Two Afternoons

A drive with Richard and a swim with turtles

Richard at ruins in New Mexico a few years ago

Driving South

Yesterday, Richard and I got as far as the Sawmill Parkway when the dentist called to say my appointment had been switched. We pulled off the road. Richard was angry in an interesting way. Anger is not his thing. When he does show an emotion you could take for anger, he calls it something else. He wanted to turn the car around and drive home. There’s a section of the Taconic Parkway we call “the bad lands.” It’s narrow and winding, and there are high stone walls that beg you to smash against them. Richard had just passed through “the bad lands,” and maybe he wanted to get it over with again.

In the car were three pieces of fancy cake we were taking to our friend Diane. We were supposed to see her after the dentist. She was really happy we were coming, and I didn’t want to disappoint her. Richard was all, Great, you’re sacrificing me! I didn’t want to be here in the first place! Why do you need to get your teeth cleaned in New York!

He knows why, and he didn’t care. Why should he care? I pretend I can see things from his perspective although I can’t. Not really. It’s the joyous mystery of life we are locked in our separate little cages of consciousness. I was trying to be unselfish to Diane. I think I was being unselfish to someone.

When I think of people with iron wills, Richard does not come to mind. He loves Diane, so the thing I am telling you has nothing to do with her. When I think about people with iron wills, men and women who didn’t take my wishes into account, I think, just piss off. The way they placed their needs first might remind me of myself, but it doesn’t. I wasn’t bending to them to make them happy. I just wanted them, and I didn’t know what else to do but accept their terms.

As Richard and I waited to hear from Diane—to see if we could come early—he wouldn’t get out of the car. I walked up a little hill. Water was rushing from a reservoir over a ledge of stones. The reservoir was still. The sky was a soft, cool gray, and I thought Richard would have enjoyed this tiny excursion, because as soon as I saw the unexpected tranquility, the mood of the car drained right out of me.

I was impressed by how angry he was acting, especially the freedom he was feeling. It was annoying, but it was freedom. You should have seen his face. Six million years ago, the Little Colorado River met the Colorado River and carved out the Grand Canyon. All the tectonic plates of Richard’s resentments were rushing toward each other like that. Later, back home, he said he was sorry. He looked sort of surprised to have acted the way he did. When he is the one who is worse, there is always the up side it isn’t me.

Diane called us back and said to come. She’d been in the shower. We’d became friends when I was sixteen and she was seventeen, and the other day she was seventy-nine. Richard and I brought her the fancy cakes, and we all ate them with tea. The whole time we were with her, Richard was charming. He was the person who adds to the conversation, and listens, and thinks about what people need. It’s great going anywhere with him. People are relieved I didn’t come alone. He was the Richard he presents to people. By people, I don’t mean me. With me, he can act any way he likes because I love him, and right there is the paradox: the resentment love produces is the resentment canceled by love.

We are all the last of our kind, looked at in a certain way.

One day, I was swept along. The water was rough near the edges, churning and white, and I didn’t think I could resist the current. Then the water subsided, and the streets gleamed. People were eating ice cream, and no one was afraid.

I have gaps in my memory. I remember my childhood room. Everything felt alien. My mother would remove baby rabbits from the mouths of dogs. I remember a man. His hands were wide. He was dark from the sun. I imagined cutting off his calluses as he sat in a tub. I wore sunglasses.

In Florida, I met a man who sold cars. He went fishing and caught an injured sea turtle. He took it to a vet. The turtle healed and grew. The man fell in love and built a compound for sick turtles. Every morning, he brings them lettuce and meat, and he speaks to them tenderly.

Turtles hunt in packs, like wolves, laying low in the water. They surround their prey—an unsuspecting bird, let’s say—then they pounce and pull the bird under and tear it apart. In this sense, a funeral can be a party.

The dinosaurs all died. Even solar systems die, although that’s no excuse for any of us. Turtles have not evolved for 250 million years. Their shells have allowed them to populate almost everywhere in the world. Also, there are limitations to life in a shell. Young turtles need to dig themselves into the sand in order not to fry in the sun. People pretend to like crudité. But if you give them fried calamari, they can be dressed in silk and they will throw back their heads and lick their lips for crumbs and grease.

I smell like I’ve been in a river. More accurately, an estuary. There are tides and a brackish taste for fifty miles. Wittgenstein said that even if we could understand the language of whales, we wouldn’t know what it’s like to be a whale. He might have been talking about lions.

I wish I knew why I was here, although I can’t see what difference it would make. Do you think it’s safer to be alone with your mistakes?

Biz

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I just like this picture

Prompty People

Write a piece in which you start every sentence with “Sometimes.”

Start with a color and go.

An accidental burial.

I’m interested in the way you can make almost anything that happens between two people—or one person alone as they move through an experience—into a scene that can suggest, maybe, all the reader needs to know in order to see the world where the people exist. I often urge writers to try this approach—that is, to go immediately to a scene and not to an understanding or an attempt to summarize an event. Forget the why, and just show what happened and the thoughts and feelings prompted in the moments—as you are writing. This can be almost enough, and maybe almost is more enticing than all that can be known?

Prompt: Take a moment between you and another person and turn it into a scene that radiates off into thoughts and associations that build a world.

The prompts are for your pleasure and to use for your writes. Please don't post your experiments in the comments section below, but feel free to post them in "Notes" on Substack, where people can read them and leave comments. Enjoy!

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