1. A boy who gets up and sits down many times, trying to make himself comfortable in a bad chair. He is 14, wearing cargo shorts and reading The Idiot. This boy blooms late in the season and thrives in shade.
2. A very large man saying, “I haven’t eaten a cooked meal in forty years.” I am possibly mishearing him. This man is deer resistant and unusually hardy. Sturdy stems add to his appeal in the garden or vase.
3. Freckly-armed lady in metallic shorts and sheer top. Enjoys chilled soups. She is not old but looks older than she should. Richly-scented and wind-tolerant, this variety prospers in low light.
This morning the radio delivered a string of local events, as usual. Not as usual was a single event that stood out as particularly interesting, and which a future novelist has no doubt filed away in a “To Use” word processing document.
The event involved three men who died of sulphur dioxide poisoning in a well. It happened somewhere in or near New York City. Freak causes of death themselves are disconcertingly common. The interesting facts here are as follows:
•A father and son were working on the well
•The son fell in
•His father went after him with a ladder
•Both were overcome by toxic fumes
•I am not sure how the third man died
•There exist wells in or near NYC, and some of them are toxic
The brevity of the radio report gave the event a bare-bones feeling, as though it were a biblical account or a fable. I could not find an online account of the accident either, so soon after hearing the report its details began to waver in my mind and become more of a tale than a briefing.
1. Spotting a blond women with black or near-black eyebrows.
2. Walking on that type of stiff, thick green grass that upholsters the grounds of certain summer houses in Cape Cod.
3. Witnessing the wiles of a child bargaining for cookies.
4. The idea of a room with nothing in it but a hammock.
5. Listing the many ways of saying “yogurt” in different foreign languages, because all of them are funny-sounding.
2.11.99
For Uncle Geoff-
“I often think about how much beef it would take to turn the Lake of Geneva into consommé.”
-Pierre Dac,
L’Os Á Moelle, p. 85
Love,
Kenny G +
Cheryl D
“God knows how ardently I wish I had ten lives, or that capacity, that enviable capacity, of husbanding every atom of time, which some possess, and which enables them to do ten times as much in one life.”
-John Herschel, 1813
Hope this finds you well. I’m imagining you on a typical San Francisco summer day: half-hidden in fog, eating many pieces of toast for lunch. Is this accurate?
Let me describe what I’m seeing from my perch across the country. First, a bus stop that I hadn’t noticed before. A man locking his bike up, attached to the bus stop. A woman in clamdiggers (not digging clams). Graffiti that looks distinctly unlike that on the West Coast, though I couldn’t isolate the formal differences.
Two phrases have been repeating themselves in my mind throughout the morning. They are: “lifetime supply” and “seldom if ever”. I have not been able to figure out their significance yet; possibly they arrived in a dream that I’ve forgotten.
Anyhoo,
Molly
Hot dog coins and frozen vegetables
Sloppy joes
Mashed potatoes and flank steak
Anything plus garlic bread
Cut-up fruit for dessert
It’s a very specific one: the excitement of being at elementary school “after-hours”. This happened several times yearly at my school, for various performances and showcases for student artwork. Both kinds of event were exciting; they provided a setting in which to socialize with all of the people that normally intimidated you (aka boys).
On such nights the art room was transformed into a refreshments area with large bowls of goldfish crackers and pretzels. There was an implied loosening of the dress code on these nights, so that bold 7th graders might put on some mascara or a tank top.
Crush consummations tended to happen on these nights, too: we admitted who we “liked” and possibly made plans to talk on the phone.
At the time I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what it felt like to be at school afterhours. Words like “frisson” and “romantic palpitation” come to mind now, but all I knew at the time was that my armpits became abnormally sweaty.
