What's Grabbing You Lately?
A new Juke smorgasbord! "I’m not waiting for some magic to grab me..."
We celebrate the passage of time in a funny way on Juke. Every three months, I send out a question to anyone who’s contributed (writing, art, etc) to Juke. They send back their responses and I gather them all into one big celebratory post—a smorgasbord.
For today’s smorgasbord, I sent the question:
What’s grabbing you lately?
The whole point is for everyone to respond however they’d like. They can take the question literally or metaphorically. They can send poems or photos or whatever. They could even make up another question for themselves and answer it instead, though no one’s tried that yet.
Inevitably, when all the replies come in, they join together in a way that’s just wonderful. I hope you agree. And I hope you’ll be inspired to join us in the comments!
Now, as for what’s grabbing all of us…
I’ll go first.
Tonya Morton:
What’s grabbing me now is the color green. Green hillsides. Green parkland. Green leaves. I’ve been obsessed lately with the idea of gardening. It’s my chief complaint about living in the city, that I haven’t found a way to garden here. People who have heard me complain about this include: my friends, my mom, the waiter at the nearby diner, the clerk at The Strand bookstore, the owner of a cute kitchen store in the east village… I just don’t seem to be able to stop talking about plants and how much I want them. A couple weeks ago, I discovered a new garden in the park at the Battery and (because the sign said I could) I went wild. I touched everything. The sage. The lavender. I took a leaf from the lemon balm. I walked away feeling euphoric, at least for a few minutes, until I tried to cross the street and was nearly killed by a bicyclist. But since that happens multiple times a day, and lemon balm never happens, I just kept right walking home, rubbing my fingers on the lemon balm leaf until I’d worn it down to nothing.
Our apartment living room has one sunny-ish window, in which we’ve kept alive an aloe, a peperomia rosso plant, and a surprisingly healthy pot of basil. This summer, I have been debating adding a rosemary plant. A small one. I’d love to go crazy with plants in here—it would help my green-obsessed head—but we do travel a lot.
In my ideal world, I could somehow have both. The exuberant city, then long stretches on the road, and then also a big, overflowing garden somewhere. Tomato plants and every kind of herb. Flowers and trees. A quiet place without traffic. For now, though, it’s just a place in my head. A green place to go to when the sirens are racing by and they’re jackhammering in the streets again…
Paul Vlachos:
“What’s grabbing you?” is one of those muscular American idioms - a bit dated now, actually - that could go many ways. At the core, it’s saying something like, “What interests you?” but the intent is more, “What’s REALLY interesting to you right now?” I see it also as a form of “What’s catching your attention?” or “What’s your current favorite thing to do, see or watch?” Am I going on too long here? Future generations that discover this as a remnant on the internet, in some cosmic archive, deserve to know what we’re talking about. I’m also trying to figure out what’s grabbing me. I almost see the phrase as an equivalent to those basic salutations of “What’s up?” or “How’s it going?”
I won’t count the world news, although a disinterested observer would think, based on my reading habits, that I’m consumed with the news, that it might be “grabbing” me. It’s not. I just can’t stop reading it. I’m not being grabbed or grabbing at much new music or art, although I did just discover these reissues of singles from the mighty Lee “Scratch” Perry from the early 1970s that are making me happy. There IS the music of Anton Batagov, whom I recently discovered and who is very much grabbing me. And, AS ALWAYS, I’m running a low level fever about where to go next, what road adventure is in front of us, but that’s not a grab as much as it is a constant state. I need a hill to aim towards.
I’m trying to get out of a rut in my work. Released a book of photos of Florida at night, but I want to revise it, which might simply be an excuse to NOT promote it. That doesn’t sound very grabby. I have a few writing projects on the back burner, but they’re barely bubbling at the moment. Trying to deal with a rotator cuff injury that’s bothering me. This is all devolving into a bad list. What’s grabbing me? As someone who can get obsessed about stuff, I usually have a quick answer for that. I don’t have to think about it. But here we stand, grab-free in New York.
Possibly, what’s grabbing me CONTINUES to be the idea of where else we might live. Upstate? Uptown? Spuyten Duyvil? Vermont? We talk about this, Tonya and I, all the time and it seems to consume the most brain cycles. I visualize life elsewhere, run through the pros and cons, think hard about it. I guess that the *possibility* of life outside of Greenwich Village is grabbing me. Does that count, a dream?
When we thought we were moving last year, before things fell through - not of our own doing - I began a piece about leaving Greenwich Village. That piece is on hold now, but it’s sitting there on my desktop and in my mind. I’m just trying to get through each day with a modicum of gratitude, patience, and an openness to mystery and serendipity.
I’m not waiting for some magic to grab me - that already happened and the magic is real. I’m just trying to stay out of its way. Does that make sense?
