Caustics & Acrostics

For $20 someone phones me and spits insults, in Cuban-inflected Spanish, through my earpiece. I also invest in seed packs for vanity, narcissus, and temerity. My fingers are refracted in the water backing up in the sink. A clog formed at the center of my soul. I’m unable to plunge it or dissolve it with caustics. The acoustics of these apartments are poor, the walls porous and sound travels easily through the heat ducts and vents. This is abrasion by the light of the full moon on the television downstairs; the Ligeti anti-aria from Le Grand Macabre tamping down from the stereo upstairs; and the constant woohooing by the spectrum kid next door; the neighbor across the hall has the scents of camphor and chicken soup, and Dave Brubeck wafting down the hall; and the elevator squalls Floor 16 too loud. The clog in my soul is not dispatched with celerity. It’s not dispatched at all. The hole in my head is a constant cavil. I speak in acrostics when I deign to speak at all. I missed the alignment of the planets last night. So I pay to have someone call me a comemierda. I eagerly and promptly answer the phone each night at 8:31.

What I’m Reading:

I’m angry that we’ve known that greenhouse gases cause global warming for more than a century and have done very little to stop emitting them. And then I remember where these emissions come from and feel appropriately guilty. I’m sad, desperately so, when I think about all the things we’ll lose. I’m afraid of the disasters I know are coming.

— Kate Marvel / Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet