HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WOLFGANG

Early on prone to a superstitious misconception that my artistic bent was most kindred to the workings of other Aquarians, I studied all of Mozart's letters to his father and sister, which in retrospect all read like they were written by a five-year-old, not a genius with the gift to replicate divinity with sound. He was shockingly idiotic, which I guess is what inspired a portrayal of him as being impish and clown-like in "Amadeus", but I have an idea that he was not nearly as lovable as his screen version or someone would have tossed in a few coins for a headstone for his burial.

We don't know where his bones lie, but that's no tragedy. Bones have no value. The tragedy is in his life, in the ignorance of the boorish aristocracy who are at fault for making his living a misery. No artist should be made to perform like a monkey for other monkeys.

The patronage system is still very much around today, and dictates what hangs on the walls in museums, whether the ABT will have a full season, whether Freddy can buy oil paints or only food. It's very sad, the dependence we have on the snootiness of Guggenheims and Rockefellers and myopic academics to know what good art is. In Mozart's time it was just a matter of who had the money; now it's a matter of who has a yearning to see something beautiful made, because the general public obviously does not.

**********

TRAVEL NOTES ON THE CITY OF MUSIC

Vienna is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Very clean, safe, heaven for tourists; the subways are spotless and antiseptic, and people are reserved but painstakingly polite. The glorious architecture in the center of the city is the world's best example of lovingly preserved Enlightenment. The Viennese have been enlightened for centuries. Mozart's music makes sense there; Beethoven's seems out of place. Vienna today does not seem a place wired for the conducting of storms.

If you were Jewish however, you might have plenty to be angry about in Vienna, which explains at least partially some of the madness of Schoenberg. It does not explain Hugo Wolf.

Vienna is a terrible place for food; bring sandwiches from abroad. The recipe for Schnitzel, the national dish of which they are so proud, follows thusly: pound the shit out of a cube of pork until it looks like cardboard, and fry it in breadcrumbs without any seasoning. The result tastes like it looks it might, no different than fried cardboard.

In Vienna one's food allowance is more wisely spent on beer. Viennese water, the only other recommendation for the palate, is as pure and sparkling as a Mozart Symphony, and is free of charge.

PRAIRIE MADNESS

The first big mistake of my life was not made by me. It was made by my father, when he decided to retire early and move to the U.S. of A. The second big mistake was also made by him. When he decided that of the fifty S.'s, the most suitable would be close to the geographical center. Have you ever noticed how there is usually nothing at the center of things? A vortex, a tornado, a spiral galaxy? When you are in the center, you just have No Idea. It is calm, it is quiet, and it is not a nice quiet; it is the kind of quiet made by the mouths of those who have nothing to say, and who do not have the ability to listen because they grew up without sounds.

I've never been able to appreciate the long stretches of space, silences, the absence of landmarks--a tree, or a mountain, or a bush for chrissakes. No? How about a wee little red flower? No? A red Coke can then?

The waves of wheat do smell sweet when the wind comes before the rain; however, usually the wind is just followed with more wind. And it is not a nice wind, it is a dry fleshless wind, grandchild of the evil Dust Bowl.

It is not hard to imagine that this area was once at the bottom of the ocean. How was it that I started out in the tropics, and beached up here? Because of one of my father's idealistic hair-brained schemes, like when he tried to farm kiwi fruit on pasture land. He was wonderful and stupid for being oblivious to the assumptions that occur to people with common sense: kiwi will not grow in the Bread Basket. Woe to me, thirsting for rain and warmth and bright colors. And people of color, that would be nice too.

Iliojuet was born on a houseboat on the Amazon river (I know it sounds made up, but I'm not imaginative enough for that.) Where I am now is not as terrible a place as where I reached puberty, because there are other transplants, orchids like Iliojuet, who will keep me company in the isolated greenhouse. It's really quite interesting, the similarities of food, for instance, that we require. Mangoes are one. Mango trees abound in both Brazil and South India. My fondest vision of my ayah Josephine is of her stuffing her sari with mangoes from a tree in our yard, and walking out the gate all lumpy as if she had multiple pairs of breasts.

