Post Office Pleasure

A child plays at the fountain inside the United States Post Office on 13th Street in South Beach, where I like to buy stamps. If I time it right, there's not much of a line and I can speak with an actual person. FedEx and UPS have been useful but I don't want to give up the post office. The writer Zadie Smith called people like me and herself, '1.0 people.'

On the ceiling above the fountain the light makes a lessor sun. The painted-on stars shine.

Do you send actual letters? Do you go to the post office? I confess: I go less and less. This morning I was glad I dropped mail into the post office slot.

Fine Morning

It was good to go out this morning after a difficult time, walk to Provence, a cafe in South Beach, drink a coffee and eat a brioche before the place filled up. Province is a good cafe. (Forget about pricey "Paul" on Lincoln Road.)

Travelers from Germany scanned the menu.

From toothsome pleasure at Provence, I walked on to bookish pleasure at the library and checked out the 18th century, Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, which I would not have chosen if it weren't for my reading group friends. The title of the first chapter: "In which Chen Shih-yin meets the Stone of Spiritual Understanding."

The South Beach Local went down Washington Avenue, the elegant man in the red cap among us.

Please tell me what you are reading. What did you see today that held your interest?

Talking to Strangers

Never talk to strangers we're told. If, while you're out, on foot, and a stranger stops his or her "vehicle" and asks you to come closer, don't! I'm, of course, no longer a child, though child-size. In northern New England, where I visited last week, I went out on the unexpectedly warm morning the day before Easter and walked down a dirt road, mountains in the distance, water rushing in the ditches. Small daisy-like yellow wildflowers--not sure what they were--had opened: all flower, no leaf. (Camera broken so no photo.) Happily I poked along--literally: I had picked up a walking stick. Down the steep dirt road I went and, when the road petered out, turned back, making my way to the paved road.

Though there wasn't much traffic I walked facing oncoming cars and made sure my long red scarf was visible. On the side of the road I picked up a discarded pale purple shopping bag in good condition. I'll use this, I thought, stick in one hand, empty holiday bag in the other. A voice called, 'Isn't it a beautiful morning!' Startled I looked to my right and saw a woman who had stopped her SUV in the middle of the road. Her large, round, bright face came at me from the driver-side window. A girl, most likely her daughter, sat in the passenger's seat, her head down.

'Yes,' I answered. 'Beautiful.'

'Are you going to church?' she asked.

'No,' I said in a perfectly even voice.

'I have something for you,' she said. Her smile was sunny and intense.

Curious, I went closer. She held out a pen and a card encased in plastic. Her serious daughter never looked up. The driver's eyes lit up: big, round, blue. I took the pen.

The woman waved and drove off. I held the pen and read the message in shades of blue. "Welcome Friend!" Welcome printed five times in differently sized fonts. At the bottom of the card: "We're blessed because you're here." On the reverse side were verses from the New Testament, mostly from the Book of John, and sayings: "God loves you!" followed by "We all feel the terrible effects of sin in our lives." I looked at the lovely pale blue mountains in the distance. A woodpecker tapped, tapped again. Wandering again I walked on, the violet bag on my arm.

The blue pen on the kitchen counter in South Beach where I'm typing is still sealed in plastic. Through the plastic I can make out the fine print circling the bottom of the pen: John 14:6. The verse appears in full on the card: "Jesus told him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.'" I don't break the seal.

Rumi and Agave: "Safe from Virtue and Vice"

A huge agave plant sends up a towering tree-like stem, and flower in which a bird perches. The Persian poet, Rumi, sends us this poem:

A Just-Finishing Candle

A candle is made to become entirely flame.

In that annihilating moment

it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light

describing a refuge.

Look at this

just-finishing candle stub

as someone who is finally safe

from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame

we claim from those.

Public Places

The public park is full after school. After-school goes on until dark. These boys filled the bench. After I took the shot, a boy said, 'Isn't that against the law?' 'Not in a public place,' I answered, identifying myself as a writer and blogger. 'Freedom of the press,' another boy said. We talked for a while about public and private. 'It would be against the law if I took your picture in a private place without your permission,' I said. They asked me about taking pictures of famous people. They didn't express any interest in being famous themselves and weren't interested in seeing the picture of themselves. They wanted to discuss ideas.

I like public pleasures--frangipani, sea grape, palm, park benches, beaches open to all, though I wish my fellow citizens would not litter the beach. These boys should have access to fine public schools, public universities. They have access to the park, to flowers, to the ocean, to a first-rate swimming pool, and tennis courts--all public.

Family

Related life forms from the Eukarya domain to which humans belong

Love, death, flora, fauna, self, mother, father, child, sister, brother, pleasure, etc., etc., We all have our themes and interests. We make distinctions. Certain things interest us, other do not. 'I am not interested in death, not even my own,' Colette famously said.

Editors also have preferences. Some have mission statements. The 21st century has not so far been a time for anything as grand as a manifesto, but there are mission statements and explicitly stated editorial policies about content. One from the American Poetry Journal states, "not interested in: poems about family members; poems about the poet; the poem; or writing a poem; or poems with an overabundant 'I.'" (Italics theirs.) Their mission does not interest me. I love, for instance, the big I-am of Whitman's "Song of Myself," and the first person voice of Bishop's "In the Waiting Room."

The idea of family--all kinds of families--fascinates me. According to scientist E.O. Wilson, writing in The Future of Life, biologists now divide life into three domains "on the basis of DNA sequences and cell structure." Humans belong to the Eukarya, a vast domain, which I like to think of as family. The Eukarya, includes "the single-celled protists or 'protozoans,' the fungi, and all of the animals." Plants, too.

Dear Readers, dear Eukarians: what fascinates you?

Friends in the Surf

There were few people on the beach this morning and nothing to block my far off view of two young women lying in the surf. The caution flags flew from the lifeguard station, and there were Portuguese man-of-wars all along the beach, but these friends had found a safe place. As I reached them, I heard them talking compatibly. They lay on their stomachs; the ocean washed over them. The water was cold, the sun warm. I could hear their light voices for a minute or two after I had passed them, an easy back and forth in the dissolving foam, the waves played out. I couldn't hear much of what they were saying. It didn't matter. The rhythm and sound of friendship stayed with me as I walked north.