To Salt

I used to be all about the sweet: ice cream, brownies, Twizzlers at the movies. Sweet was luxury, something extra, the cake and the icing on it.

I don’t know when it began to turn, but now, I’m much less interested in the sweet and crave the salt. Potato chips, soy sauce, olives.

Salted mango, watermelon, cantaloupe. Salted caramel. Salt of the rim of a margarita on the rocks. Salt beat into the eggs before I pour them into the pan and then salt with cracked pepper sprinkled on top. Toast with raspberry jam in the same bite with the salted scrambled eggs.

Table salt, rock salt, kosher salt, Himalayan pink salt, sea salt, fleur del sel, sel gris, gros sel, smoked and seasoned salt. Hawaiian sea salt, Black Sea salt, bamboo salt, sour salt. Garlic salt.

Maybe, as I’m older, I value what’s more simple, more basic, more elemental. I don’t want fussy music or complicated prose. I want a 20 minute nap at 3:00 PM. Black coffee. A car that lasts for 17 years. Wooden picture frames holding candid shots. Cotton skirt and flip flops.

Some days I have to search for the ways I should love my life. I have to train myself to see each failure as a stepping stone to here, when really, they look like holes. I need something to bring out the flavor, to make it last a little longer.

To Greeting Cards

I want one thing from a greeting card: for the recipient to open it and say, “HA!” and then read it again.

That’s asking a lot.

Sometimes I have to go to three or four stores to find one that I think will do the trick. I refuse to buy cards that are serious (except a bereavement card), that make fun of the person reading it (especially their age), that make fun of political figures (even if I know the reader would agree; greetings cards are no place for politics), have women with barely covered large breasts or men in shirtless firefighters suits. I don’t like jokes about sagging body parts and only very occasionally would buy one that references drinking a lot of alcohol.

So that eliminates about 80% of cards.

I like a good fart joke (rare, but possible). I enjoy puns (common, but not often clever). But mainly, it’s just the unexpected, the comedic timing between reading the front of the card and the punch line on the inside. When done well, it’s genius. I’ll pay $4 for that, even if I know it will be thrown away with the wrapping paper and packing materials.

Writing cards is a job I would never want. Bent over a drafting table, oil lamp on the desk corner, scribbling away with a quill. (I realize it’s all on computers these days, but high quality humor is somehow old-school like this.) Maybe there are several in a room, like a scene out of a Dickens novel. Or Jane Austen. Or Mary Shelley. If they were funny. The writers work so hard they sweat, worried for their jobs. Always, the younger writers wait at the window for their big break. A writer thinks she has a good one, revises it to get it just right, takes it to the head writer, who doesn’t write at all but holes himself up in a tiny office hiding behind stacks of paper. She hands it to him, and waits. Waits. Waits.

“HA! Good one!”

To Maps

When I was just learning to drive, I had to go to the downtown library, so Mom and I pulled out the city of Dallas Mapsco map, a large, ring-bound book of a map well over 200 pages long--to find the best route. She traced the way down the tollway, find the best exit, highlighted it all in pencil, sent me on my way, map in the seat next to me.

And downtown is just as the map has it--Elm, Akard, Commerce St. I recognize the names and which should be where. The bird’s-eye view taking shape around every corner, at each stop light. Yes, yes this is right. I find the library on Young Street.

I’m working on an essay about Edna St. Vincent Millay. I thumb through the cards in the catalog. Millay, Edna St. Vincent---American Literature--Poetry--811.52 M645P 199-. I head to the third floor, find the 800’s, the 809’s, 810’s, 811’s. Then I scan for the .5’s, the .52’s, tap the books as I pass each one until finally, M645P. Right where it should be. Collected Poems.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I read and read, found the poems so tight, the words cutting into each other. I take them home, type them out, slowly, each line, each word, each letter.

   

When I too long have looked upon your face

Why “too long have looked”? and not “looked too long”?

