My neighbor’s mother sent him a trunk full of remnants from his childhood and when I came home from my morning coffee he was sorting through them outside of his apartment. There were lots of little stuffed monkeys. Also a swimming certificate from the Netherlands, where he grew up. He said you have to pass three separate swimming tests there in your childhood.
“Or what happens?” I said.
“There is no ‘or what,’” he said. “You just pass them. The whole country is under water. Everyone has to know how to swim.”
I feel like all we have to do in this country is do two pull-ups and learn how to play tetherball and we get a certificate with like eighty gold stars on it.
Anyway.
My brain is almost back to normal working order. I wrote an essay about the bike thief experience, so that I never have to think about it ever again. I didn’t even want to, because I got kind of sick of the whole thing, but it was so stuck in my head I had to, just to get rid of it and make room for other ideas.
Now I feel like there is plenty of room, but I still need a perspective shift. I spent the morning reading There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. It knocked my head clear into outer space and back again. And next week I’m going to Chicago! And on Sunday I’m going to Montauk.
Before you know it, I’ll be a babbling, obsessive workaholic again, and order will be restored in the world.
Have a great weekend!
