Lido Beach

I love that all endings are bad.

Life

The sun is rising on a warm day in Hudson. This weekend, Richard and I will host six writers at our house for Art Lab #2, an experiment in writing together and eating together and talking together in pinball fashion, and creating a group shape that can exist only one time. The builders who’ve been working on our house have cleared their stuff to make the grounds look inviting. On Monday, new gutters will be installed. On Sunday, we’ll vote early on State Street.

In response to learning that Harvey Weinstein has bone cancer, yesterday on Facebook the director Paul Schrader wrote: “Harvey has felt the hard hammer of changing times. That is true. But one should also bear in mind when he was young and rising in the industry such conduct was considered a perk of movie power. The rules were changed and he was left standing with his pants at his knees saying ‘What happened?’"

I wrote to Paul: “Yes, in the days before “times changed,” women enjoyed rape and blackmail, and then they all got together and said maybe not so much anymore, and any compassionate person can sympathize with the confusion men still must be feeling.”

A story

A woman adopts a cat when she lives in Boston. She moves to California and gives the cat to her mother. The mother says she hates the cat. She says the cat is ruining her life. She can't go anywhere. She cooks fish for the cat every day. She says to the father the cat is only interested in her. The mother visits the daughter in California and leaves the cat with the father. While she’s away, the cat gets into a fight and the vet bill is huge. The mother asks the father why, when he had the chance, he didn't let the cat die. Years pass. The mother visits California again, and again in her absence the cat is injured and this time it dies. When the mother returns, she doesn't know if the cat died of its injuries or if the father had it killed by the vet. The mother calls the father a murderer. The mother mourns the cat. She wears black. She says the cat was her life. Years pass. The cat is still all she can talk about. The mother's sister stops coming to her house.

Life

How can you tell the difference between Laurie and Richard. Laurie spent a week milking her birthday for all she could squeeze out of it. For his birthday, Richard scheduled an appointment to have a wisdom tooth extracted.

A story

When you are shot, time opens up like one of those corridors in dreams about discovering extra rooms in the house where you’ve always lived. There’s time to note how long it takes for blood to move from the entry wound to the floor and to observe how quickly it pools. The speed with which blood is only too happy to leave your body gets you up and searching for a belt.

Life

Today in his post on Substack, Robert Reich says surely, surely, the reason Trump is tied with Harris in many swing states can’t be hatred of women and hatred of people of color. He simply “refuses to believe” it. There must be a more important and less sissy reason for the cockup in his world.

A story

Linda and I play on the dunes in Long Beach. Where she lives it’s Lido Beach, and that’s where we go every day after school. Tall beach grass with tassels at the top we call “golden grain heads” grows on the dunes. I smell the salt air. I hear the water pausing with an intake of breath before crashing to shore. The gulls are squawking to each other, “Look, at that fish!” And, “Isn’t flying the best?” Colored beach glass and chewed fish are left in a line at high tide. When snow falls, the white of the snow is the white of the sand is the white of the foam. Linda’s dog isn’t on a leash, and she doesn’t run off. I am Linda’s dog. There are no other children when we walk. Later there will be boys on a black jetty that cuts into the ocean and soaks your clothes. Linda teaches me chess. She can kick a ball harder and farther than any girl at school. I’m one of the captains of the kickball teams, and I always chose Linda first. Everyone expects it. I live at Linda’s house as much as I can. It doesn’t cross my mind my mother notices or cares. Are some people born wanting what they want?

Life

Get born. Find out you are a girl. Get treated as the girl. Think to yourself hey wait a minute that’s a load of shit. Find other girls who are exactly like you. Make your life meaningful because even if you do nothing else that dents any of this, you never shut up about treating girls as if they are the girl. You never shut up about people cutting up the bodies of girls because they are girls. You are angry all the time because mostly no one cares. You tell yourself you can’t go through life angry because everyone says anger is a stupid emotion and you don’t get invited out that much. Get older and get treated as the girl who is old. Never shut up about what a load of shit that is.

A story

In May, we went to buy a cantaloup to catch the groundhog. There was one cantaloupe at the market that was small, shriveled, and hard. It had no smell. It was a dead cantaloup. No one in their right mind would buy this cantaloup for $5, not even a groundhog.

If you have never lived with a groundhog, you might find them appealing sorts of rodents to look at. They have fur and rodent intelligence. When they look at you, you can see them scheming, and in that rodent, calculating face, you might catch something of your own calculating primate face. Seventy-five million years ago, humans and mice shared a common ancestor. I can see him, slinking along the maze of mammalian forking paths, carefully deliberating whether to turn to the east or turn to the west, like the scene in the Bob Hope movie, where he’s figuring out how to face a notorious gun slinger coming for him.

We left the market without the cantaloup, filled with grief for the plants the groundhog would eat. Our groundhog is male and a loner. In reality, we have no idea what sex our groundhog is and if there is only one. There are probably many clones of the groundhog, able to identify each other by the colorful bandanas they wear around their necks. The other day on Facebook, a renowned lover of animals said he had come to loathe the groundhog that was eating his flowers and vegetables. If he can hate this animal, who am I to rein myself in.

I don’t want to be kind to the ground hog. I don’t want to hurt him, either, but I wouldn’t be sad if, for example, two burly men in leather coats surrounded him, loaded him into a car, and drove him to New Jersey. Richard told me he read an article about moving ground hogs. He said they become confused and die. He found this disturbing. I could live with it, although I wouldn’t want to think about it too often, the groundhog wondering where he was, becoming a Beckett character like the rest of us, searching for home until it gave up all hope of a better tomorrow.

Life

I am eating string beans. A story does not end because all that can be said has been said. You are the birdsong you heard this morning. You are your face in sleep. You are your bookcase. You are the way you lick the bowl and the way you hold out your hand for a dog to sniff. I remember the girls who were training to be figure skaters at the rink in Long Beach. I remember the haughty way they moved on and off the ice. I remember learning a few of their moves. They must have taught me. They must have been friendly sometimes. I like what it’s possible to learn only through extreme emotions that look comical in retrospect. People tend to be more open when they’re happier. What do I mean by “open?” I love trees in winter with their naked branches set against a milky sky. I love that all endings are bad. I love when the fields are covered with snow and then it melts in the sun. The same can be said of the past.

You are your face in bed.

I love you, readers.

A minute ago, a friend wrote to tell me she’s being ghosted by a friend and the pain of this for her. Let’s hold each other before one of us becomes a ghost. If you become a ghost, please haunt me.

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