cluster bomb

Holiday shopping can be stressful: all the people, the cheerful music, trying to decide on the perfect gift.


The news used to make me sad until I realized: the people who die are no longer people. You no longer have to worry about them. You might feel bad about those who loved them. You might draw tear-jerking parallels to the lives of your own loved ones. But in the end, the poor fuckers who got blown to shit and mentioned parenthetically within a broad total are having a better time than you, fat-assed Andy Reid that you are, watching the news over a consolatory beer on your sagging couch. At the very least, they're having a less depressing time than you are.

Maybe the dead never were quite people, but rather scraps of formula in a bureaucrat's spreadsheet. To feel sadness or anger at this is trite, regrettable, and certainly not to be expressed. If the dead are Arabs, your discomfort is anti-Semitic or at the very least anti-American. If the dead are Americans, ask yourself, does the world need so many Americans? There is at least on the bright side a potential reduction in Northeast corridor rush-hour traffic.


Upon impact, the cluster bomb transforms into a beautiful butterfly.

Eagles 2004 Commemorative DVD

This DVD celebrates the Philadelphia Eagles' 2004-05 season, from training camp through their dominating performance against the Atlanta Falcons. This newly-produced film goes beyond typical NFL team merchandising to bring the Eagles fan more highlights than ever before, interviews with key players and coaches, and several bonus features that help the fan get to know the players in a more personal, intimate way.

Bonus features include the fight you got into with your dad on the front lawn about an hour before kickoff the day of that triumphant championship game. From the punch you thought about throwing, to the harsh and ultimately senseless things said before you retreated into your respective lives, we've captured it all right here.

In exclusive interviews, your siblings, your shrink, and legendary Eagles Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson offer commentary on the state of your parents' marriage and certain oddities in your own psychological development, leading into a word-by-word analysis of the conversation that set your friendship with your father back several years.

Finally, in a can't-miss sequence of deleted scenes, the male bonding you missed that day is simulated by professional actors watching a taped version of that classic match-up. High fives, hearty laughs, and spicy wings abound. And, during a three minute and 20 second sequence at the beginning of the second half, we see rare, shared understanding of the ties between you, the trying, the care on both sides of the ball.

sailing ship telescope wizard

Little one you are safe, nothing will hurt you, nothing can. Your good dreams are premonitions of the world to come, your bad dreams are exorcisms. When you look to us for trust, we're worth it, we won't fuck it up. We won't drop you, call you names, or mail you cross-country 4th class in a box with air-holes and a feeding bowl, even if somewhere down the road you really get on our nerves and we're dying to see a movie in the theater.

Little one your schemes are forming, you lift your head and smile and laugh and talk. You know that music is music, that love is love, that it's better with friends around and how to make them smile. Your schemes become projects: roll 3 feet, eat a blanket, eat a ribbon, eat a pacifier, eat the cat. Continuity, beta version, entropy patcher, stalwart champion of addition and multiplication, erudite designer of cross-cultural constellations, box of apples, sailing ship telescope wizard, defeater of depressives, existentialists, and cynics, cloud catcher, befriender/tamer of ghosts.

You've probably seen them on TV: classes of infants clad in swimsuit diapers or only in what Mother Nature gave them, floating effortlessly through the water like little mermaids or piranhas. You want your child to learn basic water safety, but is tossing your baby into a pool the way to teach him?

Yes.

imagined injury

Breaks of the collar bone, breaks of the clavicle or coccyx, skull fractures, broken arms (radius, humerus, trochlea). Breaks of the fibula, tears of dorsal metatarsal ligaments. Stab wounds to the chest, throat, stomach, liver, kidneys. Gasoline burns, gunshot wounds. Exposure to national media, exposure to local media. Exposure to chemical weapons, depleted uranium, the movie "Tropic Thunder."

Hypnosis gone awry. Involuntary removal of tongue, fingers, eyes, kidneys, penis, or heart in ransom or extortion situation. Voluntary removal of same in ill-starred attempt to impress girl. Exposure to the cold vacuum of space, snake bites, rat bites, rabies. Awkward sex, bad sex, regrettable sex for money in the pulsating bathroom of a Trailways bus with a toothless person of indeterminate gender. Exposure to organized religion, exposure to national, state or local politics. Frostbite. Hypothermia. Piranha bites, crocodile bites, electric shock. Spontaneous visits from college acquaintances.

Airplane crashes into your house, airplane crashes onto your car, into your place of work. Airplane crashes onto solo pedestrian (you). Airplane in which you are traveling corkscrews and burns slowly underwater, all but you eaten by octopi or a large school of small fish, you tortured slowly by evil merman in his domain. Airplane in which you are traveling brings you to all-day business strategy meeting wherein dull soundbites are pondered and endorsed.

Car crashes off side of mountain, car crashes into river and driver slowly drowns yet must rescue multiple children and pets. Car crashes into flaming oil tanker, school bus, side of building. Fender bender leaves dull ache in shoulder and crink in neck, slight paranoia regarding travel by self/wife/baby. Exposure to stand up comedy, ethnic or sexist jokes, pornography. Immersion in lye, enrollment in Poetry MFA program, immersion in diet program or anthill slathered in honey.

Slaps in face, kicks in balls, personalized poison pen letter from Noam Chomsky. Mountain lion leaps from rapidly moving 18-wheeler through open driver side window of car. Parachute fails to open, aneurysms, fast-moving cancer, heart attacks all noticed on way down. Exposure to daytime television, hospital waiting rooms. Exposure to adulthood.

professional breakfast

Yesterday, L. went up to the city and the pumpkin and I had a social day. My dad came over early and we made breakfast, bacon and whole-grain pancakes that he referred to as "different" but that he went back to for seconds and thirds. He brought along loads of extra ingredients just in case we didn't have stuff (professional breakfast). It turned out we needed his maple syrup and the oil he'd brought, because the syrup was a distant memory and the canola was down to its last drop. Score one to dad for knowing what he was getting into.

Last weekend the pumpkin and I'd gone over to his apartment bearing donuts and caffeinated coffee, figuring he wouldn't have any. He made bacon and broke out a bowl of strawberries and lit up around the kid, a grandfather learning the joys of that as his son learns what his dad already knows.

The old man is always trying to learn guitar, something surprising but not totally unexpected if you know him. The kid and I sat on the couch and he sat near the back door of his apartment with his back turned to us, plucking the notes of a song in his Grade 2 book called Lullaby . It took him a while to find the notes, but it added to the prettiness of the melody. The phrasing fell by turns to gentle pauses, like a kid trying to wend his way down to sleep, a sequence of cascading waterfalls from one level of alertness down to another. The pumpkin was all eyes.

Yesterday after breakfast was my turn to play my dad something on the piano. I've been taking an initial crack at figuring out Erik Satie's Gymnopédie #1 , a song that sounds simple and enchanting when you hear it, but one that is in fact laborious, subtle, and forever shifting and evolving, a real chore for a hack to muck through. I was worried my dad was going to gather up his breakfast equipment and split in a huff, but when I turned around he was dancing with the kid, who looked pretty interested again, albeit probably in the dancing most of all.

When my dad split the kid and I went to Lois and Chet's and watched football with them and their own little ones all day. Chet is obsessed with Elvis and casually played me these Claymation loops he'd spent the better part of two years crafting, of devotees praying unintelligibly to an angry King on a wide and vibrating altar, grim and menacing portents of a world sliding off its axis that nonetheless each seem to be craning their ears for the first strains of TCB or for some word from the King that will signal that they can stop caring, that they can lay their burdens down and fly into the beyond as free souls.

I leave the room for five minutes to go to the john and when I got back, Lois and her daughter are singing an extended You are My Sunshine to the pumpkin, who seems to be pondering the prospect of in fact being someone's sunshine, then changes his mind and starts crying for food or a pacifier or would someone get him a beer, dammit, just one beer to go with the game.

We walk around all day brimming with songs, looking for the first excuse to share them with each other. I feel like I've got about 58 years worth in there, packed away for winter under a sick-assed pile of depression, bacon egg & cheese sandwiches, and absurd put-downs.

prayer for the Philadelphia Eagles

So the mascots for the Phillies and the Eagles, the Phanatic and Swoop, go to the same church. Besides that it's a pretty boring parish. Sure, once in a while after too much communion wine the organist throws in improvised grace notes that skate dangerously away from the chord progression. Maybe once a month or so an altar server forgets to ring the bells that would signal the consecration, and a few parishioners get caught by surprise and nearly faint or at least put their hands to their hearts (we don't know the hour, nor do we know the day). Less often, maybe once a year or so, but usually around this time of year, an errant deacon might fumble a few tran-substantiated wafers and have to get on the ground on his hands and knees to pick them up and eat them. But that's about it.

