I rearranged objects and piles of papers and things in my closet, not for any special reason but because I found myself doing it and didn’t stop. There was an old notebook of my dad’s. I leafed through a couple pages to find a poem, dated 1991. No one likes to read a poem. But I knew I had to read this one. I followed down his low, stretchy cursive, so familiar and distinctly his. It was about the view from his window at night. He was living in Paris by then. It’s a scene I’ve seen a hundred times. Yellow glowy headlights like eyes, shadowy figures dart across the street. Suggestive of a river, of life, of something sinister too. He ends by asking, who down there sees me?

The rest of the notebook was blank.

Today in light of the fires we discussed digitizing everything, birth certificates and social security cards and deeds and whatever, against some abstract calamity ahead because no one ever knows. The TV playing college basketball on mute. I coughed spasmodically whenever I laughed or sometimes even talked, the tail end of this virus.

Sometimes outside our window at night someone shouts out something strange and alarming. Like now: “Excuse me! Can I borrow your phone to call my dad?” With the strain of urgency in the voice, maybe fear. But when I get up to look out the window all I see is a solitary figure across the street, a young woman. She stands at the crosswalk for a moment and then turns to walk along the park. Like nothing.

I reached for the plastic screw top on the milk carton this morning. Bleary, fresh out of bed. It felt different. It felt wrong. The contour was not round and textured as expected but smooth and beveled. I nearly let go in revulsion. Put back the milk. Never to take it out again. These sinister machinations of industrial design. But I poured some in my coffee. Life went on.

I set the hot sheet pan on the stove and stretched over the faucet and poured cold water into it and it tensed and buckled for a second then relaxed back into shape and the whole time it seemed alive, almost human.

I set the hot sheet pan on the stove and stretched over the faucet and poured cold water into it and it tensed and buckled for a second then relaxed back into shape and the whole time it seemed alive, almost human.

I finally let go of my old computer, the one I only used to play a constant slideshow of all my pictures. It was all it was good for until it wasn’t good for that. The recurring black screens, rebuildings of the photo database, your computer restarted because of a problem. I did the things you do, reinstalled the operating system, and when that didn’t work deleted everything and started anew, several times, the updating of files from the cloud taking days on end, a measure of all the pictures and all the years gone by. For the past few years the fan ran constantly; its white noise became a characteristic of the room just like the light coming in the window from the south. Now I can really hear the silence. I’ve put it in the closet, not knowing what else to do—what do you do with your broken computer?—and it fit so neatly and perfectly on the shelf behind my old notebooks that it seems like it belonged there this whole time.

Felt out of sorts most of the day as is often the case with Mondays. And this despite episodes of good fortune, such as finding that the obstruction in the vacuum cleaner hose was near the nozzle and easy to remove. You have to grab what you can get in this life.

In the early afternoon it poured for no apparent reason, and stopped. One of those summer storms when the rain comes in silvery strands and nothing gets wet.

Time stretched out in my early morning dreams to the point that I was sure I was oversleeping by hours; it had to be past noon. But I opened my eyes and it was seven something. When I opened them again it was a little past nine.

It was a day of mundane tasks: head shaving, box opening, taking out the trash. The take a book leave a book. I perused the titles and opened up an anthology by school kids called “Growing Up in Park Slope.” In the middle of the page was a sort of prose poem about Grandma having a stroke. I superstitiously thought of reading something else before closing the book, something happy, but I didn’t. I left Raggedy Ann and Andy and Grisham and something else, taking nothing.

We didn’t talk too long about it. S. thinks a woman can’t win in America. Maybe but we have to try. 

Just as we left the roof the first drops were falling and it rained hard and stopped again for the fireworks, as though on schedule. The explosions were near and far but always obstructed by buildings and trees. Our next door neighbor or the one next to that set off some bottle rockets, whistling and popping and nothing. Tentative, spectral silhouettes suddenly appeared on roofs where you never saw people before, and then they went away again.

I peered at the microwave. The light inside was flickering. Was it a grotesque, hazardous malfunction or the normal sign of fluctuating power so as to more efficiently reheat food? I couldn’t remember. “Flickering lights,” I said to myself out loud.

