First names i'm fairly good at knowing. Last names need to be indisputably visual. i have made it my business, throughout life, not to know anyone. i'm not attesting to anti-socialism, but to my non-socialization. i don’t consider myself naive, as i am probably in the second half of my life. But it has only been recently realized one could talk to strangers + they would decently talk back. i had seen this done, my mother being a champ. She would get off the phone after 20 minutes of conversation just to say it was the wrong number. But i had always imagined if i talked to an unknown someone they'd get a far off look in their eyes as though they were in State Fair,  start singing, turn + walk away. The rules change the reaches, as Le Guin says.

It is good to remember ... all is fleeting.

87 

The apartment's kitchen was situated inside what used to be a walk-in closet. The Fridge door opened only half way, as it was wedged in + the stove edged out of the door frame. If there had not been a barred window, making it seem expansive as you looked out over the gray rooftops, it would have seemed you were cooking in a closet. We worked okay, side by side Kyle + i. Since he was so much taller than me we used different elbow space.

He had to have that credenza. That damn piece of furniture. We hauled it 16 blocks uptown from the salvation army. This huge buffet counter thingy, resembling a moose — as long as a coffin, heavy + on high spindly legs. you know, that thing from th e'50s that store china + linen for fine dining. We trudged it, stumbling, having to stop every 20 feet or so. i remember someone passing with the quip, Why don’t you put a handle on the top to carry it? To the cop we pretend it wasn't ours. (What credenza?) When it got so late we discussed using it for an overnight bunk bed on the street. We fibbed to the door-man by saying a friend had won it. Up the freight elevator ... i'm reckoning it’s in that apartment on 208 W 23rd street today still. It would be fun to know. i carved a note on the outside back of the drawer for posterity.

She had a great diminutive Cuban grandfather by adoption. If something went wrong, ie, a knife breaking while cutting the illustrious bird, or the hose kinking, he would get a faraway look + reach for the ceiling (or sky) reciting Shakespeare. He could pull out, by heart, the appropriate character + speech for any situation. 

-Chance Neglected 23/24 

Speak on, but be not over tedious. - Shakespeare 

this is -Tyberious Laughing.

The gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.  -Orhan Pamuk

Listen through your screams to the wind still whispering: Don't give up -- Surrender!  -Eric Ganther

He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.  -Oscar Wilde

You’d think that after so many years of yoga i could put my boots on standing up + not fall over. i obviously have not been consistent. 

i am comforted by Maude’s observation, Consistency is not a human trait. 

Regrets sent. Regrets all kinds. Just another human condition. We often regret not having done something, more than if we had. 

e.g.

-When i left for good, not taking the wobbler from the pressure cooker just to drive him crazy.

-Another time, when i left for good, not stopping w/ she looks just like you, but needing to add ...only younger. 

-Never having a lost decade. Off center, off base and slightly skewed. Actually, would i remember if I had? Well, something about purgatory, suspended animation, + time spent in Limbo. Leave it to Latin America to make purgatory into a dance. 

Aye, Sometimes there is a need to sum up a conversation, to find a point, which seemed important at the time. Go figure, we all did. 

Drew: Do they have a class where they teach you how to change into another animal your own size?

Me: No shape-shifting. But, they have martial arts.

Drew: Oh, that sounds good.

Full Flower Moon. 

Inch by inch, row by row, gonna to make this garden grow...

That has been the kids goodnight lullaby since their beginning. Having sang that every night for ‘Drew's first 6 years Chloe's 4, i’m thinking i don’t know another song by heart.

That really just could not be.

We are grooming ‘Drew as a silent gardener. No gas machines -only hand tools, + push propeller mowers. A garden about growing rather than cutting. + always, later, about the process of decay.

It’s hard to imagine that w/ all of the safety gear kids are suppose to wear these days that they may actually get through an entire childhood without a skint knee. It’s just unnatural.

We do spend a lot of time protecting our kids. i reckon there are different buffers found at each generation. But why not give them the full catastrophe?

165 It was requisite to see Niagara falls on our road trip. We ended up hitting the state line in the middle of the night + all the fancy lights had been shut down. We smuggled W.S.Trax into Canada. By that time she was very use to ‘lie still’ on the floor in the laundry bag. After seeing the big deal we walked up to the part where the water was calmer + belied no threat. It seemed like an nice swim around. i thought how easy it would be if you had a death wish to ease yourself into that lovely water. Fifty feet along the drift you’d get caught up in the here after. It’s not something you’d be able to change your mind about. You’d need to have set your resolve. 

Last night, lying in bed, i began thinking how real that danger would be if one of the children slipped through the space between the grass + cement into that water for a little swim. The kind of realization that makes your heart race even though the danger is ten thousand miles away + ten years past. i had to mentally reduce Niagara to a harmless puddle to get back to sleep.

i often wake up + not know where i am. i don’t recognize the orientation of the room. The window being THERE, the door THERE.  But some inner prompting lets me to know. It doesn't make it sunny to know this is simply the human condition + limitation working.

from -Script For a Practicing Artist + an Unfinished Life.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.  -Mark Twain