August 11, 2003 Brookline
Back in the office with about two seconds for everything. "Hi, howya doin, ya got two seconds." Ran too long teaching a morning grammar class and so had two seconds to have coffee. But there goes my lovely Japanese student, wondering (in the director's office) where on earth I am. She wants to learn to talk "cowboy" after she learns I'm from Texas. How ironbound resolve to learn to talk "business" crumbles after a week of intense work. Okay, Keiko, damn straight means "Yes, I certainly agree with that." Two seconds, two seconds, two seconds. I keep saying it over and over to my students. (You have to show the Europeans your thumb and your index finger if you want them to get the idea). "Really? Only two seconds." Damn straight.

August 12, 2003 Brookline
It hit me for just a second, sitting on the terrace, waiting for C. to join me after coming home from work. It hit me because Washington Street is a major conduit for ambulences and fire engines. For just a minute the government propaganda got through and mixed with the memory of September. I had a drink and I had R.'s pages in my lap. They begin:

I invite you in, please, come into this sentence, into this occupation of a kind, where grief and mourning and regret are akin and have taken up residence in this American story that, until now, had been mostly free, free of such deep sorrow.

And I have George Orwell's Winston in mind, though I am in much better situated with the ability, after all, to turn the television off, move freely about the apartment without being watched. It is both too much and not enough when Orwell writes in 1984:

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish.

They have told so many lies and been met with so much acceptance that, if they have kept any record of them at all, only the intial ones were set down. The happy consumption of same demonstrating no further need to remember what one had already lied about. In the news today, four Americans and three British soldiers wounded. One has no idea whether they've lost eyes, legs, hands, genitals, or were merely scratched. How the government arugues that these are small, microscopic numbers when everyone knows that we ourselves count American lives in terms that takes scores of foreigners to equal.

Am spending my days, earning a meagre wage teaching rich students a language which many Iraqis have already died for being ignorant of. It's like breathing again when C. arrives and asks Où est-ce qu'on va manger?

August 13, 2003 Brookline
My father drew him, whether from life or from a photo, I do not remember. But there he is and my mother has his eyes and cast of mouth, excatly his cast of mouth, as rendered. How I like seeing this drawing at Uncle G.'s and how I can almost hear him shuffling about in his old man's way (Yesterday C. joked after watching me cross the street on my way to the corner store, she could see the formality of my Argentine side mixed with the severity of my Swedish side). Gravity to either side then; how it wears one down even as it steels you for months in America. My nerves are growing thin. No time for the library. No time to finish my piece on the current, virulent strains of optimism infecting the country. Daily progress on R.'s book, however. Trying to find the one metaphor, among several good ones, that will tie the whole thing together. But, too bleary, I trek. Hi Ho, Grandpa, keep your eyes at your feet and cross the street. And cross another. And you're always just across the street where my mother got hit by a car all those years ago in Brookline. And you're always just across the street.

August 14, 2003 Brookline
How to explain it to the confused colleagues? Telegraphy, the ineluctable mode of the evasive. Unloved cousins coming to town, stop. Must head for beach, stop. Must run, stop, and not stop, stop, until reach sea, stop, will not stop, stop, until Falmouth.

August 15, 2003 Boston
Ran across an excellent student of mine on the train this morning on our way out of town. There was T., a rugged-looking Roman if there ever was one, and his beautiful wife and beautiful children. Thanks to the oddity of the Boston Mass Transit System that allows you to board from both sides of the train, we were all able to introduce ourselves. T. was a delightful student, full of challenge and worldliness. When I first entered this roomful of Italians I wondered why the other three kept themselves away from T. and spoke in whispers while pointing in his direction. I asked my student M. what was up. "He's very famous," said M., "A journalist for TV5 in Italy." Turns out T. was the one who reported the war in Croatia to the Italians. Just imagine going to France and finding, say, Dan Rather in your class acting the smart-ass.

Out to Falmouth, on the crowded road I know well enough but cannot recall the number of. There's that restuarant where the busses from Providence stop. How many years ago was it I was last there? I remembered, at least, to get off at the stop behind the skating rink. It's odd orienting yourself after a few years' absence. I still found C.'s house without any trouble. But oh how I stepped so slowly through the ghosts of Thanksgivings and Christmases past. We arrived at an empty house. I imagined that C. would want us to go around and come in the back door. That enormous dog of theirs was still there, but I pulled back the screen and found the note.

Gone to Boston. Enjoy your day in Falmouth. To town: walk into woods next to boat. Left on path to pkg. lot. Take right on path to N. Main. Right to village green.

Like you've never been away. Another note led us to the outdoor showers. And so we did. In the dark. Everyone should have an outdoor shower. "Just like the cowboys," C. said. What images she still has, even after seeing Texas. In America, there's a cowboy around every corner.

August 16, 2003 Falmouth
WWII stars in the windows of the houses from time to time, the nostalgic stars that the government says we are supposed to wear in our eyes, bespeak (or invoke) a time that didn't, does not, nor ever will exist. Not every house here is at war. In fact no house I have set foot in here feels itself in conflict.

August 17, 2003
Vineyard Haven
What am I? An idiot? I've heard her story about the traumatic week bicycle touring on the Canal de Midi. And who the hell said anything about bicycles anyway? Who put this into my head? I mean, C. can ride one, but only just. "You're the slowest rider I've ever seen. I didn't know a bicycle could go so slowly and remain erect," were the two first words of genius encouragement after we got off the ferry and plunked down forty bucks for an afternoon of tension. And, hey, why not head straight up a hill? The Vineyard is an island, right? Why not just take any road to the beach? (I have always, and will continue, to hate the beach).

Of course, we ended up taking separate roads. She took a short one, downhill, that lead to a dull beach where she must have let the vehicle fall into the sand while she found someplace to hide herself from the sun. I found a very bad café and worked on R.'s book, while listening in on rich people talking over limp, low-quality pickles. One of them, bizarrely, had an Arkansas accent. Which went a long way toward explaining all the security in town. Which meant that line of people two hundred yards long was to meet Hillary Clinton. Which explained, I guess, odd apparition of a pear-shaped woman dressed as a red devil.

On one hand it was an idiotic afternoon. On the other it rained like gangbusters on returning to Wood's Hole and, on someone else's hand, the bus broke down on the way back to Boston.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.