Booklist 2022

1.    The Search: a biography of Leo Tolstoy -- Sara Newton Carroll

2.    The Buddha in the Attic -- Julie Otsuka

3.    Silverview -- John le Carré

4.    Snow Angels -- Stewart O'Nan

5.    The Blue Guitar -- John Banville

6.    Great House -- Nicole Krauss

7.    Glory -- Vladimir Nabokov

8.    You Think It, I'll Say It -- Curtis Sittenfeld

9.    Ethan Frome -- Edith Wharton

10.    Life Without Children -- Roddy Doyle

11.    Why Peacocks? an unlikely search for meaning in the world's most magnificent bird -- Sean Flynn

12.    The Last Painting of Sara de Vos -- Dominic Smith

13.    The Employees -- Olga Ravn, tr. by Martin Aitken

14.    Wayward -- Dana Spiotta

15.    Year of the Monkey -- Patti Smith

16.    By Nightfall -- Michael Cunningham

17.    Ocean State -- Stewart O'Nan

18.    Time Is a Mother -- Ocean Vuong

19.    Forest Dark -- Nicole Krauss

20.    Gap Creek the story of a Marriage -- Robert Morgan

21.    Leave the World Behind -- Rumaan Alam

22.    The Vanishing Act of Esmé Lennox -- Maggie O'Farrell

23.    The Lost Family: how DNA testingis upending who we are -- Libby Copeland

24.    The Black Snow -- Paul Lynch

25.    Elegy for April -- Benjamin Black

26.    Learning to Talk -- Hilary Mantel

27.    Something to Do with Paying Attention -- David Foster Wallace

28.    Enon -- Paul Harding

29.    Whereabouts -- Jhumpa Lahiri

30.    Dreaming in Cuban -- Cristina Garcia

31.    Unaccustomed Earth -- Jhumpa Lahiri

32.    Ghost Light -- Joseph O'Connor

33.    Eventide -- Kent Haruf

34.    Noboy's Normal: how culture created the stigma of mental illness -- Roy Richard Grinker

35.    The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri -- David Bajo

36.    The Slap -- Christos Tsiolkas

37.    The Comedian -- Joseph O'Connor 

Year's End

I start with a lie. That's too strong. A falsehood. How about a miscalculation? The year has not ended. That's a fact. We are not at year's end, not fully, not yet, not now. I start with the half life of a half truth. I start with a start, a stutter start. I stutter my strut of a start because I have nothing to say, nothing to say except to lament the rubble and ruins, the strewn limbs and blood rivers of Putin's nightmare backward lurch into history. To think that World War Two was over? And to honor, I can't find proper synonyms, the bravery, heroism, patriotism, valor of Ukraine, its people amidst the smoldering slaughter, that mother on a gurney outside the bombed maternity ward they later said she and the baby died, that image to remember, like the silent scream freeze-frame shot to the head in Saigon, or the white man brandishing the US flag against the restrained black man, the soiling of old glory, Stanley Forman, and so on, ad nauseam, till death do us unite. Even before year's end I want to flip the calendar, turn the page, close the books, hurry before there's more, hurry up, there's time, and that's both horrifying and hopeful is it not.

Apostolic Blessing

Freedom of Espresso scene, real life: She: a print dress, paisley to my eyes on a background of torquoise; open face, wide smaile; tall leggy; bright. Enter him: muscular, clean-shaven, taller, trim, Harley Davidson shirt but subtle. They sit at the table in front of me. Engaged. Riveted. his back was to me. She was animated, smiling the whole half hour or was it an hour. She had eyes for him. You can tell.

They left.

Me too.

I caught them in the parking lot. I accosted them.

You know, I just have to tell you both. You two look so happy. I saw you in there. So happy. You remind me of me and my girlfriend. People tell us all the time how happy we look. We are. Same with you two. You look so happy together.

Thank you. Oh wow. 

Man.

Jeez.

They exchange glances.

Her face turns red, the verge of tears.

We're blessed. The Universe has blessed us, man.

But guess what? This is the first time we have met in person!

It's true. Really.

That's crazy. That's how it was with me and Faith. We knew each other fifty years ago and reconnected last year. It was instant chemistry. And now it's like we're apostles of love, apostles of happiness.

I can't believe this.

I'm Paul.

I'm J.

I'm M.

Hold it.

I went to my car and came back with a copy of On the Spectrum from Me to You.

Here. That's my story, our story. Enjoy.

I want to read it first.

