Thursday, June 23, 2011

Lightnin' Hopkins came on the stereo and the guitar convulsed her body like a shock.

Friday, June 10, 2011

The F I rode pulled into Delancey and waited there a minute, doors closed. Suddenly the conductor burst out of his cabin: "This train's out of service," he declared.

We piled onto the platform and waited morosely, lost in electronic realities. I wondered: If the train was out of service, didn't that mean it was stuck here? I imagined complicated, time-consuming arrangements being made to tow the train to a siding. Somewhere above us the sun would set, maybe come back up again. None of us the wiser.

But just then it creaked into motion. I looked back down to my audio-visual entertainment device. When I looked back up, a train was pulling in. Or was it the old one, departing still?

Thursday, June 09, 2011

She reached her hand out to my guitar again today, as I played. I let her touch the strings, hoping she'd understand they were meant to be plucked, or strummed; hoping she wouldn't simply catch her fingers. She batted at them as I made a chord and made faint music.

The air conditioner in the bedroom makes little bumpy-rubby noises, the fan caressing the Styrofoam. It makes them less and less, now, as spring turns into summer and a groove is worn.

Last Sunday we were in the park with George and Stefania, on the occasion of her birthday. An array of foods from the corners of the world. Bicycles. Guitars. Parents gamely trudging down the hill to throw a Frisbee with their kids. The sky thought about rain but never did it.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Yesterday I held Sophia and we walked from the hallway to the living room. I overheard a commotion outside. Three teenage girls, one furious. She sat on a bench on the other side of the street as the others peered at her, one with arms crossed and the other arms akimbo. The group quieted and looked away when strangers passed: a woman with a stroller, a cyclist in the bike lane. Then the angry one would start anew, yelling, gesticulating wildly. I could almost hear her pleas.

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

The smiles come unpredictably; unaccountably, most times. Sometimes when I say her name, sometimes not.

She took an immense shit and I didn't realize at first. There was nothing changed in her demeanor. Yet when I lifted her up it had soaked through her pants. She continued to wriggle ecstatically, the way anyone does when they're new to the world. It was everywhere: her legs, back, everywhere. By the standards of civilization, a calamity. But she didn't care. And neither did I.

The old man at the liquor store made faces at her, shaking his hands like a ghost.

"Hello!" I said to her playfully, indicating somehow that we both acknowledged the stranger's gesticulations. I wanted to say: "Look at the crazy old man!" But I didn't.

"Your daddy loves you!" the man said.

"I do, I do," I cooed to her. "Gimme the Bombay gin. The litre."