Freddy will never understand how much I dislike this scenery. We go to Massachusetts and he gets panic attacks because he can't see for the trees. He thinks mangoes are disgustingly slimy.

1.

The Exit was a bar she went to nearly every other night, because it was just down the street from her apartment, and required no drunk driving or cab fare. Sometimes after procrastinating all day long from sitting on the bench and enduring her daily minimum of practice, she'd have two shots of tequila courtesy of the bartender, pick up a boy, and bring him back with her to the practice room, her lair, at two or three in the morning. Either the boy would be frightened and leave after half a sonata, or he would stay and fall asleep under the piano. She had a blanket and a small portable space heater for his comfort. When she was tired herself, she would curl up tightly on the piano bench.

Tonight she convinced John to come and be near her while she practiced; he was giddy about having met a pianist; he loved Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, he thought it was the most beautiful piece ever. He was short and stocky with full lips and curly hair.

Can you play that?

Yes, I have big hands. Look at them.

She held up her hands and splayed her fingers.

Wow, that's so cool.

They went in through the back door of the auditorium, where previous students thoughtfully left a brick in the jam, so they wouldn't be locked out when they needed a smoke break. Her room was on the fourth floor, and she shared it with a Ukranian student named Vassily whose boyish enthusiasm snapped piano strings and damaged the key movements. The scent of his sweat greeted them when she turned her key and opened the door.

Tonight there was blood on the white keys.

He does that on purpose. He's left it there because he's proud of himself for practising so much. As if bleeding fingers will make him a better musician.

She rolled her eyes.

After wiping the keys off with toilet paper from the bathroom, she warmed up with some Chopin Nocturnes, a Bach Fugue. John kissed her neck while she played the Nocturnes, which made her tense.

Play some Rachmaninoff.

She played the opening bars of the Second Concerto and a Prelude.

Wow, you're amazing.

In the next week John made love to her on the piano, on a pool table, and on his uncomfortable futon. She left a bra and a tube of lip gloss under his sheets and never called him again. Because by that time, at The Exit, she had met Andy, and Andy's bed was more comfortable and his ears looked cleaner.

A SIMPLE STORY


We lived on a hill, and beyond the hill was a field, and in that field was one white road. My father took us often to fly kites in the field. He had asked the farmer for permission, and the farmer had said that it was okay as long as we remembered to close the gate behind us. I could hear my mother's voice coming out of our house at the top of the hill, singing arias, while letting an updraft spin more twine out from the bobbin to send my father's kite up higher.

He made a thousand or more airborne contraptions, some like boxes, some like birds. I asked him to make one especially for me before he died, so he did, but his hands were shaky and his vision was blurry so the seams didn't quite line up. He wrote my name across its span, and the letters are fragile and halting like in the writing of the elderly.

I took the kite to a field in Kansas with my boyfriend on a road trip, and could not send it up. Maybe it needed an aria. It spun wildly for a few seconds before nose-diving into the ground. I hate myself for not lying to my father. I told him the truth, that it did not fly, and it sent him on a nose-dive into the ground.

He was cremated, so I have no skull to dig out of the ground and confront with this soliloquy, but the kite, which should have its own grave, is in a cardboard tube in my closet.

BABOONS

Sex, as wonderful as it is, is too commonplace. Most everyone does it, has done it, will do it. Which is why I will never understand why a woman pulling off her shirt will still incite surprise and curiosity, and sometimes revulsion or moral outrage. But if it didn't, I suppose I wouldn't bother to do it.

I'm far more embarrassed of my writing than any anatomically descriptive photos. So I will try to post more of the latter. (Advert.) Balance out my recent need to type longer sentences.