Damon Falke:
What has been grabbing me lately? Coffee, specifically a coffee from a bordegón in a small town in another country. The coffee, a cortado naturelle, is perfect—perfecto. The coffee has earthy flavors and is slightly tinged with cigarette smoke. It is served in a short, clear glass. You drink the coffee among locals, of course, and you drink it with your good friends. You drink. Your friends drink. After a taste, you all stare at each other. There is the recognition that you have tasted the best coffee in the world. The glass empty, you are enchanted. Then you all go for a walk. You see a cathedral. Later, you reach the sea where you stand on a cliff edge. And just before you leave, just before you drive back to the village and cottage where you are staying, you stop in the bordegón again and drink another coffee. Is it healthy? What about the cigarette smoke? It doesn’t matter. None of that matters. It is best coffee in the world. You have stood on a cliff edge. You have seen the sea and walked in holy court yards. You are with dear friends. You drive with the thought that it has been one of those days you would live again. You would live it with more gratitude and go more slowly if you could, if there was a chance.
Tabby Ivy:
I have been totally sucked in by the World Cup.
Not so much the actual game, which I only vaguely understand from my boys playing youth soccer in the 70s.
No, it’s not the game.
It’s the players, the fans, the country pride and the pure joy and humanity that has been shown in big and small ways. As I write this we are just getting into the quarter finals. We do not know yet who will win the Cup, and before that win there will be more drama and stories - thankfully without our President’s involvement - enough said about that sad moment.
I have been grabbed by the stories; of the people of Lawrence, Kansas, who welcomed the Algerian team into their community by learning French and Arabic, hosting cultural events to make them feel at home. The Scots who drank up all the liquor in Boston. The Cape Verde team who lost in the Round of 16, but won the hearts of the world to make it even that far. A tiny island off the coast of Africa (pop 500,000) taking the mighty reigning World Cup Argentina to extra time; their 40 yo goalie, Vozinha, didn’t start playing professionally until he was 25. The Cape Verde team showed the world what true grace is.
My Norwegian friend Anne, who wouldn’t know a goal kick from an offsides, singing the praises of the Nordic Viking, Haaland. The “Viking Row” in stadiums and on escalators. Filled stadiums from Mexico City to Seattle, all for the love of the game, their team and their country.
The World Cup has brought so much of what the world needs right now, allowing us to witness with awe and wonder what is possible when we are one world, together. It’s been fantastic!
Sue Cauhape:
What is Grabbing Me Lately?
my hands grab weeds growing where I don’t want them
they’re just trying to live their lives from seed to bloom
who am I to seal their doom with an arrogant yank?
my grandson grabs my attention in a preschool video
his wide-mouth grin, his jumping waving exuberance
joy personified in a tiny body that can never hold it in.
my hand grabs the bottle cap, gives it a futile twist,
a little stab thrusts through my fingers and wrist
as I fail to wrest a package open with broken nails.
I grab a few minutes stolen from chores, the must-dos
when clothes are washed, clutter tossed, lunch prepared
moments outdoors listening to lizards sliding across sand.
Joy grabs me when cloud shadows skid over hillsides
a siskin alights upon the birdbath, yellow feathers flash,
dipping for a drink while anticipating the cat’s sudden dash.
grandkids writhe upon a beanbag painted like the world
Mom grabs and hides it because they are fighting again
irony grabs me when a child’s toy becomes a metaphor.Ned Mudd:
Letter to Antares
listen. the business isn’t doing that well. i am not trustworthy and something of a fraud. satellites track us like flying bird dogs. we are not who we believe in. youth speaks its own irony. don’t fall for a rain check. it isn’t raining but it will be. meanwhile the earth is its own violence. her molten blood spills into the sea. a savage ritual. procreation carries her bags. we can only fall into place. our jetsam overwhelms us. we are strangers even to ourselves. so much longing so little time.
Matt Layne:
When I turned six years old in 1975, I had a birthday party and received two of the same Planet of the Apes books and 45 records. For those on the younger end of the spectrum, we used to have tiny little records that came with books. The records would chime to let you know when to turn the page. They were badass. I had a couple of GI Joe ones that were epic. My mother took one of the duplicate Planet of the Apes sets back to TG&Y to exchange it. When she came home, she handed me a full-length album. Pretty sweet. I loved albums, but this particular album didn’t have a single rocket ship or talking ape on it. Cartoonish rosy-cheeked children pranced about with a creepy nutcracker on the pages of the enclosed book, and there was not a bit of dialogue on the entire album. It was all classical music. I was six, and I was not enchanted. Thus began my long-running beef with ballet.
45 years later, I was attending Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. Puss-in-Boots and Snow White pranced about at Sleeping Beauty’s wedding in the second act, and my mind wandered. I wondered what she dreamed during all those years she slept. I decided to give voice to her dreams in poetry. That project led me to research the history of Sleeping Beauty stories. This summer my fairy tale research led me to stay in a tenth-century Italian castle. While studying there, I discovered an even older medieval version of the tale from France. All that is to say, what’s been grabbing my attention lately is really old fairy and folk tales. Wandering the ever-dark forest of old tales often seems brighter than the current state of our world. So many of these tales don’t end with happily-ever-afters. Rather, the reader is left to discover how to make do when a story wraps with a less-than-perfect ending. However our story ends, may we all keep adventuring until the last line.
M Sebastian Araujo:
The zinnias do not apologize for their color.
If that makes sense.
