Today's writing

My father was twenty-seven when I was born; my mother was twenty-four. They’d been trying to conceive for three years, so even my rotten math leads me to believe they were hellaciously young when they first started. Looking at pictures of them from that time makes me wonder what the fuck? Why did you bother? They had smiles set in concrete, eyebrows that confided worries. Nothing about this wooden couple spelled parental desire. 

“It was your father’s idea,” my mother once told me, mouth working around a lit cigarette. She thought she hid the habit from my father, as if he couldn’t smell the secondhand smoke, see the nicotine stains that dotted the walls. “I don’t want you to take that the wrong way. I don’t mind having kids. You can be useful. You can sometimes be fun. But I wanted to – I don’t know, go to India or something.” 

When I pointed out that she still could do it, she shook her head. 

“You know, you go from Point A to Point B, and it cuts off options.” 

“You’re saying because you had us, you now can’t travel?” 

“I lost my touch,” she said, and locked down her lips.

We watch the momentum. We watch the activity of mind from the stillness of being. ... The stillness emerges as a function of nonentanglement. - Will Kabat-Zinn

Unreal

I haven't commented much on the world situation because what the fuck can I say that hasn't already been said? I'm fucking scared. I was talking to Adam about it this morning and he kind of shrugged. "We're fine," he said.

Really? Are we?

Giddyap!

 

Today's writing

Instead, there’s an email from my father: YOUR GRANDFATHER DIED. No preamble there, just straight-up news. I can’t even say bad news, because I never much liked my Grandpa Sam. I was 18 the last time I saw him and he greeted me with: “What are you now, 12?” It was no joke either. Unlike my Grandpa Bernie, who I adored, Sam’s sarcasm was more biting than amusing, more focused than funny. When I was 15 we bought an ancient Mercedes-Benz 240D, which lived on diesel and featured cracked fake-leather seats. When Sam saw it, he said: “Jesus Christ. You’re sitting on your ancestors.” Way to use our heritage against us, Gramps.

Today's writing

Outside my window is the stuff of any train station across the country, around the world, except one exception: the woman holding her child so she can pee in the street. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen at home, in other places, but here’s the difference from what I can see: there’s a sullen fuck-you about the action, something that transcends the nonchalance you might see elsewhere. I’ve seen that in the eyes of the Czechs too. It’s a certain burning brazenness that exists underneath the casual disdain for everything within sight. I understand it with the sliver of comprehension I have at this point in my life, the little I can relate to a formerly Communist country. 

 Me? I was born and raised in a firmly Democratic, capitalist society. We don’t worry about coups; we don’t fear getting rolled by tanks. We say what we think and do as we do. That’s why we stand out so much around the world, especially in a place like the Czech Republic. People here walk fast and talk low; it is as if a veil has dropped and is taking its time to rise. 

The exception? My students.

Baz's publishing party at school