5th
Redemption flakes
Groggy morning misreading of the grocery list. Could refer to: communion wafers. In actuality: red pepper flakes
The process of traveling southward took place Dec. 31, ‘08. Airports on New Year’s Eve = something else (this weirdness augmented — no doubt — by reading material).
Airline person: “We will now board families with small children”
Father to his pre-teenage/teenage(?) daughter: “SHRINK!”
After takeoff, the flight attendant, in voice as if performing hypnosis: “You are getting very sleepy…You don’t want anything to drink…Peanuts make you gassy”
Returned to the apartment still with its ladybug problem and the automobile STILL with its ambivalent will-to-live. Awesome! The thyme infant, as feared, has indeed given up the ghost. The sitter had warned via email — “the ‘sleep’ I speak of looks more like the sleep of death than anything else” — so I was as a result not too heartbroken.
Anyway, hey, happy new year! Out with the old, which at one point was new. In fact, 2008 proved to be a year of personal and national newness.
Personal firsts
Sailboating
Found contact lens shard in eye
Absinthe
Carpal tunnel!!
Purchased paper towels thinking they were ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER
Wiped butt with said paper towels
Yoga class
Yoga class at which the instructor asked if anyone had injuries, and a pregnant woman raised her hand
Ate figs in combination with LARD
Boiled peanuts
Waffle House
Garden!
Aspirin
National firsts
Tiny foot found in Colorado infant’s brain
NASA’s phoenix spacecraft becomes first to land in northern polar region of Mars
BLACK PRESIDENT!!!!
In 2008 I turned 23, and noted to myself that “Twenty-two was not bad, a year of imperceptible yet significant personal development: I now floss daily, use lotion, and am cured of drunk dialing. Twenty-three will be better!” This forecast has proven accurate so far, and year twenty-three has been not bad. Yesterday we drove to Daytona Beach for the bookstores and at the flea market bought cookware from a man with one eye. The day before that the postman delivered the new Paris Review, featuring P. Powell’s “The Interrogative Mood,” which itself is perfectly timed, and includes questions you should pause for a moment to consider/ pose to yourself, in this fine year of our lord 2009. FOR EXAMPLE -
How many push-ups can you do?
Do you take your bacon crisp or limber?
How did the chihuahua’s head and the apple get congruent like that?
Are you comforted by good tile?
Have you had the pleasure of teaching a child to ride a bicycle?
Are your emotions rich and various and warm, or are they small and pinched and cheap like spit?
Isn’t it—forgive me this pop locution—hard being you?
Is your appreciation of a good material thing—let us say that pearl-handed revolver there—influenced by having worked hard to get it, or are you as likely to value a good thing having come by it easily?
What in your view is the ideal complexion for a cow?
Is there a natural law that draws a plastic bag to an infant similar to the law that draws a tornado to a mobile home?
This business of the ears and nose allegedly continuing to grow—can that be part of a great and benevolent creator’s design, part of a malevolent god’s design, or is it another inscrutable facet of natural selection?
Is survival enhanced by a man’s looking more and more like an elephant as he nears his grave?
Do you favor peanuts, cashews, or nuts more exotic?
Is there enough time left? Does it matter that I do not specify for what?
If you came upon a party celebrating something with a yellow sheet cake and white icing, would you partake happily?
If you had the opportunity to have a two-headed pet would you seize it?
Have you ever noticed that when the coffee purists insist that the coffee-brewing equipment be kept clean of even traces of built-up coffee oil because it makes the coffee bitter, they are not joking?
How much will you spend on a haircut?
Do you recall the last time you wept?
If a person split his time between Memphis in Tennessee and Memphis in Egypt, or claimed he did, do you think that existence would be thrilling or crummy?
Will you use the phrase “forever and a day,” and will you deal with someone who uses it?
If you could grow your own coffee would you?
When the elastic is shot in your underwear, do you continue wearing it?