My point being, you don't get a lot of speaking in tongues or deviations from C major (maybe A minor, if someone feels like getting dangerous with the circle of 5ths) at this parish. And it's an early mass, 7 a.m., so Swoop and the Phanatic can't be totally blamed if when asked to show one another some sign of peace, they limit their enthusiasm to warm smiles and handshakes or at most high fives (or a subtle backflip). You can't have the Phanatic revving folks up for the profession of
faith winging an all-terrain vehicle down the aisles. There are basic elements of decorum.

And besides, Swoop can't always fly. Sometimes Swoop needs time to reflect with his innermost thoughts. On this occasion, his mind has strayed a bit from the script of the mass. The sermon is about personal responsibility, but he (proud father, breadwinner, loyal husband, endangered species) can't help but feel he's got that down. So when it's time to pray, and his thoughts stray to today's game, Eagles vs. Giants, can he be blamed?

For the hungry and the sick, etc., Lord hear our prayer.
For the Eagles season, Lord hear our prayer.
For a balanced passing and rushing attack, Lord hear our prayer.
For the good McNabb to show up... Lord hear our prayer.
For the Giants offensive and defensive lines, may they crumble against all laws of physics and athletic superiority.. Lord hear our prayer. Etc.

And maybe he starts it off with a prayer for Plaxico's family, just to make sure God reads it as bi-partisan.

Billy Joel's fingers/token friend who's dead

So one day on his way to work this guy takes a dive in front of an oncoming train. Maybe he's fallen asleep mid-step (reasonable in the early rush) or given up (reasonable on way to boring job as a middle manager). What's certain is that the guy comes to and he's a ghost floating above this black and white sign that reads Broadway-Lafayette, looking at himself dead smushed split apart on the ground.

The guy floats up off the track and past the platform where folks are already gathering to gape and freak, floats up out through people toward the exit. From a pedestrian perspective, he's glad to discover, New York subways properly accommodate those who float. It's something he hadn't noticed.

The light hits his eyes like he's hung over but also like it won't stick, like it's going through him. When he gets home no one's there and he hangs out in the kids' rooms a while, thinking how their eyes light up unconditionally when they see him, thinking about his wife when she has something teasing to say to him that reads him too well to deny but still cuts a little but in the end is mostly just funny and goddamn when someone gets you. It hits him what he's done and he tries to conjure some way to get back to life with them but he-of-course-cannot reverse-the-cruel-ravages-of-time-Janus-though-he-may-be.

No one's ever home and every day the guy tries to occupy himself with something different, turns on the radio to listen to that bitch Imus and thinks about the off-season moves of the Yankees or those other jokers, thinks about football and hockey and what a poor substitute they are for the timeless evening of a decent ballgame and the kids arguing through the walls of their adjacent rooms. The leaves are everywhere, instant bullshit metaphors that they are and he makes himself a sandwich, puts on an old Billy Joel record (Piano Man I think), watches daytime TV. But no matter what he does, he's back to thinking about his wife and kids, wondering if their purgatory (if necessary) will be the same as his and how to occupy that time in the meantime. And sometimes his old friends, his mom, his brothers and sisters.

No one ever comes home and whenever he goes out it's fun, I mean, he can go to the movies and see concerts or Yankee games for free, sneak into people's hotel rooms while they're sleeping and watch them sleep or fuck or fight undetected. He can float above the city, its lights curving effortlessly into the sky at night like staccato pounding through Billy Joel's fingers, out over the cold fuck Atlantic, out into space. He's a master, he's in control, like Joe Torre or Derek Jeter or the Babe, or even Billy Joel himself.

It's always bothered me, man, that you turned out to be the token friend who's dead. It bothers me because your work track reminds me so much of my own, because your detachment from the day-to-day is something I find so intuitive. It bothers me because you were trying to cut your cholesterol, because you had little ones to live for, because there was so much that you seemed into, even though there was obviously so much you couldn't even pretend to give a shit about.

