XX Observations About Life Now

1. When I walk around my city, I'm secretly worried about terrorist attacks. All the time, I eyeball every threat suspiciously. Each random overstuffed plastic bag, every open grate venting subway heat, everything makes me think of the devastating explosion that could follow. I think about how easy it would be to completely terrorize this city if half a crazy really put his mind to it. The special effects in my secret worst-nightmares are incredible. I'm stepping on the concrete between two grates when the explosion hits and shielded from the heat and force of the blast. I'm rounding the corner of the next building when the dingy Toyota I've seen circling the block detonates its charge. Time passes between bouts of hysteria and these thoughts subside. Then some crackpots get about a quarter of the way down the road to pulling off a scheme, and it all comes rushing back. ¶ The worst thing about these imaginings is that I feel a vertiginous pull toward the aftermath. In all these strange little imaginings, I narrowly avoid disaster, and by surviving, I am a suspect, and as I peek down that rabbit hole, my life is destroyed, and I wish that the explosion took me instead.

2. Keen focus on mortality, if kept in reasonable check, can be a useful thing. It's this focus that makes people go to the gym, run marathons, eat diets free of carbohydrates, wear seatbelts. I ride a bike, based on my physician's insistence that I will eventually die if I don't do something other than leisurely stroll from the train to the office and call it 'walking a mile.' I zigzag around the streets like the worst courier in America, collecting sneers from cabbies and the obvious derision of other people on bikes, and putting myself into stupid positions like being caught heading the wrong way down a one-way street with a high sidewalk and no curbcut, thus having to stop completely and awkwardly crab-walk my bike over the giant curb. ¶ The other day, the forecast was miserable, so I took the train to the office. I was again leisurely strolling to the train station, but now feeling like a tourist because normally, I'm telling myself, I ride my bike. At one intersection, someone is jogging and is caught by the red light. They jog in place, huffing, to keep their wind up. The light turns and we all step off the curb, and the jogger breaks from the pack and heads up the hill. Bad red light timing reunites us all at the next intersection. In my head, despite my blatant bicycle amateurism, I ask, "How fucking inefficient is jogging?"

3. The power went off hours after a recent lightning storm. Throughout the low-cloud lightshow, our electricity held steady, with nary a flicker. The post-storm humidity is insufferable, and the house is locked up tight so all the air conditioners can perform at their peak efficiency. My wife is upstairs asleep, as are my children and dog. I'm brushing my teeth, and everything goes black. ¶ I spit. I wait for my eyes to adjust, but there is simply no light. There is also the eerie sensation of hearing no sound; eerie because our home is normally host even in quiet times to the constant thrum of fans, air conditioners and dehumidifyers. They are all silent. Nobody moves. Nobody else in the house even knows the power is out. I follow the walls to get candles, matches, flashlights. My dog tragically walks down the pitch-dark hallway and slips on the top step, roll-falling down the entire staircase, kicking up a spectacular racket. I recognize immediately that it could be no one falling down the stairs but our dog. If someone stopped me on the street and described the situation and then said, "Then you hear something falling down the stairs," my response each time would be, "That's going to be the dog." ¶ The dog is stunned and sits at the landing at the bottom of the stairs. I've gassed the first floor of the house with a strange mixture of musk and vanilla, since the only candles we have are a mismatched passel of scented candles. I arrive at the landing to make sure the dog hasn't broken a bone, and the warm teaberry and vanilla aroma rushes up behind me like a vampire's cape. The dog raises her nose to the scent, sniffs a second time, then exhales gruffly, simulating a derisive snort. I have no response. ¶ Everything is electric now. The phone doesn't work, nothing works. I find my cell in the dark and call the power company. The touch-tone response system is metallic sounding, and the long pause to 'research my report' leads me to believe that either I have beat my neighbors to reporting our outage (the entire street and houses behind ours are similarly dark), or something more sinister and ominous is afoot. The voice chirps that I have reported a new outage, it is being investigated and there is no timeline for repair. The line goes dead, and as I stare at the words "Ended" on my phone's screen, the silence makes me feel for a candid moment like I'm the last man on earth.

poetry, pre-wifey

i write a poem for them, and they
say aww, that’s so sweet. what made you
think of that?
but that’s the wrong response.
not the one I was looking for.
i shrug and play humble like it’s a member of the woodwinds.

awkward silence now spins me around,
slaps me on my ass,
and sends me forthwith.
my heart topples like a redwood in the most guilt-
arousing deforestation documentary ever.
a systematic voice yells timmberr.