Sunset

That bird. That’s all I can say quietly inside where only I can hear the one I’m talking about. How to describe that chirping already the wrong word there just isn’t, see. They are yelling, I think, glad of this day. Insisting right here in the trees. But there are even more kinds. Smaller birds under the large ones if you listen. Like the voices of children in church. You have to slow, let the whole sound fill like oh big breath. And what what comes of that? The ever smaller sound within. The opening of this strange world. Ah, the sunset, of course. But this stripe of orange through these clouds while this wave is crashing on your own two feet the sand shifting under you the mother coaxing you ever home. This is yours. Never before has just this never again, you drop to your knees the water soaks your jeans through you didn’t come prepared. There’s a cargo ship far off and those crows have found the remains of your dinner here you are longing for your own bed but riveted forever to this one spot. You are impossible, elated with deep sadness. Loss and riches the golden foam lapping you up you give way, you cry and promise to paint it all down, to call your mom, to stay right here. The sun sets like it always does. Your wallet is wet. You are unrepeatable.

Where We Took Mom’s Ashes

Once years ago I looked at a map and decided, there, I want to climb to the highest point in New Hampshire. So I hiked far enough in, slept in a very buggy forest, then spent the whole next day climbing. Food shelter clothing cooking pots flashlight notebook toothbrush forty pounds on my back sometimes climbing with two hands and both feet, up up up, and I was sweaty. It was sketchy, some steps. But I kept myself alive, and I was almost up. I saw a puff of white smoke above. I kept climbing. Another. What could it be? I imagined some geothermal phenomenon. The puffs continued periodically. I kept climbing, curious.

At long last, I reached the top. I pulled myself up over the edge and stood to look around. A tiny train full of children, I shit you not, puffing round and round. A snack bar. People all over the place, dry clean people with cameras. There’s a road to the highest point in New Hampshire, you see. Yes, a road.

So years later, I have a grant, bags with wheels, a family, and here we are in Southern India. I begin to get to know some kind Hindu folks, and I mention that my mom has died recently, that I’ve brought her ashes and I want to put them in the sea. Ah, Varkala, each of them says, happy to know this of me. Varkala is the place, apparently, where people have put the remains of their loved ones for years. There’s a ceremony, and as a matter of fact it also washes away all your sins. Outstanding. We get on a train.

My mom wanted to travel more than she was able in her life. Water, I think, is a good way to travel great distances if you are in tiny lightweight fragments. Or soluble, even. I know, of course, that this is a giant metaphor, that her travels are well underway, but still.

We drop our bags at our grubby guesthouse and walk. I can hardly wait to lay eyes on the Arabian Sea. We walk the dirt path between two shops and go straight to the edge of the cliff to look over at the beach. You know, right? We look down and there spread over the beach are hundreds of Europeans, naked like babies. Colorful umbrellas jammed in the sand like the flags of many nations. Dogs and Frisbees. We are standing in a parade of hotels and shops and restaurants. An ashtray on every table. Jewelry, tapestries, bottles of water on display.

I am cranky, of course. Arrogant. I’m not here for the croissants. I brought my mother here for chrissakes. So we climbed the broken stairs down to the beach. The travelers weren’t really naked, turns out. We played in the sand. Splashed like everybody else.

This too is sacred ground. The grilled swordfish. The Scandinavian party of twelve.

Mom would like it here.

Moth

I wonder out loud sometimes about the lifespan of some flitting animal or other. This moth landing, will it see the light of April? I want to know. But then. Is it my turn to do the dishes? I want to read that trilogy again one day. This is how the mind goes. I am walking just so down this big street. That kid yesterday with the bright orange shoes, can you believe it? The way he could hold his whole body up with one arm like that. If only I could figure skate. Next time I’ll try the green soup. And sometimes it rains hard. Once in a big summer storm, I went walking with my Dad, my small hand in his. This has stayed with me.

Postcard #17

I walked by the water too early today. Waiting in the dark for a profound thought, for the famed barista to wake up. Try as I might to be washed over with divine grace in this faraway place, I thought of mathematics curriculum in the United States, I thought of croissants and raisins. At long last, Coffee Temple on the cliff opens. My notebook wet, with sand in it, I want to tell you about the first song. On the way here. In the dirty road, two hundred birds in the dark coconut trees, the laundry hanging still, and everybody asleep except whoever made this fire. The bellowing prayers in the distance, in rhythm, I swear, with these bird bird birds. The bells. There must be, my flashing thought, a composer.

India 31

I came to India with my pains. Ready for the rigors, for the herbs and oils wherever they go. Up or down. Waiting for the doctor whose father before father before father before him. My resolve thickening. At long last. Please, he says, gathering his skirts. Be seated. I did not used to hurt, I tell him. Here and here, especially at night. Ah, he says. This is called gravity. Buy an inversion table. Three hundred dollars, on the internet.

Untitled 7

This has never happened before unless of course it has and so have you again and again back beyond memory and there the guy who had been yelling into traffic now before anyone really knows what’s happened he’s on his knees with the fallen biker gently disentangling his legs saying something quietly maybe stay still let’s make sure there’s no head injury there’s a tree above them riotous as they say with crows and here you are stuck on the corner with your salted peanuts for sale rolling a cone of newspaper for anyone who cares here you are watching there seems to be no blood and all you can think is they better hurry what if a crow shits on them it’s happened before.

Untitled 34

Once upon a time a tall tall maiden with flaxen locks all the way down her long long back, she lived in a kingdom of sparse trees, rolling rolling hills. A tree here, a tree there but space oh space between and nobody but sheep here and there. Oh, the good sunsets. Once she was of course riding her horse. And this one long day almost home from flaxen locks blowing behind her: lo, ragged boy asleep under a bush. Our maiden dismounts quick and wakes the boy with a toe.

Turns out of course he is seeking the long-forgotten golden dragon egg potion in these good hills. Off they go. One, two, one, two. The ice storm, the nine bandits, all the usual. Courage. Both transformed ever so. She listened good atop crumbling cliff: how he likes boys and all. He breathed good in the vapor cave she’s shown no one else. So.

At long last, the golden dragon-egg potion is delivered to the boy’s ailing mother on the distant shore. The mother squints at the tall maiden. Have I died? This white robed figure the cascading curls the smell of a grand horse. They touch the mother’s hot head, girl and boy both. She closes her big eyes.