It bothers me because you gave me your records, and I just thought you'd given them up for CDs.

in praise of mediocrity

In pro sports they call it parity, on Pitchfork they call it a 7.6 and comb it for stray nuances. At work it's sewn into the culture, so when anything bold or fresh happens we raise our eyebrows and scurry to a Microsoft help file for shelter. And every day some new novelist or worse poet emerges to present a new origami version of the same glinting and fragrant piece of crap.

In politics it hangs in rolls around the Clinton middle, on the Greyhound bus I take to work they actually pump extra quantities of it into the air as a kind of perfume or stimulant. At closing time when folks head home the office parks and parking lots make perfunctory love and by midnight their new spawn have birthed and laid further waste to the landscape. Look at them now, curled up crammed together so thick that in the sodium haze you can barely make out the moon.

My dear, what I really want to say is of course I'll attend your wedding, thank you so much the invite. The save-the-date card will honor my refrigerator always, and when the warranty on that expires I'll get strong clear tape or laminant and fix it to the dishwasher, so that whether loading or unloading I can remember that blessed day. Even if you get divorced I'll refuse to acknowledge it and continue to serenade the milestones as they cascade lovingly by. I'll shout it from real rooftops, hire mariachis, bake anniversary cakes that no matter where you move or hide will find you just in time.

It's strange though, as gushing as I am about the whole scene, as much as I write to praise your once and future happiness, now that you and R. are getting hitched and leaving town (forever and ever one hopes) I feel like I have woken up 50 pounds lighter, as though one of the many blocks against magic and artful function in this world has been lifted. Your presence had become a nagging but almost invisible pain, but had become so commonplace I didn't recognize it. It'll make my world a better place to have you far away.

When looking at wedding dresses keep in mind that some dresses will be better suited to some weddings than others. The type of wedding dress to choose will partly depend on the type of wedding you will be having; your wedding could be formal or informal, take place indoors or outdoors. It could be a grand occasion in a massive cathedral, a sophisticated evening event with a civil ceremony, a simple church wedding, or a beach wedding in the tropics. This will help to inform your choice but should by no means limit it.

There are many wedding dresses to choose from for all types of weddings, so it should not be difficult finding one you like and that fits the occasion.

the basic properties of light

When we were kids we had a way to send somebody off, grandparents or an aunt and uncle who visited. You stood at the front door and flickered the porch light and they honked their horn and you kept the light going until they were out of sight, so they knew you would keep the lighthouse going. The point was for them to have no doubt that if they returned unannounced day or night you would still be standing there flickering the light like an idiot. It was a way of saying distance is an illusion, we are here together no matter what, we love you.

Another way we had in the summer was to run alongside the car until it got out of our development. This way they knew that we loved them so much that we were stubbornly clinging to their presence. Sure, you could do it alone, but it made more sense to do that in groups, my brothers, my sister and me, so we actually had a theoretical chance of catching the car, lifting it in the air and returning it to park back in front of the house. The point was for them to have no doubt that if they looked to the side of their car 20 or 30 miles down the road they might see you sprinting alongside, getting pretty good mileage out of only love and cheap pro Keds.

Using a paper-and-pencil test consisting of multiple-choice situational questions which also require reasoning for the choices made, common misconceptions in light were identified. It was found that most of the students understand the basic properties of light at a knowledge level but had difficulty applying these concepts in novel situations. (And fuck, doesn't growing up mean ending up twisted/distracted/scattered in a hundred directions, subjecting that theory of long-distance communion to the harshest conditions).

My grandfather, the last of those visiting loved ones still capable or willing to make the trip, might be an agnostic by this point but if you press him at an opportune moment he'll articulate a fine vision of heaven. The soul, he says, is wisp of light, and when we die we return to the source, to be together with those we love.

what we expect when we talk about expecting

first trimester (0 - 14 weeks): Baby may occasionally react to specific meals with belches or hiccups; on occasion a tiny "fuck yeah!" rings forth. small hairs produce wolfman-like appearance. is small enough to leave your body on stealth excursions, e.g. for barbecue wings or midnight movies. does not yet see ghosts nor communicate with them. baby should not operate heavy machinery or use the internet unsupervised during this period.

