Species

What is a species? Am I one? Have I one on my tongue? Will my offspring be a different species from me? Are there species in outer space?

Bangladesh

Bangladesh exists to remind us that if there is a god, it should be crucified.

Dream of apples

This morning I dreamed that I was visiting a secret neighborhood in San Francisco. Hidden somewhere near Twelfth and Lake is a long country road, with handsome houses to either side, and at the end a house inhabited by Kelly Jo Maynard. I was driving along this dirt road and stopped to look at the house. I recalled that I'd been in it before. I parked and as I got out of my car I wondered whether it would be okay to go inside--it was evident no one was about. I remembered that I used to visit it without permission, while the inhabitants were away, long ago. I stood on the porch, then walked back to my car, seeing apples in an apple tree on the west side of the road. And a black man walking along a road that struck out up the hill to the west. I admired the apples. I saw that I had left my car door open. I closed it and walked back to the house and entered. I walked through the kitchen to a desk. From the bookcase next to the desk I took some of Kelly Jo's cassette tapes and played a recording of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. The house was very empty. I was calmly putting tapes back in a fashion I thought Kelly Jo would approve when I took fright. I headed for the door just as some people were arriving. I opened the door before them and passed out, saying "Hello." The group of three young European (?) bohemians, two men and a woman, replied to my greeting quite calmly. Maybe they were guests of the house. I ran. I ran as fast as I could to my car, but it took ever so long to get to it.

I had dinner with this woman (click here)

Her house is full of damaged animals, not all of them human.

Sohcahtoa

The cars go one way, the leaves another
As the wind brushes east,
Taking what the trees cast off.

I'm not quite ready, my thoughts a disorder
Of ambition unspent,
Plans beginning where I leave off.

Another rattling, shushing gust.

A Sunday alone is that uncountable blessing
At age forty-three, when my untattooed,
Childless arms reach for books, music, lunch,
In the sunlit trigonometry of home.

---------Where things make sense in terms of
What's not here.

Howard & Sam

Thanks to Gina, I can display the picture. Click on it if you'd like a larger view.

Identity

I could not stop staring at a picture on the front page of yesterday's Financial Times. It shows two men in their forties, bespectacled, struggling with two policemen. One of the men has his arm around the other; a policeman is pulling at his other arm, as if he means to drag him away. The scene is Pakistan, probably Lahore; the two men in glasses are probably lawyers. They are part of the protests against the imposition on Saturday night of martial law. As I stared and stared I thought to myself, "Those two men are me and Howard." It would be easy for me and Howard to be that outraged, that angry. And we have been out on the streets to protest our leaders' lawless behavior, but we've been lucky, and policemen have yet to try to drag us away.

I tried to find the photo on the Internet, but I failed. The one I present here is a weak approximation.

Me & meat while asleep

I have a recurrent dream in which I eat meat. I used to dream about smoking. So I'm dreaming about doing the two things that I've decided never to do. The meat is never especially appetizing in the dream, but it's not disgusting. Last night it was a hamburger. I took the meat patty and a bun and placed them on a barbecue grill. Then I sort of realized I don't eat meat.