30 days hath September…

It’s a foul strange world out there, kids. Woman worries about her body, man worries about his penis length: beauty is animal and beckons with the unhurried gestures of inevitability toward the bedroom back seat broom closet open green field. Marrying a woman for her beauty is like eating a bird for its song. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier. And: seemed the only cure for the world was to lie naked together.

I of all people should be unconcerned with this but in fact it’s twice as bad as usual. The sharpness of beauty and nowhere else to go. And the more I seem to be unconcerned the more things present themselves.

In the city last night as I walked to the bank there was a small boy climbing a security grating outside a liquor store. I saw his descent and the cloud of feathers from the pigeon in his hands. For brief instants I felt like I was in Istanbul (where I have never been) or somewhere even more distant in time and space, and the next thing I expected was for him to tear the bird’s head off with the unconcerned manner of a child performing a necessary task. But instead he held the thing until it ceased to struggle, rubbing its head with his chin. Then carried it down the sidewalk as he rode his little scooter.

Maybe it was his pigeon, someone back at the bar said.