If your love is there
I will be waiting
Time after time...
and remembering when I saw Miles Davis play this song, with fine
ingenious restraint, in Jerusalem.
A woman on the rural transport bus converses with the bus driver:
Passenger: Now the security will be super-strict at airports. You
won’t be able to wear a belt buckle!
Driver: It’s already like that in prison. When I go to visit
my cousin, my bra sets the metal detector off.
At Soarmont High School, where I work, a student named Eric says:
“My grandmother lives on Central Park West. She saw the whole
thing while she was drinking tea. ‘The bloody building just dissolved!’
she said.”
Illustration by Thomas McDonough
I have this dream:
A passenger on a bus tells me: “They’re going to beef up
security at golf tournaments; you’ll have to show ID to play
golf professionally.”
“But why would golfers be suicide bombers?” I ask.
9/17
“Bin Laden” has a meaning in English. “Bin” means
“container or enclosed space for storage,” and “Laden”
means “weighed down with a load” or “oppressed; burdened.”
So “bin Laden” means “a container weighed down with
a load.”
At War
We are at war, but we don’t
know with whom.
The army, the navy are
mobilized,
missiles are ready.
But where to point them?
Which direction?
And how many enemies
are there?
157? 2,000? 12 million?
We will bravely fight,
but whom?
9/19
I read this news article:
“Two pickup trucks flying large American flags collided outside
Prospect, Arizona. At the same moment, the flags flapped in front
of both windshields, as Kevin Smather made a left turn into Ben Derry’s
truck. Derry’s Ford was badly dented.”
9/20
The video store in Howard, NY has written on its marquee:
GOD BLESS AMERICA
HANNIBAL IS IN
In other words: “May the Divinity shower blessings on our nation.
The new movie about a serial killer/cannibal is available for rental.”
When I was 12, my best friend Arthur and I were walking along the
western coastline of Manhattan, above the George Washington Bridge,
one Sunday afternoon. We saw two policemen crouching over... a darkened
shape.
As we approached, we knew this shape was a dead man, drowned in the
Hudson River. He wore black, wet clothes. One policeman gave us a
suspicious look. We continued walking.
“Let’s not tell anyone about this,” Arthur said, and
I agreed. I have never mentioned that day.
Now, somehow, I can speak of the dead man, so limp and anonymous.
(Years later, Arthur worked in the World Trade Center.)
Dying
Who can die
5,224 times?
What Have I Learned
I have become a pacifist, after these attacks. Previous to this, I
believed in ideals that would justify the deaths of some people. My
ideals were so valid they outshined a few casualties. Now I don’t
want anyone to die, except when they are aged, surrounded by comrades
and children.
Nothing is virtuous enough to kill a person; the murder of humans,
by fire or bomb, is more horrible than I can believe in.
10/3
My daughter’s dream:
Our family is moving back to New York City. Sylvia is frightened;
there are few people in the street. And the whole city is now the
same height, as if a giant scythe had cut across all the buildings.
(She can see, somehow, that upper floors are cut in half.)
Emmy,
I went for my walk, my daily 20-minute walk, yesterday, and as I returned
over the Phoenicia Bridge, I looked down to see a family of eight
on the beach by the Esopus. Two men around 30 years old were skipping
stones. They were both excellent skippers.The first one skipped a
rock seven times; the second skipped a rock so many times you couldn’t
even count. (Do you know how sometimes each skip becomes shorter than
the last, until the stone finally glides across the water?)
While these men were skipping stones, our bombers were dropping lethal
bombs in Afghanistan.
Respectfully,
Sparrow
Dirty Clock
I’m going to
throw out this
dirty clock
and buy
a new, clean clock.
You can
hardly see the time
on this dirty clock.