Looked upon your face

Looked upon? Looked...upon?

            mists of brightness

terrible beauty

a mind undone

familiar things grown strange

pause [comma!] and feel [ another comma!]and

hark

She is laying out the streets of her heart, the roads of her desire, the overgrown tangled path she traveled towards and then away from her lover.

I follow her, the poem a map. Turn here. Pass this. Here is the border, the edge. Trust me. Jump.

To the Parents Who Used to Let Me Take Care of Their Children

I started out with bigger kids, maybe 7 or 8 years old. Kids who could pretty much take care of themselves, but needed someone to play with. Never for a long time. Maybe the parents would go out for a quick dinner. In the time they were gone, we would have played a game, watched a TV show.

But as I got older, I was literally handed the babies. One mother said, "You probably know more than I do about babies," as I bounced the girl over my shoulder, the mother grabbing her keys and leaving me with very little instructions.

I would feed them bottles of warmed formula and spoonfuls of baby food. I would walk them around until they feel asleep. I would place them in their cribs and then go check on them.

I would eat the ice cream in the freezer and drink the Cokes in the fridge. I'd watch whatever I wanted on television without anyone interfering. I would fall asleep on the couch. It was like a vacation.

These nights, the parents were out for hours. They'd come home smelling faintly of cigarettes and alcohol. They'd have a glow about them that I would understand years later. It comes from spending several hours without hearing a baby cry or cleaning spit up or struggling to stay awake when the bed is so close but the baby won't nap.

They ask how it went. How much did she eat? When did she fall asleep? When was her last diaper change? And then one would drive me home, hand me $10, thank me. Sure, I'd say.

At 16, this seemed no big deal. Teenagers babysit babies all the time. But when I think about it now, as a parent, to hand my little boy over to a kid represents a tremendous faith in humanity. This kid will pay attention to the baby, listen for a cry, respond. A tremendous, ordinary faith.

To Snopes.com

How are you not a bitter, cynical, depressed mess? How do you get up every day knowing all the lies created on the Internet while you were sleeping? Grab your coffee and make it a strong one; there’s a lot of work to do.

Arizona Iced Tea uses human urine in their brewing. A woman found a human finger in her chili at Wendy’s. The cremated ashes of the Pringles creator were packaged and sold to devotees of the chips. California wine contains arsenic. Brewery workers find the body of a co-worker in a vat. Aldi’s sold horsemeat. Where to begin?

Henry Kissinger
By White House Photographic Office [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Kissinger was the last Harvard grad to have perfect grades. UW adds the face of a black student to make the campus appear more inclusive, and if you’re black and go to Harvard, you don’t have to pay tuition to major in chemistry. A med student is shocked to see a relative as the cadaver under the sheet. A math prof gives a trick question--an unsolvable problem--and a student solves it.

Walt Disney was frozen before, or maybe just after, he died. He had an extensive porn collection, but objected to a single frame of a naked woman slipped into a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Disneyland doesn’t allow men with long hair to enter the park. Children have been kidnapped out of the parks. Tinker Bell was based on Marilyn Monroe.

Elvis, homeless, now dead, has been found in San Diego. Obama has lowered the drinking age to 18. Muslims students at the Catholic University of America protested offensive crucifixes found all over campus. Bob Marley was also found homeless and dead.

Sorting truth from lies online must be like sorting water from oil in the ocean. The absurd begins to seem possible and the mundane, improbable. The entire cacophony of human thought now has a venue with eye-catching gif’s and hyperlinks. One at a time, you pluck them out and study them. Most are false, rumors made up for the hell of it, but there’s no way to know, no magnet to use that attracts the truth only.

You stretch your back. Refill that coffee cup. Call your mom to take a break. She’s planting begonias today. “They’re sexy!” she says. Now you’re ready to get back to work.

To Otty, Whom I Will Consider (after Christopher Smart)

For I will consider my Dog, Otty.

For he is small, but his smallness fills the room and then the house and then whole universe.

For he believes in God and is pretty sure that God is Whit, who walks him every day.

For he speaks with his eyebrows and cries with his ears.

