I took care of a wedding present today. Just walked into Wms-Sonoma, bought a couple hundred dollars worth of knives, had them gift-wrapped and shipped. Left. Paid cash. It felt great.

It’s spring already.

The last 2 days were cool again, hoodie weather, but the sky was so brilliant blue. Little green buds are breaking out all over the trees. The plums are in white. Willows are starting to weep thin green cascades, like droplets from an upturned showerhead.

The thorn bushes in the vacant lots on the east side of Yosemite St. have caught a large number of plastic bags.

It’s spring already. A final heavy snow will seal the deal. If it doesnt come we’ll be waiting til July for the other shoe.

Okay. I’m officially counting calories. 2500 or fewer per day. A modest goal. Surprisingly easy, actually. But I have no doubt I’ll lose weight if I do it consistently. I have to lose weight becuz I have high blood pressure and that’s correlated with weight. And a guy my age having high blood pressure is fucking pathetic. I weighed 241 pounds today. I will weigh myself again after one month of this regime. Hopefully I’ll be down a few pounds. Five or ten, I don’t expect more than that. Do it slowly. My goal is 225. I’ll get some exercise too. At the very least I will walk one mile each day. That will be pretty easy too because on the days I take the bus to work I have to walk the last mile. On the days I don’t, I take long walks with the baby. Several miles. I do these things quite easily, but I’m not consistent. That’s why I never get anywhere. So for the next month, I’m doing it evry day.

About the Man in the Moon, that like a certain other nature spirit, I wouldnt put it past him to change his sex from time to time, if he even has one. The Kat has none, according to his creator.

Aside from the finer points of poo cleanup*, I don’t see where it matters at all to a child my son’s age. One sex is almost exactly like the other during the first part of life. I was buying some things at a little supermarket by my house while holding my son L. in a carrier. A woman in line behind me politely commented on how cute L. looked curled up in his sling. His body made a sort of crescent shape and she thought he looked “just like the Man in the Moon.”

“Or it could be a Woman in the Moon,” she said. “Could be,” I responded sagely, missing the point. Sure, why not a Woman in the Moon?** “Well, which is it, a man or a woman?” “Who can say?” You brought it up, lady.

Ohh…

“In this case it’s a little man. In the case of the moon itself I don’t know.” Seems like very awkward language to use, as I think it’s obvious this creature won’t be a man or a woman for a very long time to come. (Both terms imply maturity and L.’s most distinguishing feature is his lack of it. I daresay it’s just that feature that led you to ask about him in the first place.)

Someone recently advised me not to get any nude portraits taken of him. (Unbidden: I hadnt mentioned any plans to get portraits done at all.) I think most 21st-Century Americans find “naked baby” pictures in bad taste. Which is actually peculiar since everybody is so interested in his sex. But you don’t want to see it? (I realize my tack here is a bit birdbrained, as most “naked baby” pictures focus on the bum, not the generative organs. Why are babies’ bums, featured on the covers of all the baby books, so fetishized? My baby’s bum, covered in corn starch and shit, isnt particularly photogenic.)

*Speaking of poo, no one will stop speaking of it. Dealing with shit is a major part of early parenthood, and I don’t mind at all, but it’s not a pleasant subject to talk about and I don’t understand why other parents must constantly bring it up in conversation.

From those who already know my baby’s sex, the main question I get is “Does he cry a lot?” Well, he’s a baby. How much is a lot? I have no idea; this is my first one. The related question “Are you getting any sleep?” is also popular.*** If I say yes I feel like a slacker, but if I say no I feel like a screwup. I want to seem like I have my act together—and have an extremely above-average baby—but I’m also suffering in the right measure.

The last thing I want to do is complain however, even when all I want to do is complain. Lord knows I brought this on myself. I’ve taken to speaking effusively about the power of my son’s lungs. I imagine a circle of hunter-gatherer dads in some anthropology book bragging about whose baby can cry the loudest. I don’t know where L. would place in a contest, but I am honestly impressed with his lung capacity.

I’m not slagging off anybody who asks if it’s a boy or a girl, of course not. First of all, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but many of our pronouns are gendered masculine or feminine and there is tremendous pressure on us to use the right ones at all times. The neuter it is reserved for things not people. Usually babies can safely be called it because they are somewhere in between the two. The better you know it, the more it becomes a person and you have to stick to the he’s and she’s. If you’re a stranger in line at the supermarket…you don’t have much of a stake in the whole question. Anyway it’s a boy. Even though it will take a while before he’s even that.

***Less popular but a personal favorite is “Is he sleeping through the night?” This is tinted with varying degrees of sarcasm. He’s a month old.

**Actually, the Man in the Moon appeared to me once when I was very young. I didnt mention I had met him when I conversed with my friend at the supermarket, for fear she would think I was a flake. I remembered it tho, I have never forgotten, and I still feel his warmth sometimes, especially when I see the moon in the daytime. You think I’m a flake now. (You have at least since I brought up Uncle Aleister.) He was sitting in a tree, smiling down on me while I playd in my sandbox. He had descended from his house in the moon to hang out with me. I have a feeling he comes down here frequently and plays in the treetops, probably on the days when the Moon is closest to the Earth. He was large and round and white. Mellow. Benevolent yet puckish. A cousin to Pan. See “Piper at the Gates of Dawn”^†. Hey here’s a funny story about Pan. Have you heard this one? He was insanely in love with Aphrodite but she wouldnt give him the time of day. One night he spied on Aphrodite having a fling with Heracles in the woods. They played cute games like wearing each other’s clothes, fuckd like mad, and passed out. Seeing his chance, Pan pounced on the sleeping Aphrodite and raped her. But, it turned out it wasnt Aphrodite, it was Heracles wearing Aphrodite’s clothes! Zing!

I don’t see my Man in the Moon ever getting quite that worked up, but he would look natural with a set of quills in his lips.

Oh the mystic visions my boy will see, when he is a boy, playing in his own sandbox, fontanelle closed**** but head still permeable to the spirits of nature.

****Thru it you speak with Godhead Itself baby. But once the skull ossifies, you’re done. You’s an apple-eater just like the rest of us.

He who embodies the fullness of integrity
    is like a ruddy infant.

Striving to increase one’s life is ominous;
To control the vital breath with one’s mind entails force.

Something that grows old while still in its prime
    is said not to be in accord with the Way;
Not being in accord with the Way
    leads to an early demise.

Victor H. Mair
after Lao Tzu

(#)

I’ve never been too worried about this “internet is forever” shit. One, a lot of stuff has gone away, and two, even if all this stuff stays around, who the fuck is going to look at it?

Can’t seem to burn dual-image CDs (what they used to call “enhanced” CDs). Tried 2 different applications. No good. Used to do this all the time w/no problem. Friend suspects hardware issue. Anyone?

Sometimes I take 2 songs and I expect them to be the seed, the germ, the sperm and ovum of a mix tape, but sometimes (often) they arent. Sometimes they don’t produce. Sometimes the 2 songs I put my hopes in are just friends. But sometimes they can get together and harmonize with a tape’s worth of other friends.

Evrybody knows bad luck comes in threes. Maybe that also goes for being stupid. Lately I have… Gotten a ticket for making a left turn from the wrong lane. Run over a stump with my lawnmower and bent the crankshaft. It will cost me about 2 bills to get it fixed. And yesterday at work, in the fourteenth hour of a 16-hour shift I say in my own defense, I made the kind of ridiculous, rookie mistake that if someone else had done it would have made me shake my head and wonder why they hadnt been fired yet.

So hopefully I’m in the clear for a while.

(…including solitude of course.)