Alyssa comes in late from a week in Savannah, Georgia, where she will begin teaching at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I pick her up at Newark Airport. She looks happy to be back. Summer evening. We head to the countryside to enjoy the humid freedom of languor. While I wait for the delayed flight, I wander around this public place, people-watching. Spanish is the language most heard. When I am in most public spaces in America now, I feel more as a foreigner than ever. Not just for the language issue, but for the strangeness of Americans. (With a statement like that, I have to elaborate, but am not sure that I can…). Writing is a flippant out. Or flipping out, or copping-out. Not in. I am being careful to limit my mediated inputs these days. Finding so much is mediated in this society. I wonder how hard it would be to eliminate any level of mediated input (web, radio, newspaper, teevee, magazines, telephone, books, and the like) and simply rely on first-hand sensory input. Mulling all this makes it all the nicer when she arrives. And we get to the car, head north west to the darkness towards the hexagon house.
another night, I remember there is a copy of the Kama Sutra on the bedside table. Once again, it is read, ensemble. That the lover should leave careful and particular impressions from fingernails on the body of the loved — not scratches, but small unhurtful grooves — is subtle. In yet another context. I guess my copy is packed away in boxes moldering in storage there in Newton. damnation.