For he naps the nap of a king’s dog, yet does not forget he is also the sentinel’s dog and yips at

noises in his sleep. Even if it’s the sound of him rolling over.

For he reads Rimbaud, understands none it, but feels for the young man.

For he has learned that resting his chin on my leg, or the chair or edge of the couch makes him more adorable by 75% and thus more likely to get a smackerl of whatever I’m snacking on.

For he waits for us when we are away, but in a way that makes us not want to go. He does not cry by the window or tear apart the accent pillows. He is more like Wordsworth, wandering lonely as a cloud.

For he is a feminist. I’m sure.

For when he sighs, I feel my humanity even more deeply.

But then he is stalking the backyard creatures, standing still for three minutes, tracking the rabbit eating clover, his patience profound, until just the right moment as he leaps off the top step toward it, with a bark and clamor that betrays all the hard work of waiting he has just finished. 

For his refusal, even after 15 hours of being in the house, to step outside, however briefly, to relieve himself in the rain. Or if it smells like rain. Or if there is a bit of dew still on the grass. 

For he demands, as he leans into me, that I be kind, not just to him, but that I be kind and though I fail frequently, often loudly, he has faith that now, this minute, I will recover.

To Summer Rainstorms in Texas

I’ve seen it rain without a cloud in the sky. Thunder cracks like a tree splitting. You have 4.3 seconds to decide where to go.

No where outside of Texas have I felt raindrops this thick, like small water balloons, drops so big I can feel each one individually as I run from the car to the store. I can’t really see the store, but I remember it’s there.

Flashflooding. The ground is hard and dry and cannot soak up the all rain. The water fills up the roots around the crepe myrtles lining the parking lot. The flowers shake but don’t fall, delicate deception in those spacey blooms.

 The water will rise to the curb in 3-4 minutes. The rain pools in places we forgot and floods the edges of our yards, reveals all the grooves and dips we try to ignore, try to landscape away. But something, small shifts in the earth perhaps, reveal the depressions again and again. The rain fills them.

And then over. The rain vanishes. The temperature rises again: 87, 93, 96, 101. Steam rises from the concrete.  We hold our breath, hoping everyone emerges from the storm. We wait to hear the mockingbird.

To the Customers at 1-Hour Moto-Photo

Sometimes it was at the end of a graduation party; the kids pouring themselves through the front door still sticky and happy with beer. They haven’t been home yet. They dump 14 rolls of film onto the counter and say they would like them back in an hour, after breakfast at Denny’s. We have to explain the “1-hour” part of “1-Hour Moto Photo” doesn’t work with 14 rolls of film. We can have them by noon. One kid begins to demand his rights, but the others say ok, lead him out. The last kid pockets all the slips with the matching numbers. They don’t come back for three days. Only a handful of the pictures are in focus. Most will be starting college in the fall.

Grandparents and grandkids. Proms and homecomings. Birthday parties. Smile smile smile smile. Heads together. Big hugs. The candid shot--when the dog jumps up for the cake, when the two uncles are debate the which is the best “Godfather” movie, when the 4 year old discovers his mother’s make-up and paints the baby--is rare and when we find it, we put in the window of the photo envelope so it’s the first one they see. They’re more likely to buy a roll of film, come back next time, accept all the pictures without fussing.

I always dreaded the couple who comes in, her arm locked around his. They put down a roll of film while they continue to pet each other. I want to take them on a tour. “This is the film developer, where we process the negatives so we can print the pictures. And this is the printer. The person who runs this sees every picture, makes adjustments for lighting and color, studies each frame. And this long conveyor belt, facing the customer service area, that you see now is loaded with pictures from someone’s trip to Six Flags, is where your pictures will come out fully developed for all the employees and customers to see.” Because I know what these pictures are. We will see these, I want to say. We have eyes and we have to look at them. The come back later, not at all bashful. They never open them in the store, the way everyone else does. Most people can’t wait to see the pictures. But we watch them in the parking lot, sifting through one by one. We shake our heads--the whole roll was overexposed.

