A net beneath everything that falls

[sovay]

I can't remember the last holiday that didn't feel like it was celebrated for spite, even the non-Jewish ones. I dreamed of being trapped at the dying end of time and woke to the news. I have been contemplating evocatio, but I think Langston Hughes got there first. I celebrated the Fourth of July in fragments, with my parents and my niece and my husbands and my cats who have taken to circling like sharks on the other side of the door to the summer kitchen, with the pseudo-kulfi that we froze the custard base of our traditional strawberry ice cream into after the churn that has never really worked in six years showed itself to be well and truly broke. We couldn't see the fireworks that erupted after dinner, but we comforted the cats against their noise, which we also listened carefully to. My niece watched another half-hour of My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and my mother bequeathed me her "Faber Paper Covered Edition" of Djuna Barnes' Nightwood (1936) which would have been secondhand when acquired by Jimmy Camicia, the founder of Hot Peaches and my mother's friend who remains the only person on the planet to address her as "Glix." He wrote his address on the flyleaf—Kentish Town Road—and a poem on the last page. I suppose I could ask if he actually meant to give it to my mother or only lend it when she visited him in London in 1968. I like this queer inheritance better than the one I must survive of my country. I know which one I want to pass on.

Comments

[asakiyume]

How is your niece liking Totoro? Has she seen it before? One of my favorite memories of being in Japan as a family were my two oldest kids, at that time two and three-and-a-half years old, marching along the street singing the opening credits song, "a-ru-kō, a-ru-kō" (rendered in English as "hey let's go").

There were fireworks coming from the apartment complex behind us--the other night I mentioned to you going out to try to catch a glimpse and seeing the crescent moon instead, but last night, the sparkles from them were just visible above the inky-black nighttime trees, wonderful.

The holiday felt like a bad joke, though.

[sovay]

How is your niece liking Totoro? Has she seen it before?

We finished it tonight. She loved it. (She said so.) She also loves Ponyo, as recorded some years ago. I am waiting for her to be old enough for Spirited Away.

Everything feels rather damaged at the moment.