second trimester (15 - 26 weeks): You are going to be hungry as shit now. Example: you may eat a dog or other mammal whole. baby's hiccups, more active now, are capable of triggering world disasters, e.g. floods, wars, famine. now has capacity to yell "motherfucker!" at room volume in quiet or awkward situations. may briefly become a fan of the Dallas Cowboys; typically recedes as a normal part of your child's mental development. first traces of cynicism (sample conversation: You: Baby, how do you feel about the recent national election? Baby:____ You: I mean, will Obama run the country like he ran his campaign? Baby: (may kick) You: But seriously, come on, level with me here. Baby: As long as you view Obama in a ruling class context, you won't be disappointed.) Later, baby may express profound hope about the glacial thawing of our racist national heart, tempered by reminders of imminent bombing, etc.

third trimester (27 - 40 weeks): Baby now capable of revealing your innermost thoughts in stealth calls to your parents, friends, or the national media. typical in-flight wing span now exceeds three feet. baby is typically born during this period, a simple and foolproof process after which follows tidal waves, tsunamis, the complete redrawing of the national map with texas occupying the area formerly known as canada and ohio greedily occupying the rest, the reversal and/or multiplication of gravity to several times its intensity, dizziness, hallucinations, vomiting, waves of confusion and happiness and telegraphic love, a scrambling of the periodic table whereby unstable elements occupy the first 12 elements and form the others when fed after midnight. during this time tic-tac-toe may become an immanently winnable game for you or your partner. relatives reappear. marital conversations reduced to grunts, sighs, and storming out of the room (helps to prevent an immediate second child which christ knows you could not handle at this point).

Baby may exhibit alien vampire tendencies and attempt to drain mother of all bodily fluid. also may develop acne but should not at this point be left unattended overnight.

nina simone

it's silver's birthday and while we were waiting for myrtle (who bought all the presents and made this perfect hand-drawn birthday card one could base an entire ultra-depression-proof park slope card boutique around) she played nina simone at full volume and we split a bottle of wine.

because i was drunk and hell bent to explain how i appreciated the infinite despite my bureaucratic trappings, i launched into this whole tirade on why i liked the music so much. what i ended up vaguely articulating (besides dumb shit like "that piano is bright fish skimming the ocean floor" or "she's an angel sent to remind us we're alive") was the idea of african rhythms searching for freedom within a western idiom. something i'd read once in a jazz text and have been trying to make my own ever since.

silver's commie response was that all people are searching for freedom within whatever imperfect system they've had the misfortune of existing into, and that while people are capable of the worst atrocities you could imagine, they're also it must be stressed capable of busting through their fuck-all cages to express their infinite contents, letting the totality of their beings shine forth in whatever milieu they happen to exist.

hopes for mr. obama.

radio

We weren't sure if it was at 12:01 a.m. or 5:59, some time before we woke up for sure, but that day the radio broadcasted only good news. It was the kind of thing you noticed right away in the relieved tone of the announcers.

By the time we'd had our coffee my wife and I were feeling pretty good. The baby seemed to pick up on it as well and he just sat there, smiling. As an experiment we kept moving him to different positions to see if he'd get pissed but he just wouldn't stop smiling. Upside down, smile. Sideways, lying on his stomach, on top of the cat, sitting in the refrigerator. All smiles.

We kept switching stations but no matter where we looked we couldn't find bad news. On the conservative station a Mexican man had legally immigrated and gone on to success as CEO of an environmentally-friendly burger chain. On the lefty ones it was Hugo Chavez's birthday and he was unstoppable, giving out free kittens for each of the world's citizens, postage paid. NPR was doing a 24-hour Car Talk marathon. In sports, the Phillies had won the World Series.

The news was so good that I worried we might be hallucinating. At lunch I asked my wife to feel my chest, which had this strange new feeling, kind of queasy, kind of nervous, but it made me smile. I asked my wife what it was. "That's hope, honey," she said, like talking to an toddler. But she was still smiling too.

By 3 p.m. we were happier than our first date and the neighbors had stopped by and we were all sharing stories. You could picture the radio waves going out all over the place, like friendly ghosts.

That night the kid fell asleep early and she and I made spaghetti and lit candles and talked to each other like real people, the radio still going in the background. When we went to bed the good news continued unabated and we went down to sleep knowing all was good in the world forever amen.

