progressive damage

A few of us in the main conference room: the new foundation person, the executive director, development, program leads. Meet and greet for the new foundation person.

We have a telescope that we point out the window by way of show and tell, magnifying different parts of the South Bronx for the new foundation person. The practice people zone in close on an old tan brick. Much to say re> brick, much that can be changed. Is the change sustainable?

The policy folks aim the telescope at the sky. There isn't much, I think a cloud, I think maybe a flit of a hawk or a daring high-altitude pigeon, sunlight diffuse and un-pinpointable. Sunlight, if only you could get to the source and change the angle or tint. If only you could start upstream.

The foundation person turns the telescope back into the room and inspects the angles where the walls meet the floor, the ceiling. An hour passes, during which she asks a sequence of architectural questions, ranging catholic from arcane to obvious to questions put in terms we understand, but devastatingly difficult to answer. From her tone at first (world weary disappointment and smartest guy in the room and vague hint of should have stayed asleep today) it's hard to tell but I think we're doing alright.

Beat. Beat. Someone from our side asks, "But how can we fix all this?" Gesturing out the window, out at the world at large, out into the world as it is.

"Good question," the new foundation person admits. For a second it looks like her face is going to sag off of its moorings, that she might lose corporeal stature, her spirit spilling onto the floor.

She gathers her thoughts and answers sharply, answers in herobureacratic fashion, for a minute we can all picture the solution. We break for lunch.

friends

One said let’s make a try of it, which was only a way one had of making a more graceful exit, of evading clutching hands, drawing sharp dry parallel lines where before rose confused floodwaters of dramatic feeling, which was only a way one had of replacing awkward animate clutching love with something crisper, more manageable.

The thing being tried the high concept of "friends." Friends! to be shouted standing atop roofs, etc., friends the concept left worn out rust- or dirt-encrusted in a kind of mutual discard pile.

Years pass and the end result is a kind of faint residual taste akin to a vaguely recognizable chemical in tapwater, punctuated by the occasional appearance of that special friend in one's dreamlife less as a friend so much as a kind of extra, a last minute casting addition brought forward by memory as a sort of unfunny joke, then to reappear in one's consciousness as a skipping record for the next several weeks. Sentimental 78 rpm hiss, standing girl, non-speaking part.