41: rip john updike.

3.18.32 - 1.27.09

the city is huge in the middle view, and he opens his lips as if to force the lips of his soul to receive the taste of the truth about it, as if truth were a secret in such low solution that only immensity can give us a sensible taste.

-j updike, rabbit, run


(serious fans* will note that i used the end of that sentence as the final header quote on the basilica.)

*of mine, not updike.

addendum.

new rule: if youve bathed with someone, theyre automatically cash flow, no matter your frequency of contact at any given time.

happy three oh palm.

BORN TO DON
in the day you negotiated an email address at a late summer lavender farm
at night you get married, eat an astro pop, pop in the guest house for some warmth
sprung from yorkville under googie skies
some char-broiled laughs, and a bevvy of those crisp stringy fries
bro
laddy this town strips the paint from your hood
and if spru could, hed wish you nothing but good
mixing you martinis all night long
cuz boy veys like us, palmy we were born to don
(yes palm we were)

rabbi let me in, i like the lakers to win, i need to sign your little ketubah
and you know me and hales, we just gotta set sail
for vieques and never aruba
together we could sell this banksy, we'll refresh till we're dead, and palmy, we'll never get cranky
bro
will you sanction me a slice of the stromb?
cuz donnie im just a mr. cocktoston, but squish just must know the spread
in the game tonite, i dont mean libor, baby libor's dead
(yes fannie it's dead)

beyond the fifth floor starched collar bdo's stream to the metro cafe
frank and max raise a brood under the longest of odds and we watch musicals with bobby flay
the juice of blank rises bold and true, some think it could reach all the way to the moon
lets go to that nick spot and do what we do and palm let's play a mishka tune
yeah

the trail of tears's jammed with the broken splitters after the lizard king left town
theyre all hiding in the handicapped bathroom with no place to put churrasco down
together palmy we can live in this slope, like obama loves hope, i will love this neurotic don
bro
someday man i think its soon, we're gonna write that arch day song
that we really want to pen and they'll all sing it strong
cuz dudes like us, palmy we were born as dons
oh oh oh oh

BORN IN THE D OF A
water boarded in a dead koy pond
evie's in the den watching gg all night long
you end up on hardscrabble, gotta make that train
youre gonna take that long ride to get away from the brane

born in the d of a
born in the d of a
born in the d of a
born in the d of a

liz's dad's feeling his marley oats
ari's in the field taking photos of goats
the rest of the crew's passing that jersey moat
i have to toast them with this song i wrote

born in the d of a
born in the d of a
born in the d of a
born in the d of a

i had a stepdad, wasnt no answering machine
when we order food at palm's, we gotta keep it clean
dont get the mashed potatoes at the spring street natch
when milk puts up a fight youve got intolerance to match

born in the d of a
born in the d of a
born in the d of a
born in the d of a

now down in the shadow of the blx
lookin at shepherd fairies like duchovny looks at sex
i wont have this place smelling like, well you know
get in the pontoon boat and we'll take it slow now

born in the d of a
born in the d of a
born in the d of a
born in the d of a
youre just a cool rockin son of shiny in the d of a

its just too good.

brian williams even drew the parallel during the telecast yesterday, though he cloaked it under the guise that cheney's condition was unfortunate because 'some people will make the comparison to dr strangelove,' or something like that.

actually, it was a clever way to do it.

and i had been one of those people.

someday just began.

i wrote this on a beach in grand cayman on a biz trip in may 07, as you may recall. prescient!

talk about life benchmarks. this is a planetary benchmark.

still, let me relate it to little ol me.

this will be the third inaugural ill remember.

i remember the day clinton got sworn in in 93. tamara m had given me a tiny black and white watchman the year before for my bar mitzvah. i never used it, but i brought it to school that day in eighth grade. the ceremony conveniently took place during my class's lunch hour. i sat in the dalton cafeteria with a few of my similarly precociously nerdy friends looking over my shoulder, watching something my father - and the world at large - had tacitly convinced me i might never see in my lifetime, even though i was but 13: a democratic president taking office.

i remember feeling much as i would feel in october 96, when the yanks won the series for the first time in my life: i cant believe this is actually happening. it seemed too good to be true. like, i shouldnt get to feel this light and airy and happy about something so ostensibly external, something so far from my day-to-day life. something that seemed more symbolic than anything else.

dubya's day was fittingly melancholic for me. it was on a saturday during mlk weekend. i had flown home from ann arbor in no small part b.c i was still smarting from my breakup with j.go, and also b.c i wanted to spend more quality time with aya before she went back to brown. i remember watching that swearing in with her and my mom, from the latter's old bedroom. maybe it was a blessing in disguise that i was in a daze. seeing bush's ascension didnt cut me to the quick as i thought it should have; i was generally numb. then we watched clinton give a long, wistful speech, after which he was finally pried away, his fingernail marks trailing a wake from the spotlight.

im curious to see how this inauguration consolidates in my mind.

critical lift.

40.

nora went to dc to see c & s this past weekend. c is with child, and due pretty much any day now. i emailed nora to see how the visit went, and she wrote back with the best description of the final stages of human gestation ive ever come across:

I felt the kid move. a LOT. in this weird, slow-motion, swimming kind of way. you can feel his/her whole body kind of pass by your hand - you get the idea that if her belly was clear, the whole scene would remind you of an aquarium, where some big, lazy fish saunters by you (can a fish saunter?) behind the glass.