Under the presumption that I needed to have experienced first-hand everything that I wanted to write about, or everything that I wanted to use in art (which is why so many artists choose turbulence as a lifestyle--not from a lack of emotional stability, but from a lack of internal inspiration) I have feared that if my life was boring, my mind would be too. But when you are busy screwing people and collecting stories, you have no time to think. And then you fall into the delusion of imagining that so-and-so's story is magical, or that your love affair with a billionaire is interesting, simply because you had personal contact with these stories, when in actuality so-and-so's story has already been told a thousand times over, and your love affair with the billionaire is just a cheap trick worth the smell of money. We know it works, why not try something that might not?,

she said, slick with anticipation. Her nipples hardened into pink nubs like the erasers at the leisure end of pencils, and when he slid his middle finger out of her to downshift, the purr of the BMW was the sound of her own body.

My god what baboons we some of us are (I speak for myself).

PROCESS

THE OMMISSION OF EMISSIONS

I'd rather write about cow patties, rabbit pebbles, horse plops, grassy dumb dog loafs (from the vegetarian sect of the canine world), mouse rollies, bird white-out, carbons di or mono-oxide emissions (emit for wide-spread inclusion), the soft-yogurt dispenser and its dispensions, the lever and squeeze that pinches the cream to a glistening point which flops over in the exposure to the world outside of itself, but no, no animal or machine makes a stink quite as digusting as our own. Oh the diapers, oh the flushing, oh the papers and pages. 29,200 a lifetime is not a terribly large number, not applied to say dollars and cents or malaria fatalities or miles per year. But I did not count the days of diarrhea.

What of relativity, and of nothing being for certain? (I've met people without hearts or minds, but no one yet without an asshole.) Who would care to, besides our few renown scatologists, lovingly note the subtle differences between today's unique shit against the shits of history? It is all shit, and the only quality one concerns one's self with is where it is located so that one can dispose of it or move away from it as quickly as possible. You MUST disassociate yourself from your shit. And if it ends up on a plate, should you actually recognize it, you are within good moral standing to say, "Nope, that ain't mine."

Nothing is precious solely for the reason that it was made. Even if it took weeks to push out.

AND GOING

If I don't write dead tired, I would not write at all, though one could argue and win hands down that nothing is usually better than something.

For the last two days, because of the Second Coming (tooth), Ms. Zulita has been a real, dare I say it, yes, a real brat. Five- thirty in the morning Mister Freddy was nudged to just the point of phallus functionality without really being awakened, and he finished first place, and then in my final sprint, Ms. Zulita wails for help. Because of her second coming, I missed my first coming. Later in the day during her nap I thought I could make the finish, and was again thwarted by Little 'Un slamming her head against the crib. "No Mama, you cannot!"

This is the time of night when I used to feel most amorous, but now I feel as though my body has been run through a pasta bicycle. I am fourteen feet long and so very thin. My skull bulges out somewhere off-center like ravioli filling.

BELIEFS

WHAT ARE MY BELIEFS?

They must be bats in the belfry. I screech or sing, my sound bumps into whatever blocks the moonlight and flaps back to me with a conclusion. I can't know anything without making noise.

I don't know anything.

My ears have had nothing to taste slowly, (that is bad, isn't it, that the root vegetables on either side of my head that have been licked would in turn have tongues?), and the hope of playing again would not fill a shot glass enough to see, would evaporate along the rolling from the glass to--where would you put it, even in knowledge that it wouldn't be felt?--if you had an actual drop of the blood of Christ, where would you put it?--would you just watch it dissolve into more emptiness, not having the pig-headedness to be profane? It might already be gone, rendering every part that was meant to be touched useless.

Bach could have fallen in a wet ditch on one of many long walks to hear an organist play 30 kilometers away, because he had notoriously bad eyesight. He might have opened his mouth, gotten cholera or giardia and died, and his 22 children would have been sad, but would the year 2006 have been sad? Yes, I would have missed him, starting from the year 1978, having never heard of the Cello Suites or 48 Preludes and Fugues, or known of such divinity, I would have missed them. A lot of us are in hell without knowing it, which is no easier than knowing it.

I have something I am supposed to do, I sit and stare. I am not enough to see, and I am not enough to move.