In the dead middle of the night my wife woke me up crying. In a minute we both were, then the pumpkin too. We switched the radio back on, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

my energy efficient new heart

so the other day i wake up and my heart has stopped, a clot of bad vibes blocking up the works. wanting to do the responsible thing i pull it from my chest, seal it in a ziplock bag, and stash it on the bottom shelf of the freezer behind an old carton of vanilla ice cream.

i go down to the hardware store and replace my heart with a compact flourescent bulb. when i get it home it takes an extra couple seconds to light, but when it does i feel 1,000 times better.

people take to me and my replacement heart. i'm a new man. i sprint from the train to work and take the stairs 20 flights in leaps and bounds. my coworkers shower my efforts with unanimous, unfiltered accolades. within the week my boss gives me a big raise and moves me from a cubicle to the corner office with the nice view of the SILVERCUP sign. kids and elderly people rush up to hug me on the street. doves and deer appear everywhere i go, shitting rainbows. my girlfriend even stops hating my guts.

but every time i open the door to the freezer my heart is in there waiting for me, eating something, frozen chicken, tortellini, even raw coffee beans. it looks up in disgust, like a scorned claymation california raisin. my heart hates me. it wants to fight me.

life beyond the fridge continues to improve. my girlfriend and i marry, i inherit a zillion dollars from some aunt i never knew i had. the president of the company flees the country to avoid jail time and appoints me in his place. shares skyrocket. Economic Dipshit magazine puts me on its cover three months running. i lose weight, my piano playing develops a rhythmic quality, the ozone layer replenishes itself. my wife and i even speak in complete sentences.

back in the kitchen, my heart's moved to the refrigerator side and it's looking strong, poised to take over the whole apartment. knee deep in a tupperware full of leftover quinoa, it questions my manhood, my intellect, cursing at me like richard pryor kicked out of his own bed in the middle of the night by a dozen tiny richard nixons in elvis gear. my heart warns me of last days (mine) and irreparable offenses (grievous, multiple).

i know that it just wants me back, that all i have to do is promise to pay more attention to it and we can live in peace. but things have gone so much more smoothly without it that i can't justify the expense. so i stop buying groceries.

one day my heart chomps gloriously through a Hungry Man TV dinner, pantomiming sex with a big bowl of chocolate pudding, singing "Guantanamera." two days later it's dead tired, rationing the last baby carrot, plotting an escape it's too tired to execute. by the weekend it's just my heart and a half empty bottle of ketchup. two days later that's gone and my heart's too weak to even stand. profane requests are whispered for foods high in protein and carbs.

the next morning my heart's lying prostrate in the ice cube tray, both middle fingers extended, out cold. that night when no one's looking, i drive it out and lob it off the verrazano narrows bridge, my energy efficient new heart glowing in my chest.

layoffs

call half of your staff into the main conference room, let your HR director explain things in calm perfect resource-speak and then fire her too while someone changes the locks. pay and then fire the locksmith and have them all thrown out into the parking lot and sprayed with a firehose by the security consultants.

pile the unused aeron chairs in an empty conference room until its full of them. empty chairs have sad old memories, sagging marks from sagging people, dead dreams, amusing enough. but these tangled chairs are also actually a form of competition; if something goes wrong and a competitor buys you out they'll never be able to untangle the chairs and suddenly they're paying rent on a room they can't use.

assemble your remaining staff each morning for 8:00 a.m check-ins. pace the room, filing your nails with a machete. reveal nothing.

don't lay off by merit. keep the managers who botched it up for now but pick their lackeys off at random, using percentile dice or the I-Ching. after you've fired half the staff, hire ten new people at higher salaries to break the spirits of the rest. wear a bandolier festooned with human skulls.

when plotting layoffs, don't think people, think strategy. consider office layout, an even gender balance, two by two. if this downturn for some reason features an apocalypse, will your organization be prepared to propagate the species? consider both your situation as chief executive but also that of your chosen successor. castrate or drug other males. police your brood. kill your successor, planting his head on a pike in front of your office to warn pretenders to the throne. think of your employees as potential followers in the dusty haze that will follow the great war. fill the supply room with bottled water, TV dinners, and a trusty cyanide supply, just in case. in case they come for you.

perhaps you've gotten a bit paranoid, alone in your office late at night, drunk in the dead new york quiet. but it's sort of nice, isn't it, how every one else has gone home. now you don't have to draw the shades or lock your office door. unlock the secret vault and review the dog-eared pages of your great plan. if the market continues its descent you can fire them all, and the last man standing will be you: master of the universe.

