read this book now !

I'm talking, specifically, to a lot of you.

"But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points,' one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but, of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable." [The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro.]

I'm writing this, specifically, to a lot of you.

riding in trucks with boys

losing the brickerville united lutheran church independence day barbeque cake- and-watermelon-walk, and other july stories

1. "I took the three-year-old kayaking on my lap this morning. Usually a chatterbox, he was silent, still, petrified. I pointed out all of the birds and talked about the lobster boats and how they worked. After fifteen minutes of silence, he asked, 'Are you talking to yourself, or are you talking to me?'"

2.



3.


4. More to come.

maps: geographical / emotional / colloquial

1. "LIBERTY FUCK YES." Lititz, PA, 4 July 2009.




2. Chengdu, China, 1983.



3. In the last week three different recent acquaintances have described my speech as "terse," "anachronistic," and "what is this an episode of Peanuts?" Antiquated, me, who knew?

&c. / &c.

Wylie Toms, Fat Baby, 1 July 2009.

like so many haunted houses

"A Story About the Body"
by Robert Hass

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused or considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity -- like music -- withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl -- she must have swept them from the corners of her studio -- was full of dead bees.

[Thanks, Seth]

(Okay, now I've made myself laugh, and at a very inappropriate moment. So it goes.)

i would never lie aboout something like this

Actual broker voice mail messages:

“Hi you’ve reached [name deleted]’s phone. Um.. I’m not picking up. I’m not here. So. Leave a message. I will call you. Back. Thank you. [Pause] Oh, God, that was a terrible message. [Fumbling noises.] Oh, I hate these things. How do you turn it off. [More fumbling.] I am so bad at this kind of thing. [Into the receiver again] Hello? Hello? Do you think it’s still on? What the hell. [Beep.]”

eggs v. baskets

Oh, god, this essay.


Modern Love: Raising a Princess Single-Handedly, NYTimes 28 June 2009.

IT was about 6:30 on Thursday morning, and I was cooking breakfast in my pajamas. My daughter, Madeleine, 4, was helping by transferring eggs from the cardboard carton into the refrigerator egg box. It’s one of the things she does, like pressing the button on the elevator, and licking the cake spoon.

That morning we were both performing our duties with sleepy devotion. Then I put down my whisk and asked Madeleine to throw me an egg.

She peered up curiously from her work. "One of these eggs?"

I nodded.

"But it might break."

"Just throw it, Madeleine. I’ll catch it."

She looked at the egg in her small hand, and for reasons known only to her, she began to carefully inspect the shell.

What at first was a trifling culinary request — another egg for the mixture — quickly became something more significant: an unscripted moment of trust between a father and daughter. I wanted her to trust that if she threw something delicate, I would save it. Her mother had died a year earlier. It was sudden — an undiagnosed disorder, a suspected case of Marfan syndrome. Most people I know have never heard of it.

...

Besides learning how to fake New Year’s parties and sew buttons, I’ve learned about myself. The other day when I was brushing my cheeks with shaving cream, Madeleine came into my bathroom. Surprisingly, she was already dressed for school.

I’m rather a messy shaver. Afraid I might get shaving cream on her dress, I said: “Please keep me company, Madeleine. But don’t get too close.” Then I laughed, realizing that what I’d said characterizes the nature of my adult relationships.

...

The other morning I was frying bacon, drinking coffee and trying to scramble Madeleine’s eggs. In a single moment of craziness, the bacon turned black, which triggered the smoke alarm. The eggs began welding themselves to the pan; the garbage bag I was tying split open at the bottom, covering my slippers in three-day-old linguine and rice pudding.

As I fanned the smoke detector furiously with a towel, Madeleine rushed off the couch to see what was going on, tripped and spilled her orange juice on herself and the floor. From the corner of the kitchen, a little girl covered in juice looked up at her father and said, “We’re like clowns!”

I think it was Charlie Chaplin who said that close up, human life is tragic, but from a distance, it’s funny.

SO on that recent morning, when Madeleine was still clutching the egg that I had asked her to throw, I leaned across the counter toward her and softly said: “Just throw it, Madeleine. I promise it won’t break.”

“O.K., Dad.” And in one quick motion she flung a single perfect egg at her father.

you know, because i was walking around with a 10-pound bag of rice, as usual

A man walked past me in the subway yesterday, and said, "Ooh, yeah, gimme summa dat fried rice, baby."

Claudia: At least he got the nationality right and didn't request sushi.

James: What a post racial world we live in.

I guess.

q of the d

DFW on being a tourist: "You become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing."

[Thanks, Will]