September 2015/Tishre 5776 equinox

♍ In the New York City area, the equinox will be Wednesday morning, the 23^rd, at 04:22 EDT, coinciding with Yom Kippur. 🌐 ☀

• “Sun at the Equinox,” uncredited illustration in A Short Course in Astronomy and the Use of the Globes, by Henry Kiddle, New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., 1871, 31. (In the public domain.)

Notes on Conversation Last Night

Some notes on conversation last night

• Though many persons say the phrase root beer more like roo’ beer, the beverage is in fact not made from (or for) kangaroos.

• Gram snacks are not served in India with peppercorns but in paper cones.

• My friend said neither optimist nor octopus as I had thought, but alchemist.

• The same friend became incredulous and asked “Does it eat?” when told about a cat that doesn’t shed. I then emphasized that the word he had misheard was shed.

• It’s fun to say cashews and pistachios as if they rhyme.

• Saying a man is subdued is not referring to him as a lesser type of dude (a sub‐dude).

Memory Card Woes

I got the catastrophic news on Thursday from the data recovery company that not a shred of data could be recovered from my camera’s memory card that abruptly failed back in April, and so all the photos I took with my Nikon camera (as opposed to those with my smartphone camera) from February or March to April are forever lost. Of course, I should have backed up my photos more frequently and thus had fewer images on the card when the calamity struck, but I am grateful that I was very lazy during those months and shot most of my photos with my smartphone anyway. However, I did lose my photos of the St. Pat’s for All parade, of the Sunday Assembly in April and of the spectacular Persian Parade.

Bizarre Pansy Creature

⚘ The bizarre pansy creature wishes you a happy new year (לשנה טובה). 📅

Nineteenth or Twentieth Century Roʼsh hash‐Shana greeting card in the collection of the Yeshiva University Museum. (Photograph apparently by the Center for Jewish History. Per their Web site: “This material may be used for personal, research and educational purposes only.” Per the corresponding page on Flickr: “No known copyright restrictions.”)

Sciatica ideographs

These are the ideographs (three emoji characters and an Egyptian hieroglyph) that I used in my sciatica post, arranged like a comic strip to be read from left to right and lightheartedly portraying how my walking was affected by sciatic pain.

🚶 PEDESTRIAN

💥 COLLISION SYMBOL (here representing the sudden onset of pain)

😧 ANGUISHED FACE

𓀗 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH A019 (“bent man with cane,” “be infirm; old …”)

Graphic by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.
• The glyphs for the first three characters (🚶, 💥, 😧) are from the Twitter Emoji set, developed by Twitter with the Iconfactory, under a Creative Commons license.

• The glyph for the final character (𓀗) is from the open‐source Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs font, commissioned by Google, under the Apache License.

Sciatica I have.

I regret to say that I’ve been diagnosed with another ailment. For the past two weeks, I have had pains in my hip and thigh that led to occasional difficulty walking. I also have some numbness and weakness of the muscles in that leg that led to my knee giving out and my falling into a sitting position on two occasions (on the 13^th and 15^th, both times while socializing in community organizations).

Sunday night and Monday morning, the pain was at its worst, almost unbearable. It had largely subsided by ten o’clock so I walked to the doctor’s office and was diagnosed with sciatica. My primary care physician’s associate told me how nerve pain is very persistent and how physical therapy doesn’t work for everyone and how they would talk to me about pain management if physical therapy didn’t work for me. Then I went home and looked at Wikipedia—not the most reliable source, I acknowledge—which gave a very different story: “Often all that is required is time and in about 90% of people the problem goes away in less than six weeks.”

Wednesday morning, I limped to the nearby radiology building for a spinal x‐ray, but that night and Thursday morning, I was nearly pain‐free and was able to socialize. I’ll be starting physical therapy next week, but I’m feeling pretty well as I write this; today, only a little pain has returned and it’s intermittent. I’ll keep folks informed should they be interested.

🚶 💥 😧 𓀗

August

🖻 “A Heading for August,” headpiece by Wesley R. de Lappe in “St. Nicholas League,” St. Nicholas, Aug. 1904, 944. (In the public domain.) Internet Archive, Flickr.

🎗 Faigy Mayer committed suicide Monday by falling twenty stories to her death from a Fifth Avenue rooftop in NoMad. I had met her a handful of times at social events in the “Off the Derech” community and the “reason‐based community” over the past three years. In this photo, she was taking a selfie at a social gathering organized by a mutual friend visiting from Israel.

📷 Ami’s return to America, Oliver’s City Tavern, 190 West 4 Street, Greenwich Village, 13 September 2012. (Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.)

📷 My marching with the LGBT cluster in the Celebrate Israel parade, Fifth Avenue and 59^th Street, Midtown Manhattan/Upper East Side, 31 May 2015. (Photograph by Harold Levine.) 🇮🇱

23 March–19 April 2015 microblogging

Microblog posts of mine that only made it to Twitter and not to Google or Tumblr.

Just another visit with my oral surgeon. —23 Mar.

A consultation with the surgeons. —25 Mar.

I’m still getting over a gastrointestinal bug I first noticed Wednesday when I preferred to stand in the hospital waiting room than sit. 🏥😷 —27 Mar.

Ensalada con pollo. —27 Mar.

House of Cards ≠ “Oscar’s Farts,” a rarely seen episode of The Odd Couple. 📺 —1 Apr.

Chef salad. —2 Apr.

With participants from the gay men’s discussion group. —3 Apr.

Una otra ensalada con pollo. —9 Apr.

At the Persian Parade. —19 Apr.

