At Chick Fil-A

We've got Chick Fil-A all to ourselves, Anna and Ava barefoot in the play place, Latin jazz strumming over the speakers and the girls are choreographing their dance moves in step, one then the other copies.

I just got off the phone with my dad, called to wish him a happy birthday, which is today, and we talk about the Ravens, because it's fresh and that's what we do.

A steady rain outside, with a hint of ice or snow to come. It's nasty, but the coffee is solid and I'm kicked back with Terrance Hayes's Lighthead, but mostly watching the girls.

Thinking about birthdays and fathers and kids--Anna's birthday is Monday and Ava's is less than two weeks away.

Generations of consciousness and smiles. The creativity the girls are turning loose in the play place matches the flamenco finger picking of the guitar.

Ava comes out and asks to sit on my lap to finish her yogurt. Anna walks out reciting, "six salamanders, eight chocolate chip cookies, 11 trees..."

I think about the girls and my dad and being a dad and my heart knows, in this moment, I could not love any more than I do.

"Saying what I mean to say"

Friend, sometimes the wind's scuttle makes the reeds
In the body vibrate. Sometimes the noise gives up its code
And the music is better at saying what I mean to say.
--Terrance Hayes

And how. How many times have I wished for the right note to convey what I am after. Or the right brushstroke. Writing, stepchild of the arts, is what you have left if you can't draw or sing or play music or dance. It takes home the least primal award.

I've been listening to Robert Johnson and Son House and Blind Willie Johnson of late. Those cats could sing and play nursery rhymes and still move you to tears or reverie.

Language must have been born out of frustration. Why can't he/she understand? How come they don't get it? How can I make them know? How can I make them see me? And words grew and attached themselves to things and concepts and actions through consent and a hope that we were speaking their true names.

Maybe I am glad for this frustration after all. This need for language and to find the right words--to invent them if need be. The struggle to say it precisely.

Maybe. But sometimes I'd still give music the nod.

At the laundromat

The laundromat reeks of being backstage, actors with hair tucked up but not yet wigged, make-up foundation layered, waiting for further building. Costumes are removed for the next show. This is not a place to impress.

I sit reading about Jeff Bridges' band and his childhood, about how he uses the word "dude" incessantly in real life. As I look up the dryer has kaleidoscoped our costumes--each a memory of what we were doing while wearing a particular shirt or skirt--one covering up another, shoved aside by another. A mosh pit of memory, which is maybe an apt metaphor--one memory skanking and high-stepping in front of the others.

I think back to yesterday, sitting behind our dryer, with its insides spread around me, an inexperienced paramedic unsure which piece to resuscitate.

My mind moves forward to the Ravens game, which I don't yet know that they'll lose in heartbreaking fashion to the Steelers, but man what a game.

Back to the laundromat - I look up at a woman pushing a cart by and we both laugh for no real reason. A few words to the mom in Uggs and a Ray Rice jersey and her daughter in Ray Lewis jersey. We're trying to predict a future different  than what will happen--maybe one where Flacco hits Dickson for the first down and the dryer, the drive rather doesn't stall.

I read Terrance Hayes "Mystic Bounce"--maybe that's what's going on in the dryer--and Hayes says:

If I were in charge, I would know how to fix
the world: free health care or free physicals,
at least and an abiding love of the abstract.

Fast forward to this morning and Hayes says the same thing when I read it again.

The abstract, the laundromat, the Ravens game, the Hayes line, they're all new colors swirling, new articles of clothing moshing with no real rhythm around the dryer, one circling in front of the next.