What Are You Looking At?

Ten a.m. Agent 97 wakes up, drags himself to the living room to read the latest volume in whatever fantasy adventure series it is this month. I take a ninja stance, arms up, wrists cocked, wagging my fingers menacingly with a “Come on, what have you got?” look.

“Shut uppa you mouth,” he says. “Go to the store right now and get cookies.”

“Ha! I mock you” I say.

“Go get cookies!”

Cool gray Saturday morning, the second chilly day of the season. I love this weather, it makes me imagine I’m in New York or the Bay Area. It lets me wear my new favorite sweater. I’m sitting near the open window, sipping my second half-decaf au lait from a ceramic mug that Agent 83 doesn’t remember giving me when he was a child. I may take a walk to the library, or I may just imagine it. I watch a squirrel with twin nuts in its mouth run the length of a telephone wire, its back undulating. It speeds up when a little bird flies near it, though the bird can’t do it any harm.

I can see what the wire looks like through the squirrel’s eyes. The wire moving under him, and the tops of the green and tan bamboo under that, and the gray cloud-light in his peripheral vision. Pure sensation of movement, no words, pure sight and motion. Life, absolute life.

I can see what the world looks like for this Richard, too. A wide dark space with thoughts zinging across it like meteor showers that make him go, “Ah.” A space infinite but bounded; within its borders everything fits: cities, hosts of people, entire literatures, out to the galaxies. And him little in the center of it, taking in all the messages and sending ones back. Absolute life.

“Get some cookies! There’s nothing to eat around here, what’s a person to eat? What are you looking at?”

crumpled form, mysterious sauce, pussycat rug

1. Under a bed, a crumpled blank discarded yellow form: “All Students Must Have This Signed by Parent or Guardian Immediately.”

2. On the midline of the road, a plastic bag with “Have a Nice Day” and a yellow smiley face; inside is a styrofoam to-go box from which leaks a brown sauce.

3. In the street, an orange cat lies fully stretched, motionless. There’s no blood or other signs of violence, but the cat is flattened, thinned out, as if it were a cat rug. Is this truly okay with me? Is it okay that it will happen to me?

It's a Wise Child

Whenever possible I pour drops of paternal wisdom into my children’s ear canals. This time I bought Agent 97 a copy of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens. Skimming it, I thought that many of its lessons would be useful for adults too, one of the good ones in the series rather than the useless pablum.

97 reads down the table of contents and responds to the chapter titles:

“’Don’t Throw Up on Your Friends!’ I wasn’t going to.

“’Don’t Sweat the Breakups’ I don’t have a girlfriend.

“’Practice Mental Aikido.’” (Snorts, doesn’t deign to reply.)

“’Avoid the Words “I Know” When Someone Is Talking”’ I already know that.

“’Check Out These Odds! (The Likelihood that Everyone Will Like You)’. Everyone does like me.

“’Get Out of the Emergency Lane.’ I don’t drive.

“’Be OK With Your Bad Hair Day.’ Every day is a bad hair day for me.”

I think he’s got it!