Walls

We build them, don’t we? For shelter, or for the simple act of demarcation. You could step right over this, but now we both know it’s my yard. There are good colorful toys for wall-building: they click into place just so. There’s sloppy mortar too, bricks of all kinds or stones of all sizes puzzled together, make some of us very happy like here we are just like our ancestors with all that patience. Walls of dung, yes? Walls made of tires, of rice paper, of corrugated cardboard with exacto little window flaps. Tiny sand walls with fingerprints all the way around the moat. And of course, those framed first with twobyfours, yes, yes, sheetrock.

We build walls of dirty dishes sometimes, broken promises. The wall between this boy and this girl, they didn’t know. They just didn’t see each harsh word dripping and hardening over the last. All those flowers. Still.

And this one here between father and son. The things said, the things unsaid, over the years. And now, well, what can be done about it? The tide might come in. The father’s chest, at this age, might rise with one good breath. He might take the blade in his hand, extend the knife’s handle to his son, say, you carve this year. Later the father might say, I know a good place to get those shoes of yours shined. Or better yet, wait. That kit’s here somewhere. The soft brush with the wooden handle. Remember? When you were a boy I’d let you brush after I rubbed the polish in. That’s when I wore boots every day. Now these goddamn white walking shoes. I feel like a nurse. Yes, I remember, the son might say. Mom would get mad at you when my fingers were blackened. Oh, says the father, you can’t keep your hands clean polishing boots now, can you?

Bug 2

I reported before that we had rented a giant bug to live in. You must remember. How we rattled around in three large stomachs, dried the laundry on threads between the antennae on the roof, yes? Well, I’ve been thinking. Let the bug be larger. Much larger, such that our apartment is one of its cells. Now this whole bug is a big city. Bombay, say. And let this be one of many bugs, as ever there are. One of hundreds, nay thousands. This is how the world is, is it not? There’s never just one bug. So, thousands of cities and each multi-cellular. With coursing veins. Some are winged. There’s something. And the ones without wings may walk. So. In the morning you live in a coastal city, but in the afternoon, no, here’s the desert. You have sand in your eyes, you curse the heat. Tut, tut, says your good neighbor, this too shall pass. You sigh and shoulder your load. Off to market.

Confidence

Oh, yeah, we were all over each other in the beginning. A thousand tangled Saturdays. Remember? But eventually, like everybody, we’d fall asleep having talked of money and yardwork. Or mad. Still though, sailing in the same craft, finding each other in the night or across the big party. Hours on that white couch.

Then something happened, not that we didn’t see it coming. Your belly, oh, your belly grew. I took your feet in my hands every day, least I could do. And one day one day there she was, alive and wiggling. Her head gray with afterbirth and everything was different.

She was all over us in the beginning. We wrapped her on like Africans. Slept between us, that one, in a little foam boat. One day, of course, she climbed off my lap and ran through the yard, shouting no, no, no. We gave our bodies, sleep and all, to grow this confidence. She has a lot to say.

India 23

Don’t imagine that I am unhappy. It may seem so, coughing and honest as I’ve been. Missing tall fir trees, yes, missing my Dad and walking by the lake. But the birds. This and that bold bird calling so across the misty coconut valley. It’s morning. Morning, can you believe it? The sea right there. The chickens and the laundry. All together now. The white sky forever. We walk ever so across the rooftop. The orange sun peeks just now up up. Stretches herself and looks around as other voices join the birds. A motorcycle starts and rides away. A dog.

Multiple Choice

1. We came to a) India, b) Mother, c) the moon, d) the tropics.

2. To find a) God, b) sun, c) scholars, d) pineapple.

3. Instead we found a) curry, b) tiny blue jellyfish, c) warm bags of milk, d) each other.

4. Next time we’ll bring a) you, b) a frenchpress, c) aloe, d) scotch tape.

5. Today we went a) to the Devi temple, b) to the doctor’s kitchen, c) by bus, c) to spread Mom’s ashes in the sea.

6. I came thinking I am unique in all the world, talented and important, but really, I find I am a) hot, b) sticky, c) clueless, d) afraid of wheeled vehicles.

7. I walk around hot and sticky, without a clue. This place teaches me that, like everyone else, I am a) unique in all the world, b) a child of god, c) a guest, d) just getting started.

India #14

If I ever write about India I’ll write, of course, about the garlands of bright marigolds, the table squeegies, and how everything is painted. I’ll write about the men holding hands and swimming in their briefs. When I can, I’ll write about how comfortable this boy is with a machete and how people just drink the juice with a straw and toss the coconut in a pile. I’ll write how every day is a party dress, how driving is an art, how, um, devotion.

India #67

Here, like everywhere, fire. And the wheel. Everybody finding some way to do each thing. This guy, I’m telling you, on the back of a motorcycle balancing a goddamn hardwood glass-paneled door over his head. His two quiet hands a fulcrum in all this traffic, he is at home in this world.

And me. Worrying my next big plastic bottle of water. I could make up a story about him. His father a craftsman. Generations. The girl he likes, she works at the dairy.

You’ve heard, no doubt, of whole families on two wheels. Ladies side-saddle. I step around a trash fire on the sidewalk, and still I wonder who, every morning, sweeps up, makes these neat piles.

India #33

And this. I want a map of the city. Of course I do. No one knows where to get one. Finally, I am sent across town to a specialty book shop. We’ll see how that goes. People give me slips of paper with ideas on them, addresses. I give these little papers to rickshaw drivers. I don’t know how far we’re going. I don’t know if I’ll find what I’m looking for. I just want to spread this city out on a table in front of me. Take a slow breath.

India Story 11

Our family is the perfect size for a rickshaw. Home from the beach we got the rig with the sound system in the back. Our little girl dances in her perilous seat to the driver’s loud Jesus music. He asks, are we Christian? No, I say, mostly Buddhist. He is quiet for a long time. We have traded something. Still, he wants to take us to a waterfall. When we stop for Mama to buy curd (no whey), our daughter shows the driver the fresh bird poo on his running board, the soiled toe of her sandal. He cleans everything off with a rag from under his seat. Then he picks up an orange peel from the street, squeezes it on her shoe, on his vehicle. Grins at me, says, “citric acid.”

Untitled

Best thing just happened.

Writing in my sleep. You there

Warm. Dreaming. Pancakes.

Dear Traveler

You have your fast-drying pants, your exchange rate. Some advice. Go to any restaurant. Order three black coffees. They will be bad and the first time they will be sugared without asking. Drink them fast, as medicine. Smile, tip, repeat.

