Summer Diary
Summer Diary (2021)
13 July — Brussels
6 AM: mistaking shadows around the house for the cat. Every corner. He’s downstairs with the neighbors. He’ll have a good home there for our month away, but I can’t help but worry.
Finished off a Toblerone some Swiss friends gave me. Been a while. I like how the nougat shards collect/wad up in the mouth. Reminds me of stars joining other stars in a black hole. I don’t like how thin the wrapping foil is. It shreds. I’m afraid I’ll eat some of it.
14 July — airborne
Gum is food you chew but don’t swallow. All the other food you have to swallow. Not all food is gum.
15 July — New Hampshire
Loopy/jetlagged dinner at Mom’s. While we eat caper berries we discuss what a caper berry is and how it differs from a caper. No one comes to blows. Resist the urge to look it up.
I rescue a drowning rabbit from the pool with a decisive flick of the pool brush. This is the brush, mind you, not the net, which would have made it easy. So, you know, I’m a hero.
Rabbit’s so stunned it doesn’t hop away immediately. Fur so heavily wet on the patio stones. I double back and almost get to touch rabbit before rabbit makes the dash.
I’m naked under the covers and drifting off when my sister comes into my room to ask whether I’ll be the baby’s guardian in case of a fatality. I say of course. She rests her belly on the bed when she hugs me.
16 July — New Hampshire
4 AM: see the dawn come in and define the sights of the backyard.
The rabbit’s dead in the pool. Maybe not the same rabbit. Grab rabbit by the foot, walk across the grass and throw rabbit over the brook and into the ferns.
Dew’s sticking the grass to my feet, so I have to return to the pool to dunk them off again. Mom’s floors are looking pristine.
America has cotton candy-flavored grapes now.
20 July — Cape Cod
Out in the surf, mother-in-law finds a branching piece of seaweed with a periwinkle at its center. She brings it up to the beach. What does it remind you of?
Neither L nor I guess correctly, but it’s the logo for the Milwaukee Bucks, who win Game 6 against the Suns that night. After we watched Game 4 or 5, mother-in-law started doing some research and now her knowledge of the NBA probably exceeds mine.
Read this on the beach.
Read this on the Martha’s Vineyard ferry.
25 July — New Hampshire
Mom is pacing and glued to her phone. Waiting for the birth. We marinate two dishes before 7 AM. Hoping my sister isn’t scared.
At the Airfield Cafe Dad explains that attempting to shoot a basket with me last summer was a watershed moment for him. “I just couldn’t do it.”
I’m looking at his belt where, as I’ve often seen him do, he’s looped a ball cap by the strap. The strap is wrapped in factory plastic.
He doesn’t seem to have much to say about the portrait we brought him from Brussels until he brings it into the light — or rather when we’re seated at a table so now the light has found us, which makes me worry there isn’t enough shade for Dad to sit comfortably.
I offer to take the portrait to his truck so we don’t forget it. His truck is still full of fishing gear. We’ve already established he’s not doing much fishing. My eyes fall on two pairs of boots. So when I return to the table I find myself asking whether I can borrow one of the pairs of boots, and of course he’s agreeing, but I’m already feeling a little hesitant about it.
Out in the parking lot he makes me try on the boots. L cops a feel at the toe to see where I’m hitting.
“Don’t do that. You’ll break the toe-box,” says Dad.
It’s funny because they’re a very sturdy pair of boots and also because he says it like like L really should’ve known better. Dad reminds her he sold shoes when he was a teen.
28 July — New Hampshire
Didn’t exactly enjoy my first trip to Whole Foods in over a year. Too much, too soon.
I visited the store with Mom on a mission to gather supplies for the new parents in our family: sister and brother-in-law. They were out of the pretzels my brother-in-law wanted (he’s corresponded with the makers of these pretzels about the quality of their product, usually high, though sometimes a little burnt).
I’d forgotten about the self-congratulatory air. Brands deploy words like ‘honest,’ ‘angel,’ ‘good,’ and ‘halo.’ I see this as signaling not just the virtue but the morality of their products. These philosophical ideas are more than I’m ready to consider today. They put me on edge.
