A small ball

It was a haze all afternoon, all evening yesterday with no particular way to take in the catastrophe of another 2, no wait, 12; hold on, more than 15, no, 19 children (and a teacher or two for good measure) being murdered in a Texas school. And as you go through that news feed, you feel a ball growing in your stomach, becoming a knot in your throat that ties you down because nothing you could do would ever change a single thing at this point.

And you add your voice to the chorus pointing out the absurdity, the sadness, the vacancy left by small hands, bodies littering the classroom floor. And it goes into that fucking echo chamber and does nothing. But you can’t take your eyes off it. You look at the news again, your eyes twitch as you scroll top to bottom for more hot takes, more apathy, more nihilism, more hope all while your child sleeps on the other side of the wall there.

I woke at 5:23 am the day after.

I tried to press my eyes closed, to sleep a bit more. Pretend it isn’t happening this way. Preserve health and sanity so I can be good for my family, for myself, but I woke anyway.

There is no way for us to comprehend the gravity of this all. But it hits harder with context. It hits you in the morning when everyone rises. It tears through you when you read about 8 year olds dismembered by bullets. It drives into you as your own small child in her school uniform clambers up on your lap at breakfast and there’s nothing you can do or say; she doesn’t know yet. So you bury your face in her hair. You smell the heart that has made itself manifest, the merging of two people.

And you fold her into a small ball that you will not let go.

You refuse to let go.

You cannot let go.

A Difference of Taste

I still like to write people letters occasionally. And generally, if you receive a letter from me, it will include a clipping from a magazine or the weekly grocery store circular. When I lived in Germany, my favorite clippings were in the weekly Angebote at Rewe or Edeka. Most of the stuff was standard and of little interest, but the pictures of meat were exactly that: meat in the raw.

Big slabs of Kalbsbraten bleeding Schweinenackenbraten, pasty Hähnchenbrustfilets, or flaccid Puteschnitzel. They had it all – and all was presented rather matter of fact. Sure, there’d be the occasional decoration propped nearby, like the slices of pepper next to that floppy chicken breast below, but most of it was blissfully unadorned.

11:30 pm in a Park in Atlanta

Gentle Asian woman

smoking cigarettes

typing, texting, sexting

looking for a home

something to hold onto

Eddie Money said it best,

“Baby, hold onto me.”

Times are going fast.

A Nice Bike and Compliments

I pulled up next to him. A man on an old bicycle, a man in all plaid.

“Nice ride, dude,” I said.

It was a nice bike, maybe from the seventies. A comfortable, but speedy upright riding position, sweeping handlebars, maybe three speeds and a trusty steel frame.

“Thanks man, it gets me around,” he replied.

And then, in the brief moment that followed, I saw him engage in that human tendency where once complimented, you feel an overwhelming desire to comment back. He gave me a cursory glance looking across me and my bike. But there was really nothing there. Just me, after work clothes, a cheap helmet, sunglasses and a nice – but not too nice – bike with homemade milk bottle fenders.

“I like your panniers,” he said.