Carmex to car

As I walked that morning, I remembered,
during a moment of deep meditative thought,
that I needed to replace the Carmex in my glovebox.
So I took out the phone from my right front pants pocket
and typed into the 'notes' icon;
"Carmex to car".

I was amused how those three words had come from me
so easily
onto that phone application,
and tried to fathom other instances when words like them
could be obtained with such effortlessness.
They were just simple instructions,
but I was disappointed by my thinking too much about them.

Words and sentences

With my held tilted up, I see the sky, and think suddenly of the richness and depth of words, momentarily feeling that I can grasp the infinite.
Yet when considering both sky and words, only the latter seem even the least bit pliable.

I am ashamed that I find the ability to form things appealing
a person that professes to desire the infinite and the unnameable!

And even though I don't consider it possible to bend the world around me into squares or rectangles
(or maneuver it into a shape where if twists back onto itself),
this feat seems entirely manageable with sentences.
I need only imagine it doing so,
and find it unnecessary to do anything but describe it.

Fernanda Cooperstein

I find it hard to fathom, even strange,

that someone should choose to share a name

that I have been more or less forced to bear.

I remember the day,
(though a little hazily),

when I asked the former Ms. Casal if she would like to keep hers,

or take mine
when we married. And she chose mine!

This person, who decided all those years ago

to relinquish those five letters for my eleven, 

can on occasion seem so known to me

that she can appear unrecognizable.

So I wonder, as I press these keys,

if the repetition of seeing the same person
often intimately, for more than fifteen years,
justifies this idea:
that knowing so well might also embody the inverse,

where I comprehend that much less
in perfect proportion?

Labor day

Driving the short distance to where I took my morning walk on Labor Day

I recall thinking how beautiful and quiet this normally busy is.

I remembered times when Fernanda and I have vacationed

in some small northern California town

and I had gone somewhere to write in the early morning
while she sleeping in the hotel room bed.

There is often a stillness in those places and times
that I find remarkable
and lonely.

Probably due in some part to the lack of visible cars and people
I thought, on that holiday morning

that perhaps there had been a declaration of war

or news of a bomb or impending catastrophe.

I had the sense that I would be perfectly at peace if I were to die 

perhaps not at that very moment

but on that day
would be alright

and imagined that I could probably not ask for much more

in death

than to feel so ease at ease as my life ended.

A threat misread

Although it seems strange to me
writing it here, as I am
but sometimes I find it difficult to distinguish
between inquisition and threat.

I might feel someone looking at me, from the periphery
(and it's all periphery)
and I sense disapproval, aggression,
though that person may just be interested in
something in my general direction.
Looking near me, though not through me.

A short while ago, I saw some large ducks,
Muscovy ducks, more particularly,
approach a groups of Mallards, much smaller animals,
who had a couple of youngsters among them.

Slowly, one Muscovy approached a duckling
with what to me seemed like aggression.
Suddenly, the parents of the Mallard, apparently terrified, vocalized loudly, though they did nothing to physically stop the approach,
which surprised me.

As it seemed that there would be an imminent attack, the Muscovy, big and cumbersome on land, waddled away, apparently only having been interested in a closer look at the smaller beings.
I noticed at this point that it didn't seem to be bothered in the least that its' intentions had been so violently misread.

Miles Davis

Sometimes, perhaps mostly

I've found that a lack of knowledge 

improves my experience of things that interest me.

The allure that I can give 

to epochs that I was not present for,
or was, just barely,
for a variety of possible reasons

often imbue the things that I enjoy most from these times

with a special flavor.

This flavor seems to make them all the more delicious.

I started writing this thing

-whatever it is-

with the idea of noting why I like so much
two specific recordings of the jazz artist Miles Davis,

someone that I don't know too much about 

and a genre I know even less of.

After many starts,
and edits,
I found that too many ideas

and thoughts

and especially words

tangled me up

when writing in essay form.

So I thought to myself;

"self"

why not write in a form you know less of than even jazz

or Miles Davis?

And found this form perfect.

Spectator

The messages that I've received
so many times and in such varied ways
is that being a specator is always inferior
to being a player, yet
how does one begin playing?

For example:
I have assumed my entire life that if a person says "Adam Cooperstein"
they are talking about me.
People have used that name
in my presence (and when I have been nearby)
for as long as I can remember.

Although I may well be the person
weakly fitting into that moniker
I can't wholly convince myself that I am him
nor anyone else,

and while it is true,
that I have become more comfortable with the description, "Adam"
over time
I can't imagine an argument I could win
or facts that I could offer
to make me feel to be more of it.