Today a big summer thunderstorm broke suddenly. The street filled with water and our sky light made a huge racket as the rain hit it. Cool air rushed in from all of the open windows. And the smell of rain. I was sad not to be out there-- I love the way it feels to get caught in a big storm. I decided to go out anyway but, by the time I was dressed with rain was mostly over and there was only a little lightening here and there.
But the air! It was so fresh and clean. You could just smell the plants growing the way they do after rain and it just made me feel light headed with oxygen. It was cool and the rain had knocked the smog away and the air just tasted so fresh.
As I ran the clouds cleared and then the sun was back just in time for the most beautiful sunset. I have never seen the Bronx so pretty bathed in soft pink light and the sidewalk sparkled with sunlight and little droplets caught even more light... it was like running in liquid sunshine! It came between the buildings in wide slats of lights, children came out playing making long shadows, the swing sets squeaked and the basketball players returned to the court in time for just one more game.
I love a good thunderstorm. Rain makes the air sweet. I think the best time to run in summer is right after the rain.
But the air! It was so fresh and clean. You could just smell the plants growing the way they do after rain and it just made me feel light headed with oxygen. It was cool and the rain had knocked the smog away and the air just tasted so fresh.
As I ran the clouds cleared and then the sun was back just in time for the most beautiful sunset. I have never seen the Bronx so pretty bathed in soft pink light and the sidewalk sparkled with sunlight and little droplets caught even more light... it was like running in liquid sunshine! It came between the buildings in wide slats of lights, children came out playing making long shadows, the swing sets squeaked and the basketball players returned to the court in time for just one more game.
I love a good thunderstorm. Rain makes the air sweet. I think the best time to run in summer is right after the rain.
It's what inside that counts.
I remember how adults used to say this too me and I'd roll my eyes since clearly they hadn't been teased the way I was being teased. Later as a teen I picked of the retort "It's what inside that counts? Oh that's just something sad ugly people say." If I was to be ugly at least I would not be deluded too.
In the end, I concluded that "what's inside" did count most-- it took me long enough but I got to the point where I knew it was true. But, frankly, even though I know it's true I just don't think I could tell that to a young person with a straight face-- I mean look at the example adults set in the world around us-- look at all of the superficiality... the way people act-- it's so transparently focused on outward appearances it is sickening. And it's so easy to get caught up in it all. So, what do we tell young people? How do we explain it?
And what do you think counts?
I come out of my building this morning and this is what I see:
It didn't seem that anyone was seriously injured, thank God.
( Read more... )
They do not do enough to enforce the speed limit or traffic laws in my neighborhood. People are always speeding on the Grand Concourse. They zip on and off of the side streets... this is the 2nd crash in 6 months near this intersection. I saw a man nearly get hit yesterday morning too. Thank God none of the kids who go to the elementary school one block away were on the sidewalk!
People act like it's a highway or something-- you don't get a pile-up like that with low speeds. They need to enforce the speed limit in my area and ticket people who speed. This is a residential neighborhood not a highway!
More images here.
(![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
docthestampede has made this in to a funny macro.)
It didn't seem that anyone was seriously injured, thank God.
( Read more... )
They do not do enough to enforce the speed limit or traffic laws in my neighborhood. People are always speeding on the Grand Concourse. They zip on and off of the side streets... this is the 2nd crash in 6 months near this intersection. I saw a man nearly get hit yesterday morning too. Thank God none of the kids who go to the elementary school one block away were on the sidewalk!
People act like it's a highway or something-- you don't get a pile-up like that with low speeds. They need to enforce the speed limit in my area and ticket people who speed. This is a residential neighborhood not a highway!
More images here.
(
docthestampede has made this in to a funny macro.)
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Brooklyn Half 2009.
Which one do you think is best? I might get one of them in high res. I think I like the one in the park best.
I wrote this years ago... back in 2001. But I still feel the same way Something about this time of year:
For some reason for the past few days I have been thinking of the idea of heaven. I've dreamed of a distant parade of people and beasts (most especially the dogs and the lions all with garlands of pale flowers about their necks) and the people rejoined, reunited at last with each other in soft robes and holding hands. They are singing (even the dogs) and they sound so sweet and in harmony with each other that you know from the sound of their song that no one is alone or searching for anything. No one is wanting or striving, yet they are moving, like the elegant runners I have seen who seem to make their flight over the earth so effortlessly and whose strides fall in unison somehow, unconscious, I think. There is no end. It is infinite.
I was sitting on the train this morning and listening to some music and I found myself crying because the thought of this impossible parade had entered in to my mind again and I wished that in the distance I could be assured that all of the lost people: the innocent, the confused, the hated (and the animals too, who are to dumb to ever know their place in the world, yet still seem to know love, like my small hound dog, Bobick) I wished that they were really there and that they could sing at last and that the truth (the truth is that life grows dark when it ends and is snuffed out in a gasp of fear-- leaving nothing behind but flesh to rot and memories to plague the living) -- I wished that that awful truth were not so.
But, I know better.
Well, here is spring for me. My window can stay open all night again. Each year, along with the earth, windows crack and tear open, like these new flowers breaking open old memories and they tear and stab in to me harder and harder as each season passes.
Someday every moment of this season will be an anniversary of loss. Another warm summer that my silly old dog will never see, another year without any heaven.
I was sitting on the train this morning and listening to some music and I found myself crying because the thought of this impossible parade had entered in to my mind again and I wished that in the distance I could be assured that all of the lost people: the innocent, the confused, the hated (and the animals too, who are to dumb to ever know their place in the world, yet still seem to know love, like my small hound dog, Bobick) I wished that they were really there and that they could sing at last and that the truth (the truth is that life grows dark when it ends and is snuffed out in a gasp of fear-- leaving nothing behind but flesh to rot and memories to plague the living) -- I wished that that awful truth were not so.
But, I know better.
Well, here is spring for me. My window can stay open all night again. Each year, along with the earth, windows crack and tear open, like these new flowers breaking open old memories and they tear and stab in to me harder and harder as each season passes.
Someday every moment of this season will be an anniversary of loss. Another warm summer that my silly old dog will never see, another year without any heaven.
It felt good to zone out for a week-- but the time has come to do my homework.
Also I'm clearly depressed again. I'm so sick of this. I wish that my mood would match my life. I know I should feel happy but I don't.
Darkness and despair etc.
At least back when I was a little mini-goth being depressed made me feel cool-- now it's just like having a cold-- it gets in the way of doing stuff-- I can't get in to it and "enjoy it" it's just a pain. I better keep busy today and just wait for it to go away.
Darkness and despair etc.
At least back when I was a little mini-goth being depressed made me feel cool-- now it's just like having a cold-- it gets in the way of doing stuff-- I can't get in to it and "enjoy it" it's just a pain. I better keep busy today and just wait for it to go away.
Is there a sequence in l2 that converges to every possible sequence in l2... are there elements in l2 which are like the transcendental numbers... in that they are not governed by a polynomial, but they are still convergent when you square the terms?
And can these "transcendental sequences" always be described by a sequence of sequences in l2, in the same manner that it is always possible to describe a real number as a sequence?
And can these "transcendental sequences" always be described by a sequence of sequences in l2, in the same manner that it is always possible to describe a real number as a sequence?