I also notice that the most explicitly religious branding — angel, halo — appears on diet sweets and ice cream. Dieting can supplant the role of religion in some people’s lives. But it saddens me to think that dieters must conflate their own eligibility for heaven with the type of sweets they consume. What a burden they must face every time they uncap an ice cream.
One of my back molars crumbles partly apart in the parking lot. No pain and I don’t tell Mom about it until later.
30 July — New Hampshire
Learned of the death of T, cousin of a very close friend. I first met T on a rainy night in Union Square at a party full of models; T was in a raging mood for some reason but made room in his rage to take note of meeting me and becoming interested in the band I was in at the time (he later came to several shows).
We went outside together and when his umbrella showed some hesitation in opening he smashed it apart against the side of a building. I had just been about to pay him a compliment on this umbrella: it has a magnificently tooled metal handle and must have been very expensive.
Read (and loved) this on the beach.
31 July — New Hampshire
News from the borrowed truck. Deep in the engine, on the battery tray, L and I found the desiccated corpse of a mouse whose scent had pervaded the interior. We had been searching for at least a week.
1 August
Three or four things are going on at once.
Hearings about the 6 January insurrection on TV, testimony from Capitol police officers. They play a body-cam video — some of which I’ve seen before — but today, ‘push, push!’ rhymes in an uncomfortably way with labor, birth, something my sister experienced first-hand earlier this week.
From behind I hear the disco soundtrack of Mom’s water aerobics class (a bassy remix of “Heaven (must be missing an angel)”). Also the encouragements of the instructor: And one, and two, and — good, Linda.
I’ve got my phone in my hand and I’m composing a somewhat businesslike text to R about our proposed hiking trip. Feeling a bit anxious to complete the hut reservation. I’ve already borrowed the boots I need.
Dad calls me back. He was at the library, picking up Power by Bertrand Russel via inter-library loan. He wants L and me to come over and see the portrait L drew of me, now in a frame. First he wants to clarify: “Should I call it a painting? Or a drawing…”
2 August — New Hampshire
Rizla cigarette papers (the ones I buy in Brussels) give an advance warning when there are 10 leaves left. This is courteous. It might be mandated by European law. Yet I find myself appreciating (anew) the American Zig-Zag papers that offer no warning at all that their supply is not infinite. Of course their supply is not infinite. Get wise. Be prepared. Join the Boy Scouts. Buy two packs. Don’t you dare start crying when the good thing suddenly is gone. What did you expect?
3 August — New Hampshire
Somebody’s plastic bag of Cheez-Its is sitting on the sand about fifty yards off my left shoulder. Not sure who owns these Cheez-Its. Seagulls are mobilizing, though. They have a legitimate claim to the Cheez-Its.
A mother and young daughter have packed up the rest of their beach gear and the Cheez-Its are the last thing they have to deal with before they go home. I sense a confrontation in the brewing. The seagulls are already pecking at the plastic bag.
It’s the daughter who isn’t afraid of the seagulls (she looks remarkably like her mother, sturdily built and dark featured) who stoops to pluck the plastic bag out of the sand. She opens it and overturns its contents on the sand. If seagulls had any way of expressing thanks they’d be doing so.
I’m not sure why the girl’s mother came with her.
6 August — New Hampshire
I wrote a poem for the naming of my sister’s daughter. My niece. The printout of the poem traveled around in my pocket for a few days while I thought up alterations and crossouts.
I liked the idea of giving my sister the marked-up copy of the poem; indeed I knew it would take its place in my niece’s baby album. But, the more I thought about it, the more I questioned my role in this situation. I’d become complicit in the construction of my niece’s history and memories.
“Construction” as we, my sister and I, are assembling proof of events the baby experienced but will not remember (in theory we could tell her any lie about the day she was named).
Also the construction of a nostalgic artifact: the baby album. The album is, in a sense, a bridge across time. It is for her, but not yet. And it will be a while before my niece could read, or has the genuine inclination to read, the poem that is meant for her.
