-watching a son play his first New York show; watching the video his father was filming of him, instead of watching the show
-lying under the whale’s belly at the natural history; lying in my bed in Brooklyn, in a room the size of a shoebox, and feeling far smaller, far more insignificant than when i was under the whale
-wondering how Robert Frank would photograph the americans at The Americans exhibit at the Met
this time last year the girl who owns these hats bought us a turkey from the farmer’s market. and some other stuff too, stuff with dirt still on it and stuff with green leaves on it still, green leaves i hadn’t known about before. and for the rest, we trekked to the grocery store, and walk back with the shopping cart, up two hills and down one, and emptied everything into her fridge and reconvened the next day to get started.
it was all kinds of roll of your sleeves work. i ate the whole time. while another friend drew cartoons of us cooking, in between cutting the squash. there were moments of hesitation, and in those moments we’d call my friends mom, and she’d talk us through it. i remember being surprised by her accent on the phone. now i can’t remember it of course, but it caught me off guard, it was simultaneously brisk and tender as though my friend’s mom had just returned from a walk in the woods and was making dough from scratch.
we cooked until everything on the menu was done. and when it came time to sit down, our cheeks were all red, and our guts were all ready. (though i had been snacking the whole time.)
i remember passing things down the table, and thinking that no matter how old i get, passing a heavy bowl of mashed potatoes or stuffing, will always make me feel like a kid whose wrists might snap under the pressure; the pressure and the anticipation.
this year, we’re all in different places. i have a few of my loves in london, one who’s probably already made six pies. she’s probably made the kind of pies that look too good to eat, the kind that i would inevitably ruin by cutting the pieces all wrong. and then there’s the two in boston, who i can only imagine are in a loud kitchen; the loudest of kitchen, the kind of kitchen in the movies where women’s bangles bang on the counter top as they chop, and jingle as they stir. and another friend, she’s in chicago with her family, where she still sits at the kid’s table and runs back her grandparents’ room when nobody is looking to check the basketball score.
i’m headed to a dinner with one of my favorite families. i can’t wait. i’ve waited all week.
one day i hope to have one of those long cutting board tables. the kind that stretches long that half the time has old newspapers on it, and my laptop and notes and a bowl of half rotten fruit. but it’s also the table that everyone comes to. i can’t wait ‘til one of us has the table that everyone comes to.
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a pretty woman your wife.
“Roger Phaedo had not spoken to anyone for ten years. He confined himself to his Brooklyn apartment, obsessively translating and retranslating the same short passage from Rousseau’s “Confessions.” A decade earlier, a mobster named Charlie Dark had attacked Phaedo and his wife. Phaedo was beaten to within an inch of his life; Mary was set on fire, and survived just five days in the I.C.U. By day, Phaedo translated; at night, he worked on a novel about Charlie Dark, who was never convicted. Then Phaedo drank himself senseless with Scotch. He drank to drown his sorrows, to dull his senses, to forget himself. The phone rang, but he never answered it. (…) And it was Aleesha who brought Roger Phaedo back from the darkness. One afternoon, wandering naked through Phaedo’s apartment, she came upon two enormous manuscripts, neatly stacked. One was the Rousseau translation, each page covered with almost identical words; the other, the novel about Charlie Dark. She started leafing through the novel. “Charlie Dark!” she exclaimed. “I knew Charlie Dark! He was one tough cookie. That bastard was in the Paul Auster gang. I’d love to read this book, baby, but I’m always too lazy to read long books. Why don’t you read it to me?” And that is how the ten-year silence was broken. Phaedo decided to please Aleesha. He sat down, and started reading the opening paragraph of his novel, the novel you have just read.”
I finished Auster’s most recent, his fourteenth, I think. And have read everything I can on it because I am uninterested in my own thoughts on a book whose ending, literally the last paragraph, is more poignant than any other bit. I only want to know what others think. I wasn’t moved enough to consider my own thoughts. I will finish reading Wood’s piece and never consider the book again. No matter how many contra-Wood sites I find, so far, ‘in my books’ his rhetoric has been champion.
it was around this time last year, or maybe a bit later in the month, or early in the next month.
my father and stepmother were visiting me in new york. the van gogh exhibit was on at the moma.
i’ve always loved watching people i love, in museums.
inevitably we walk at our own pace. and stop longer and certain paintings. and miss entire rooms. it happens.
i stood across my father, seperated by a giant space and caught him, as if he were my reflection, in the same nook, at the other end. i took this picture around this time last year, or maybe a bit later in the month, or early in the next month.
