Binaries Are for Suckers

Suzi had an engorged tick in the scruff of her neck the other morning. I saw it on the walk home from the park. It was a marble-like and taupe, the size of a black bean. I thought at first it might be a tumor. Joe, the porter in my building and a friend of all dogs, thought maybe a skin tag. I took a photo, sent to the vet, and got a call back. Remove it yourself or pay for an appointment for them to do it.

I still get queasy imagining it.

We’d been to Vermont a week and change ago, where she must’ve picked it up, though I’d not be surprised if we have ticks right here in Brooklyn. I did tick checks up there in the Emerald Paradise of New England and found a different one, in fact.

On the drive home I swam in a pool of forlorn. Traveling does that, don’t you find? Think of Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” and you’ll know what I mean. The scenery that barely registers as you speed by it, blurred as it must be, to some other destination. Who lives in that old house? Or that brick one? What is their unique disappointment? What is their joy?

Unmoored is more precisely how I felt—and still feel at times now. My dad’s gone; my mom is too, after a fashion. I still have no full-time job. My son is fairly independent and embarking on an exciting new chapter of his life.

What is my anchor? Where is my tether? Is it in the routine? In this letter-writing? Is it the fact of my home? Is it my sense of self? Is it just up to me now to tell myself that it’ll all be okay?

Everything’s a vector of evil. I read an article yesterday about how the warming planet is affecting bacteria that are exponentially more adaptable to environmental changes than we humans are, such that if you cut yourself nowadays and go into a body of water you may well find yourself with a flesh-eating disease. Or you’re more likely to find that than you were two decades ago. Obviously I’m leaving a lot out explanation-wise. You can find it yourself if you inclined to inciting further alarm.

It’s enough to make you move to the farthest reaches of Alaska, except the microbiome there is equally canny and iterative and I’m sure peril also lurks up north.

I’m off(ish) gluten. How’s that for a non sequitur?

I’ve waited too long to write and now I don’t know quite how or where to enter the maze of ideas and one-off thoughts that animate my imagination. I have World Cup fever. I’ve become a Knicks fan. The casual anti-Semitism I’ve lately encountered is supremely distressing. I thought of a great joke but forgot to write it down, so who am I to even consider pivoting to stand-up with such mediocre habits—or at least to making it some kind of half-past-midlife side hustle. I’ve fallen in love all over again with John Turturro, haven’t you?

Isaiah graduates tomorrow from 8^th grade. He and his classmates were in Portland, OR for a week and a half, building tiny houses and gardening at a settlement for the formerly unhoused. He learned to use an electric saw. He heard the story of a domestic abuse survivor who faced down a rifle-carrying spouse. He went white water rafting and hiking. He called Portland a “wannabe Madison,” a description I can’t properly rebut since I’ve never been anywhere in the Pacific NW but I suspect is inaccurate. He had a great time and came home, as did all the kids, with a signature razor-cut of the eyebrow—the temporary equivalent of getting inked to mark your eternal bond—and a souvenir t-shirt.

His red-eye landed Thursday morning and by evening we were on the road, up to Massachusetts, for a soccer tournament in Lancaster, a quaint, leafy burg northeast of Worcester.

The team fared poorly but it was nevertheless fun. We had a big team bbq at a state park on the NH border, and Saturday night another parent and I took six of the kids to see Obsession, a slasher film I alone found funny—judging by the periodic outburst of my solo laughter. The kids cowered and later pretended they’d done otherwise.

I took a half-garden-bed plot in our building’s courtyard for the summer, trying once again to grow tomatoes and cukes. The plants are growing, though not yet fruiting, of course, and I’m hopeful but I’ve met with too much disappointment before to allow my optimism too much emotional real estate. At the soccer tournament some of the moms were joking that I wear rose-colored glasses, which I wonder if it’s true. I see myself as somewhat cynical, but what’s choosing to raise a child or watering a garden if not an expression of hope?

Am I a hopeful cynic or a cynical optimist? Binaries are for suckers, I reckon.

I’d like more (some) good news, please, now, universe. I am beseeching.