[FEBRUARY 2017.]
After the Women’s March in Oakland, R. and I sat on a muddy hillside, she in a nightgown doing duty as a dress that would never be clean again, and looked for four-leaf clover. We found several, and those we picked wilted within minutes, so I’m glad we let the others be. Last week I went to a conference in Washington, DC in order to get in the habit of talking about my book, and whenever I left the convention center—which was often, in among all that presentation of self—the Capitol was out there, hanging over the edge of things. White stone, cold wind, the moon.
The size of the exhibition hall, the hundreds of booths and display tables: it’s not a world that can come into focus all at once. The old fantasy of finding a unique pivot point between myself and that world stands revealed as incoherent, and I’m glad to let it go.
In the sandy riverbeds of childhood were broad dark leaves, dotted underneath with eggs like bright green sand grains. I still don’t know what laid them.
Divestment from community, disavowal of community endeavor: that’s what I’m going to find in St. Peter’s book. You never boarded a ship in your life but you kept one foot on shore.
R. falling asleep after a chapter is read to her: “It’s so annoying when you can’t figure things out.”
Are there things you can’t figure out?
“I can’t figure out what’s going to happen in the book. Or what’s going to happen in my life.”
Next morning at breakfast she asks if we’ll have to go to church in the Trump presidency. No, no; some people in the government care about church, but Trump doesn’t think that Jesus has anything to tell him.
“I think Jesus should put a leash on Donald Trump, and make him give all his money to poor people—or most of his money—and make him crawl on his hands like a baby.”
Everything seems aleatory and interrupt-driven, even more than usual.