I have stared at the dishes in the sink, I have stared at the wood chips around the stove, I have stared at the dried-up bugs in the light cover, I have stared at my hands loving and missing the disappeared callouses on the fingertips and have wondered why my nails are growing--my mother would shake her head, "All that money, and you have let your nails grow long," as if by clipping them I am at least thinking about practicing. The money and time: I had the most expensive manicure in the world. It cost me my heart to have my nails trimmed to the quick. Actually, trimming isn't the procedure, they were hammered back into the knuckles and bound tight. They never had a chance to grow.

You were right, not to believe a word of it, of anything I was doing. Go to school. Go to Hollywood. Go to Italy. Do a plumber, a conductor, a film director, a candlestick maker. Be a writer, an ingenue, a singer, violinst, pianist, composer, artist, hater of men, lover of men, hater of men (my daisy still has petals.) Get pregnant, have a baby (the daisy is spent, he loves me.) Never have to fuck again.

I never believed any of it either.

I am staring at disbelief, in disbelief. Do not trust the eyes at night.

STORAGE

When Zulita is awake, I look forward to her afternoon nap, the one space in my day to play. When she finally and reluctantly closes her eyes, I hardly know where to put my mind.

I could cook myself lunch and eat, but the end result of a full stomach doesn't seem worth the effort of both cooking and eating, when in that time, I am free of having to think about some body's urgent requirements--the filling of Zulita's stomach, and the clean-up of the emptying of it, is quite enough to satisfy my own hunger.

Today, Freddy brought lunch home ending the debate of whether I should eat, and ran out the door after drinking his own sandwich down because his mind was already running out the door ahead of him. He has even less play time. He spoon feeds both Zulita and Zulieka, depriving himself, and the extra inches left in his pants' waist, despite the many layers adding bulk around his belly: long-johns which are not long enough and stop mid-shin, the black band of a back brace, a t-shirt, a sweater or torn-up sweatshirt, all of these tucked into insulated canvas Carhart pants (because when you are working in an unheated shop in sweet January the mind is not found in fashion) still mock the efforts of a tightly cinched belt trying to keep hold to his diminishing frame. If his pants fall off I am to blame. It is no longer necessary to unzip or unbutton. I have suggested that he hook a pair of bungee cords into the belt loops and strap them over his shoulders in lieu of suspenders.

A strong gust of wind and his clothes could unfurl, setting him to sail across the beige winter prairie.

I still do not know where to put my mind, creep every few minutes to peer at sleeping babe during the writing of this, find relief in her first plea for Mama after rousing. I pick her up, hold her to my face, because I've missed her so much, in the space of that hour-and-a-half which she allowed for me to have playtime. And then I don't know where I have left my mind.

HISTORY

My paternal grandmother was a landscape painter. In all of her paintings, there is gently moving water, and the water spills off the bottom edge of the canvas though you get the idea that downstream is actually back toward the horizon, into the painting, if you follow the flight of a small insect or bird. The path of the stream is her escape, I imagine, from the mental asylum where she spent the latter half of her life. I can follow her streams and visit her.

She was forty-six when she gave birth to my father, who was left in the care of three older siblings when she was carted off shortly thereafter. I try to imagine the last unlikely coupling that produced him, a last-ditch effort to save her sanity, or a momento for the lonely years of confinement to follow? Her next youngest child was sixteen at the time of his birth.

My father was hatched from an old egg, and his own sperm was old when it begot me. That makes me less evolved; somehow my being slipped into the world several decades past its due date.

THE COUCH

AiLing, our nanny, took my brother and I to the playground almost daily. In Hong Kong, there are no grassy parks really, and the playground we frequented was on shiny granite tiles, the kind you might see in a bank or mall. I first ran to the see-saw before making rounds to the other equipment, and each time, before letting me off to play, my nanny would warn that I must hold on very tight or I would fall off. She would watch from a distance, while rocking my baby brother in his stroller back and forth.

