Dear Michael,

This is who I see when I see you, this right here.

This is how I see you. Expectant, shy but confidant. Even with the crooked haircut. Already turning away. All, every bit of you, ready for the camera, for what’s ahead. Not fully smiling, not fully enjoying it, hint of a smile, eyes clear and deep, almost endless. One arm still hooked back around my neck. As if steadying yourself, finding that last moment of purchase before leaping, before finding yourself. You have no idea who you are, but you don’t care. Not quite reckless, not arrogant, just literally head strong.

This is what I hope I mean to you. That last bit of holding on without looking, a touch stone you can remind yourself is there even without touching. Of knowing I am there to fall back on, I am there for you to push off of, to gain momentum.

I love you and adore you and admire you. I will always protect you, I will always let you go when you need me to but I will always anchor you when you feel untethered. Just reach back and you will find me there. I might be the launching pad, but you’re the rocket.

always,

me

The one thing I have noticed over the years, as you and I get older, is we’re getting softer. And I don’t mean this in a bad way, I don’t mean we are getting weak or feeble or absent minded. What I mean is, we laugh easier. We forgive easier. We look around us, and while we still worry, we are finding it easier to relax. I think that bothers us on some level. We still feel that urgent need to get things done, to protect and plan, but’s different, it doesn’t have that same do or die taste to it. Instead, we look around us and see what we have built, what has come out of the toil and hard work. We’re actually having a chance to admire it, to breathe it. Sure, we still want more, we still want to grow and secure a future, but at least, now, we can take the time to reflect and to say, despite all the things we could’ve done differently, and I want you to know this, to understand what I telling you, despite all the regrets and could’ve would’ve should’ves, you have given us so much baba, so much you have taught us and given us and prepared us. I do not deserve the father you are to me, I truly don’t and sometimes I don’t know quite know how to measure up, other than to try to do what you do, think like you do, prepare the foundation for a better life for my kids, and hopefully, their children. Like you have baba, like you have.

Happy birthday

Always,

me

my love,

There is no place without you, there is no breath, there is no hope or joy or -wait. This is crap. This is drivel. This is beneath me. This is not what you signed up for.

This is not what I promised you. This is not what was on my mind on the tram over Randall’s Island. This is not what was on my mind when I kissed you for the first time in November. This is not what was on my mind when we walked from Lark St to the Blockbuster on Colonial Ave. This was not what was on my mind when I wrapped my arm around you for our first dance as a married couple. This was not what was on my mind in Paris avoiding the hustlers at Sacre Coeur. This is not what I promised you when we looked at the bones of this house and thought we could raise a family here.

You were never hope or a place or a fleeting thought. You walked into a room and we went outside and never came back. You walked into a room and everything became something. You walked into a room and I disappeared.

You walked into a room and we were, as if we had always been and will be, always and forever

happy twentieth

me

Not a day goes by, every day that goes by, once a day, not since that day, but some day, it will happen all in one day and it will be as if that day never happened and we will sit and say, as the sun filters through the alley, do you remember back in the day?

While watching the movie, sudden horror of my mortality. Not sure what it was, but it was sudden and there and solid. In the middle of the living room, after an indoor jog, I tell her, how much longer can I lift 400 pounds. My little girl is in Arlington on the phone telling me how a fortune teller told her she’s an old should and has lived 47 lives.

47, a star trek favorite. It repeats. Does any of this repeat? No, it’s all at once, only once, then it ends and I cannot face it, still. Yesterday was the first day it invaded during the day. I’m a ticking time bomb. There are very few things I know, and this is one of them. The finality of death. I believe in quantum physics. I believe in high probability and the beauty of chaos. That is how I know that death is an end that is total and complete.

The best I can hope for is a quiet end of a long life, alone and she has been taken care of, I’ve seen her off and she will be buried close enough for the children to visit her that I won’t know it’s coming, it will not be on my mind, it’ll be a night like any other and everything will be taken care of, but I won’t know it.

