floor plan

The storm that blew winter away was so fierce, it seemed like the trees had grown tired of being surrounded by suburban blight and one by one would take their shouting splintering revenge. Five feet of rain in a weekend. We added a couple hundred pounds of salt and made our basement into a giant aquarium. Now we have an octopus and a Portuguese man-of-war and some Atlantic blues. We have jellyfish and a skate and a depressive tuna. We have diving suits in his and hers and toddler sizes. We have a coral reef and even sunken treasure, a piggy bank split open along the floor bed, nickles pennies and quarters awaiting the intrepid diver. I hope we've properly sealed the drainage. In the morning the baby whale surfaces near the top of the basement stairs and gives us a good morning spout.

We've knocked out the walls of the ground level of our house and turned it into an indoor soccer field. Our young son is Ronaldinho or Diego Maradona or better yet Zidane, running up and down the field with the ball in his hands. He's impossible to catch. He runs laughing from one goal to another. He does not yet know how to throw with any accuracy so to score he runs and touches the ball to the back of the net. At halftime he sits for supper. He scores constantly, recording shut-outs by margins of 150 or more. He is much coveted by Boca and River Plate. There is the potential he could play for both. The ball is an expanding world that he runs with, laughing, held tight, almost off balance. Goal! Goal! Goal! (goal, goal, goal, goal).

Upstairs we brush our teeth and go to sleep in single file. And dream, he of a bowl of butter three feet wide and five feet deep, eaten fastidiously with a large plastic spoon. We of multiple disasters that we dream, so as to avoid living them.

the physiology of chills

Music can arouse extraordinarily strong affective responses, up to ecstatic “chill” experiences defined as “goose bumps” and as “shivers down the spine” (Panksepp, 1998; Sloboda, 1991); even, in some cases, "shitting oneself" (Freeman, 2009).

Since emotional states may change in the course of every piece of
music, it is necessary to measure psychological and bodily reactions continuously. In order to investigate distinct musical events related to chill reactions, we combined psychological and physiological methods in one experiment.

The experiment: See if your cracker ass can hold on to its ironic detachment through five minutes of this video, sent to me by my friend Jolene, who doubtless intended just such a chipping away of useless reserve.