I would say, most of all, when I am walking. When I am walking to school I cut a diagonal across a patch of grass. The diagonal is worn away with heavy footprints, slushy tonight and frozen over in a lumpy oceanic curvature. Under a canopy of birch trees, the art building is empty. My peripheral vision is all faux fur.

—

When someone mentions an address in Manhattan and the numbers mean all the meaning to me. It’s not an extraordinary language to speak. My mouth opens with the inhale of recognition but I can’t speak, it feels like lying. No one owns those numbers out here.

The company is so big and fast that when you order the wrong thing by accident you do not have time to change your mind. The company’s shipping system is actually faster than the brain’s electrical synapse system. When you call the 1-800 number, the robot is sensitive. You sigh heavily into the phone. “I’m sorry,” it says. “I couldn’t hear what you said.” When the robot finally admits that it cannot help you, it connects you to a man in Texas. If you accidentally hang up on the man, he will call you back. This is how you will know what state he is in. The man from Texas is not able to combine your two separate orders into one order which is what needs to happen in order to get the ninety-nine dollar rebate. He is able to request that the separate items not be shipped, but he cannot command, as it were, the separate items not to be shipped. Do you understand, he will ask. Yes, you will say, though you cannot imagine what kind of North Korean style warehouse he must be talking about, girls in matching leotards twirling laptop computers over their heads in perfect unison. If the separate items arrive, the man in Texas continues, it would be better to accept them. After accepting them, all you would need to do is print out the return shipping label. Of course what you have ordered is a printer, you think. OF COURSE WHAT I HAVE ORDERED IS A PRINTER, you yell, in what you imagine is a wry tone but the man from Texas interprets as a belligerent tone. You could print it out at the library, offers the man from Texas.

Rick Santorum is like Al Gore’s weird younger brother, can’t you just see him in the family room, navy blue sweatpants with an awkward drawstring, eyes glued to the television all hours of the afternoon and night, a loud cartoon flickering its reflection onto his glassy eyes, the plot about action heroes in metal suits.  No charisma and an unusually large rear end.

Second idea is to “Santorum” “Gingrich” and name the greasy film (a blend of ear wax, sweat, grease, and L’oreal foundation) on an iPhone screen after even the briefest of telephone calls. Example: “I wonder if this gingrich will stain my denim shirt?” 

And when is someone going to print, in the newspaper, the picture I saw of Jesus on a boat facing west like George Washington? We were staying at the Marriott and I opened up the dresser drawer in hopes of a small mint or something. It contained two books: the ‘regular’ bible and the Book of Mormon, the latter of which depicts in great oil-paint detail ‘Our’ ‘Lord’s’ oceanic conquest and subsequent procreation of and/or communion with a race of ‘white’ ‘Indians’ in Upstate New York. Besides that everything I know is from Tony Kushner and the long conversation I had with a Mormon lady at the Dublin airport—now where did I go to school? Boston, and now what did I think of that great governor of ours? I talked to her for at least twenty minutes before I realized I had my time zones screwed up and had to ride the bus back without my cousin, who was coming in the PM, or the AM, or the following day.

Staying at home is like attending Dunn University. This morning alone, I benefited from the following series of lectures:

The Time My Father Caught Fifty Seven Fish and was Sent To Bed with No Dinner

The Birds and The Bees, As Taught To My Father By His Father, And How It Was Humiliating

What My Father Thought The Birds and The Bees Meant Due To His Experience At The Hospital Once

Teachings and Oddities of the Catholic Church, Specific to Lower Upstate New York

How My Father’s Best Friend’s Father Drank a Whole Quart of Whiskey and a Whole Thing of Vermouth Every Single Day

Excommunication and its Deleterious Social Effects

The Time My Father Worked For A Man With A Whole Warehouse Full of Hoarding

How To Cure a Sinus Infection Using Just The Tools And Instruments Found In Your Own Kitchen

For I am glad you are delicate and thin, that some part of me may be so. But against this, I offer a plea: grow wider, that air might flow through you. That wafting aromas may enter you. That you cease your ruinous offering of dark alleyways in which gangs of criminal bacteria may gather and do their lewd bidding. Each upper cavity like a foreclosed-upon house: though the windows be boarded and the ownership be seized by the bank, the old neighborhood man still lives inside, called upon by the neighborhood children. Get out of there. I flush you with all manner of liquid, tears from within, sprays from without, and still! You disobey me. I have beckoned the King’s forces enter, by way of the Urgent Care Clinic, via the CVS, and in a small orange bottle with my name printed on it. BEGONE YE

OK, so first of all, all the books about the History of Albany are sequestered away on the second floor in a place called the Pruyn Room, which may or may not be pronounced: Prune Room. The Prune Room is only open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which means that it is not open on a Tuesday.

On the first floor, the History section (Local) is located right outside of the Men’s Restrooms. You would think, with regard to a Library, that I might say: “the Men’s Restrooms are located right by the History (Local) section,” but the emphasis in this case is definitely on the restrooms. Men came and went, strolling confidently past the stacks and pressing open the heavy door as though entering their own kitchen, though I was not sure whether or not these were men who owned kitchens. Each time a man entered or exited, opening the heavy door, he would release the sound within—an amplified din, loud conversation over the roar of the hand dryer.

I glared at Brooklyn, Schenectady, and Troy, fuming about the Prune Room and trying to ignore the traffic. It was hard to concentrate on the alphabet while keeping an eye on the drinking fountain, which was behind me, and which was the other main attraction of The History (Local) section. A man helped himself to some water, wiped his mouth and said, to me: “Boy, looking for a book can be like a real Wild Goose Chase, can’t it?” 

Anyway, after some discussion at the Reference Desk, I was able to get my hands on a copy of Visible Man, a 1978 anti-welfare tome, which I selected because it was, in fact, the only book under the subject heading: Racism — New York (State) — Albany. 

While waiting for the librarian to emerge from the Prune Room with my book, I discovered a hidden local economy: the no-library-card one-dollar-fee for one hour’s use of the internet. Newspapers are free, however, and the librarian in the starched white shirt put together a nice array for a girl who was looking for an apartment. 

On my way out, while waiting for the elevator, I noticed that the conference room was populated by a sea of Eames-style desk chairs, each a different shade of autumn, and all I could think of, besides how to steal one, was that each chair was probably worth at least fifty dollars if sold in bulk on the New York City Craigslist.

Rick Santorum looks like someone you’d avoid in the line for bagels at church

Ron Paul’s eyebrows are like two slow-moving poisonous caterpillars, just waiting, just waiting to burst into bright white triangular butterflies

Newt Gingrich looks like Porky Pig

Rick Perry got his Bachelor’s degree in Animal Science

Mitt Romney watched too much Mad Men last year (so did I)

Kim Jung-un looks like Brendan Behan with a nose job

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks like Ringo Starr (credit: Chris Dunn)