She got into her SUV. She had parked right next to me. She rolled the window down. She was quite oversome by emotion.

I don't know what to do. I live in New Hampshire.

Don't worry about that. Go with your heart.

My apostolic blessing.

Confederacy of None

oh say can you see

a pox upon our land

a Pax Americana

no not never

oh my can you spy

a flag swirling

in the bed of a pickup

a rebeling with a cause

if hatred is so called

fear by any other name

as sordid and as sour

as the banner of the hour

this far north

this far gone

an uncivil war

a confederacy of none

a lunacy of race

and riot and roar

a sound and a fury

of democracy

out the door

Exit Strategy

The paperwork is in place

Ready for processing

Before the spiraling expiry date

No it isn't

It never is

Like Tony Soprano

All due respect

Reaching across the table at the Jersey diner

The jukebox's Journey's Don't Stop Believin'

No not yet

Affairs are never in order

Not quite

Prepared for

That rudest of rude interruptions

All due respect

#SCOTUS v. 2022

gimme an L gimme an I gimme an F

(and an FU2)

gimme an E

womb tomb BOOM

firing squad lethal injection guns and no butter death penalty electric chair let 'em fry more guns carry conceal reveal life penalty choice no choice gimme me a gun Johnny got his give me a bomb cradle to grave

through my fault through my fault through my most grievous fault

mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa

pro-life pro-white pro-gun pro-men pro-right pro-wrong pro-lie

wave the flag

wear it

wrap yourselves in it

sashay in it

sway away

lipstick smeared

ear to ear

grinning gamely

smiling widely

in your robes

your Robespierre robes

Reigning Error

rain of righteousness

razing democracy

raising theocracy

Amen.

 

 

The Orchid Teacher (An Update)

Back in the Time of Quarantine (TOQ), in March 2020, I wrote about the notion that Mother Nature teaches us, not vice versa. Thus, "my" orchids have taught me they bloom and blossom, live and die, in their own time, if at all. Despite my ministrations and proddings, they rebloom when they say so. (Incidentally, are we not still in the TOQ? Some are; most aren't.)

All four of "my" orchids had thus far refrained from expressing themselves via white, yellow, pink, or purple blossoms of the sort they were arrayed with when I received them. 

Fair enough. Have it your way.

I was undaunted. Correction: I was content with who and what they were. I appreciated an applauded the new green leaves that kept on sprouting from the delta of the existing foliage. I had been obeying the most common dictum of successful orchid growers: Benign Neglect. Bowing to the orchids as my teachers, I let them do what they would do, absent resentment, rancor, or expectation.

Or so I say.

Recently, one of the little plants slowly burst forth a shoot that differed from the roots that float into the air or burrow into the matrix like lazy tentacles of a small octopus. This shoot was thinner than the meandering roots and of a different shade of green, less pale. Most surprising of all, it sported buds! No question, those were buds. A half dozen nascent nodules of exuberant blossomitude. This was the secular, natural miracle I was unpraying for.

I was like a kid (secular or religious, Santa Clausified or capitalismified) the week before Christmas.

And then . . . 

And, um, then . . . 

[I can barely bring myself to admit it.]

And then, last evening, I figured I would attach the pregnant branch to the vacant and mournful solitary chopstick the plant came with, the slender sentinel that allows one to clip a branch onto it so it grows upward, according to an unspoken, if vain, aesthetic. Why not? Let's celebrate this vernal renascence with upward mobility! Who needs droopy doldrums perilously inching downward away from the mother-ship green leaves?

As I was gently and delicately trying to curl the tiny fleible clasp embracing the stalk onto the stick, it snapped. Without a sound, but palpable and visible nevertheless. I had grievously injured the vindication and triumph of my do-nothingness. (I was brought up on the Confiteor, during the recitation of which we would beat our breasts over the words "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.") The budding branch was not quite severed, but I suspect it is done for. Kaput. For good measure (really, as a quixotic gesture if ever there was one), as a palliative I curled some plastic tape around the trauma site. Perhaps it would allow some sort of mysterious recovery. This was like putting masking tape around a broken arm.  

I was so distraught I could not tell anyone until the next day, when I confessed to my beloved a "crime against Nature, possibly unforgivable."

Maybe it will survive and prevail. Most likely not. There are other fish in the sea, other orchids in the jungle, blah blah blah.

Right.

The orchid teacher is teaching me a painfully obvious lesson:

LEAVE WELL ENOUGH THE FUCK ALONE.