watching you and chuck dance

your ex-husband never was much for dancing. i think he thought he'd sprain an ankle or miss something on TV. but it seemed like that's all you wanted, to be good and drunk on a saturday night, dancing your face off. it didn't surprise me when the two of you split up, him on crutches and clinging to a little portable black and white TV, watching you move all that heavy shit out of the apartment by yourself, in your dancing shoes.

once you asked me to dance and i said no. it isn't that i won't do it, but dancing combines two of my weakest suits--rhythm and casual physical contact. i'm still trying to play down a 1995 incident involving language barriers, castanets, and temporary blindness for a hungarian economics major. i felt bad, though, like i'd let you down when all you wanted out of life was for it not be a boring sack of bad writing and flat white brooklyn irony.

this made me all the happier to hear you'd gotten together with chuck--a fantastic dancer--but i didn't see what sort of solid gold shit y'all were working with for myself until the other night.

chuck was wearing a sequined bodysuit and wielding 8" Dazzler-brand glow sticks like a ninja. you were dressed in a triceratops costume, your third of the night, this one a sort of maroon. T and I had been drinking "full grown men" (3 parts beer, 2 parts whiskey, 1 part jaeger, lime wedge) and talking up librarians. Then the librarians had taken off, T and I had missed our own cues to leave and there we were, you, chuck, us, and my dad, who for some reason had just arrived and was playing "Lady in Red" on an accordion.

watching you and chuck dance we saw a future spool out where each of you was always looking up to see where the other one was and the other one would always look back, eye to eye, getting each other, digging what you saw and not fucking it up.

you danced, changing leads, twirling, tipping, never spilling. it was almost 5 in the morning. T, my dad, and I took off in full possession of saturday night peace. the clock tower had all its faces back and we couldn't smell piss anywhere, no matter where we walked, and my dad at the top of his game, chord and melody everywhere, a shimmering and nimble pack of mid-sized animals on a forever plain.

treehouse

when the kid was born we wanted to be good parents so after a week or so of showing him off to our families we moved to the middle of the atlantic ocean. everyone knows there are tall trees there and we built a house in one with wood from shipwrecks. when it dried the wood was sturdy and we even got a TV hooked up and it cost us next to nothing. compared to what we could have gotten in new york it's a palace.

we try to sleep at night, with the long waves rolling against the trees and the rain ganging up from upstairs. when he wakes up you feed and change him and maybe i bat an eye. at first light i try to let you get some sleep, sitting with him out on the balcony.

those mornings he smiles up at me in the new sun, before it gets so bright that the water magnifies it into a million invisible knives and we have to keep him in with the shades drawn. he smiles and maybe coos and my heart goes into defrost mode, it ain't bad. eventually he's hungry again and i bring him back, sheepish to wake you up from first 45 minutes of good unworried sleep you've had in 24 hours.

sometimes the neighbors bring bluefish and once in a while, if the kid's in the mood to sleep, you and i get to talk just the two of us, watching the sun set back to the west. you don't mention it, but i know both of us are wondering how long it would take us to row to queens for that perfect halal cart at the corner of Broadway and 73rd.

how voodoo works

All of my teams are born losers. The Eagles always tank. I gave up the Phillies for the Mets in '01 when I met L, who has an 86 and a particularly coked-up looking Doc Gooden tattooed on her right bicep. Things started looking up. But now all of a sudden the Mets are Charlie Brown trying to kick a field goal, and the Phils are wizards, world champions.

I suspect that my grandfather--my mom's dad--can control the outcome of sporting events with his mind. He's a knowledgable man, and could he string together a focused sequence of games I believe he might guide the Eagles to the Super Bowl.

There are two problems with this flight to victory. First, for late games like last night's, he goes to sleep by the 4th quarter, and some night-owl Chicago area grandfather was probably able to sneak in his own psychic tomfoolery to tighten up the Bears' goal line defense. Second, football games always seem to bring out the man's nostalgia, prompting him to pour a glass of something strong. Andy Reid and Jim Johnson have complicated playbooks, and if grandpa's vision is blurred, he might dial up a blitz where something a bit more conservative would be appropriate.

What I'm saying is that when the Eagles lose, it doesn't bust up my theory. You have to look for other factors. McNabb's inconsistent brilliance is one thing I would watch very closely, if I were you. Cross-tabulate with my grandfather's mindset at any moment.