To The Woman in Acme Who Scolded Me for Leaving My Purse in the Cart

I’m over in produce, picking out the right head of red leaf, thinking about work I haven’t finished and a run I want to get in, when I hear a voice slightly louder than usual, “Is this yours? Who’s is this? Yours? Who left this here?”

I look up and she’s point to the grocery cart I left one aisle over. This is a busy time of day and the carts are so big, I just parked it in front of the brussels sprouts to get the lettuce, figuring no one was going for the sprouts. I left my purse in the child seat of the cart and there she was, standing next to it and pointing at it.

“That’s mine,” I say.

She scowls, literally scowls, at me. “Don’t you think someone might steal this?”

Honestly, I don’t. I’m one aisle away and can see it. And I think, if they do, so what? I cancel my credit cards. Renew my license. No big deal. I buy cheap purses so I’d be out maybe $10. And I hate carrying my purse over my shoulder as I shop; it falls into the apples, slides down my arm as I grab a milk.

Besides, I trust my fellow shoppers! Everyone here is doing the same thing, getting through this day, getting what we need so we can get home, trying to satisfy whatever it is that we can with items found in a grocery store. This is a sister and brotherhood extraordinaire, fighting the good fight. We are all Willy Loman.

No no no, she says. I don’t know why she is so concerned about whether or not my purse gets stolen, but clearly she’s not shopping in the same store I am. Am I tempting someone needlessly? Like putting a bottle of wine, unopened, on the table of someone who just gave up drinking? And if someone does steal it and I make a fuss, would that mean that now this store, her store, would be considered unsafe? And she’ll have to live with that, too? The store will a reputation because some crazy lazy woman left her purse in the middle of the aisle.

I see her a few minutes later in the cereals. She shakes her head as she passes me and I can feel what she’s thinking: Everything goes your way. The world just works for you; there’s a red carpet everywhere. I keep my keys in my front pocket and my purse tucked under my arm.  Has your faith never been tested?

To the Ice Storm in Dallas, 1978-1979

When I woke up that morning in December, the room seemed brighter than usual, the house seemed more quiet.  My bedroom windows looked out onto the backyard, only it didn’t look like the backyard this day. The elm tree in the backyard, the picnic table, the hedgerow along the back fence sparkled, covered in a thick layer of ice. It was quiet and remarkably still. Only the light moved.

Source: DMN staff photo by David Woo

I was thrilled. Days like today are events always and though I didn’t know what that would mean, I knew it I liked the change. And I was the only one awake, so I felt like the good news was mine to share. I would be the one to report it.

Wondering what the front yard looked  like, I went to the dining room and suddenly what seemed like a great day turned frightening. Tree limbs all over the yard, a large one fallen on the little Dodge in the driveway. Neighbors’ trees down, the road clearly not passable, as if a giant had walked through and smashed across the yards, the wake of a tantrum. No, this is not good news.

And the power was out. I didn’t notice it at first, but then I feel the house is colder than normal. The appliances in the kitchen aren’t humming.

Mom and Dad get up and begin to take stock. Mom builds a fire in the fireplace while Dad goes out to survey the damage. He’s from Brooklyn, familiar with snow, but ice like this is decidedly southern. Just cold enough to freeze the rain as it’s coming down, but not really snow. We can’t go out to play in it. We watch neighbors pick their way across the yards.

By nightfall, the power is still out and will be out for three more days. Dad has spent the day clearing limbs from the driveway, though it doesn’t look like it, and it’s we still couldn't drive anywhere.

No television. No radio. No heat or hot water. But we had a gas stove, which we huddled around in the kitchen and we had a gas fireplace, which we huddled around in the living room. They decided we should get out the sleeping bags and all sleep on the living room floor. All seven of us.

We were passed the age when that sounded like fun. None of wants to relive the camping days; we like our privacy, our space. But we do. We spread out the brown flannel-lined Sears sleeping bags and grab our pillows from our bed. We have flashlights. We can read. Mom sleeps by the fireplace to keep it going all night.