The next time, that same kind waiter catches your eye from across the room, smiles and holds up three fingers. You nod and take your seat.

You have three very small bad coffees, and he watches from nearby, wondering what you are writing. You are writing, wondering what he is thinking. This you share: knowing almost nothing but wanting to know. You two so different, but did his mother scrub his face the way your mother scrubbed your face? You will contrive to ask him some one thing. Does he have children? You show him a picture of your daughter, point to your own sternum. Look questioningly, point to his sternum. He nods, oh yes. Holds up three fingers. Shows you with his hands. You guess one infant, twin five year-olds. Smile, tip, repeat.

The drummer boy. He’s seen you before, saw your head turn to the rhythm first time you walked down this street. He will get you eventually. He’s seen you shrug by sarongs and carvings without a second glance, and he knows already that this smart little drum with the iron rings on strings that tighten the heads, he knows it’s the only thing you want to carry with you from here. You ask him to play for you. Twice a day. He has pretty eyes.

And the orange lady. She touched your watch. You touched her bracelet.

This is all you need for now.

Have you found a place to live yet?

It’s fine here, I guess. We never really expected to live inside a bug. We imagined an apartment maybe, or a house. A place with, I don’t know, air conditioning. Marble floors, perhaps. But this. There is plenty of room. This bug, like so many animals, has three stomachs. It’s a little damp, but that’s three large chambers for our little family when we could easily get by with two. And as I mentioned, the twin spiral staircases up to the kaleidoscopic eyes. That’s a nice bonus. We can climb up and see a thousand tiny copies of this hot green world. They’re better than skylights because they’re round and they make the view interesting no matter where we are. Oh, that’s another thing we’re getting used to. Living in a place that has legs. We never know where we’ll be when we wake up. There’s always a taxi to be found though, I have to say, that’s a good thing about this city. And we’re grateful, of course, that our bug is nocturnal. She’s always right where we left her when we get home for dinner. Once, though, we woke up in a tree and didn’t even know until we were all dressed and on our way out the door. Anyway. How are things back home?

99.6

If we had an entire bowl of acorns, we could throw them, one by one, at poverty. And be patient. Some will land on soft enough ground. Then. All those big oak trees right up in the middle of everything. Kids might climb, for sure they would. Look around, around. Oh, the distances! This kid here the skinny one way high up, she sees the shining art school. What else, mighty oaks? Might whisper stout dreams to poverty. Somebody will think to make furniture. Someone will notice all the new birds. We don’t have to know how everything works.

99.5

Sister mermaids picked these apples, don’t you know. Now, papa mermaid, this is how we cook in our language. Like this. Put them here in the pot. (Papa thinking oh how clever I am to have brought home, as bath toy present, pingpong balls. Oh, rare parenting genius moment.) And stay still! You grip my head. I have to organize your hair now. We shampoo each other. Baba, don’t pour water in my ears the way I poured water in your ears, okay? Then wrapped in bright towels you reach out for jelly toast, milk. We are clean. Amen.

99.4

The smell of onions. Meanwhile, somebody walking again upstairs, somebody checking the mail. Might flush or something and we’ll hear it. That’s how it is in the city, this strange intimacy. So many animals in so many boxes, stacked like shoes, row upon row. Countless and reaching. Eight and a half, or seven. Blue or brown, maybe laces, depending who you are. Oblivious or wondering. Here we are, then. Leaping with faith. The Catholic family with the loud music, the little janitor from Pakistan. And you with the hip furniture, the handmade vodka. Throw pillows. The phone keeps ringing.

99.3

Newspapers on the early early boat, and I say, people, that is no way to start the day. Just saying. Start maybe with little doses of beauty. A little oxygen in the blood, a little birdsong. Fragrant hot drink. Later, further from the dreamtime, if you must, after a little food, take in the ills of the world. Or not. No train will leave without you. Have a muffin. And look, the oranges and the pinks, above the snowy mountains so early for chrissakes. And there. Way way up high: V in the sky. How do they do that?

99.2

Used to walk by say how are you, then you answer and legs might wonder why aren’t we moving? Or you nod, say fine. Everybody keep going. Anybody listening? Now this status thing. How are you, what can you see from there? Exactly when you feel like saying, like telling everysinglebody this is how it is for me. Five hundred people might be listening, sitting still, in fact, in a glowing place. And one person or eleven might click at you, might have something to say. Weird oh weird this new world. We like it, we wary, we wonder.

99.1

On the dogdamn soaking wet full of people bus in the rain cold. Did I mention? Stormy dark out. I live in this glorious green green love it here place. Oh, the tall snowy mountains. We leap and point at the orcas, we read good books. The coffee, oh yeah. But indeed, cold cold water falls from the sky sometimes a lot right on your head; we just walk under it chuckling to each other sniffling growing vegetables still home off the bus going to work. The children, oh the children everywhere in their smart strollers. They’re wet too.

Quack Grass

This is about two things.

1) the eye.

Pelican dives to the glint beneath the surface of the water. Hawk, her vision attuned to the least movement in the grass below, but a particular kind of movement, the way small mammals move, so different from grasses in the wind.

Now me. The old farmers training my eye to quack grass rhizomes. Quick and tough, it threatens the winter cabbage, the purple sprouting broccoli, the late kale. You have to sift through the soil with your fingers. Deeper. See, here. These long Chinese noodles. My eye learns just that shape. Before long, I can feel triumph. We show each other our longest trophies. So it is. My mind, both unruly and obedient, stands ready to be told what’s important. I learn to see things that didn’t used to be there. Yesterday, it was the late model Westfalia. Today, it’s this bad grass.

The world just opens and opens.

2) the grass itself.

This smart grass that lives all over the country at once. We pull it up from our beds and lay it out in the middle of the gravel driveway where it can’t get to the soil. We dry it in the sun and drive over it. It hasn’t adapted itself to survive this idea. Yet. Our job, farmers with thumbs and trained eyes, is to think one step ahead of plants—to learn their needs and ways, to work for or against them. The ones we call weeds, however lovely, we follow to the bottoms of their roots. It’s a kind of loving, as all deep knowing of another is. Ultimately, we’re killing everything—what we grow and eat and what we throw in the driveway.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing we can do out there to stop life. It keeps coming, and that’s what makes our work so everyday.