Another reason the Mets can't win is that my dad's parents met at Connie Mack stadium. It is possible that the jinx hanging over the depressins these past two years has actually been the handiwork of Ed and Lorraine, formerly of Marlton, NJ, now of the sweet hereafter. They're probably haunting the shit out of those sad sack Mets. My mom's dad is a Phils fan too.

To put my ability to jinx my teams to good use, I've taken the amateurish next step of falling in love wiith the McCain-Palin ticket. As my team, they will surely lose...

...but everyone knows that isn't how voodoo works. It'll cross you just for trying to fuck with it so obviously, reverse your jinx. I'll have to get grandpa to show me how it's done.

caffeine paranoia

the kind of doom and gloom week for quick spirals of paranoid thinking, e.g.:

a) total economic collapse perhaps more palatable than second Mets collapse?

b) assets perhaps best converted into canned food?

c) nonprofit fundraising perhaps not first profession to prosper in the new world?

d) south jersey perhaps too populated to protect family?

e) vast array of guns friend has been quietly gathering in his basement perhaps not scary, so much as lending library or nest egg to build a new community on?

definitely need a good night's sleep.

anesthesia

pumpkin a/k/a the troll man, under anesthesia.

you breathe it and the tide goes out, but consciousness can't disappear, it reunites with the whole. so under the knife you're nowhere near the scene.out the window, your breeze curls a tired american flag into something pretty to behold. you're sunshine, trees, the fading fall air, you're each schlep stumbling into the hospital's front entrance to stay alive for their loved ones or help their loved ones stay alive.

you're there but also further out, you're the rings around saturn, the kid orion threw in the air a light year from throw to catch, you're both dippers and a blinking satellite making its rounds, spewing good news back to earth in rapid data packets.

back here on earth they're remaking part of you. but they can't touch you, you're the totality now, all the good in the world. you are baseball momentum, secret handshakes, 12 tone rows, chutes and ladders, frisbee catches. you are cherry coke and strict california grass, you are guitar through two fender super reverbs one clean and one with long delay, and the clean one is snaking a melody through the hedgerows of delay.

you are every love that ever was and ever will, you are the discovery and documentation of heaven, perpetual motion patented and pushed on late night TV for just infinite easy installments. you are every historic first that ever was, first love, first man in space, first saturday morning cartoon. you are the first child, king troll the 1st, progenitor of a long trollish line.

we've been beating ourselves up all week about this and now it's finally coming to pass. every time a door opens i picture some asshole with a bereavement counselor name tag. 'Mr. and Mrs Trollman? I'm sorry..." and what I would punch in a violent helpless expression.

trollman, if you just make it through this, we promise, we'll never take anything for granted ever. we'll learn spanish and chinese and esperanto. we'll dot every i, cross every t, give every homeless person ten dollars and never say a mean or snarky thing to no one. we'll honor every tenet of every religion, we'll root for every team, we'll unbreak everything we've wrecked and apologize to everyone we've ever hurt. we'll take full responsibility for u.s. foreign policy and do our best to reverse it, we'll never ignore each other another second, all will be sainted perfect love ever and ever amen.

but all of this, we bring upon ourselves. in the end it was a minor procedure as those things go and now they're leading us it's fine he's fine are you sure he's fine to where you sleep in the nurse's arms.

and everything that could have receded from the world never to return is back again, and i'm kind of starved for one of those not-bad hospital burgers.

pumpkin preface

before pumpkin (BP) we moved to jersey from brooklyn. the omens didn't improve:

driving a UHaul into town, a bird flew across an oncoming car and shredded through the grill.

on consecutive mornings packs of big flies coated the southeast corner of the house. sprayed with a hose they stayed right where they were.

our cat ignored the omens and found the suburbs much to his liking. william, the kaiser, roamed his fiefdom at will, bestowing purrs and tail wags at his leisure. he tightroped fences, dodged dogs, presented us with a chipmunk for a royal feast, respectfully declined. he pondered the living history of sunny patches, and let it be known by royal decree that as the kaiser willed it, so it should be warm and bright. but he always came back. then one day he did not. or the next. or the next.

such were the portents, but the pumpkin would not to be denied. dear reader, etch his birth date in the nearest tree in a generous-sized heart: 7 - 31 -2008.

let us offer each other some sign of peace.