Was there ever a time, this time, some other time, time and again, this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

Running into parents we’ve known throughout the years but never quite clicked and the ease of it, the shared songs and fears of growing children and aging pains. And just the night before, with a completely different group, we were the geriatrics at the dinner table, the senior couple, the ones with the most miles in. Not quite sure how to feel about that, if we’re a success story or not with so many variations of a common theme, people trying to do more than just get by in a world that was determined to constantly escape their grasp.

And again and again, I’ve met you all before, I’ve known you and listened to you and ignored you and befriended you and abandoned you and resented you and it’s the most important moment in the world and also the most trivial.

Once a day, every day, even if the mantra is the thing itself. Even if the telling is of the telling itself. It doesn’t matter, it’s the practice, the doing, because sometimes, something else will come from it, the repetition, the routine creates the groove, the groove creates the ease, the ease assuages the guilt of the telling. The guilt of it all. the guilt of taking the time out to take your yourself out of this time, to dictate of that time. Shameful rip form blanchot. When I am writing, I am not living, but if I am not living, what is of there to write.

On and on it goes, but it doesn’t matter, the practice matters. You cannot practice life, there are no rehearsals, not out takes, you are suddenly on stage without lines and so few cues. Merely suggestions accrued over time, of being under the spotlight when such and such a scene has played out before, and you improvise, you hesitate, someone else steals the spotlight but in the end it’s always been your show. You can however, practice this, the writing and the telling and the saying and the revision and the something that escaped notice and was truly trivial until you made it real and whole here, in this empty space.

We can say there was never an end to it, that it went on and over, on and over. But was there a time before it, before this? Or was it always already concrete and sinew?

That’s beautiful, he said and strokes his son’s head. Or was it his daughter’s? Or was it a dream he had while he was passed out on the couch and she was at her mother’s funeral? They had argued about this, about the memory, and made love afterwards and she slapped him as she left. It was funny but he was tired and bored.

In the end there was a very promising beginning, and if his dog hadn’t gone deaf, or was it the cat going blind, or the fish turned upside in the yard sale bought aquarium, he might’ve gotten up to draw the blinds and stop making a show of it.

There’s a talent to this, she said.

Earlier today, a construction crew was driving down the block pulling out old cable with the cherry picker RAISED and ripped right thru my internet line. I approached the guys and said hey you know what you did?

One of them says, ya sorry, you have optimum or Verizon?

I tell him Verizon.

He says, ok we can’t touch it, you have to call them.

So I call Verizon, they tell me earliest to fix is Friday. I tell them how does that work? Everyone is remote now, what do I tell my boss?

They go, we understand your issue.

I say, no you don’t, I’ve been a loyal customer for ten years.

We appreciate your loyalty.

If you appreciate my loyalty get someone here tomorrow.  otherwise this is all thoughts and prayers. Show me your appreciation.

We’re sorry, we can’t bump someone else.

I say, you mean to tell me everyone else scheduled for tomorrow pays Verizon 400/month? Been with Verizon for ten years? That would show me appreciation. Then I tell them, that’s alright, here’s a picture, I’m at the Verizon store right now to cancel all my services.

They put me on hold. Guy comes back and tells me tomorrow afternoon.

Motherfuckers man

You want. And want. And want. It’s all yearning and desire and ennui and goddamn it I wish I could do more. Didn’t I write about spindlefingers?

No, that’s not right. It’s never right. It’s an attempt, a series of attempts. Aborted attempts. Not a safe topic. Not something to talk about. Write about. We’re not in a safe place. Increasingly not a safe country. Was any of this really possible? But it happened and we weren’t dreaming.

I keep coming back to this memory I have of Blitz, taking about a near future of indentured servitude of credit and how he must feel silly that it didn’t come to pass. But what is passing is far worse.

And I want to write that none of it matters. None of it has mattered, nothing has really changed. Not for us at least. We’ve been lucky riding the coat tails of privilege that never belonged to us. We’ve been passing.