The dark is deeper than usual. I am awake and it seems like everyone is asleep; I’m not sure. But I can hear them all breathing. We don’t recognize the comfort, but we feel it. This will be the last time we ever gather like this. To sleep in the same room. To wake up together. To weather the storms together.

To the Tea and Cake Served at the Meeting of Heisenberg’s and Himmler’s Mothers

It’s a lot to ask of a brewed beverage, of a layered cake. Especially with sugar so sparse, though money is not really a problem for the Himmel’s, she thinks about it.

You will have to be the reason they come together. You will pace their conversation and soothe the anxiety. They are trying to find peace among their sons and you will be brokering that agreement.

You are served in thin china, rimmed in gold.

Himmler tries to explain. “He was never a very bright child, she says. And always sick. The farm work made him worse. But since his rise in the Nazi Party, he’s found real purpose. He’s hard-headed, yes.”

She takes a sip of tea. Places the cup back on the saucer, *tink.*

“Your son has a lot to lose. And we know he could be teaching in the United States. But he is here. He wants something if he stays.”

She places a piece of cake in front of her guest.

Heisenberg says thank you. She is smaller but more imposing. She knows that when the war ends, her son, if he is still alive, if the Nazi’s have not killed him, will continue his life’s work. Her son? This is all he will ever be.

“What your son needs to understand,” Heisenberg says, “is that we need Werner more than Werner needs us. Yes, he is here. His family is here. His research is here. He wants to stay. Americans find him a novelty and he wants to work without all their questions. He can move at any time. He has offers. And if he does, think of what goes with him.”

By Friedrich Hund (Friedrich Hund)
[CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Fundamental between a mother and a son is how little they actually know about each other, especially the older they get. The mother sees the boy in the yard, digging into the dirt with a stick. Or the boy at the table with a book. Even though he is a father himself now. Even though he has won awards and become famous. Mothers see the whole life at once, not just the men they are this day.

And the sons don’t know their mothers are having tea.They will never know. They visit their mothers the following Sunday.  They eat cake and pour the tea. Just a simple afternoon in a complicated life. This one place, my mother’s table. So bright. The cake just right. Like always.

To the Tiny Crowd at Lockview Bar on Friday at 3 In the Afternoon

Six people at the bar. All men. Four wearing white t-shirts. They drink leisurely; in the hour I am there, they have one, maybe two beers.

The bartender dries glasses with white towels. She rubs and rubs and I think, surely it’s dry by now. She calls one by his name and makes a joke. Like they do this every Friday.

Who has time on Friday at 3 to drink a beer? Aren’t there kids to pick up? Final reports to make? Isn’t there something broken that needs to be fixed? Right now? This is the hour we wrap up the week, tuck papers into whatever file they belong and clear our workspaces for next week.

Granted, I am here, too. And I study the menu written on the wall-length mirror on the bar and consider a beer myself. I’m not usually a beer drinker, but what with all the local brews on the menu and skinny-jeaned hispter waiter here, a beer seems like the proper choice. Maybe just one to nurse while we plan a presentation. There’s daylight and driving still.

The men at the bar are living a different life, with different time and different rules. Different music. Different work. Different kids. They put on coats and walk out and back into whatever a Friday is.

To My Husband Misunderstanding the Park Ranger

At a nearby nature park, my husband and son have gone to feed the birds. Chickadees fly off nearby pine trees and take a seed from Whit’s hand. Keith watches both Whit and the birds. Whit. The birds. His hand. The bird on his hand. He hopes Whit remembers this.

Keith grew up by the ocean in Half Moon Bay and then on the country roads of southern Michigan. Deer hunting as a kid, the best part was sitting still in the woods, waiting and watching. The rustle of something far off and the sound of it moving closer: deer? racoon? wild turkey?

He never killed one, always missed. The few times he had a shot, he got so scared his arms shook, throwing his aim off. 

When we drive, wherever we drive, he sees them, far off in a small grove. He can count them before I find them. He comes back from a run on the trail, all excited, “I saw three deer!” As a child he played "deer," running through the cornfields behind his house. I think if I tell him I want to paint our house deer brown, he would marry me all over again.

