The silence of a woman. It could mean many things and probably nothing that you should guess at. But the silence demands a guess which will always be wrong and which, inevitably, will make things worse. My father. He always puzzled me. He’s like a riddle that was never meant to have an answer. The sphinx, enjoying the game of the riddle, makes things up as he goes along. My father is as inscrutable as any phenomenon, natural or supernatural.

Life and creation and the universe and everything. As an accident or as a plan, altogether inscrutable. And, as with life, death. Tax forms.

My Westinghouse stove’s window. The stove, whose antique womb must have brought forth generations of Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas hams and countless other baked and broiled fare, is as old as sin and at least as filthy. It resists all manner of cleaning agents.

People who, with no good reason, except their own stupid lives, ignore clearly posted rules of public transit. Calculus. I never got it. The scientific phenomenon that causes ice to float. Ice is colder, colder ought to be denser, and denser really oughtn’t to float.

The future. The present is a vantage point from which we look back at our past and attempt to look forward at our future. But looking forward into my future is like looking off into the night sky where time and possibilities are limitless and everything obscures. I would no doubt cloud the psychic’s ball. The past; and in particular, when confronted with an old snapshot of yourself, attempting to remember what you felt, what you thought, what you dreamed and hoped and feared. The ongoing appeal of Jerry Springer. The dreams of a dog.

Not always, but often, and nearly always at all the wrong times, my heart.

SS