something that seems to swim up from inside and wrench her back into hell.
But itâs okay , she said. Iâm working on it. Okay, so the therapist wasnât really that helpful, because you know talking doesnât do much. And the chiropractor was sort of a joke, but the massages can be good, and sometimes the acupuncture. For a bit. Donât get me started on herbalists. I canât believe Iâve become a person who does all this stuff. I never used to be this skinny. Look at me! But anyway, thereâs an energy therapist, thatâs where Iâm going now. Heâs supposed to pull energy away from the pain or something. Also the hot tub can be helpful. And the pool . . . Well, the pool. Weâre lucky to live here, you know. Itâs paradise, right, she said, and shrugged, and bent herself into her car.
B ONE TISSUE = calcium phosphate + collagen . Makes bone rigid, like coral. Calcium phosphate is not organic, unlike calcium carbonate (of limestone, cement, and concrete), which is.
Itâs getting clear that Iâve been wrong about N and her husband, their being Want and Want Nothing. When she gets up, agitated, from a lounge chair and stalks over the cracked pool deck, her bone fingers clutching her riddled back, from beneath the brim of his baseball cap, her husbandâs eyes keep watch. They turn to his paper only when she looks back.
O N THE CAUSEWAY this evening, across the road from the silhouetted duck was a silhouetted iguana. Iguana gazing pensively south. Gazing north, the duck.
And suddenly I saw a painting in the dusky air: An annunciation angel floats on one side of a column, a virgin sits amazed on the other. Between them, a beam of light.
I bring you a message from our lord! says the angel .
Messages, messages. Faraway men.
Blue-ink letters from the other side of the world.
Messages now are blue light.
Farther along, on Rivo Alto, a hen and five long-legged chicks jerked and clucked over the lawn of a palace, then rushed flapping across the street, making a Maserati swerve.
The sky just then: coral dunes.
Dancing light-girl on the west side of the bay; her mate, the huge clock on the east. The clock can be the angel here, delivering his message.
Guess what , the angel clockâs saying. Itâs time .
THREE
S MITH & WOLLENSKY : a fancy restaurant at the south tip of the Beach, with a bar out by the water that rushes through the Government Cut. Cruise ships pass on their way to sea, making the atmosphere festive. I perched on a stool, sipped a French 75, and spun around now and then to watch spangled chunks of city float by, miniature people waving. Bar-mates: two couples, a young trio, and a man on his own. I texted K that I was on a stool in public with waxed legs and candy-floss hair, solo man not distant. He ordered a rye and likewise cast his eye around, a glance that flicked on me, but passed; he focused on his rye and phone. Maybe Latin, maybe Anglo, but mostly not one of the deadbeats I know and thus cento per cento implausible.
Imagine an alien face drawing near.
I donât know how people do it.
When I was fifteen, the idea of a boyâs face coming so close that it would dissolve in my vision made me panic. Like Zenoâs arrow: for another body to get that close, it must not only blur but melt into me, and this was so paralyzing Iâd laugh and bolt.
Was thinking this as I pondered the cheekbones of the Smith & Wollensky man. They glowed from his cell, and occasionally he smiled at the glow, looked up as if the phone-person were there, then shuttered again, dropped screenward.
Sipped and turned slowly around and around on the stool. After a while I wiggled off and walked to where the coral-rock path meets boulders that hold back the rushing water, and stared at ugly Fisher Island, and out to the black, black sea.
Thatâs once , wrote K.
⢠⢠â¢
Two days later. Will do it three times because three points confirm
But itâs okay , she said. Iâm working on it. Okay, so the therapist wasnât really that helpful, because you know talking doesnât do much. And the chiropractor was sort of a joke, but the massages can be good, and sometimes the acupuncture. For a bit. Donât get me started on herbalists. I canât believe Iâve become a person who does all this stuff. I never used to be this skinny. Look at me! But anyway, thereâs an energy therapist, thatâs where Iâm going now. Heâs supposed to pull energy away from the pain or something. Also the hot tub can be helpful. And the pool . . . Well, the pool. Weâre lucky to live here, you know. Itâs paradise, right, she said, and shrugged, and bent herself into her car.
B ONE TISSUE = calcium phosphate + collagen . Makes bone rigid, like coral. Calcium phosphate is not organic, unlike calcium carbonate (of limestone, cement, and concrete), which is.
Itâs getting clear that Iâve been wrong about N and her husband, their being Want and Want Nothing. When she gets up, agitated, from a lounge chair and stalks over the cracked pool deck, her bone fingers clutching her riddled back, from beneath the brim of his baseball cap, her husbandâs eyes keep watch. They turn to his paper only when she looks back.
O N THE CAUSEWAY this evening, across the road from the silhouetted duck was a silhouetted iguana. Iguana gazing pensively south. Gazing north, the duck.
And suddenly I saw a painting in the dusky air: An annunciation angel floats on one side of a column, a virgin sits amazed on the other. Between them, a beam of light.
I bring you a message from our lord! says the angel .
Messages, messages. Faraway men.
Blue-ink letters from the other side of the world.
Messages now are blue light.
Farther along, on Rivo Alto, a hen and five long-legged chicks jerked and clucked over the lawn of a palace, then rushed flapping across the street, making a Maserati swerve.
The sky just then: coral dunes.
Dancing light-girl on the west side of the bay; her mate, the huge clock on the east. The clock can be the angel here, delivering his message.
Guess what , the angel clockâs saying. Itâs time .
THREE
S MITH & WOLLENSKY : a fancy restaurant at the south tip of the Beach, with a bar out by the water that rushes through the Government Cut. Cruise ships pass on their way to sea, making the atmosphere festive. I perched on a stool, sipped a French 75, and spun around now and then to watch spangled chunks of city float by, miniature people waving. Bar-mates: two couples, a young trio, and a man on his own. I texted K that I was on a stool in public with waxed legs and candy-floss hair, solo man not distant. He ordered a rye and likewise cast his eye around, a glance that flicked on me, but passed; he focused on his rye and phone. Maybe Latin, maybe Anglo, but mostly not one of the deadbeats I know and thus cento per cento implausible.
Imagine an alien face drawing near.
I donât know how people do it.
When I was fifteen, the idea of a boyâs face coming so close that it would dissolve in my vision made me panic. Like Zenoâs arrow: for another body to get that close, it must not only blur but melt into me, and this was so paralyzing Iâd laugh and bolt.
Was thinking this as I pondered the cheekbones of the Smith & Wollensky man. They glowed from his cell, and occasionally he smiled at the glow, looked up as if the phone-person were there, then shuttered again, dropped screenward.
Sipped and turned slowly around and around on the stool. After a while I wiggled off and walked to where the coral-rock path meets boulders that hold back the rushing water, and stared at ugly Fisher Island, and out to the black, black sea.
Thatâs once , wrote K.
⢠⢠â¢
Two days later. Will do it three times because three points confirm
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