one thing today

  ... as my sister Suzie is wont to proclaim out of the blue. I've written back and forth with a guy online for quite some time now. pleasantries, mild missives. nothing much.  never spoke to him on the phone. recently we've begun to text. He lives far away and is a very fit  6'9''. 70. For the last few days he has apprised me of his heart surgery - which he told me just moments ago - he's being wheeled into. he just typed ... love ya little guy.  o my. better sweetness thru chemistry. I guess when you're taller than some trees - everybody's puny. I worry he hasn't close family/ peeps. why me? who he hardly knows. I'm stumped - so what's new.

  ...  is the idea that everything, every particle, the ink on the page, the atoms, all have some infinitesimal degree of consciousness, and somehow this consciousness is combined in some way from our cells and the rest of our bodies to create superconsciousness. Consciousness has become our secular substitute for the soul; we talk about consciousness the way people in the 16th or 17th century talked about souls. Some people’s interest in it is the fact that it floats free of these mortal bodies and maybe gets folded into a collective consciousness after we’re gone.

… there isn't a word for it, there should be.  I go to the library and check out Of Mice and Men . I ask the guy at the desk if I can get on a list to get Flesh , a new novel that got rave reviews. I say to him I hear its really good . He says it is and points to the desk where it sits opened. He’s currently reading it. I return a book about Dylan and ask if he needs my card. He says no, you’re Paul, right. I say what’s your name -  Dylan . I asked were you named after him … yes. I tell him the book is very good.  I

  A doll in the doll-maker's house Looks at the cradle and bawls: "That is an insult to us.' But the oldest of all the dolls, Who had seen, being kept for show, Generations of his sort, Out-screams the whole shelf:  'Although There's not a man can report Evil of this place, The man and the woman bring Hither, to our disgrace, A noisy and filthy thing.' Hearing him groan and stretch The doll-maker's wife is aware Her husband has heard the wretch, And crouched by the arm of his chair, She murmurs into his ear, Head upon shoulder leant: "My dear, my dear, O dear. It was an accident.'                                                                                                     ...

Well, not really. More like front window. Mine and those across the street. But it smacks of the Hitchcock movie. Very New York summer, all kinds of neighbors living all kinds of ways.  And mine -  an old woman who combs her fat, white cat a lot on the window when the sun most strikes her place in the afternoon  a young guy who looks like he’s living in a disco, room flooded with flashing colored lights and undulating streams of choppy video 24/7 as they say   a young couple watch their two little girls in their pajamas dance a lot   their next door neighbor - a young single who spends the vast majority of her boring day invisibly chained to her keyboard and desktop.  But the biggest thing I notice is how many windows hold no life most of the time. No bodies, no soft light. It’s 9 PM now. I see about 80 windows and only 13 of them are lit from within. 

Shawn Jackson and his wife, Destiny, both 26, said they were driving home from a son’s basketball game when the family found themselves caught in a clash between protesters and federal agents in North Minneapolis. The couple sensed the encounter could quickly spiral out of control, they said, but when they tried to turn their car around to exit the blocked-off street, they were surrounded by federal agents. “From the side, the front and from behind me, it was nothing but ICE,” Mr. Jackson said in an interview on Thursday. One agent told the couple that they needed to get out of the area. Ms. Jackson said she and her husband responded that they were trying to do exactly that, but their path was blocked by agents coming up the street. Then, agents let loose on the crowd, the couple said. The crowd-control grenades went off around them and one tear gas canister rolled beneath the car, Ms. Jackson said. A concussive blast — from the tear gas canister or another device, she wasn’t sure ...