At the park, after the bird feeding, he hears a ranger talking about needing volunteers for deer maintenance and thinks, “Finally!” He imagines walking out with buckets of water for them on dry summer days, maybe leaving corn cobs out in the winter. Maybe one will recognize him over time, approach him. He can’t touch it, but it doesn’t run. The deer will be as much a pet as a wild animal should be. He wants in.

So he asks the ranger and the ranger explains that twice a year they find volunteers who help with--he pauses as he sees Whit there--”herd control.” Slowly, slowly Keith realizes what “maintenance” means, what “control” means. It is the complete and exact opposite of what they should mean. He feels sick and that he misunderstood and that somewhere, volunteers are applying to come into the park, shotguns at the ready. 

I want to live in his world. Where we feed animals from the palm our hands. Where we feel responsible. Where we hold ourselves still in hopes the beautiful appears. The world where that never grows old.

To Deer in the City

 I’m running down a street one neighborhood over and out of a clump of bushes near the sidewalk, a little brown head pokes out. A dog? Long nose, brown face. And then, a silent woosh of the branches and you step out. You’re young, maybe a few months old. You’re not wobbly anymore, but you lack the grace of a full grown deer. You don’t see me as you bolt across the street.

"Rothirsch Spießer Auge 2007-08-16 131" by BS Thurner Hof - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rothirsch_Spie%C3%9Fer_Auge_2007-08-16_131.jpg#/media/File:Rothirsch_Spie%C3%9Fer_Auge_2007-08-16_131.jpg

Another deer, an adult this time, breaks out and follows you. And another and another. All together, five deer running across the street and between the houses. A couple seem to see me and zig zag a bit, dart away faster. They follow you through 4 yards, past newly trimmed lawn edges and sculpted shrubs. Neat rows of impatiens. Tightly coiled hoses in the corner of the yard. SUV’s parked in the driveways. So civilized.

You lead them to the end of the street, where a large grove of new growth oak trees forms a fence for a shallow ravine. You break away down towards the water, meager and dark as it is. One by one, the others tuck themselves in behind you. I run past after you and even though I stop, I can’t see you anymore. I hear the traffic on Merriman, one street over.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zombieite/15256628308/

Though I was alone, I didn’t feel alone until you vanished. The way silence, broken by a bell or a boom, is stronger when the sound stops. A void, filled and then emptied, seems larger. I miss the wild in me.

To Weeds, Especially Creeping Charlie

If it were up to me, we would just admire your tiny beauty and let you be. But Chuck, across the street, has issues. One summer, he spent his afternoons sitting on the ground in his front yard, jeans and golf shirt, digging root after root out out from between the blades of grass. He would spend days in one spot until there was nothing but grass growing. You had been removed, like drunk uncles at Christmas who sprawl out on the couch and demand more Cheez-its. Chuck kicked you out.

Source: This photography was created by Artem Topchiy (user Art-top).

And I imagine it takes just one or two of your flowers to blow across the street to start the invasion all over again, and though he would never blame me out loud, he’ll mention it. Often. And Chuck has better things to do. The dog needs training. The roof is dirty. The fence is starting to lean, a clear 93 degree angle by now.

If someone had not told me that you were a weed, I would have never thought to get rid of you. Your equally horizontal and vertical growth, the smash of blue flowers against the circle green leaves, your rapid ease growth on any terrain. You are the perfect plant for a gardener like me. I can sit in my folding chair with my book and my iPad, writing all afternoon, tending to nothing but my own wordiness, pulling out the “very’s” and the “really’s.”

By John Liu [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

So we do it for the neighbors. Creeping Charlie for Chuck, the thistle for Steve, the dandelions for Wayne. We do our best the keep the wild within our borders so that neighbors continue to wave to us when we walk the dogs. We recognize our responsibility to the make the block look decent, keep our property values up. 

But I don’t really understand it. I make a wish. Blow.

