November the Eleventh, when spelled out numerically, forms a singlefile line of skinny soldiers spaced in a double pair forming a pallendrome: 11 11. There are now 50 days left in this year, and even that number seems to have a strange ring to it due in part to its fullness (similar to how 100 is plump in its perfection as a sum) and these two reasons alone are not enough to make the day special.
What should we call it? How can we name it? It's a day, any other day, and somehow it seems special, even upon waking it felt differently colored and vibrantly rearranged so as to almost not even feel like a "today" once woken after casting off a "yesterday" into the blackness of a good or bad night's sleep. What should we name this day?
What should we call it? How can we name it? It's a day, any other day, and somehow it seems special, even upon waking it felt differently colored and vibrantly rearranged so as to almost not even feel like a "today" once woken after casting off a "yesterday" into the blackness of a good or bad night's sleep. What should we name this day?
Today, the eleventh of November, is the day that Doestoyevski was born. Kurt Vonnegut was also given to the world on this day. In 1911 there was an event that is now referred to as "The Great Blue Norther" though at the time it was probably just called "freezing." The temperature knew to be dramatic, yet it didn't know why. In Kansas the air was measured to be a moderate 76F yet as the cold front approached, like naked death, the heat vanished and the temperature had dropped to a startling 11F. In only 14 short hours there was a loss of 65 degrees. Springfield and Oklahoma city reported similar findings and the records remain unbroken thus far.
I search the past, of course, to find some sort of foothold for the present - some stray fact that is lonely only in isolation but when coupled with my own personal past it might link up fantastically and fit some hole and provide some fitting reason. We just have no name to give to today. 90 years ago they had a word for it, and maybe in 1821 when Doesty was born they had a name to bestow on the day (if they knew they were in the presense of Thee Doestoyevski, despite his having just been born and all bloody and new.) It's in vain, it is entirely personal. The morning felt different and from the second my tire hit the ground and my foot found the pedal I noticed exactly how chilly it felt, how empty the street looked, and how poorly I was able to breathe in and out. The day knew it was special and was holding its specialness from me, I felt like I walked through a door and came out onto a stage without having had ample time to learn my lines and even though the auditorium is empty it is still demanding a show. The day, oh this day, it has a name.
The day belongs to my Mother. It is her's and has been her's for thirty years. Today is the day that her son Adam died, he was only a young boy. His hair was blonde and shining and it came so suddenly, just a hollow scream from the street as she was alligning some stray forks in a kitchen drawer. She says she felt the world would end - a phrase that is now an empty plattitude, though the facts trickled out of that November in a bloody mess: only seven days later news came that almost one thousand people drank poison and died in Guana, and shorltly after that: a man murdered Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. For a native San Franciscan who had just lost her only sunny haired son, the tragedy seemed unending and the weight that each subsequent event must have placed on the chests of everyone who cared, let alone those directly involved, would've sank the sturdiest of ships. One tragedy entirely personal - the death of a child affects the mother most of all, and while it leaves in its wake a collection of crying brothers, sisters, father, aunts, uncles, it is always the mother who is hurt the deepest - followed by two tragedies that were more widely felt. Have we any name for such a triple explosion?
There was that cold snap in 1911 (11 11 11) a line of tall slim soldiers marching in pairs, and the birth of a great novelist, and the death of a boy no one knew. Just 50 days shy of a whole new year, too, and doesn't that color the day even darker? I have no name for it, no word or title. Any day can be mined in just this way and each and every day must contain at least for one person somewhere some huge monumental loss. It might be temperature or worse, it might not be so bad. Today, the actual today, has been decent save for the persistent nagging of a nap untaken or the bad ratio of coffee to cream in this morning's first mug. It is hard to shake the dust of history off of it though and while there is cause for celebration by way of Kurt Vonnegut's birth (Yes, a lot of readers and a lot of writers are very happy for this day to come and some might even call in sick to work and read a book or two in quiet honor of the man) there is someone who faces it despite every dark implication. What can one even name it? How could we even call it a day like any other day? And what of tomorrow or yesterday, they could just as easily be mined for their marrow and a reason to stay in bed could surely be churned up with enough research.