Getting Saved

All of us, admit it, want to get saved. Saved by cocoa, somehow, by enough good sex or the long-awaited arrival of this deathly sweet new baby. Am I doing it right? Enough? Does Jesus Mama Allah Lala love me forever? Exactly like this. I mean exactly exactly like this, even if I don’t trim my toenails write a novel clean the kitchen? I will, I will, we say at least annually, improve. I will make that thing finally, hang that shelf, apologize. That closet, I don’t even know where to start. And if really I want only two feet on yonder pillow, this good long story in my two warm hands, will you love me? If I stay all day right here? If I want pizza and cookies only today and I eat pizza and cookies only, not even eight eight-ounce glasses of water, no broccoli, no fish oils whatsoever—just suppose—and and I sleep till eleven? Make a pile of all the things that have worried me, douse them with a medicinal amount of lighter fluid and throw a match. Oh, I feel that in my thighs, don’t you? Gone, gone, gone. I have to hold back from breathing up the smoke. And you there watching through the window, I check your eyebrows carefully. Ah, you are smiling. Wishing me well.

Satori(zed)

Driving home from some good thing I saw a big snowy big mountain, tall and gleaming, indeed, inside my own chest. Ah! At long last and always as they say under my nose: no separation. That’s me and I’m it and I’m everything else too, every dolphin and drunk, every pine needle. We are all every one of us everything at all breathing just like that the crusty snow moving imperceptibly up and down with the rise and fall of my personal breath. My hands all tingly and vast on the steering wheel like oh, hot chocolate the dark kind without milk running through my veins at the same time rivers of course surging toward the ocean, also me. I thought, oh, I-not-I am enlightened onceandforall, in good company: Buddha, John the Tasmanian, Teresa. Oh, the rapture. The Oneness. How things will be different. The light around my head and even the ex-girlfriends will like me. I’ll write books or just sit so happy in a field of blue blue flowers the sky spreading orange in the distance where the endless water is and I could just sail to India on mere thought, the big warm bespangled elephants there would wink at me in glad recognition. Shit. I missed my exit.

Take Me Away

Never knew about this place. Birdsong escort. Oranges and grapes at hip level everywhere. Free bicycles. And no matter which door you knock on there’s Grandma baking your favorite thing. Maybe. Just one side of the street.

Grandma’s baking, she’s made hot decent coffee, wants to hear all about it. Grandpa’s bluegrass in the basement, fixing broken things. One side of the street. All the Grandmas and Grandpas with their sundry twitches and gifts, they just stay calm no matter what, always happy to see you even if you just don’t want to talk about it. Sit here, dear, read a novel. We are just so proud of you. Knitting nearby and Grandpa builds a fire. Opens the door to get more wood and the chill blast makes you grateful all over again, you snug down and sink deep into story like you’ll just always be loved.

On the other side of the street, not grandparents, no, but some delight behind each door. Here, a new lover. Here, that wacky filmmaker who likes when you pretend to fall: off the stump, off the trampoline, you roll and laugh. Behind the blue door the hippies with the always-painting child. Green in her hair, she offers you a brush when you arrive. And this one, the maroon house, with nobody at all inside but three big hot tubs on the deck, snowy peaks in the distance, vaulting blue sky. Stacks of white white towels.

No. Like this. The grandparents are interspersed with the other houses, and who’s behind which door changes day to day. Always that perfect kind of surprise the kind where you didn’t even know what you needed next but here it is.

There’s a big crashing beautiful warm beach, of course. I get out of the water, finally. Walk, salt-thrashed and grinning, back up to the neighborhood. Slowly. Knock on the pink door. Oh, yeah. The sassy girl with the sailboat. Hold this picnic, she says. I want to show you some islands. Thick towels on board, thick steaks. Man this rope, she says. The sun on me like new paint. I want wind.

What Water Wants

Water, stuck blue in glacier, lifts her chest to sun, becomes river.
River flows hard down mountain, flows to ocean,
Ocean rocks and rocks, sprays herself silly.
Offers herself up, head bowed.
Cloud. Cloud grows heavy. Wants to give.
Rain.
Rain fills river.
Oh, yeah.

But water wants more.
Seeps into soil, comes up dressed as lettuce.
Seduces nearby rabbit.
Water is tomatoes, plums, oranges.
Wants to run down your chin. Melt in your vodka tonic, wants to break out as sweat. Water wants to spill over the rims of your sweet big eyes, run hot down till you feel strangely better.

Water wants to stand up. She spills down down the mountain again grows up tall now finally as a whole big grove of aspens. Roots reaching pushing through good cold earth. Tall and swaying together, those trees. Leaves rustling like that. Can’t get this feeling as river, no.

Water wants to walk around. She wants to feel the heft of that favorite brush in your hand. The thrilling smell of paint and the sweet hard clutch in your stomach when the red first first swirls into yellow. Water wants the music too loud. Wants to feel the beat in her blood, rock her hips. She wants ink on her fingertips. Wants skin on skin, fur on fur, currents underwing. Wants to hold a baby.

Water wants you to rub harder, oh, right there. She wants to trudge up the hill with her sled again, oh the icy wind scared she might run into the tree at the bottom. Water grows feathers, pierces the shell with her tiny beak. She wears down rock over centuries, then drives her dirty white Westy all the way to Arizona. Marvels at her own crazy power.

Talk to water.
She doesn’t like plastic.
Water wants your heart.

Fox Dream Deer

Big meadow tall grass. Long tall grasses. I am crossing. Slowly, so slowly toward the forest. There! A fox rustles up quick and runs. Scared out of the grass. Fox runs short. Stops. Turns. Stares. I am flat in the grass breathing. And there! Young deer. Spots on her back, quiet. Me unmoving, belly down, grass smashed flat. Deer walks. Walks ever more toward me. Doesn’t stop: inches! I keep still still. She keeps coming. Oh! Fox too right here. Belly down and they both animals bend down and touch their noses oh . . . gently to my head, one, two. Somehow I have the presence of mind to take a good long breath. Thank you, Jesus. Deer walks off without looking back. Fox follows. Leaps. Tears into her backside. Red muscle, white bone, I hear fox mouth. And I wonder. How slowly she must be dying, the wound at such a distance from her heart.

Immortality: A Word Problem

Let there be 500 immortal turtles on a green green island. And let there be, as well, 200 mortal turtles. Like us, these ones die. And let us suppose that, like us, these mortal turtles can reproduce. Excellent. The immortal turtles, on the other hand, do not. There have always been and will always be 500 of them on this green green island called Home.

