Thursday, June 24, 2010

Bliss is Possible

I've been trying to get on a plane for a short flight to D.C. since 5:30 this morning. Now it's 8:30 p.m. and I'm at my dining room table writing this and checking in occasionally to watch my next scheduled flight be postponed, and postponed again. It's probably dead but doesn't know it yet and I'll have to start over again tomorrow.

)ver the last fourteen hours I've gone through frustration, anger, regret, anxiety, at least two loooong transits through self-pity, more anger--but now I'm floating over the room. I'm lighter than a baby's hand. I can barely reach the keyboard and when I do my fingers blur on impact. I am no longer a corporeal being! My senses are deranged and I'm full of bliss.

Thank you, United Airlines, thank you!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Picture Above





It's not the ears, too big, like the nose. The hair is boyish and well-trimmed—his father was a barber—but a little too Kennedy, perhaps? Doesn't it have a practiced air? Partly it's the collar, the vest, and the old suit coat. They say "Poverty, but I don't care." And the bottom lip that is, forgive me father for saying so, almost too soft for manliness, while the upper lip is almost not there, as though the bottom one got more than its share.

Most of all I admire the eyes with their sweet snap of "I've got you." He was sixteen in the photo, or so I've been told, and already burdened with lying jester's eyes, too skilled by then at pushing the truth away. And, though I can't escape the truth in his eyes, I cling to the note of innocence you see in the youngster slump, the touch of arrogant twentieth-century America. But what I love most is the crease across the top.