plagues—a travail so repeated without manumission that it becomes its own
travail, and so the tradition is earned.
But instead of explaining all that, I said, “I’m treating
life like a book—like I’m the hero of my own life.”
“A book you’re living, not writing?” Aar had never
been so direct.
I’m not sure it’s good writing to say what my reaction
was—it was bad.
I don’t want to continue with that meeting—but then neither
do I want to have to prose just one of our regular meetings: who’d you fuck, who
do you want to fuck, Achsa’s college application essay he wanted my read on (How
I Dealt With My Grief), remember that guy who tried tosell Miriam
his father’s library comprised entirely of a single book the father had published
about how to make rocks talk on Wall Street—the father had bought enough copies
to make it a bestseller and put him on the lecture circuit, when he died his son found
pallets of the stuff, books still wrapped, in a vault registered to the father in
Secaucus. Or that other guy who’d tried to sell some other inherited junk: a raft
of detectives, Westerns, that tatty crap by two nobodies named Thoreau and Emerson
(first editions).
Or the way Miriam would pick her nose and silently fart at the register or
if the fart refused to be silent how she’d slam the register drawer.
The scarves she always wore.
Let this meeting be as cryptic—as
representative/nonrepresentative—as the Arameans, a people that never had a land
of their own but still managed to leave behind their language—the only thing they
left behind, their language. Aramaic.
Ha lachma anya
. This is the bread of
affliction.
Eli Eli lama shavaktani?
Father, Father, why didn’t Christ
quote the Psalms in Hebrew—was he that inept, or does excruciation always call
for the vernacular?
Aar would pay, and would say as he said every time: “I never gave
you anything for your funeral.”
He’d pay in cash—“My condolences on your continued
nuptials,” and I’d slap down Rach’s card, and he’d put his
hand atop mine and hold it, palm on palm on Visa and say, as if conspiring, as if
pledging undying service, “Cash only.”
Always has been. Always will be.
Then I’d walk him to Lexington—leave him by the 4 train, or
the M102 bus, and walk quickly, quickly, toward the museums, and don’t turn
around, don’t judge him for never waiting or descending, rather striding to the
curb to flag down a ride.
\
That was the last we’d intersected before the
spring—I’ll have to check the contract: 4/29/2011. I’d been
sleeping—how to put this? where? I could say it was a time apart thing suggested
by Dr. Meany, I could say I’d been sent back to Ridgewood for a spell due to a
Bible-sized, though,given our history, more than passoverable,
argument dating from Pesach, which was the most amount of time Rach and I had spent
together in a while. After the seder at her mother’s, we drove to mine’s,
and stopping at a backroad farmer’s market had bought a tree and given it to my
mother who’d wondered aloud, who spends money on a tree? and then criticized the
pot and Rach had taken that as a snub and refused to stay over and yelled at me all the
drive back and yet all had been forgotten until we received in the mail a thank you note
Rach took as begrudging—though that’s just what Rach would’ve done,
sent a belated thank you with gritted teeth—enclosing a photo of a fresh pot
thrown as criticism.
I could say it was a disagreement over how I’d acted at Dr.
Meany’s, refusing to talk about “trust as fatherhood/fatherhood as
trust,” instead ranting about Jung, Lacan, hypergamy/hypogamy,
gigantonomy/leucippotomy, modern male childhood as berdachism, modern male parenthood as
couvade, or over how I’d acted at her mother’s house when the woman, who
knew everything/thought she did, told me to
travail, and so the tradition is earned.
But instead of explaining all that, I said, “I’m treating
life like a book—like I’m the hero of my own life.”
“A book you’re living, not writing?” Aar had never
been so direct.
I’m not sure it’s good writing to say what my reaction
was—it was bad.
I don’t want to continue with that meeting—but then neither
do I want to have to prose just one of our regular meetings: who’d you fuck, who
do you want to fuck, Achsa’s college application essay he wanted my read on (How
I Dealt With My Grief), remember that guy who tried tosell Miriam
his father’s library comprised entirely of a single book the father had published
about how to make rocks talk on Wall Street—the father had bought enough copies
to make it a bestseller and put him on the lecture circuit, when he died his son found
pallets of the stuff, books still wrapped, in a vault registered to the father in
Secaucus. Or that other guy who’d tried to sell some other inherited junk: a raft
of detectives, Westerns, that tatty crap by two nobodies named Thoreau and Emerson
(first editions).
Or the way Miriam would pick her nose and silently fart at the register or
if the fart refused to be silent how she’d slam the register drawer.
The scarves she always wore.
Let this meeting be as cryptic—as
representative/nonrepresentative—as the Arameans, a people that never had a land
of their own but still managed to leave behind their language—the only thing they
left behind, their language. Aramaic.
Ha lachma anya
. This is the bread of
affliction.
Eli Eli lama shavaktani?
Father, Father, why didn’t Christ
quote the Psalms in Hebrew—was he that inept, or does excruciation always call
for the vernacular?
Aar would pay, and would say as he said every time: “I never gave
you anything for your funeral.”
He’d pay in cash—“My condolences on your continued
nuptials,” and I’d slap down Rach’s card, and he’d put his
hand atop mine and hold it, palm on palm on Visa and say, as if conspiring, as if
pledging undying service, “Cash only.”
Always has been. Always will be.
Then I’d walk him to Lexington—leave him by the 4 train, or
the M102 bus, and walk quickly, quickly, toward the museums, and don’t turn
around, don’t judge him for never waiting or descending, rather striding to the
curb to flag down a ride.
\
That was the last we’d intersected before the
spring—I’ll have to check the contract: 4/29/2011. I’d been
sleeping—how to put this? where? I could say it was a time apart thing suggested
by Dr. Meany, I could say I’d been sent back to Ridgewood for a spell due to a
Bible-sized, though,given our history, more than passoverable,
argument dating from Pesach, which was the most amount of time Rach and I had spent
together in a while. After the seder at her mother’s, we drove to mine’s,
and stopping at a backroad farmer’s market had bought a tree and given it to my
mother who’d wondered aloud, who spends money on a tree? and then criticized the
pot and Rach had taken that as a snub and refused to stay over and yelled at me all the
drive back and yet all had been forgotten until we received in the mail a thank you note
Rach took as begrudging—though that’s just what Rach would’ve done,
sent a belated thank you with gritted teeth—enclosing a photo of a fresh pot
thrown as criticism.
I could say it was a disagreement over how I’d acted at Dr.
Meany’s, refusing to talk about “trust as fatherhood/fatherhood as
trust,” instead ranting about Jung, Lacan, hypergamy/hypogamy,
gigantonomy/leucippotomy, modern male childhood as berdachism, modern male parenthood as
couvade, or over how I’d acted at her mother’s house when the woman, who
knew everything/thought she did, told me to
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