To Speaking Out

We preach it to our kids: if you see someone getting hurt or bullied, say something. Tell an adult. Speak up. Speak up for someone who can’t speak up. Do the right thing.

We know they don’t. We know they see it every day: the shove on the bus, one kid gets called “fag” in the hallway. No one sits with that kid at lunch. Her jeans don’t fit her right and she wears her ponytail just a little too far to one side. Be the nice kid, we say. Be a friend, make a friend.

Credit: Dreamstime

I see it every day, too. I tell myself I’m picking my battles, that adults are different, that our choices and behaviors are not like the children. I weigh it against upsetting a colleague, against my job, against what I think my reputation is.

But sometimes, I am just stunned.

I’m working with a woman and some volunteers on a church project. The woman turns to me, concerned. Our volunteers are all Black and we have offered them the leftover snacks to take home. She suggests I walk out with them, so no one thinks they are stealing. She whispers this to me.

Source: "WaterstriderEnWiki" by PD - Wikipedia english.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
WaterstriderEnWiki.jpg#/media/File:WaterstriderEnWiki.jpg

I feel broken. Stupid. Angry. Small. I cannot even think of what to say; I brush it off, “Oh, it’s just the snacks. It’s ok.” To speak up, I would have to have words. I would have to, in that split second, be able to frame it. I feel 12, in the lunch room, the loner is sitting alone and I know it’s wrong. The tensions hold us all on the surface, waiting for one small move.

To The Little Red Pocket Calendar I Buy at Walgreen’s Every Year

I try every year to resist, to use the technology I already have: my computer, my phone, but they just don’t work.

You lay it all out. One week per open page. Saturday and Sunday fitting into one square. Lined boxes so I can write “Dentist” on a Tuesday, “English Meeting” on Wed.

The beauty of you is that I can open up to any week and see it: Monday is at the top of the page, Thurs day at the top of the next page. No other week except the one I am looking at. This is as fast as I want to live my life.

The others give me more than I want to know. And they list it. And I have to sync them all. And if I am on the phone with the doctor’s office, I have to pull the phone away and use the speaker to get to the calendar because she might say any day in the next 4 months. I hate speaker. You, I simply have on the desk. I thumb through. Thursday the 27th? Yes, that will work.

And on December 31, I file you away. Another year completed. One more down. Maybe this year I will go paperless.

No, no I won’t.

To the Russians Who Follow This Blog

It appears there are about 5 of you who, on any given day, read these letters. I have readers in other countries, too, but I have some idea who they might be or how they might have discovered my blog. Those are kind of a Kevin Bacon, six degrees thing. If you’re not sure what that is, google it. We measure our connections to each other in the world by Bacon.

St. Basil's, Moscow

But Russia? I have no ties, nor ties to ties, that I know of, so I have a lot of questions. How did you find this? Many of our workplaces have strict policies about using the computers at work and the Internet for personal, and I wonder if you broke the policy, bored one day at lunch and after following a few links, found this. Do you have to worry your boss will find out? Do you have to erase all the cookies and history before you leave for the day? Do you all know each other, sit next to each other, complain about your workday the way I used to when I worked in an office? Do you email links or just crowd around one computer and read out loud?

Second, are you Russians or American ex-pats? Are you looking for glimpses of a country you’ve never been to or a country you left behind? Do these letters shed light on who we are and remind you either why you stay there or why you left here? Does it make you miss a home you never had or one you did? Or do you just feel relieved?

Finally, where in Russia are you? Moscow? St. Petersburg? One of the big cities all of us in the US have heard of? Like the way you know New York and Los Angeles? Maybe Dallas?

Coat of Arms for the City of Nalchik

Or are you in Nalchik? It's about the size of Akron. Horseshoe shaped around mountains. Are you professors or students at the local university? Do you teach writing? Do you wonder what happened to the attention spans of the kids? Do you like their music? Do you go home, like I have done, to the Dostoevsky or the Chekhov on your bookshelves? Do you wonder what you will write today? If there is anything left in this world to say?