the Newis Glad:

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of a moral universe.

Recently, I went to see a Rothko exhibit with my friend Adam. We were in Paris, and the city was gray and cold. On my way to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, I walked through a wooded area. I looked up, and there were pine trees. For a few moments, I couldn’t walk because I was so flattened by the sight of these enormous trees. They were bare of needles. The scaly bark was an ashen purple. The branches were dark as they spread out over the milky veil of the sky. I used to run through pine forests with my cousins. The pine tree is an indelible image of my childhood. But something about seeing them there, when I least expected it, thousands of a miles away from the pine trees of my youth, the trees which had been cut down to pay for booze and which would never be replaced, all this time and distance away from those lost trees, to have encountered them in Paris, my life so radically transformed, startled me.

Various sundries.

Happy Labor Day! Today is for me the fourth of a four-day weekend, so I feel I’m doing the holiday justice—though I have been engaged more than usual in the work of self-promotion over the course of it, which is in itself laborious. Ah, well. Let’s get to it:

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of sin.

Her name was Opal. She didn’t become a friend. She was more like a rival. She had flour to the elbow like long white gloves and she clicked that stud while she waited for me to get to the end of a sentence I was in no hurry to get to the end of, because the ordering was the point and the pizza was a formality. “The Pig Kahuna.” Back bacon, thin pineapple, red onion, chopped cilantro, hot honey. I told her how I wanted it built and she built it, layer by layer, with the flat, unhurried patience of a woman dealing cards she knows you can’t afford. The hot honey came last, always last, and she held the bottle at a height that made a thin line of it and I watched the line and she watched me watch it. There are women who will make your food exactly how you asked, and there are women who will make you watch. I ate the slice standing up. I did not taste it once that entire year.

Twenty years of roses.

Let’s see: in the first ten years (2006 – 2016), I managed to write twenty-seven novelettes, or about 400,000 words; in the second ten years (2016 – 2026), I’ve managed twenty-one (almost), or about 326,000 words. I’ve slowed down a bit, it seems. —In my defense, that second decade did kick off with Trump 1.0; I only managed six novelettes total during those four dire years. When Biden swept in with his brief interregnum of reason resumed? Remember how we danced in the streets? I managed four novelettes in 2021 alone.

the most Recent installment:

“The heck is that”– (some of) the Contents of a Box– his Language–

“The heck is that,” says Jo, absently rubbing her chest.

“Where have you been,” says her mother.

“Out,” says Jo, her hand still on her chest, just below her clavicle. “Where did that come from.” She’s looking at a cardboard box on the floor before the counter there between them.

“Your father brought it by, last night. You might’ve said hello, if you hadn’t been, out.”

Jo looks up at that, frowning. “You told him.”

Her mother looks away from the laptop, looking Jo up and down, the cargo shorts, the saggy, short-sleeved shirt, cornflower framing royal blue. “You slept in that, didn’t you.”

“You told him.” Jo kneels by the box. The grime splashed up past one knee, marring her thigh. “I didn’t know it was a secret,” says her mother.

“I didn’t know you guys were talking.” Jo’s peeled back a flap of the box, wornly soft with age, printed with a red capital R offset in a red circle. Another, an ancient shipping label too faded to read still clinging to it. “We talk about important things,” her mother’s saying. “Our daughter comes home after seven years away, we’re going to talk about something like that.”

“Ma, it was not–”

“You left before your–”

“Which was not–”

“I simply cannot understand,” her mother’s voice, rising, “why anyone,” a deep, recalibrating breath, “would do a thing like that,” she says, her tone restored.

“I can’t talk to you,” says Jo, slapping the flaps shut, gathering up the box and herself to push the both of them, “I’m gonna,” she says, on the way up, “go and wash, everything. Thoroughly.” Turning away, the box in her arms. “Then sleep,” she says. “Till I wake up.”

“There are rooms to clean,” says her mother.

“It’s Sunday,” says Jo, testily limping away.