Wednesday, June 18, 2014

TROOPS

The city would usually request a third page because the twenty reminders that

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

TROOPS

we're safeguarded, existing policies that bore down unfairly

Monday, June 16, 2014

TROOPS

Although the unicorns feared the crawlers,

Friday, June 13, 2014

TROOPS

"The only member of his whole family who survived the war,"

Thursday, June 12, 2014

We went to hang out in Central Park, a class reunion of sorts for Sara’s high school. It was a radiant, beautiful goddamned day. A little girl there had a sheet of paper with boxes numbered one to a hundred. Jackie counted them to thirty. Nearby, a fat man and a skinny man kicked a soccer ball back and forth, the skinny man much more skilled. A pale woman sunbathed in a bikini and a leg cast. A portly couple sat picnicking, she reading aloud from a hardcover novel as he picked off a grape. We laid out our blue sheet. A couple times, I lay back on it and closed my eyes. For about a minute. Bliss seeping into me.

While Sara talked to her friends Jackie wanted to go play on a big, flat rock, on the other side of the wire-fenced path. Just to be on the rock instead of the grass, I suppose. She said she wanted to climb the rock, but there was nothing to climb. It just rose very slightly higher than the ground, like many other rocks in this contrived landscape. She must like the change in the surface, the fact it feels different underfoot. She’d just learned the word texture.

There were weird round metal disks embedded into the rock, about three inches in diameter. Some bewildering numbers were stamped on them, and also these words: project marker. Jackie lost interest in the rock and went to pick leaves off a tree. After a while I put her on my shoulder and headed back.

TROOPS

standard macho-money guise.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

TROOPS

a reality just as important as "real life."

TROOPS

and showed no sign of weariness

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

I like the storms that occur at the end of the afternoon, this time of year; that make commuters loiter on subway landings, waiting for a break.

Did I dream about China last night?
A lot of technology that we think is about communicating more, or communicating better, is really about communicating less. The telephone took the place of calling in person; phone conversations are shorter. Emails are short, often terse, versions of letters. Our texts and tweets are shorter still. And now that we maintain contact with the rest of the world via the “like” button, our communications are entirely wordless.

What’s the next step?

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

We walked through the Coney Island station, Jackie on my shoulders. Above the bustle and the dirt. It was crowded on the sidewalk, too. With big people. Big kids. Big couples holding hands.

A lady with a haunted look panhandled listlessly outside Nathan’s. She might have been pregnant. Or her belly was horribly distended, like a Biafran child’s.

I peered at the go-kart track and wondered if Jackie was old enough to ride with me. Probably not. The sun shone so bright, you could barely see.

We got to the Boardwalk and everything seemed alright. People were having fun. But there was something funny in the air.

I spotted a large man, a biker type, with sunglasses and a goatee. He was clutching some kind of children’s plastic toy—an airplane, or a car, or a water gun maybe. It was made of that bright, brittle, translucent plastic. That material that can only be a toy. I believe it was pink.

Suddenly he threw it to the floor and crushed it under his heel. All the while looking straight ahead, tight-faced, seething. His woman ran up to him and swatted him on the shoulder, like he was a misbehaving boy.

“How could you do that?” she cried. “How could you do that?”

TROOPS

Then catch myself. It's messing with my mind too much.