ADVENT 2006

12/03/2006: in the three silver lines on the wall from the light of full moon through the closed window shutters, which quickly disappear at 3:09 AM on the digital clock with a single small, round “on” button lit, probably obstructed by a cloud;

12/04/2006: in the siren of an ambulance speeding down State Street past the ominous roar of a huge truck, parked perpendicular to the street; and, later at noon, in the shadow of a branch in the form of a giant hand on the stone section of a fence, the index finger on the top and the thumb on the bottom, as if about to lift it from its place to allow nature to enter;

12/05/2006: in the mattress on the Van Wick Parkway in New York beside Exit 3;

12/06/2006: in the triangular piece of paper, perhaps of a candy wrapper, dropped by the only other person on a ramp at the Heathrow Airport, a moment before and around the corner the lighted “1” is seen above the “Express” of a printed advertisement on the side of a luggage carousel;

12/07/2006: in the three windows in a row on a wing of the Royal National Hotel, the right one closed, with a white shade on the upper half, which dazzles in a ray of sun; the middle window partially open and gray in the shadow of a nearby building; and left one wide open with ugly drapes blowing in the wind;

12/08/2006: in the fire alarm at about 8:00 AM in the Royal National Hotel and the “All Clear” signal is sounded when people reach the third floor on the fire escape stairs;

12/09/2006: in the two yellow beams of light in the early morning on the bed room ceiling, one solid and the other divided into four sections; and in the evening amidst the gaiety of holiday shoppers on Brompton Row, in the image of an ogre on the sidewalk formed by a spilled liquid; and, still later, in the eleven lights of the chandelier under the center dome of the Oratory of John Henry Cardinal Newman lit and one burned out, a reminder the eleven Apostles and Judas; 

12/10/2006: in one of the four elevators of the Royal National Hotel that, after a very slow assent with several stops and starts, comes to a complete stop on the fourth floor, when the doors fail to open and, after the alarm button is pushed several times, begins its
slow descendent to the ground floor, where the doors do open to allow passengers to enter one of the three operating elevators, which ascends to make its first stop on the third floor;

12/11/2006: in the “0%” on a sign, the fee charged for processing something, to which the stem of a green maple leaf on the ground points; and, later, in the smile of a young lady who arrives with eyes that sparkle to an area in the British Museum just after four noises are heard almost simultaneously, of a door being shut, of a beep announcing an elevator’s arrival, of the thud of a package hitting the floor, and of a man coughing;

12/12/2006: in the figure of the Christ Child in the “Madonna Casini” reproduction by Tommaso Masaccio on the cover of a booklet to which the edge points of one of the three small, paper rectangles tossed in a heap on a bedspread; and, later, in the three large green wreaths, wrapped with blue seasonal lights, hanging from the ceiling in the Heathrow Airport before the check out stations, beside the “Nero” sign on the distant wall;

12/13/2006: in the spinning red light of an ambulance that passes the three red lights on the back of an AT&T truck, which is behind a construction truck with three white lights, seen when the AT&T truck turns into another street; and later in the three nearby piles of logs, as a strange and ominous black van, large enough to carry a coffin, backs out of a neighboring driveway;

12/14/2006: in the three wires wrapped around a telephone pole beside a store that has been boarded up after a recent fire: two as similar circles but the third as an imperfect circle inside the other two, its horizontal diameter about half as long as its vertical diameter;  

12/15/2006: in the three pieces of paper picked up by a man with his left hand, wearing a cap with a green visor, who then discards them in the back of a white pickup truck;   

12/16/2006: in the three calls or songs of a bird in the backyard, each with three notes followed by a forth, which in the first two songs is softer and lower than the other three notes and in the last song in higher, three songs of three prime notes and one secondary note;

12/17/2006: in the white shopping bag caught in a tree, inflating in the wind into a globe, above and slightly to the left of a square, red “No Parking” sign; and, later, in the “love” written into a piece of the cement sidewalk on Elm Street beside Christ Church, seen as its bells are ringing and as an anti-Iraq war demonstration is in process in front of the church; 

12/18/2006: in the four green wreathes on four lamp poles in front of St. Raphael’s Hospital, two on each side of Chapel Street, with one on each side having many lights lit, but the other on the right has only four lit while the other on the left has none;

12/19/2006: in the sign on a Trinity Church railing that blazes in the sun so that nothing could be read, probably a metal sign with parking instructions, and beside three green wreaths on each of the three doors of the left entrance, one of the three sets of front entrances; and, later, at the Westville Post Office, a woman, probably a mother, says to a young girl, about the age of ten, bundled like a tiny Eskimo: “No! You’re home sick, not to get your nails done” and, to a man opening the door for them, says to him: “Merry Christmas”;

12/20/2006: in the square sign on Whalley Avenue, “Around the Clock Food Mart”, below the frame for a similar sign, now open with the sight of neighborhood electrical and/or telephone wires; and, later, in the group of four men, standing in a square and looking inward, each men facing his opposite, as two men and a woman cross the street; and, still later, in the plastic straw in the gutter pointing at one end to a mauled and twisted candy wrapper and at the other to a small, red heart on a yellow shopping bag;

12/21/2006: in the foot long and inch wide piece of a poster tacked to a telephone pole that is horizontal to the ground, when a gust of wind blows it to point vertically to a highway directional sign above it with an arrow pointing to the sky, and moments later points to the ground and to what probably was another poster but now a remnant with only one word remaining: “SWOLLEN”, for a few moments before returning to its original position; and, later, in the three black birds, maybe crows, in the front yard and shortly thereafter in the dozens of them in the backyard, as though a black tarp had been pulled over the grass;

12/22/2006: in the concrete island that separates two streets as they come to meet a third, which is divided in half, like the island of Cyprus, one half in good condition and the other in poor condition with much of its material missing;

12/23/2006: in the piece of paper placed on a bureau top beside on empty ink pen, to be used to wipe it after was filled and picked from the waste paper basket from which two other pieces of paper fell to make a paper trail; and, later, in the silver string of balloons tangled into three triangles in a tree beside the Yale Repertory Theatre, with 7 white balloons and 9 red ones;

12/24/2006: in the lambda formed on the sidewalk by the remains of lawn fertilizer and a twig, the sum of the numbers of the position of each of its English letters in the English alphabet is 33, a Greek letter which corresponds to the English letter “L”, which is in the 12th position, the sum of which is 3 and the product of 3 times 4;