By Franz Wright
Chapter minus two hundred and fifty
in which the author pays (and pays for it,
as always) a visit to one of the lost: I
dropped by the dark house with no furniture,
knocked, and was introduced to her mother,
a woman much younger than she was
and for obscure reasons known only to
no one had kept her from childhood on
locked in the oven, &c. At this time
they were living together or, hard to say,
dying, possibly from a mystery
condition which fuelled and quite vivified
their blunt if obsessively honed and
devotedly mutual hatred
and hissing contempt: classic case of
the weapon lying down with the wound?
From the first I had no problem picturing
(and would have preferred to eat decaying
fish and live, rained on, under a bridge)
what would happen if harm came to one of them,
should indeed anything this side of murder
slash suicide occur, although if that did
it was anyone’s guess which event would
come first. In a flash you could see it:
all hostilities concluded, and their own
miniature World War III’s aftermath,
and the all-out final progressive and
uninterrupted commercial-free
stone-cold muttering psychosis awaiting
lone survivor of this conflict, the end.
--------
From this week's New Yorker.
I had lunch with Vertigo at the Corner Bakery, and the weather was so gorgeous that afterward we walked around Washingtonian Lake, where we saw geese and ducks but no goslings -- not sure whether that's because it's early in the season or because the management took away the eggs, as I heard they did last year. Then I went looking for clothes for the Bar Mitzvah weekend -- I need something to wear to services Friday night, something to wear to the Bar Mitzvah itself and the party afterward, and something to wear to visit with out of town company Sunday morning, though I probably have something acceptable for the latter. I bought a blouse I liked when I had it on in the store, but when I got it home and looked at it, I didn't really like the quality for the cost, and then I tried on a pile of stuff in Ann Taylor Loft and Kohl's and various other places and didn't find anything terrific. Woe -- I may have to brave Macy's. Have I mentioned that I despise shopping for dressy clothes and would rather go to the dentist?
Two little girls were playing in the fountain in the middle of the Capitol Columns at the National Arboretum last weekend.
The azaleas were in the early stages of blooming...
...but there were plenty of carpenter bees already hard at work in the Asian gardens, so many that the arboretum put up signs telling people not to panic since they don't sting.
The arboretum's tulips were blooming as well...
...and the camellias and peonies were already past their peak.
A Trident Maple, Japanese Zelkova, and Japanese Premna in the bonsai exhibit.
Also in the Asian collection, Suiseki entitled Bird-Shaped Stone "Nesting" from Saddle Peak Hills, California.
Most of the white azaleas weren't yet blooming, but the hybrids with pink and pink-and-white flowers were beautiful.
I had a great stroke of luck in that I called the videographer who is filming the Bat Mitzvah of the girl who will share the service with Adam, and he said he would produce DVDs for our family as well for half what it would have cost if the person who did our older son's Bar Mitzvah filmed it. Now we just have to work out times and places to work with our still photographers! We all watched Smallville, which I pretty much adored; I loathe the Chloe storyline, but having her distracted and Lana gone means that Lois is finally getting her turn to shine. Spoilers: I thought she was a blast as Stiletto (I especially liked that she despised wearing the heels) and yay, she and Jimmy finally got to save Clark, even though of course he had to save her too. I thought Clark totally dropped the ball with Chloe, who is clearly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, anyway, so it was totally Lois's episode. And we howled when she said, "Can you read my mind?"
Daniel is away till Saturday on his school trip, so I only had Adam to hang out with after school and discuss the economy. He has twice as many coins in Superpoke Pets as I do.
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