8 July 2018

I want to write an honest sentence. An empire dissolves in an acid bath of lies; I dip my foot in vinegar to kill a fungus that lives between my third and fourth toes. It likes a basic environment, Bryant tells me. The president manufactures a violent pity, piety matched to a sacred gun. Go fund the little girl's surgery, the man's rehab, redeem the coupons of our anguish. A psychopath's self-study guide would include questions about intent, the ardor required to carry it out. Pity without empathy is all self-directed.

My dog pushes up on my hands when I meditate. She licks my leg when I type. She turns her big brown eyes at the precise angle to touch me. She places her head between her two front paws: one side clear claws, the other side black, her ears up like satellite dishes. She dishes out the self-pity, wanting a walk.

Wind rustles in the near palm, the further trees. Birds chitter in layers. The earthquake map spills outward from the summit in yellow and red dots. House like a hammock in the wind. The outcome is either 1) very good; 2) very bad; or 3) takes the middle way, whatever that way is.

The dog has moved beside my chair. She stares at my feet. A woman climbed under the Statue of Liberty's foot, as if to be ground down by her heel or to persuade her of something. Suffer the little children in a court of law, testifying at age three about their missing mothers, their missing brothers. Suffer, the president says. That's how he negotiates. That's how he negates.

How do you write, my former teacher asks. How do you read, one might ask in return. Do you take what is crafted and drill a whole in its hull? Do you take its material and de-matter it? Is meaning immaterial before it enters the bloodstream, like lead? If I were in Flint, he says, I'd kill someone. Hard Flint. The man who studied psychopaths was one. He only lacked the urge to kill.

Adulthood is a suburb we inhabit only to the extent that we accept its boundaries. The small lot begins from stone, ends in soft earth that easily shifts. The earth is so fragile I want to bend down and hold it still.

8 July 2018