Frost knew the following: “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

Related posts:

The Granny Who Knew Time. Still Sundays Still Sundays