The line moved quickly this morning, still dark before sunrise. One man greeted another man in front of me and told him, “I thought I’d find you here,” which I thought was a reassuring thing to say.
Last night, we took the kids to see a free jazz party band from New Orleans. Or a “free jazz party band.” The phrase is always snug between quotation marks in descriptions of the band, but I can’t tell whether that’s because it’s what someone else called them or it’s what they call themselves but they think it’s funny. They’re called Basher. The performance was fantastic. I felt groovy in that old familiar unfamiliar, like an electric blanket gifted me by aliens. Our kids were the only kids there and they sat in the front row and bedtime came and went and they were utterly enthralled. You just never know.
Recently, we read Lorrie Moore’s “How” in the undergraduate fiction writing class I’m teaching. A mustachioed baseball player raised his hand first in our discussion and said, “I have a question—so, is this story hypothetical?”
I felt very satisfied.
“Isn’t all fiction hypothetical when you really think about it?” I asked him, I couldn’t help myself. And I have to say, he smiled in gradual agreement. He looked very satisfied, too.
Both before and after October 31, my son has been announcing what he wants to be for Halloween, a constantly moving target. My wife made him a very impressive robot costume upon his request, but when it came time for trick or treating, he switched gears and had a temper tantrum because he wanted to be a “lawnmower man.” Eventually he agreed to be a bat. For the last few days, he’s been saying he wants to be “your worst nightmare.”
Last night I diligently researched the race for Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisors. It was all very confusing, with two incumbents on the ballot and five more waging write-in campaigns, all for four slots. Some outsider kooks were involved. But then maybe it also seemed like old-money horse farm interests were involved in ways I didn’t understand. One candidate was a landlord who looked like he was twelve years old. He noted in his candidate statement that he didn’t have a car. At a certain point in the research rabbit hole, it became pretty obvious which four candidates had experience and knew the ropes. But I did not trust them. It seemed there was funny business with the horses. I did not know. I do not know. I abstained. With honor I thought. What I mean is that I felt satisfied that my abstention was well-earned. That corner of my ballot was blank, but the unfilled circles were bulwarked by labor and duty. I patted myself on the back. Diligence is its own comfort, even (or especially) when its sole reward is nothing at all.
The kids are off for the holiday today. Today, like every day, the future is hypothetical.
My son’s favorite part of the Basher performance was the drums. My daughter’s was the synthesizer player, who fiddled with the wires with great urgency. She enjoyed most, but not all, of the bleeps and bloops.
Last weekend, we took a family camping trip to an area near the Red River Gorge. It was very cold in the evenings, so we snuggled close together in the tent, to catch each other’s warmth. It felt a little bit like that sitting together on the floor last night, listening to Basher, my son drumming on his sister’s knee, all four of our bodies huddled together in the bleeps and bloops. The saxophonist did saxophonist things. Every note was hypothetical until it became actual. Our bodies did their body things. It was like a sleeping bag we shared. It was a free jazz party. It might get late, too dark, too cold. It might. And so we hold each other close.
I like this kind of writing. A little portrait of A and B and C and then how A B C talk to each other. It is good to have those times of discovery with kids, lets us re-discover that wonder. love ya!