I have doubts about what it will mean to her then. What will be her experience of encountering the poem in her baby album? Will I be present in the room?
It may be that the poem is just a signifier that her uncle considered the angles and the truth of how to welcome her to the party. That’s probably not so bad, but…
7 August — Brooklyn
Show up at the old apartment on Union Street. Our former downstairs neighbor and his girlfriend (now his fiancee) have a smoke and chat with us outside for a while.
The rats have gotten worse. The dredging of the Gowanus Canal has taken away a fine home for rats. My former downstairs neighbor has been saving up for his wedding by flipping Pokemon cards and investing on Robin Hood. As the conversation moves into investment tips, I grow distracted: across the street is a missing person flyer; at this distance the person pictured bears some resemblance to me.
“We only left the screen window open the once and the rats chewed through it.”
I’m thinking I have to move the car to respect alternate side parking regulations. There’s a woman in a yellow windbreaker sitting in a chair next to it. “You better look under that hood. The rats get in there.” It takes me a minute to find the hood release, even though I used to own this car; I sold it to J last year but he’s lent it back to me.
“I found chicken bones, shrimp…” The woman in the yellow windbreaker gets up to help me look in the engine for rats. We notice that J’s already put some green blocks of poison in there. The woman in the yellow windbreaker thinks this poison tactic is a good idea.
I’m glad I mention it to her that I came to move the car for street cleaning, because she tells me street cleaning has been cut down to once per week.
The loud 90s music in Weather Up (louder than anything I’ve heard in that bar before) has put L in the mood to sing. It’s a joyous and mostly downhill cruise on Citi Bikes, down Fulton and up Atlantic, to Montero’s.
The old timer who owns the place at first turns us away. “At capacity.” L goes to pee in a construction site. Then some people come out and he waves us in. We get the best spots at the end of the bar. It’s getting too late and there’s too long a backlog for L to reasonably think she’ll get a chance at the microphone, but still I’m content to be here.
While outside for a smoke I see a van roll up and drop off six young people who are probably in a band together — five Black, one Asian, instruments in cases. The old timer at the door tries to turn them away. At first it’s for capacity reasons… then he asks for vaccination papers. “I’m sorry, they’ve been on me all week about this.” No one asks who “they” is. L and I were not asked for any papers.
Most of the band is ready to produce these papers, but there’s one guy, heavy, sneakers flattened at the sides, who isn’t vaxed. The band confers for a minute, then leaves. I don’t know what to do. I sense racism but have no real proof, especially not in the moment, and don’t want the band to resent me for butting into their business. Feeling powerless/conflicted/unsure of the right move. All I can manage is an apology of sorts to a woman in the band as she passes. She probably says don’t worry or it’s all good.
8 August — Brooklyn
With a bodega coffee in hand I proceed to a bench on Eastern Parkway to drink it/smoke/read. Look up after a while and realize I’m on Rogers Ave., two blocks from my first apartment with C. I’d already intended to revisit this apartment, and now seems like the time.
At the top of the block there’s a Caribbean guy (purple Metro PCS T-shirt) standing on a first floor rooftop. He calls me over. He needs to get the fire escape ladder up from the ground and fasten it on a hook, so its last rung will hang suspended above the sidewalk. The ladder is too heavy to do this himself; he needs me to push it up to him.
The ladder’s heavy, much heavier than expected, probably hundreds of pounds — can’t exactly tell because he’s pulling while I push. I have to strain and stand on my toes and gain the last inch or so with my fingertips. Finally he hooks it.
During the straining phase of this encounter I’m thinking of the damage the ladder could wreak on my jaws and teeth and the toes it would crush if I dropped it (I’m wearing Crocs, the only footwear appropriate for the blisters I got hiking in the White Mountains while wearing Dad’s boots), and how I had never, in all my time in Brooklyn (14 years), taken the step of fooling around with one of these ladders, though they’re on nearly every building. Never even noticed the hooking system before.
