… September 30 When I get off the L Train at First Avenue, I usually take the Avenue A exit which is closer to home, but I had to stop at the post office and CVS so I got off … Continue reading

… September 30 When I get off the L Train at First Avenue, I usually take the Avenue A exit which is closer to home, but I had to stop at the post office and CVS so I got off … Continue reading
September 8 The elevator isn’t working; we have a first floor room with a view of the pool. I’ll get to practice my awful French with the Haitian staff, me and Google Translate. J’ai encore sommeil. J’ai besoin d’une serviette … Continue reading
… I got a fan letter from Janis Joplin once about a decade after her death. How is this possible? Her friend and lover, Linda Waldron, whom I knew through my friend Patti, was a psychic and sometimes, especially … Continue reading
… Friday I walked through Central Park with two old friends. We began on 96th Street and walked along the stream and little lakes on our way to the Conservatory Garden. There was a slight drizzle for about twenty minutes, … Continue reading
On Valentine’s Day, I handed out my haiku postcard to my High Beginner ESL class at LaGuardia Community College. I had been teaching the class since October, and this being the second semester, some new students were added. Jing Yi, … Continue reading
When I was eighteen, I saw a film of Matisse sketching his grandson. He did sketch after sketch, each time simpler. The portrait never became abstract, it simply became a face with fewer and fewer lines needed to give … Continue reading
I brought tulips home to lift Akram’s spirit, and he took two photos of them that lifted mine.
Yesterday, August the third, my friend Tom and I took our walk through Central Park. We always meet at 96th Street Central Park West and walk east from there through the ravine to the falls where we sometimes go … Continue reading
Hound Dog, a twelve-bar blues by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, was first recorded by Willie Mae Thornton on August 13, 1952 in Los Angeles. I, whose birthday was on August 15, would have been turning three at the … Continue reading
I wrote the words to this song when I was twenty-three; it came in a burst of writing three other songs as well, just the words, not any music. Over the years as I learned to play the guitar (always … Continue reading
… … I … … I will only write about books that are on my bookshelves now; if the book is not here, then I won’t mention it, so I won’t be mentioning books like The Idiot, which may have … Continue reading
… On September 13, 1955, Carl Van Vechten photographed the fairly well unknown James Baldwin who had just published his first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, was already … Continue reading