It probably would have never occurred to me to let go, but because she had warned against doing so, it was always in my mind--the possibility of it. I did not want to fall, but I could think of nothing else while playing, and the voice got so relentless, don't let go, don't let go, that I could only stop it by letting go. Just after my third birthday, I let go, precisely because I was deathly afraid to, and broke my arm.

Henceforth, I tried exactly what I was told not to, cutting my hands on my father's razor, sticking a bronze souvenir of the Eiffel tower in an electrical outlet, drinking the contents of a brown glass bottle in the bathroom cupboard.

It's a lack of imagination, probably, that has necessitated this method of learning. Mimicry would be too obvious a reference to the source of inspiration, so rebelling with the opposite can cover for creativity.

TIGERS

Our bedroom looked like a crime scene this morning, but the splatters on the ceiling and walls were a little too purple in hue to be taken seriously. We are out one wine glass and one pane, well, not really, we still have both but they have taken on different forms. Some of each became sparkling glints on the bed sheets where they were absorbed by a pair of kicking thighs, some embedded in the wood of the window sill, most flew under the bed in tiny slivers. The qualities of glass have always pleased me.

I would like to lie, and say that Zulita, in the nursery, slept through it all. But I might as well confess the horror in its entirety, kick the insane woman into the ring for a stoning. Zulita whimpered at the first sound of aggression in our voices, and after I threw the glass, I went into her room to calm both her and me. Freddy, being jealous, or worried, though more likely jealous, followed shortly, and in my anger I yelled at him to leave us alone and when he didn't I took an ineffectual swipe at his face. He removed me from the scene.

He held Zulita for the next hour while I lay prostrate on the couch, and I could see him only as my enemy, as someone who wanted to take my daughter away from me. And he did. He did take her away from me, if only for an hour, an entire awful hour. What a mess we presented to this innocent baby, and all of the guilt was mine; I am the crazy one, I am the unhappy one. You see, Zulieka, you are unfit to be a mother, and that is why the baby needs her father's strong protection.

Beware, this is what happens when you love your child so tangibly more than the other half of its genetic contributor.

We are alright today it seems, full of apologies and deeply felt sympathy, and resolved to never bring Zulita into an argument. I cannot believe how stupidly we are acting. I cannot believe how easy it is to lose your mind over your child.

MINIMALISTS AND MAXIMALISTS

Art as divided into two categories: Not Enough or Too Much. Not Enough leaves too weak a taste for memory, Too Much makes the knees weak and you're down. I think I've read Kawabata, but I can't remember a damn thing about it. Ether. That is the beauty of it, they say.

This is a night of not keeping very mean things to myself.

"The Night Piglet Did Not Keep Very Mean Things to Himself."

We must pity Piglet, because is he such a small creature and unable to defend himself.

I think I am dehydrated. I have often noticed during foul moods that my pee is thick and green. I have not yet concluded whether the mood is cause for the changed viscosity of the pee, or whether the parched bladder is cause for the changed mood, but in any case, I will return shortly with a glass of water.

I have returned.

After peeing, and washing my hands, which entitled me to flip the world off yet again, but sometime before filling a glass from the faucet, it occured to me that my meanness may be caused not from a lack of playing music or a lack of water but rather from a lack of sex. I have never in the course of being sexually active gone without it for this long. I don't miss it, and by virtue of not missing it, I am not having it. That is not to say that I do not need it. I am often dehydrated because I don't miss water. Who has time to think of it?: "I must go and get a glass of water now." The baby is crying and you have cut your finger, V.'s dog has died and Alicia would like for you to meet her boyfriend, Freddy's mouth is purple with wine and he hasn't shaved for a week even though there are twenty plastic razors in the medicine cabinet and three in the bathtub's soap dish. Mon ami, you would prefer Nothing to Not Enough. Nothing means you do not think of it, Not Enough means you do think of it and suffer.

MISSING PARTS

Entirely impossible to practice, I think I managed 7 minutes before Zulita became bored and needed attention. Cannot do it while she is asleep either because it wakes her up. While she sleeps I eat soup or crepes and look at photos of her. Have not become desperate enough to need a babysitter or nanny.