Once upon a time, then, we’ll call it year zero, the 200 mortal turtles arrived. By boat, say. It was a field trip from a nearby continent with a fleeting science department. The mortals were thereby delivered and forgotten about given the ensuing events on the contintent through the rest of year zero: the fires and the arrivals and all that. So.

Suppose further that the habitat of the island and the needs of the mortal turtles are such that their population is decreasing at a rate of 2% per year. An exponential function. Don’t freak out. I love you, and it’s just a exponent. We have, then,
P(t) = 500 + 200(.98)^t, P for population, t for time.
In the year following the Delivery, we see a lot of jockeying for position, much allocation and negotiation, scuffles, misunderstandings, miraculous alliances, and of course one scandalous affair. Between a bold mortal boy, Tucker, and the Princessa Olympia Papadogakis. The union causes a stir but no issue. Among the mortals, we see two births and six deaths. There are now 696 turtles total, the mortal turtles having grieved and celebrated as is their wont, the 500 looking on with great curiosity.

The tide rises and falls, rises and falls, the fruits grow and ripen, grow and ripen, the moon round round round. Thirty five years have gone by, there are bold new recipes, fire dances for unions between mortals and immortals, and half as many mortal turtles.

The tide rises and falls, rises and falls, the fruits grow and ripen, grow and ripen, the moon round round round. One hundred years after Delivery, young turtles sit at the feet of old and never-ending turtles and ask “what’s a boat?” The immortals have learned to do funerals. There are about 526 turtles left.

Where is this going?

The tide rises and falls, rises and falls, the fruits grow and ripen, grow and ripen, the moon round round round. 240 years, there is great sadness. There are 501.567791 turtles remaining on this green green island called Home. Still, sometimes, Princessa Olympia awakens haunted by the soft folds just inside the tough shell of one young Tuck, long dead.

Tide, tide, fruit, fruit, moon. 500 + 200(.98)^320 = 500.3114399. Just that much of a mortal turtle left now: about thirty-one hundredths of a mortal turtle. Less than a third of a turtle left. And after 500 years, the fraction of a turtle is about 2/250. Imagine cutting a pizza into 250 slices and you eat just two of them. That’s all you get.

But wait, you say, wait.

Tide, fruit, moon. P(one thousand years) = 500.0000003. That’s no mortal turtle at all, you say. Ah, sweet child. But this is how the strange world is. You’ll need friends. Blankets in puzzling times, you’ll need calculus and other comforts.

What we have here is an asymptote. As the years increase without bound, the output of the function gets closer and closer and closer to 500 forever. A-sym-ptote. Never falling together, from the Greeks. This forever straight line 500 and this gently curving line edging towards it. They never touch. There is never no trace of a mortal turtle left.

But live turtles are complete packages, you say. What happens really, really, is there are 200 then eventually 2, 1, finally ZERO turtles. The last one dies, the immortals string up the blue lights one last time, gather wood and flowers.

What could a fraction of a living turtle be? What does it mean?

One night last week my daughter and I came home cold and undernourished, having played all day and gone out for pepperoni pizza and no vegetables. (Mama was out of town.) Quick smart dad that I am, I chopped carrots and ran a hot bath for us. Vegetables, clean kid, good times. In the bath, though, I found my head next to a pile of, I must say, disgusting bath toys. I never see them up close like this. Me all grown up, showering tall above the rim of the tub every day. And who knew? If you clean bath toys, let’s say, never ever, and a child turns four and goes on playing with them, well, when you look close they are growing, not kidding, black around the edges. So there I am at five the next morning sinking all those toys in a bucket of bleach water. (Shush. This will help with the turtles.)

I had to admit at that point that the very bathroom itself was dirty, and of course when I opened the refrigerator to feed the child who woke up at 5:15 I noticed the dirt, I mean actual soil, on the bottom shelf. (We farm.) Then, whirring about with a sponge, I couldn’t look anywhere anymore without seeing what to do next with my big life. Sweeping and scrubbing, taking down the shower curtain. What’s gotten into me? (I’m not forgetting. I have to tell you something.)

My mom died. Two months ago, my mom actually died. Knowing that this would happen, we still didn’t really believe it. But there she went.

See, my mom was a force of nature, a goddamn miracle. A bodhisattva, for real, grandmother to fifteen, with the world’s brightest grin even when everything’s falling apart, held us all together. So. With five kids, Dad off at work. Here’s one tiny thing I remember.

I remember my mom cleaning all over the house like a good warm tropical storm. Mostly the sounds. Me in one spot, say, reading on the couch, home sick from school. And my mom: the sound of bathroom scrubbing here, vacuuming there, the freezer opening and closing and I knew everything was okay. The soft folding of laundry on the living room floor, and I’d roll off to help.

So, the word problem. The problem with the word immortality is, well, it’s a negation of a negation. Im-mort. Not death. Is never-dying the same thing as always-living? Living on? See, my mom surely did die. I was there with her, looking into her eyes when she crossed. And the body there after, the children came in with roadside sunflowers and put them across the hands and feet of that body. But it wasn’t Grandma anymore, she just wasn’t there. Meanwhile, my mom most definitely lives on. Her short bright loving life lives on in her children, suddenly cleaning. In my Dad, his laughter. In the sprawling grandchildren, their talk of angels. The pillows, the shirts and dresses she made for all of us.

Maybe leaving this planet is an asymptotic process. The starlight we see here is thousands of years old, some of it. The bright burst of my mom’s life ripples out and out still.

She’s gone, not gone, gone two months, and I’m suddenly scrubbing the tub. Maybe this is how reincarnation works. Maybe we don’t pass from one body into the ethers for a minute to catch our breath and then, plunk, whole into an infant somewhere else on the globe to give it another go. But maybe rather (or also) like this. Like ashes scattered in a number of oceans. Now this grown child is cleaning like Mom always did. This other is humming Elvis tunes. So it goes. She’s everywhere at once now. These rosy roses her favorite and that laughing kid and the way these shoes don’t feel right anymore, the exact way she might have cursed and shrugged, smiling. Ready for the next thing.

Day Eight: A Grief Poem

Big fire came through eight days ago. Big fire called Mom died. Came through one day, like we knew it would, and here I am tall tall tree with a burned out trunk, checking myself up and down. Do I still have roots? Do birds land in me?

Here I am stranded. The beautiful ship that bore me to this island, She came through so many storms still smiling. One day though right beyond those rocks, She went down. Me, sitting in the driftwood. Might go pick fruit.

I am sand flattened and soaked through again and again. I am barefoot walking. Kneeling, I make a line of rocks on a log, a trail of raisins for the gods. I cry. Stare at the improbable sky above.