At the festival after the Persian Parade. —19 Apr.

Yesterday, I did jury service and wasn’t even picked for a voir dire panel, let alone a jury. All I did for about five and a half hours was write in my diary, check online social networks with their free Wi‐Fi, talk on the telephone with my mother, watch movies and flirt with a few attractive men. Then for my trouble, they gave me a certificate good for four years that thanks me for my “participation and contribution to the delivery of justice.” 😌

With five participants (plus the facilitator), the gay men’s discussion group Friday was quite well attended compared to how it’s been recently. The introductions and preliminary talk about ourselves led into an organic discussion about addiction. As it turns out, I was the only one without an addictive personality; everyone else present has had true addictions to alcohol or to recreational drugs or to sex or to overeating. Gripping a discussion as it was, I had difficulty relating to it for that reason, but also for one other: Multiple participants were happy to attribute their strengths to God and take credit for their accomplishments away from themselves in order to hand it over to a Deity. Even those who saw the benefit of praising and recognizing merit in human accomplishment still tempered it with God talk. (God gave me the tools the overcome my addiction but I had to use them.) The facilitator even attributed human ethics to God, saying that he truly believed that our internal voice that knows right from wrong (to which we do not always listen) is God. Another participant compared God to the sun and humans to the planets which revolve around it. Nevertheless, this was an exceptional discussion in which I learned about their strategies for overcoming their issues and I got to briefly discuss the adjustment disorder I feel I had in the early Aughts.

It was the first night of Passover and I had no seder to attend, but I went out to eat with the men’s group participants to a local diner and had a Passover meal of chicken cordon bleu, a garden salad and side vegetables (no bread).

16–22 March 2015 microblogging

Microblog posts of mine that only made it to Twitter and not to Google or Tumblr.

I felt sorry for the ḥalal truck guy because he looked so cold. I wanted to cuddle with him to keep him warm. 🌡 😈 —16 Mar.

The crazy song mash‐up in my head: “Sweet, Fast Hooker Blues,” “Rock This Town” and “Polythene Pam.” 🎵 —16 Mar.

The @KeyFood “Louisiana style” hot sauce I get from Global Supermarket is quite bland; my food sooner tastes too vinegary than pungent. 🌶 —16 Mar.

Each day for breakfast, I have a makeshift nargesi: scrambled egg, spinach, mushroom, garlic powder, black pepper and hot sauce. 🍳 𓆇 🍄 —16 Mar.

No one phoned me all day. Within five minutes of my stepping into the shower, the phone rang. 🚿 ⚞☎ 😣 —16 Mar.

Thinking to mix tuna salad with a garden salad. —16 Mar.

I had to convince and push myself to begin my daily constitutional today but returned with a spring in my step, bounding up the stairs. 🚶→🙋 —16 Mar.

❝ “Building your dream has to start now. / There’s no other road to take.” —⁠John Farrar, “Magic,” 1980. 🖊 —18 Mar.

🌬 34°F, wind 13 m.p.h., feels like 25°. So much for my “daily” constitutional. Novruz and the equinox are on their way. Right? 🚷 —18 Mar.

Rubbing elbows with important persons after the film festival. —19 Mar.

Every discussion group participant (other than the facilitators) is here with me! —20 Mar.

Having keys duplicated. —21 Mar.

📽 Of the shorts I’ve viewed in the Queens World Film Festival this year , a surprisingly common theme is haircutting . Barrio Boy , The Dum Dum Capital of the World and The Way You Love all had extended haircutting scenes during which a character’s thoughts are revealed . ✂💇

💤 I dreamed I was having a big celebratory meal at an Asian restaurant with many friends present and showing off a sexy new boyfriend seated next to me whom I’d invited as my date. Unfortunately, he got up to go to the washroom and never returned. I even checked in the two washrooms and couldn’t find him. I was so embarrassed that I ate alone at a largish table in an entirely different part of the restaurant, although I was later joined by other customers and, eventually, friends of mine from the party. At least the food was good (and it was only a dream). 😞

☔ Rain was pouring last week and the ponding on the sidewalks was so bad that it was sometimes impossible for me to span some of the lakes. A reasonable person might assume it was due to a combination of the rain and of the higher temperatures’ melting the snow and ice already on the ground, but I know it was really due to Israel’s opening up a dam in order to terrorize the people of my neighborhood.

#FloodLibel

💭 🐠🐟 It can be relaxing and peaceful to watch fish in an aquarium and tell them your secrets. Don’t worry: Fish won’t give away any of your secrets. Well, except for the sole. I suspect it may be a gossip or blabbermouth. You know the old expression: “Don’t tell a sole.”

🍴🐟 At the restaurant, I ordered a spicy rohu dish and the server called the fish by its Bengali name, rui (রুই). Then I encountered a neighbor in the market who described my faux fur hat as “Muscovite.”

Tree over the ḥalal cart

My current cover photo/header photo on the social networking sites.

Tree over the ḥalal cart, 37^th Avenue and 74^th Street, Jackson Heights, 27 January 2013. (Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.)

IMG_1675.jpg, taken with iPhone 4. See the rest of my photos in the album January 2013.

🌡✉🍴 I have convinced myself I have the mettle and personal responsibility to go out now in the middle of the night (01:15) in the extreme coldness (18°F) to do an important task (mailing my maintenance payment) but I acknowledge that’s only if I get some food in the process. Let’s see if I can get some real food at a nearby 24‐hour restaurant rather than indulge in discount leftover Christmas sweets at the drug store (if they’re even still available).