Anthony Head:
I am at a loss. Nothing is grabbing me. Nothing.
Contance Christopher:
What’s grabbing me is I cannot find just one answer to the question? For me it’s that I have a maximal response. I am interested in our planet’s losing case of survival. The atmosphere we have destroyed and will do more and more damage to with so little real investment in what it will mean to live through the disastrous effects on our lungs, hearts, brains. All of us in the grand island of Manhattan breathing in smoke from the Canadian wild fires that erupt every year. Spring and summer have become a threat to our lives, and yet not too many people even think about it. And it’s not just the impossibility of putting these seasonal eruptions back in a bag, as if anyone is truly working to find a remedy that would defuse the danger. To breathe in and out should not be a danger to one’s life let alone that is what it has become for countless living creatures. So, it is the atmosphere that most grabs my thoughts and fears, survival, not just of human species, but of all living creatures. Why such a global failure cannot be taken seriously? These sources of deadly pollution killing our earth that has taken care of us forever? I cannot accept the lack of will that humanity has evolved to just get by. Who will live and who will die is a rather dull solution? That grabs me where it hurts the most, in my sense of disgust at the power of the dollar bill or rupee? Honestly, another Musk satellite thruster is not going to do it? No more than another moon landing. Forget our water, waste, mountains of trash. It grabs me that Bali, once a paradise is now the capitol of the world’s garbage. Balinese, not long ago, had a divine and creative civilization. Today, countless Balinese only thrive by picking through scraps of garbage from mountains of our global deposits onto their onetime pristine and glorious island.
Kathryn Reiss:
We are grabbing at HOUSES lately, and they’re making me dizzy.
We should not own three houses. I hesitate even to mention that we (currently) do, because we don’t intend to keep them all for long. We don’t have the funds to maintain three homes!
But right now each one of them is grabbing me in different ways. Our house in California is the one that will soon be up for sale… and it’s grabbing at my pocket book as we fix it up to go on the market. It’s grabbing at my heartstrings because we’ve lived in it for nearly thirty years and raised our family there. It’s a very special old place, circa 1867. But we’re selling it as soon as we can because it’s time for a new chapter.
We are retiring. Our children have moved away, following job opportunities. They live in five different states and in the UK. We found an old farmhouse, circa 1885, that grabbed us. It’s right on the edge of a pretty college town in Ohio very near two of our sons and an easy driving distance to three more of our kids and their families. Ohio is where I grew up. Most of the grandchildren live in the east and Midwest. It seemed to make sense that we buy it before it got away. This took some creative financing that still leaves me gasping.
But I’m writing this now from our ancient English cottage, circa 1640, which we bought four years ago. It was for sale just down the road from our daughter who has settled here with her sweet family, and we couldn’t bear for it to get away.
It ticked every box in our considerable list of what we wanted in the second home we’d been saving up for decades to buy for our retirement. It’s the Gamekeepers Cottage—a traditional servant’s cottage on a large historic estate. I feel I’m entering a fairy tale every time we drive along the narrow lane, past fields of sheep and a pretty bit of woodland where I’ve seen red foxes and badgers, and the ancient stone turrets of the old manor house rise up in front of us.
Three houses require crazy amounts of upkeep. Each of them requires funds we don’t actually have—even as we’re now deep into renovations in California and restorations in Ohio and repairs in Derbyshire. This summer we’re writing checks and transferring funds and paying electricians, contractors, floor refinishers, painters and plumbers in hopes of keeping on top of all we have set in motion in this quest to find the perfect place we can call home. An email today from my longtime employer in California reminded me to sign up for Medicare Part B as soon as possible. Here in England our wooden kitchen counter is sticky with some sort of awful ancient varnish and needs refinishing. The HVAC repairman in Ohio just called me to explain that the reason our a/c stopped working was because a pincer bug crawled into one of the parts and died there and now the whole part needed to be replaced.
I lie in bed at night here in our little cottage and conjure up the Gamekeepers and their wives who dwelled within these thick stone walls over four centuries. I wonder what was grabbing them!
Jodie Meyn:
Picked at by little ideas like doctor fish at your feet Pulled at by big ideas like gravity in your heart Poked at by the need-les of today Grabbed at by the musts and the mom!s and the wordless wants of the moment Spun around by today’s enjoyments, jumping through its mundane hoops Hypnotized by the siren call of the screens Ignore the pricks and pulls of other dreams - This one will have to do.
Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton:
Elementary aged Messi, Ronaldo and Lamine Yamal play a pick up game of soccer in the town square. The Spain v Belgium match plays on improvised screens in outdoor cafes. Eruptions of cheers punctuate every score. The World Cup has captured my imagination this summer! Gooooaaalllll!!!
It was an intereting question if not just for the ways in which it was interpretted. Being grabbed, for me, arrives with a history of disliking the physicality or even less the mental pressure it conveys. In fact, it was good to rip the monkey's grip off my mind of a conservation decline. So thank you, Tonya, for the topic of which your answer, the lush greenery of late, has given me enormous pleasure. Many other of the answers on the topic were so good, too, so thank you all for reminding me how wonderful it is to enjoy our Juke community. C.