Outside the old apartment they’ve put a bus stop in and at the corner there’s a woody, well-turned-out cafe staffed by young Orthodox Jews.
My friend E does not recall it was this apartment to which she traveled during a blizzard just to come eat a lamb/Guinness stew with me (and C — who did not feature in E’s retelling of the event). E may have confused the Rogers Ave. apartment with another.
At E’s house, with L and D, the conversation is already bending toward memories. We rolled out our origins stories, how we met, and all four stories I found interesting, odd and unfinished, even the story of how L and I met (at E’s house), which has an arc many works of fiction have traced before, as L and I are now married, and marriage is a lovely/trusty end for a story.
Listening to the origins stories I’m once again convinced that the way we meet other people has no bearing on our future together and that this is a truth fiction often tries to refute. I count myself among the fiction writers who fall for the seductive qualities of a marvelous meeting and ache to write the rest of the story when the real one might not be so compelling. I think it’s an impulse I should fight.
E describes the existential philosophy class where we met in college (the instructor with fingertips like little lightbulbs; the girl who couldn’t stop staring at her new engagement ring) and the first time I invited her over to give me notes for a class I’d missed.
“You said, ‘i could pour you one or twist you one,’ and I thought, this kid’s down… and you warned me that later you had to do a project for another class… and the project was that B, who became our mutual friend, was coming over and you two were going to outline the comedic beats in Wedding Crashers.”
My line about ‘pour you one or twist you one’ makes me blush, and I cop to my embarrassment over it, it’s too cool, too on-the-nose. I was probably watching too many movies at the time. Trying too hard to make my own life into a movie.
10 August — New Hampshire
At a restaurant where L used to work. A spider is spinning a web in L’s hair but I can’t get a good photo of it. Haven’t taken many photos on this trip.
Most of the restaurant crew L got close with quit sometime in the past year and aren’t there. But still there is a dishwasher. L tells me she’s transitioning. It’s a big, lovely surprise. Formerly the dishwasher performed a very crusty male who controlled the kitchen’s music.
Met up in Portsmouth with the crew members who’d quit. One of them had a much more extreme story of hiking in the White Mountains than ours (thought I don’t think she was trying to show us up). While she described it I was seeing Kaspar David Friedrich paintings.
She also explained in great detail why I should start using TikTok. “It serves you what you deserve.” She might have been paraphrasing a Nine Inch Nails lyric.
15 August — airborne
22 August — Brussels
The fun fair occupies a long stretch of public street around a major train station.
L wants cotton candy and we get some early on in our midway amble. Belgian touches to the fair food: stands with escargots and mussels arranged to cook in their half-shells on a grill; frites everywhere, though people here seem to prefer a pinkish sauce as opposed to the usual.
As is often my experience at raves and music festivals, I’m impressed that humans have found all the right buttons to push for pleasure: bright lights, rhythmic music, sweet, fatty, smoky. Crowds. Masks are gone and the police are present mainly to direct foot traffic.
African and Middle-Eastern immigrants dominate the crowd. Many women in hijab. Teens in fake Supreme and cross-body bags. These are the people who have not taken a monthlong vacation for August, as many of their neighbors have. Including me. The fun fair seems, at least partly, a government-sanctioned concession to those who had to stay in town. Bread and circuses.
Can’t shake the phrase ‘test event.’ The night before, across town, there was a widely attended music festival billed as a ‘test event’: “No masks. Dancing allowed.” Negative Covid test required.
Attendees were well-informed that the event was put on with the provisional support of the government, in order to determine whether events of this kind could happen again. Attendees knew they were test subjects. If the fun fair was also a test event, the test was not made explicit to anyone. But if this idea occurred to me it probably did also to those who come to the fun fair.
I’m discussing my unease about all this with L as the crowds thicken around us.
L wants to ride a flying trapeze. The hard rain starts as we lift into the air. The swinging puts our feet not far from an apartment building. I wonder what it’s like to live there while the fun fair is in town — how long into the night the residents must endure the whoops of joy.