First names I'm fairly good at knowing. Last names need to be indisputably visual. My friends, (all of my dearest few) can attest not to my 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 and 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 and start singing as they walked away. The rules change the reaches. 

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 and the sink 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 and 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, as long as a coffin, on high legs, that you store china and linen in 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 and reach for the ceiling (or sky) reciting Shakespeare. He could pull out, by heart, the appropriate character and speech for any situation. 

-Chance Neglected 23/24 

Speak on, but be not over tedious. - Shakespeare 

This is Tyberious Laughing.

You’d think that after years of yoga I could put my boots on standing up and 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. -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 with, “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? Lonnie and I were talking in circles ... well, something about purgatory, suspended animation, and 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. It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. Go figure, we all did. One Head, Two Necks and Three Hands.

“Do they have a class where they teach you how to change into another animal your own size?”
“No shape-shifting. But, they have martial arts.”
“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 and 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, and push mowers. A garden about growing rather than cutting. And always, later, about the process of decay.

It’s hard to imagine that with 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 and 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 and 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 and ten years past. I had to mentally reduce Niagara to a harmless puddle to get back to sleep.

I often wake up and not know who I am. I don’t recognize the orientation of the room. The window being THERE, the door THERE. Sometimes I’m as sharp as the proverbial tack- sometimes I almost cry with dread before I remember who I am. But some inner prompting lets me to know. It doesn't make it sunny to know this is simply the human condition and limitation working.

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