He was a writer. That is what he told people who asked what he did. Although he said it was what, no who he was. He said he wanted to be the sort of person that Stalin feared, a man of ideas, maybe someday, in an Alexieian world, charged with a crime of holding an audience hostage with the idea of a gun. But he knew somewhere along the way, the weapon would have to be fired. That was Chekov’s rule and he was one to obey the great writers.
It slipped away. He had no idea where it had gone, but he knew he had to find it. It could have been accidental, an errant passer opening the gateway and off it went. But he was so reliant on it that he knew he could not do much of anything without it. And he couldn’t get help finding it without endless waiting, a waste of time that put him even farther behind. But it was stealthy, and could easily hide in plain site. He hadn’t wanted to adopt it, but he had, and it had consumed him. It was that simple, life without broadband was unimaginable.
In Yuma, Arizona today, I have no idea what might have happened. Once, without going to a library and rummaging through microfiche in the dust laden corner of the second basement, I would never be able to find out. And if I did, I would wonder why there was not some simpler way of finding out. Now I can search the internet and know what did happen and what some think happened. I can find truth and conspiracies involving Yuma. It will take some time, but it can be done with relative ease. The problem is that I couldn’t care less what happened in Yuma today or most any day.
ENTRY: July 30, 1970
So, is this fakokteh box doing anything? Hello, HELLO? Buttons, now I’m a button pusher. Some kind of secretary now. Hello? Oh, hell, if it’s on it’s on and if not that’s Saul’s problem. So yesterday I tell my Saul, “You wouldn’t believe, we’re pregnant!” And Saul says, “you mean you’re pregnant Yetta, now isn’t a good time – can we talk about this later?” “Later, schmater,” I say, “we’re going to have a baby, so what do you feel?” And Saul pauses like emotions are alien to him somehow. “You know I’m excited,” he says. Like a dead person shows excitement as they lower him into the ground. “But I thought we were going to wait until the business grows.” And I’m thinking so Saul, did you tell your sperm they should be patient, maybe they should forget how to swim. But when he gets home he got this plastic box with the cartridge thingee that only goes in backwards, a true goyish design. “It’s a cassette recorder,” like I’m stupid, he says, “so you can keep a journal of your pregnancy so our child will know more about where he came from.” So my hand is broken Saul, nu? A pen and paper won’t do? For five thousand years it worked just fine, but no more? And so he’ll know where he came from? He came from you getting all hot and bothered after watching Sophia Whatshername, the Italian one with the big you know whats. Like your memory is so short you forgot what she looked like in the time it would take me to put in my diaphragm? And four minutes later, I’m pregnant? Charlton Heston, such a cutie even if he is a goy, couldn’t part the seas so fast as Saul is finished. So I say “how does this thing work?” and my energetical Saul says “Yetta, I’m tired, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Which means my beloved husband, Thumbs Goldstein, hasn’t got a clue, what else is new. So box, you getting this? My child should know his father wants we should call her Sophia if it’s a girl. I tell Saul she’ll be Sophia right after a blind moyel I hire recircumcizes you. But by then, of course, he’s already snoring to wake the neighbors. We’ll I’m gonna push the button says STOP/EJECT and hope it works. If only our bed had an eject button. God, now that my figure’s going to hell for nine months or so, thank You very much, you think on the next model of man you could put a nice on/off switch? Well my kinder, welcome to the world, and if you’ve got complaints, go talk to your father.
First appeared here on April 3, 2016
During the Presidential debate the other night the inevitable question was eventually asked. I have to say the answers were much as expected, exactly as scripted, and while “correct,” each candidate missed a golden opportunity. “On January 21, what will be the first thing you will do as President?” Most of the world’s problems made the list, immigration, climate change, wealth inequality, you get the picture. It was never mind that almost none of the things listed could be solved by an executive order, their hearts were in the right place. But no one hit the real mark. Ask me and the answer’s simple. My first act as President is to appoint the official White House herpetologist. It is a two for one appointment, after all. I get someone who can help me deal with Congress, members of both the Senate and House. But better still, when it hits the fan, and we all know it will, repeatedly, I have an expert who can explain that yet again, it is all the snake’s fault. That one has worked since Adam, and even the evangelicals and Catholics must agree on that one.
It is incredibly frustrating that no matter how long I spend in discussion with the egret, he will tell me nothing of his life, of what it is like to be able to perch on long legs, and then take glorious flight. The limpkin will speak endlessly on this topic, but he really has nothing to say of any importance. Still, I’m not giving up hope, for a friend said that he had it on good authority from a passing wood stork that the egret is planning to write a tell all book, once he figures out how to use a computer.
Birth, he said, is the first and only real terminal disease. You only realize that, of course, when it is far too late and there is nothing at all you can do about it. Cancer and all manner of diseases merely shift the timeline, but once you’re on the path, there is only one way off, and that is a step few are willing to take. For some, this is a source of terror, for others it is no more than a slow walk around the block, with the promise you’ll eventually arrive back at the place you began, although it is no longer the place you began but one from which you begin, not again but anew. Again. This is what the Buddha said 3000 years ago, more or less. He confirmed that the just the other day, outside the soup kitchen. “Hey,” Buddha said, “even the once or twice enlightened need to eat from time to time. Join me?”
The gong reverberates, its depth hangs in the air, fades like a slowly retreating army.
The zafu is at once coarse and caressing, nestling me as I settle down into becoming one with the earth, the zabuton, a fluid translator. The mokugyo’s rhythm lies deep within my chest. The incense settles on my tongue, an acrid sweetness, and there is absolute silence where my breath is an onrushing freight, passing quickly and departing to clear the way for the next, and the next, until even that fades and there is nothing, and there is everything, and there is me and not me, you and not you, and here is no longer.
The gong reverberates like a single hand clapping.
A cloud envelopes the forest. The trees believe it is they who pierce the cloud, impaling it, its essence drained onto their sagging limbs. The shower passes and we walk the forest floor. In a small clearing we lie down on a damp bed of needles. They do not pierce our skin. Four birds gather on a nearby limb. They stare at us, we back at them. I pull sandwiches from the picnic basket, a bottle of wine. You open the small blanket. The birds seem to find this interesting. They chitter among themselves. We only think we understand what they are saying. The tomato is pressed tight against the mozzarella, basil leaves floating above. Crumbs from the ciabatta fall on the blanket. I am distracted by a motion on the edge of vision. I turn and think it is a doe standing many yards off, in an odd stand of birch that seem lost, dwarfed by the surrounding pines. Bits of roll fall on the ground. The birds pause and take careful note of this. They are certain when we carefully pack up, the last drops of wine spilled on the ground, our forgotten scraps will be their meal. As we walk from the forest we watch as the trees release their grip. We see the cloud slip away into a sunlit sky.
“Call your mother,” she says. She speaks in the voice of my mother. It grates on my nerves in just the same way it always did. I listen carefully. She repeats herself. I reminded her that she died two years ago. I tell her I tried to call for months after her passing, but there was never an answer. I tell her it is clear that she no longer accepts calls. She asks, “why should that matter? Call your mother,” she repeats, “it doesn’t matter if she answers, and anyway you never called when I was alive.” This I know to be unfair, untrue. I know she is pushing buttons, a skill she had long mastered. I speak in my defense, “I called at least once a week or more. Back then. Don’t argue with the dead,” she says, “and whatever else you do, don’t argue with your mother.”
an old writer and his words 