Days, though, are decided by the person inside of it, at the moment it is happening - I can just as easily stay at the desk and perform my usual rendition of what a "Tuesday" has come to mean to me, my life, and the lives of those shared by me. My Tuesday, today, might have a different shape due in part to the tragedies (minor or otherwise, personal or otherwise) that belong to it as a placeholder in sequential history which give it its "thisness" and while I wholeheartedly understand that it is mine for the making, I am obliged to step aside out of quiet respect of the sheer remembered weight of it. I have no name for it, it has no title, the day is today and as arbitrary as it may seem it is only a small slip of perception that allows one to enter into it completely, blindly, and sadly.
I search the past, of course, to find some sort of foothold for the present - some stray fact that is lonely only in isolation but when coupled with my own personal past it might link up fantastically and fit some hole and provide some fitting reason. We just have no name to give to today. 90 years ago they had a word for it, and maybe in 1821 when Doesty was born they had a name to bestow on the day (if they knew they were in the presense of Thee Doestoyevski, despite his having just been born and all bloody and new.) It's in vain, it is entirely personal. The morning felt different and from the second my tire hit the ground and my foot found the pedal I noticed exactly how chilly it felt, how empty the street looked, and how poorly I was able to breathe in and out. The day knew it was special and was holding its specialness from me, I felt like I walked through a door and came out onto a stage without having had ample time to learn my lines and even though the auditorium is empty it is still demanding a show. The day, oh this day, it has a name.
The day belongs to my Mother. It is her's and has been her's for thirty years. Today is the day that her son Adam died, he was only a young boy. His hair was blonde and shining and it came so suddenly, just a hollow scream from the street as she was alligning some stray forks in a kitchen drawer. She says she felt the world would end - a phrase that is now an empty plattitude, though the facts trickled out of that November in a bloody mess: only seven days later news came that almost one thousand people drank poison and died in Guana, and shorltly after that: a man murdered Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. For a native San Franciscan who had just lost her only sunny haired son, the tragedy seemed unending and the weight that each subsequent event must have placed on the chests of everyone who cared, let alone those directly involved, would've sank the sturdiest of ships. One tragedy entirely personal - the death of a child affects the mother most of all, and while it leaves in its wake a collection of crying brothers, sisters, father, aunts, uncles, it is always the mother who is hurt the deepest - followed by two tragedies that were more widely felt. Have we any name for such a triple explosion?
There was that cold snap in 1911 (11 11 11) a line of tall slim soldiers marching in pairs, and the birth of a great novelist, and the death of a boy no one knew. Just 50 days shy of a whole new year, too, and doesn't that color the day even darker? I have no name for it, no word or title. Any day can be mined in just this way and each and every day must contain at least for one person somewhere some huge monumental loss. It might be temperature or worse, it might not be so bad. Today, the actual today, has been decent save for the persistent nagging of a nap untaken or the bad ratio of coffee to cream in this morning's first mug. It is hard to shake the dust of history off of it though and while there is cause for celebration by way of Kurt Vonnegut's birth (Yes, a lot of readers and a lot of writers are very happy for this day to come and some might even call in sick to work and read a book or two in quiet honor of the man) there is someone who faces it despite every dark implication. What can one even name it? How could we even call it a day like any other day? And what of tomorrow or yesterday, they could just as easily be mined for their marrow and a reason to stay in bed could surely be churned up with enough research.
Days, though, are decided by the person inside of it, at the moment it is happening - I can just as easily stay at the desk and perform my usual rendition of what a "Tuesday" has come to mean to me, my life, and the lives of those shared by me. My Tuesday, today, might have a different shape due in part to the tragedies (minor or otherwise, personal or otherwise) that belong to it as a placeholder in sequential history which give it its "thisness" and while I wholeheartedly understand that it is mine for the making, I am obliged to step aside out of quiet respect of the sheer remembered weight of it. I have no name for it, it has no title, the day is today and as arbitrary as it may seem it is only a small slip of perception that allows one to enter into it completely, blindly, and sadly.
