I can't sleep…
Every leaf that falls
never stops falling. I once
thought that leaves were leaves.
Now I think they are feeling,
in search of a place—
someone’s hair, a park bench, a
finger. Isn’t that
like us, going from place to
place, looking to be alive?
— Victoria Chang, “Passage” in The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022)
Notes:
“Self-examination? I’m ripe for it, always. As much now as ever. I’m sure there’s never an end to it. No full closure.” […]
What sort of “Goldblum mania”?
“I don’t think I’ve ever said to anybody out loud. If anything, most everybody would get the impression that I’m doing well, that I’m comparatively stable, full of purpose and focus. But just between me and me? Let me see. Garden variety moments of anxiety, possibly.” He goes on to talk about sometimes running out of patience with his young sons and his frustration with himself about that. “They are primal. They’re experiencing raw, unexpurgated life. And in proximity to it, at least I find, I don’t know about you, things come up in me more readily and fully. Including temper.” […]
I ask Goldblum how he talks to his boys about masculinity and their behaviour as men in the world.
He thinks, pouting. “Off the top of my head, masculinity overlaps into good humanity, no matter what gender. Which is an ethical, honest and authentic morality; a contributive, caring kindness; a loving navigation through the world.” He prefers to ask a different question of his sons: “How do you be a good person?”
He’ll say to them, “‘Listen. I don’t want to step on your spirit, or suppress you, or hog-tie you. But you’re in this world. Don’t hurt each other. Take care of yourselves. Have regard for the gift of your own human life. Have regard and respect for the lives of others.’” He says he has a general approach to life that he cribbed from a book of philosophy by Sam Harris: “Always tell the truth. Don’t even go, ‘Hey! I love your sweater!’ Or don’t go backstage and say, ‘You were great, you were spectacular!’ Graciousness and elegance demand that sometimes you need to not tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the time, to everybody. You have to honour kindness over cruelty and be sensitive to somebody’s feelings. But don’t lie.” […]
You’re tactile, I say to Goldblum. Is it that you think you need to feel things to understand things?
“Probably so. Human beings do. I like to. I’m glad I have my vision. I certainly like to hear. Smelling is very important to me. I’m a big taster. And then last, I believe, is … Yes, I like how things feel. I do like to feel things.”
— Tom Lamont, excerpts from an interview with Jeff Goldblum titled “‘It’s foolish to mask your age. Accept it. Present it’: Jeff Goldblum on vanity, mortality and becoming a father in his 60s.” (The Guardian, August 3, 2024)
Photograph: Jeff Goldblum (71) with his wife Emilie Livingston and their two sons, Charlie and River. (Photo by David Vintiner/The Guardian)
950 consecutive (almost) days. Like in a row. The morning walk @ daybreak at Cove Island Walk.
I’m up. 5 a.m. Grab iPhone, tap Dark Sky app, forecast: 98% overcast, 32° F, feels like 26° F. Too damn cold.
I feel Wally at my feet, it’s warm here in bed. Lay here. Cozy with Wally. Skip today. Skip today. Skip today. But with the 1000th day like right there, there can’t be a break of the chain. Yes, 1000 days, an artificial milestone, no significance vs. 950, 500, 437 or any other damn number. Alan Burdick, from Why Time Flies: “Only the clock moves, its tick steady, unhurried, relentless. At these moments I have the clearest and most chilling understanding that time moves in one direction only.”
I get up.
I look back at the bed. Susan asleep. Wally under the covers stirring, but even he knows better not to get up at this hour in December.
It had to be around 1 am. I felt him. I was out, 2 Advil PMs out, and felt him crawling up the length of my body. He gets to my head, and tucks his head into the crevice of my neck. He shifts left, right and left to find just the right Wally spot, and he drifts off. I could feel his breath, and hear the soft whistle of his nose. And feel his little heart beat slow. It’s been 1.5 months, and he’s now Family, and he’s taken over the bed. And the moment left me wondering why it took so long to get Wally.
I’m out the door. Wind gusts up to 25 mph. Goosebumps huddle for warmth on top of each other.
There’s no traffic. No humans out. No sane humans anyway.
Speedometer clocks me at 25 mph, slow for me, a sign that the body, and my foot on the accelerator is resisting, this morning habit of mine that is beginning to fray, and fray me at the edges.
And, right then, out pops Peter Cottontail. The road narrows, no place to swerve. They’re fast. I’m sure he skooched safely to the other side. A near miss. Sigh.
I pull into my parking spot, unreserved, but mine for the last 950 days. I sit in the car, heater running. Go ahead, drop your window, snap a few shots, say you did it and call it a day.
I sit for another minute or so, the heater blowing on my feet, and get out.
I hadn’t known that a light could be a feeling and a sound could be a color and a kiss could be both a question and an answer.
And that heaven could be the ocean or a person or this moment or something else entirely.
— Megan Miranda, Fracture. (Walker Childrens; January 17, 2012)
Notes:
~ sara, from “ways to start feeling again”
Notes: