Good writing can make the most mundane occurrence profound

Anime in Boston. Again.

Certain activities in my neighborhood mark my city calendar in my head telling me that time is passing. Spring brings Anime Boston, the Marathon, and this year the melting of the ice on the Charles River. Out walking a couple of days ago, I saw this guy in the open water negotiating between the floating blocks of ice. Then a few days later the street was dotted, then crowded with hundreds of folks young and older in full character.

Optimist or Masochist: bring on more snow!

I'm not one who's won much, but gaining the title of having lived in Boston during the worst snowfall in recorded history would be some kind of badge of honor, especially when the rest of my family is on the West Coast. And who wants to be in second place? A few more inches of the white stuff will take us to the top of the charts. Bring it on!

On March 7, 2007, on a balmy day that promised an early spring, I slipped on some invisible black ice and cracked my head open. Eight stitches later my body felt bruised and beat up, an outer manifestation of my crashing economic and romantic situations at the time. What appeared to be a beautiful day turned into a "whack on the side of the head" that got me moving in a new direction in my life.  What's the point here? I like what I can see. Not the invisible black ice hidden in some imaginary scene of happily ever after.

So when I go out walking in sub freezing temperatures like today, I relish the patches of gleaming ice I can carefully avoid. I like "snow days" when I can slow down the pace, eat junk I normally avoid, in short, get to enjoy sick days without being sick. Or it's like playing hookie without any penalty. I admit I have spent days streaming obscure TV series on Netflix without getting out of the pjs, but that luxury soon led to insomnia from lack of exercise. So I put on my trusty yaktrax, as you know from earlier posts, and resumed my Boston walking.

Today I saw these prickly nuts—excuse me I don't know the correct name—dotting the snow mounds along Massachusetts Avenue beside the Church Park apartment complex. I picked up several and took a picture of them (above) once I was back in my cozy apartment. A moment of beauty amidst the graying snow becoming more ugly with dog urine stains, cigarette buts, and assorted trash. Some new snow will cover the dirt, get us closer to first place, and maybe even give us a few more snow daze.

Counting "Smoots" is moot when you're trudging across the Mass Ave bridge.

More runners than you might expect are out doing their thing no matter the temps.

Perhaps I can be so cavalier because I do most of my work from home, and I gave up having a car over two years ago. I don't own a shovel and I'm proud of it! Condo living has its benefits and not having to dig out a car, go into a skid, or find overnight parking on days and nights of parking bans has gone a long way in my ability to remain unphased by most of this white stuff. Uber and Lyft have helped out as well as Enterprise Car Share for the days when I need a car.

Never retrieved since late January

There is an expression in Buddhism, "When the conditions are right, blossoms appear." So hold on because in a few long weeks we may actually see the crocuses bursting through the melting snow. But in the meantime, I say see the snow blossoms, the prickly inscrutable nuts dancing on the snow mounds and the invigorating air that can clear my head enough to see the beauty of the race for first place. We're expecting more snow tonight and into tomorrow. We're so close! Just a couple more storms and we can get the trophy.

My feet think I'm at the beach . . .

Yesterday when I ventured outside for a walk I broke the spell of being officially snowbound. As I was walking with my Yak Trax cleats I noticed that even along the sidewalk my feet were getting more exercise, more massaging than I would normally when walking cleatless on a flat surface. Wobbling through the heavy snow it felt like walking through a sand dune or deep mushy sand at the beach. Today since it was a balmy 30 degrees I ventured out again around 4 p.m. as the light was beginning to fade. When I got to the Mass Ave bridge I saw that the path was totally like deep sand and opted out of that to walk along the river. Here are some shots from that. My camera which has been dropped and abused over the years decided to freeze on me and I had feared that I had lost all the images. But sure enough they were all there and the lens finally went back inside the camera body once I entered my cozy, overheated apartment.

Like walking in deep sand with the bottoms of my feet purring even though they were inside my boots

A tiny spot on the Charles under the Mass Ave bridge along one of its supports

The entire Charles River was a blanket of uninterrupted white.

How deep? Deep enough to cover the benches.

Yak Trax Walker gets me moving again

I love snow days. But after too many of them I get into a snow daze. I feel my body expanding and my mind shrinking from not enough oxygen. My friend Claire who lives in the wilds of Maine challenged me today to get myself walking again. She said, "Go get some of those cleats you put onto the bottoms of your shoes."  I admitted to having a pair I bought years ago but never liked because whenever I used them there was hardly ever any snow on the sidewalks. Not so today. I rummaged through my closet and uncovered my hardly used Yak Trax Walkers for which I had paid $19.95 at least five years ago. Too many days in my pajamas was catching up with me. I got dressed and threw the cleats onto the bottom of my shoes and out I went. Much more confident than the last few days, these things really work to give me the kind of grip that the normal soles don't. Here they are and here's a few shots of what I saw along Boylston Street today.

One year later . . . in time for 2015

Don't know exactly why my blog life got interrupted for so long, but here I am saying hello and happy new year after more than a year away from the blogosphere.
   Maybe it was the birth pains of reinventing myself as an ESL teacher in 2014, but I've been wrestling our illogical English language with several different student populations since January: Chinese children (7-13 y. o.) in online virtual classroom classes on language arts and creative writing, Beginning English classes for immigrants through English for New Bostonian funded ESOL program at the Gardner Pilot Academy in Allston, and a variety of special interest classes with the international students attending EF (Education First) classes in Brighton. This has been some of the most satisfying work I've ever done, and like all pursuits, it's had its hills and valleys.
    My zentangling mania gave birth to a whole new illustrative style that mystically matches the 15th Century subject matter of my novel FLORIANA. Creating one more massive delay, the decision to illustrate the novel came to me in an epiphany last month when the zentangle techniques came together in the drawing below. Now I'm hoping to have the novel on sale on Amazon by early spring.

      Not sure how often I'll get back here but at least it's a beginning. I wish all of you a healthy, love-filled, prosperous, and creatively unfettered 2015.
     Just got back from LA and a visit with my two sons who live there. A visit to Emerson's architecturally stunning LA Campus building on Sunset Boulevard was a dramatic departure from the facilities that were available when I did several internships there in 1994. At that time, the offices were on Barham Blvd. near Burbank with limited classrooms and student housing at Oakwood Apartments.

Now with the new facility (above) there are over 200 student dorm rooms, many performance spaces, state-of-the-art classrooms, screening rooms, distance learning centers, and a vibrant complex right in the heart of Hollywood.

Snow won't stop these Santa Sprinters

Santa Sprinters outside of the Pour House on Boylston St.

I never know what I'm going to see along Boylston Street. Yesterday as the snow was beginning to fall, I saw this trio of Santa Sprinters hovering together outside the Pour House restaurant in the frigid air. They happily smiled for me. They were about to do some santa sprinting to stay "warm" while spreading holiday cheer. I asked if they had a website that I could link to, but the Santa sprinters aren't on social media, just on freezing asphalt.