Gather, Friends...
I still have the bin in my basement that we all seem to have in our basements or attics, that big plastic tub bulging, nearly tearing with the weight of a childhood of pieces. I lug it up into the living-room. I engage in the practice.
“In the Time Before Time…”
I try and remember Before, the best that I can. Before work. Before taxes. Before hours on the phone with insurance-agents or accountants or doctors putting together treatment plans for grandma. Time was different, Before. There was more of it. There’s less and less time in the day, now– there are more and more things that need doing. Forms to fill out, emails to send. Open houses to attend. Dishes and laundry to do. Drafts to write and rewrite and scrap and start over and then rewrite again before giving up. I don’t really have time to be doing anything, anymore.
maw
“Everything is sinking. All of it, everything, all of the time, always.”
Not many people have heard of the Greek philosopher Theuciddus. You might not even find anything if you Google him– barely any of his writings have survived– only two of his writings in fact. Or actually, one of his writings; the other thing is a map.
The only reason I know about Theuciddus is because I took Geology in college, and my professor mentioned him. “Theuciddus was one of the first geologists,” he said– and that was probably the only reason he knew about Theuciddus, either. There are a lot of things that geologists only know about because they’re geologists, and there are a lot of things too that only geologists know about, things like Theuciddus and the tastes of different rocks.
A dog was hit by a car.
Really, this is the best way to start this story, by just putting it out there. Stories about dogs so often have bad things happening to them, and you spend the whole time reading just waiting for it; better to get it out of the way now. That, and there’s nothing I can tell you about the dog beforehand that will make it any better or worse, what happened. A dog was hit by a car. It doesn’t matter whose dog, what breed, with what name, or when, or where, or what kind of car it was….read more
Miguel stepped forwards— he hesitated a moment, a decision bouncing back and forth between his ears— and then he nodded to himself, reached into his pocket. ‘These are for you, Alonza,’ he said, and he handed her a pair of glasses. ‘These glasses will help you see. If you wear these glasses, you will never ever get lost adventuring in the woods, never ever again.’— read more
We talk for four hours, uninterrupted. We talk about languages, English, the difference between all her pronunciations and mine. She makes me say my words over and over as she repeats after, doing her absolute best to copy me. She doesn’t let me move on to any other sentences or ideas until I’ve told her that she’s gotten one of my words or phrase exactly right, and it usually doesn’t take more than four or five times, aside from the American “R”, which she’s been trying to master for a few weeks now, and it’s absolutely destroying her throat. She’s had a horrible cough, and whenever people get nervous around her or raise an eyebrow, we have to quickly explain that she’s been learning to growl, that’s all. She tells me out of nowhere that I look like a duck….read more
Dishes
“Honey…?”
“I know. I know, I swear I will do them tonight, I will get to them. Before bed. I’m sorry. I swear.”
“No, not the dishes.”
Not the dishes, not the dishes, it’s the bottle of Mongolian Garlic stir-fry sauce that’s been left open on the counter, I got an email about the next round of orientation for the tutoring job and I went into the bedroom to read it, I have to be in the bedroom or the living-room to read emails, not the kitchen or the bathroom or the hallway– hasn’t it been four rounds of orientation already?
At first, everyone thought it was probably something to do with climate change. What, exactly, no one could say— a subtle shift in the ambient air-temperature?— something to do with the humidity?— extra UV coming through the hole in the ozone?— a break in the chemistry of the oceans and lakes? Maybe, maybe. It was probably something to do with climate change, though, that’s what everyone thought at first. Everything had been something to do with climate change, lately… read more
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