This wacko love. Walking around celebrating you and turned to ash myself.

The wild urge to make tribute.

I’ll make you pictures and poems, fold them into airplanes. Hurl them against the wind.
I hope you have refrigerator magnets wherever you are, a place to call your own. Ears.

Or I’ll make the tallest sand castle in the world, with pink frosting and solar lights.

And the way I slumped there breathing like you were breathing. There in the broken nursing home recliner that doesn’t recline anymore, I slept curled up like your own puppy. Breathing like you were breathing. I wanted to give you the moon.

(Maybe you have it now.)

I wrapped that moon up, I wrapped it in bright orange paper for you. And here. I got tickets. A cruise for you and Dad to Wallahubba-dockamaimai. I made cookies, that kind you like. Oh, and goddamn lung capacity. A pretty rock for you. Anything, anything.

Or this. The last shining thing I have for you. I lean over your body unraveling, and I whisper. We’ll be okay, Mom.

You can go.

Untitled 121

Once upon a time in a land far far away I don’ t know what happened but I’ll tell you this. The apples there, golden, golden, and the soil blacker than coal. So the miller’s daughter one day climbed one of those apple trees reaching for the goldest gold one there, and she, well, she fell with a dead branch in her hand. Thing is, she died. But the dead branch stuck solid in the coal black ground and believe it, believe it, there today grows a tree with even golden better apples just like I said.

When I grow up

I’ll write all the time and never scold myself. When I grow up I’ll care less and less what anyone thinks of me. That will mean painting. That will mean singing. Stretching and yawning. Wearing so many colors. Or none.

When I grow up, you’ll know me better. I’ll be quieter and I’ll share more. When I grow up I won’t slump or lean, and I’ll sleep soundly. I won’t look at the tags on things anymore. I’ll just look at the things themselves. I’ll be unflappable.

Worry about almost nothing at all and celebrate almost everything whatsoever. When I grow up, this and that won’t hurt anymore. When nothing hurts anymore, I’ll probably die and that will be okay with me.

When I grow up, children will climb my limbs, like they do now. I’ll let people read what I write. I’ll walk tall into rooms, and out of rooms. I won’t yell anymore. When I grow up I’ll be an astronaut, or course, like everybody else. A firefighter. Peacemaker. Planter of seeds.

I’ll meet you where you are. I’ll love you just like that.

Experiment: Connection

On joining facebook, after all these years . . .

I’ve heard about this place. And I wonder. What do I have to say to everyone I’ve ever known? Maybe you were my student. Teacher. Uncle. Maybe we shared that heady day, all of us against the war and tingling. I might be that drunk you knew in Colorado. You might have worn a plaid jumper, too, in Dayton, Ohio. The communion and the basketball, remember? Were we philosophers once upon a time? We studied side by side, perhaps. Pizza every Friday. That train we rode. That one where we stayed up late and marveled at shining old things like they were new, ours forever finally?

What can I post for you? Honest. Why do you care? And I think (math teacher): lowest common denominator. Not you personally, of course. You, I’m sure, are a very important number. 56 or something. A cube within and interesting, with a seven and all. But maybe you’re just that art history professor I met at the meditation retreat that one time. You noticed that I too need arch support, friended me. Who am I to say no? You’re probably perfectly brilliant. Okay, then. My vacation photos.

Or we hiked together, remember? The dry dry trail and that stick you thought was a snake and I jumped too. Maybe you’re my sister. Maybe we ditched Chemistry together. Maybe you were married to me. And you, oh yes, you. We were in Africa together. What are you up to now? I live on an island, pull ivy out of the forest, stack blocks. Learning to grow vegetables, working with teenagers, doing my best. Are you still with that Beauty from Detroit? Indeed. I’m a Dad, finally, and that is everything. Writing still. Taking a boat to work (this very minute), in love after ten years. How are your parents?

But really. What can I say to everyone? Went to a ballgame. You might have something to say about that. Or you might just like it. We can’t really spend our days this way, can we? I don’t even like the phone. I can’t see your eyes!

Maybe this, then: I give you my best.

I love you but don’t touch my stuff

I love you, but really don’t and I can’t tell you why my stuff is very particular about this kind of thing like what if there’s fingerprints on the screen and I know you said they would wash off but it’s better really if nobody ever touched the screen ever like I don’t because I just don’t, okay?

I will take my shoes off in your house in our house because it’s as important to you like all my things but I don’t like it, I like my shoes and then I have to be careful where I step because there could be a drop of water on the floor or who knows what else and then my sock would get a wet spot and that’s just not in the book.

Okay. There’s not really a book. People are certain ways every one of us like you with the sidewalk cracks, me and my rocks. You are my favorite and you wish I wouldn’t spill coffee everyday and I line up the seams of the cuffs of my shirts just above that bone whatever it’s called and they feel weird if I don’t.

What Happens If, Early

What happens if I get up early enough? Before the yard lights up, before the heat comes on, before anybody in my little family knows the day. I might ask questions. What happens if I find the edge with my toes and leap? What is the brave thing I’m not doing—can I find it if I’m quiet enough? I might think about emergency preparedness this early in the morning. What if the facts come tumbling down on us? I haven’t fastened this tall bookcase to the wall, and it will all be my fault. I might have fatherly thoughts this early and more thoughts because it’s too early to drill anything or climb on ladders I might wake them up. I might think: what if we could fix everything with the one right change? The right move, the right house, the right job, neighborhood, health insurance company, marriage counselor, preschool, waterproof shoes. I might check my email early in the morning with that weird kind of expectation that some surprise will pop—something I haven’t thought of that will turn things around and we’ll say, “wow, who ever thought we would end up here!” That weird kind of looking for something that can’t be googled, something that comes to you, and it’s that kind of looking that makes you breathe different for just a minute and then you look and there’s nothing new and you keep going as before.

And what happens if everything is okay? I mean really. What if there’s nothing wrong and life just is this. This borrowed rug, this new lightbulb, this pile of things to be folded and put away, your bright eyes? We’re not waiting, there’s no decision to be made, no revelation around the next bend, there’s just this. You on your way down the stairs, me, thinking about socks and more coffee. We’re already here.