While music was playing in the living room I had a thought, or a feeling, or both, that the music wasn’t really playing at all and the room was silent. It might have been an effect of the restlessness of the mind today, always seeking new stimulation, never satisfied with anything in the moment. So then I perceived the room as both: a silent room and a room filled with music. Both were equally real, equally true.

 I detected some pale beige fragments as I cleaned the dining table. Some crumbs, I thought. As I inspected them more closely I realized they were pieces of book. Little woody chips from the spine of an old paperback, the residue at the bottom of every box of books and the back of every bookshelf. This is what every book turns into in the end. Dust jacket to dust.

Sometimes at night after the kid goes to bed I collapse onto the couch and into the idiocy of “Below Deck Mediterranean.” There’s a comforting aspect to its wretchedness. The put-upon staff welcoming aboard a clan of holidaying ugly Americans, the men paunchy in pink shirts, white pants; the women sun-damaged and lip-augmented; everyone a little rude and impatient to get soused. The staff are hungover themselves, recovering from a shore-leave escapade when someone hit on someone, someone was offended, someone puked and someone fell into the bay. I watch this for exactly six minutes and I’ve had my fill.

It’s the sort of night when I want to fall into the imbecility of watching Worls Cup downhill skiing, a scotch in my hand, mouth a little bit agape.

After I’ve emptied the little Tupperware dish of fresh litter into the box, I bring it outside and let it sail over the seven or eight steps into the open bin on the half landing. It’s so light it almost flutters, and it seems like it might veer off-course, but it always lands right there on the gravelly gray pile. Pufff. This is a moment of pure bliss, just a second and a half or so, every two days maybe.

It occurred to me that I didn’t know how to operate the fire extinguisher in the corner cabinet under the sink. It had stood there behind the U pipe, next to the leftover tiles, ever since we bought the place ten years ago. In the back of my mind it was always, there’s a fire extinguisher there if there’s a fire.

But today I imagined a short circuit over by the TV, maybe something the cats did, sparks shooting, smoke, flames, the cabinet alight, the album collection smoldering, vinyl dripping like molasses on the floor. I’d go get it of course. But then I’d hold it up idiotically, fumbling with it, not knowing what to pull or push or squeeze.

I knelt down and opened the door. The thing was farther away than I remembered; I had to press my face against the stove to reach it. In the bright kitchen light I examined the cartoon instructions on the side. Pull the pin. (Like a grenade.) Squeeze the thing and aim for the base of the fire. Sweep back and forth.

I brushed off the dust that had accumulated on the canister’s shoulder. I gave the pin a little tug, just to have the ghost of the muscle memory I’d need. It seemed flimsy, ready to be ripped away. I fingered the lever gingerly. And then I knelt back down and put the thing back for another decade. But closer to my reach this time.

Something like a gun or firecrackers went off outside but when I looked out the window everybody was doing normal shit, jogging, crossing the street. Still I heard it: pop-pop-pop.

I forgot my phone upstairs, a bit drunkenly, and of course I immediately saw beautiful pictures to take: a view up the blocked-off street, children playing under a silvery dusky sky; grownups on the sidewalk drinking; pink-purple chalk hopscotch and Black Lives Matter. But of course if I could have taken the pictures I wouldn’t have written the words.

Part of being on vacation, if you’re not on a cruise ship or an all-inclusive I guess, is the pleasure and relief of trading one set of problems for another. The things you find irritating and uncomfortable at home are gone—or at least transformed, mostly because they’re temporary—and instead you have a new set: bad lavender hand soap, dust and grime under the bed, baffling television technology. These inconveniences are in fact worse than those you’re accustomed to. They’d be intolerable if you were working, getting your kid ready for remote learning, straining for the end of another day. But because they’re here—next to a lake, next to a little town with an ice cream stand, nothing special even, just somewhere else—they’re perfectly OK.

This is why we go on vacation, really. To temporarily trade our cares for other ones. Also for the pleasure of going home.