Velvet

"Oh silk and fur,
How could that scratch the furniture?"

by Tallulah

My current state of mind

Writing from the deck of the "clubhouse" of the Whittaker Pointe Marina in Oriental, North Carolina. It's a nice night. Life is good. All I want to do is hide out. More reflections to follow.

Litchis foraged from Crescent Lake Park

Night swimming

Sitting at the Dairy Inn across from the Flamingo Sports Bar—with a picture of Jack Kerouac, black and white, blown up, to the left of the door. Tallulah is eating ice cream, a mountain of strawberry ice cream, her spoon digging delicate little bites of pink from a styrofoam cup, and I’m staring out across the street, beyond the handyman here on his break, across Martin Luther King Jr Avenue to the little green shack of a bar where Jack Kerouac drank (my brother-in-law tells me) whiskies and a wash—cheap and plentiful. Maybe he’s an unquiet spirit, hanging out at this busy crossroads with a message, for I can’t take my eyes from the photograph, the pale face with its wondering eyes. And I can’t stop seeing him bent over the toilet, blood streaming from his mouth, lifting his head to call out to his wife—“Stella—I can’t stop bleeding.” Maybe he came here sometimes, on his way to or from the Flamingo Bar, maybe he sat on a white picnic bench just like this one, looking out across the street. Hey—I hope you can rest in peace, Jack. I have received you.

Random thought when I should be doing something else

I remember a long ago afternoon when I was allowed to stay home from school. It must have been at the end of the school year, because it was a sunny day in Portland, Oregon—I remember lots of sunny days there, no matter what they say about the rain—and my grandmother took me somewhere I’d been longing to go—that now I remember only as bright colors in a cave, a kind of strange garden, the sort of place that lives in books that were read aloud to you once, long ago, before you understood all the words. We took the bus up a hill and in my mind the city’s stretched out below us, the river like a skein of silver in the distance. We were talking, she and I, about nothing in particular—and how could either of us know that I’d keep the memory of that day, the way it felt to be beyond the reach of ordinary things, folded away so long?

ISR Swim lessons rock!

http://www.infantswim.com/
This is the "baby abuse" swim course, can't recommend highly enough! T went from never having swam underwater to this video in 1 month. She was used to the water so never seemed too traumatized, other kids definitely weren't having fun--until they figured it out, then they were loving it--but it's only 10 minutes per day and soon enough they're not going to drown, big plus if you live on a boat (or have a pool).