Here, In the Void

Here, in the void, there are lots of churches. Big stone lofty big churches. Gargoyles. In the void there are punks begging for change on the street. One word in front of another. There’s silverware clattering somewhere, cigarette butts. Here in the void, what birds. What cloud vaulted, and a photographer present. Sycamore watching. Here in the void the blue buzz of my body very still and how it is to be here. This. The chairs stacked and unstacked, professors lying on the floor. Here in the void the grass is striped, the physicist wears a sweater. Here in the void fourteen ideas and nothing’s happened yet. The rise and fall of sun, breath. I could clean the windows of skyscrapers. I could be someone else. Here in the void, a legal pad, floorboards, parallel like nothing could ever go wrong. Here in the dark, lovely, and five hundred ways to swing two feet around and down to the floor. Make a life. I wonder suddenly how many zippers in the room. Bags, pants, sofa cushions. And what if books had zippers? What if minds? This is what happens sometimes, in the void. I could ask for the impossible and change my mind. Bubbles rise to the surface and we want to know: who’s down there? Here in the void, the bacon is very thinly sliced. The toaster huge and never stops. Here. The books watching. Very tiny birds, a thousand miracles a minute. Blades of grass growing. Buttons buttoned. I don’t know what will happen.

Two Paper Cups

Ink on the smoothed pulp of giants swaying in the wind, green. And how do I reconcile life when I am modern? I need a hot stimulating beverage, this slight headache, up late working, packing–all privilege, but anyway, my coffee. This drink handed over in two nested thick cardboard cups cause it’s so hot, and what will come of us? The planet already belching and rolling. We try to hold on. We’re sorry, we didn’t mean it, somehow—we didn’t know how to say we. There: innocent in corduroys with one wheeled bag, a sweaty boarding pass, I just wanted to wake up. A dollar fifty eight and he gave me two cups. Two cups and a plastic lid and the airport doesn’t recycle enough. Nobody does. Then the beans, the land, the chemicals, the people—what do I know about rippling effects? I’m flying and driving and flying and driving to see people I love and how can love be dangerous? Infrastructure. Superstructure. The TV’s on in the airport. We know already in Seattle, the viaduct will fall down. The earth will shake it down. We drive up there mapping traffic patterns in our little urban heads—we are headed to a lake up north to throw bread with nice Jewish people in white. We’re getting ready for atonement. We’re talking about dinner. How does all this add up to bad air and dead in Bagdad? We want to blame the Hummers. And all those shiny huge SUVs with flags and Bush stickers—they’re the ones the planet’s mad at. Me and my friends, we don’t have flags. We’re going to feed the ducks. I want to say: I was born here. I would have listened to Indians. I carry a sturdy water bottle and shop at thrift stores. Apologize all day long.

The Symmetry of Things Half-Submerged

And how everything sticking out of water has the above-surface part of itself right there solid for everyone to see and if you look close enough the surface part that ripples and wavers but is another way of seeing the body of the thing, the way light bounces off it and then off the water’s surface and then into your eyes and then what the brain does with that and all that together, that’s what we call reflection which also means think about it.

And how everything sticking out of water has also the below-surface part which sometimes you can see if you look the right way through the surface, through the reflection—this is all an exercise of attention—through the reflection into the darkness of the inside of water which will show you some idea of the other half of the thing, the half that stays wet, the half that’s turning into the bottom of the lake, slowly, however slowly, whatever the thing is . . . wood or rock or your arm which won’t really become the bottom of the lake if you pull it out in time and take it on with you.

And how everything has these three parts whether they’re sticking out of water right now or not. Unless they don’t. I mean you could also say everything has a price whether it’s for sale right now or not and that’s just not true it’s only when the mind starts looking around in a marketplace sort of way that that seems so and maybe things all have the above and the below and the reflection part only when the mind is looking around in a let’s-throw-things-in-the-lake sort of a way.

Look this way or other then, and everything has a lost-in-the-fog part and a sticking-out-in-clear-air part and everything has its own quiet and its own music. Everything is smiling or not, too slow or too fast. Everything is edible or it’s not. It’s cold in here or not or is it just me? The desk is made of wood or is it just me? The egret’s reflection is taller than the bird’s own self or is it just me—just me today standing in this place with the sun shining like that at this time of day this season on this rice field this bird like that. Everything, inside outside.

Thirteen Inches

Maybe you were walking once and that same damn sky blue pickup drove past, you were just walking down this street, no sidewalks, dodging puddles, looking at the clouds at your feet, the trees the sky the clouds deep down under the street in these still puddles, your hands jammed tight in your pockets and that same pickup, your grandpa in your head, his truck. Brake lights at the corner and the puddles are still still, the sky is still there. And you haven’t been the same ever. Once.

Maybe once you were thinking about Manzanita and there she was around the next corner. You wanted nothing but coffee and you had this dumbass appointment you were late to but when you got there the lady smiled said we’re behind schedule would you care for some coffee or something? Smiled.

Maybe once you didn’t even know you needed shoes already on your feet walked through glass didn’t thank god didn’t wonder that time about who doesn’t, what if, why’s there glass on the streets busy clicking a cherry lozenge against your teeth that song in your head.

Maybe once you were hiking and you got through the forest up the rocks to the edge and there was the ocean before you could even catch your breath a whale surfaced to exhale and you could have believed those really were blown diamonds in the sun you knew you’d chosen this planet on purpose.

Maybe once you were just passing through some dumb town and it happened that day, no way, free concert in the park your favorite folk singer from college.

Maybe your tire was flat that time you walked instead and the smallest bird you ever saw landed on the branch of a very short tree I’m not kidding thirteen inches from your eyes.

Maybe you were pissed all morning didn’t even know why hated even the sunny day the innocent smokers out the coffeehouse window the confident palm trees across the street you wanted to break chairs. Finished your stupid coffee went to the bathroom with the noisy broken fan and there someone really had pissed fully all over the seat all over the floor—dark yellow and pooled in the corner sticky on the bottom of your sneakers. You washed your hands and what a gorgeous day it was. What’s that music they’re playing?