I've injured my middle finger on my left hand anyway. I was slicing a roast thinly and not paying attention, and the knife slipped. I cursed and sucked my finger but didn't taste any human blood. "Fucking dull knife. You were supposed to sharpen them, Freddy." Two negatives indicating a positive.

A few seconds later blood spilled onto the salad greens. The knife had sliced clear through my fingernail.

To try to keep the wound dry, while washing my hands I flip the world off. One positive, one negative, the impact is nil.

French prose without any e's, Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" scored in part for a cello with a missing string, piano concerti for the left hand only--some injuries or ommisions make for innovations. With all ten fingers I have no cause, being cared for, and loved, and never alone, I have no music.

HER

When Freddy was teaching as a graduate assistant, he dated a married woman, several years his senior, whose studio was next to his. He dated her for seven years, through her divorce, and despite his silently implicated trysts on the side. She was married to a rich architect who was sad in the sack, so I've been told. He was religiously Catholic and pent-up about sex (though in no way can we assume that there is a correlation) so she took Freddy to bed instead and taught him a few things about classical music and Japanese cuisine. For which I am grateful.

A cookbook I use often, "Sauces" by James Peterson, is inscribed by her: "Christmas '98 To my favorite chef...Love Hannah." Though this will make me sound wildly jealous, it puzzles me that a lover could write something so insipid on so insipid a gift. It's almost apologetic. But I'm trying to think what I have given Freddy that is any better. I gave him a very nice watch when I was making lots of money (comparatively) and I dumped 300 valentines on his head when he was asleep, which was more a present of mischief for myself. He always buys me flowers and a book for my birthday. We suck at presents.

I am common and base. I would like jewelry. I like shiny things.

Hannah felt guilty and gave up everything in the divorce settlement except for her grand piano. A strange coincidence that she took piano lessons from a former girlfriend of the Maestro's. Her ex-husband wrote Freddy threatening letters, which I don't quite understand; I would be more inclined to just go punch him out. One said, "The worst I could wish for you is what has happened to me. I hope you have your heart broken by someone you love."

These folk, Hannah and Mr. Hannah and Freddy in tow were very polite and elegant in the heat of rage.

Hannah wore everyday the same outift: jeans and a white shirt. She had one dress in her closet, a bright sun dress worn once in a blue moon and dubbed "the magic dress". She used Bobbi Brown make-up, just eyeliner and lipstick. She had short hair. She was pretty, a little wider in the hips than me, had small perky breasts. She liked to have sex in the mornings and had a killer grip, kegel muscles. That is what Freddy has told me; he never says anything negative. That is to be admired I suppose. Respect for all bedmates past and present.

Freddy's artist friend visited us recently from London, and I asked him about Hannah. He said that his own studio was always a mess, paint splattered all over the walls, not an inch of clear space, but that Freddy's and Hannah's were both immaculate. Freddy needed only a thimbleful of paint for an entire month because he painted with a one-haired brush, and Hannah did something with wax and crates but I can't describe it because I've never seen her work. Drunk and ebullient, the London friend elbowed me and leaned over to my ear, "She didn't have a sense of humour. Always serious-like, and dry as a bone. You're much nicer." I am much more disorganized at least.

Mr. Hannah owns a big firm now, Rabatini Co., and Freddy pointed him out to me on the street one spring day and he was carrying a baby girl and holding another girl's hand, smiling, with a little blonde wife laden with shopping bags. Hannah is married to a bald photographer. Freddy sent her a photo of Zulita and she wrote back, "That's just lovely, Freddy. What is his/her name, when was he/she born, details?" Very much the minimalist is Freddy. Or less than minimal, what is the word for that?

CHRISTMAS WITH THE REBUBLICANS

Now that I have a few minutes to reflect on the piebald faces sitting too closely across the table with nothing to shield us from GOP spittings but a hacked apart turkey and ham.