One Shirt

When you know how to listen, everybody is the guru.   –Ram Dass

When I know how to listen, I can land solidly suddenly in a swirl of bird calls. Full song inside outside, same same. It’s me, not-me, inside out and that’s what peace sounds like. Peace looks like going into a thrift store and finding a really cool shirt somebody loved before me and before him too. Knowing what a privilege it is to get to love and wear this shirt some hearts have beat in already. Maybe somebody won a chess game in this shirt. Maybe somebody died, made love, held a baby in this shirt. And who before him and what possibly small brown hands made this shirt, and who filled the gap? These hands holding the fabric careful under one of hundreds of needles in a gaping hot room full of women with little brothers outside somewhere, this one with the hands who sewed this shirt, her little brother knows how to make tiny animals out of mud. He doesn’t kill mosquitoes anymore. And what love went into choosing this shirt for this rack instead of the dumpster—this shirt qualified to help raise money for the American Cancer Society, and who grew the cotton? Who picked the cotton? Who all died and fertilized the soil that grew this cotton and how many journeys across sea across land were made? Cotton to thread, thread to fabric, fabric to dye, dye to sew, shirt to wholesale, wholesale to retail, who hung it on the plastic hanger once and shot it through with tags? Who paid the price took the shirt home in a bag made from what dinosaur’s body and who else’s clothes tumbled with this shirt’s first journey round and round the family’s washer tub made from steel forged from earth dug from deep by whose hands where and then finally a heart beating clean inside this shirt for the first time and the second third fourth in ongoing cycles through that guy’s days—chest to floor to washer, dryer, drawer. Chest. Did he keep cigarettes in this pocket or pens? And what will happen to me the first time I wear this? One of many shirts with many histories and maybe on any given day I’m wearing all six degrees of separation to the whole rest of the world. For all I know the sweet woman who let me in front of her in the grocery line today, maybe she’s got a kidney from someone whose Grandmother’s next door neighbor’s brother designed the trademark on the label of these vintage corduroys. People’s hands all over everything and anyway I want to meet the cow who made this lunch. Let’s talk about world peace at the church rummage sale because for all I know the president and I have a lot in common. For all I know I’ve missed important funerals. For all I know, you and I are fifth cousins three shirts removed and I don’t even know your name. For all I know I’ve got Arab blood and a Japanese man saved my Grandpa’s life once. All that and then there’s whales—underwater so much and like all mammals they breathe air. Surfacing like a new island, she sprays breath over the surface of the planet, the sun soaks it up, rains it down on my head and yours and Saddam Hussein’s. Whose old clothes are you wearing? Whose wearing your old clothes?

 

Corn Plants

Maybe you don’t remember but maybe what happened was you saw a flock of birds. A flock of blackbirds rising at once from a picked-over rice field, straight up and a quick right all together you almost ran your car off the road. A piece of your brain tore itself away like a limb of starfish, locked itself up in a room. Locked itself in with an abacus and a roll of masking tape. Wouldn’t accept food or company, wouldn’t listen to reason. Opened the door quick for a tin of coffee once, slammed shut ever since. You’ve given up. Went to an aquarium one time, a school of sardines flashed you and the door got hot. No answer. What I’m talking about is how you think you know who you are. How you think there’s a you, not me, not Charlie. You and your abacus. Charlie and his albatross. What I’m talking about is teaching the bird to count. What I’m talking about is there’s no such thing as a bird. Read the dictionary, man. Look at the flock landed on a telephone wire: more evenly spaced than even space. Now look in the mirror in the dark. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m supposed to be me and you you and strangers silent. Then a school of sardines comes along flashing their harmony like that, and what do you do with that? School. Fish. Stranger. Everyone’s dazzled when jets fly in formation when chorus girls kick like one sexy centipede. But the birds: there’s no training, the fish are not cooperating. It’s us making up these plural count nouns for clouds of breathing ink, for water showing its colors. Life by any other name. Maybe I don’t know anything about you but I watched a flock of birds one time. birds. ink. air. cloud. rice. time. I haven’t been the same since. I. I don’t know anything anymore. I like people better, somehow, fingers and toes, tall corn plants standing next to me, our roots interlaced our arms rustling together in the wind. And how the sun glints off your silky top: now I know what it looks like, the warmth on my head.

Every Seven Years

Maybe I don’t know your name but maybe I wish you the best anyway. Every day, a new pancreas, each of us, and generating new skin all the time. So maybe I don’t know your name but maybe you breathed in a molecule of skin I was done with and maybe that absorbed into your bloodstream and became part of you and maybe I forget how that sort of thing happens all the time we’re all the same atoms spinning through everything and that’s why I don’t say hi to people walking towards me on the sidewalk. Maybe I forget and that’s why I avert my eyes and bustle about my business like a good American like everybody else.

But I mean it. What if there in the air between us we don’t even know it but you’ve got part of me now and I’m partly you. We’re breathing the same air and letting our whole selves go—bit by bit all day: a new pancreas every 24 hours, a whole new body every seven years—so maybe you sneezed then, a mote of my skin in your nose, and you sneezed. Now what’s possible? That moisture rocketed through the air we’re all breathing and a drop landed on the bark of a tree. A cell of the moss growing there absorbed the drop, a molecule that was you, one that was me, some old rain that ended up in the soda you drank that day. So there’s you and me in the moss. And maybe there’s a strong wind some butterfly somewhere flapped her wing and there’s a storm and this shallow-rooted tree you sneezed on comes crashing to the ground and the moss gets pressed into the earth and decays and we become soil together there. And that soil nourishes a trumpet vine and the molecule that was my skin nuzzles up against a bit of chlorophyll in a cell in the stem and you luck out and end up in the bottom of a blossom and a hummingbird comes and sucks up what was some of you and now you get to fly.

You see the whole neighborhood quick like that and then some. you didn’t even know there was so much trumpet vine in the world, and then you get a tour of the hummingbird’s insides, then you’re shit on the sidewalk in front of McDonald’s and there you are. A Vietnam vet comes by and you end up on the bottom of his shoe. He’s on his way to the beach, you’re both hitchhiking till he meets a woman who really needs these shoes and she doesn’t even know about you, you get washed up on a rock in the middle of a puddle in a vacant lot right at the edges of this prosperous country. The sun shines hard, and you evaporate–you didn’t even know how big clouds could be how far they travel on the wind and suddenly you’re raining over the Middle East somewhere and who will you be next?

What I Said to India Blue

I said I can’t stand to leave for the bus in the dark before you’re up and then the whole new day unfolds and there you are, learning to crawl or whatever you’re doing, while I’m busy with dreadfully important things like the opposite angles of parallelograms. By the time I catch the afternoon bus you will have grown and smiled at 72 new things. I’ll get home and say tell me about your day and you’ll slobber on my shirt. Excellent.

India, listen. They’re going to tell you there are so many things wrong with this world. They’re going to wonder why you like it here. I want you to know, you are right in your joy. Don’t worry about these things. Yes, poverty and war. Yes, recession and disease and the planet heating up. But you were born among a thousand shades of green, and I love you. You were born in a city of light.