It was the world against Freddy and me, neither of us able debators, against dozens of uncles and cousins and hard-working farm-folk flinging back fifteen pitchforks for each one we managed to throw. Freddy is related to everyone in St. Anthony's, which is a tiny tiny town, but makes for an absolutely enormous family. With chagrin I must accept now that Zulita is also related to the population. It seems unbelievable to me watching her bounce on the knee of a three-hundred pound farmer with huge black sausage fingers and worn-out overalls wearing a John Deere cap, that she shares some of his genes.

I like these big-hearted people, don't get me wrong, but my observation is that they are too busy castrating calfs and beheading chickens to read or watch the news. Certainly they don't have time for in-depth studying.

I tend to stay out of political arguments, seeing that there's no point to them. Under attack, most people hold onto what they believe ever more rigidly, and the only way to sway their minds is to show by example that you're living a happier life. I am currently in no position to do that.

I was spooning mushy food into Zulita's mouth when we fell victim to the awful chit-chat of Zulita's very, very distantly related cousin Doris. "You know, I was feeding my sons Oreo cookies by the time they were three months old. But of course, they had their teeth in already."

I nodded.

"They got their teeth in real early, because I had my teeth in early too. It runs in the family."

I nodded.

"Wilbert put in a new medicine cabinet."

I nodded.

"A real good thing to do, when you're out at a restaurant, is cut the straws on the drinks. They make straws too tall."

I nodded.

"Them Hollywood types. They don't understand that freedom comes with sacrifice."

I nodded. Zulita screwed her face. Freddy was arguing with his uncle about Haliburton, and I felt I should stand by him and help. The discussion moved to voting, how the 2000 election was screwy, and Freddy threw up his hands and said "After that, I didn't even vote the next time around, because it wouldn't have counted."

I said, "What Freddy!? You didn't even vote? Then you best shut your mouth!"

We started arguing with each other, Freddy saying that there wasn't any point in voting in a red state, and me saying that his reason for not voting was sheer laziness and apathy. His family thought this was funny and Doris cackled under her moustache. We have failed, my fellow Americans, we have failed.

Later that night Freddy's father admitted to having qualms about Bsh. (I refuse to type his full name.) I advised him to let Doris know of his opinion, and she'd stop coming around so often and pestering him. He'd told us how one afternoon she'd knocked on his door and to be rid of her he lied to her and said he was on his way out to run errands. He then had to spend the next hour driving around with nothing to do because she had gone across the street to his mother's, and would see if his car was in the driveway.

He looked frightened at my suggestion that he tell Doris he was no fan of Bsh. "I wouldn't want something that to get around," he said.

PLUM PUDDING

Zulita is wailing in the background. It's Freddy's turn to deal with her, as I was on duty last night. She was near perfect until this teething business. She bites down on her thumb to make her gums stop hurting, and then yelps for her thumb's sake. I just tried it myself, I chomped down on my thumb. Who can blame her for crying?


Since her birth I am more aware of my own mortality, and am a little envious of her relatively clean slate, that so many possibilities are open to her and as yet not shut away or lost by negative experiences or the limitations of circumstance. Each day that we age, our bodies make decisions for us, our cells divide or die, and three eyelashes fall out. These and the conscious decisions of our mind, and the unconscious motives of our mind, narrow the available options for what we will do in the rest of our lives.

The thought of death did not scare me as much before Zulita. It was easy to fantasize and indulge in suicidal thoughts when the people I loved were older than me or were my contemporaries. I didn't have to care about the future because no one I loved was going to be in it. But now that she is here, and given the likelihood that she will outlive me, I've an investment in the future, and it terrifies me that I cannot carve out a protected path for her and any who follow. And it bothers me too, in a selfish way, that I cannot share in the joys and sufferings of my childrens' childrens' children. I want to be there to know that they will keep on going on.

What is the scientific definition of a live organism? That it must be able to eat, shit, move, grow, and finally, reproduce?

Freddy says every so often, "She's beautiful. We can't screw this up." A mother is nothing and everything.