2011

I am enjoying this new year, although it is only an hour long so far. I started out looking at a photograph of a happy couple smiling with two donkeys making love unbeknownst in the background, and a trifle fuzzy. Fun, yes, still, everyone says I like to complain and I do.

The year itself, for instance, has a problem: 2011. It doesn’t seem right. It seems uneven. It seems lopsided, queer, a little restless and terrible. 2010 seemed right, even, balanced, zen, silky smooth and dreamy. The last thing I learned in 2010, a right year, was that there was a monster called Nauga that advertised Naugahyde.

A teen wrote the newspaper in 1968 and asked if he could acquire a Nauga for his girlfriend in the hospital and the newspaper said Not so fast we called your mother and she said you don’t have a girlfriend in the hospital you want the Nauga monster for yourself and I bet you could use some naugahyde for your butt once you get home and your mother finds out that you are a liar.

If you turned to Page One Robert Kennedy was not asleep on the kitchen floor, and the temperature was a mild 68 degrees in Los Angeles. 1968 didn’t seem right either, and at least 2011 started out looking at a happy couple in a photograph while two donkeys made love in the background unbeknownst, much better

I think that all of that naugahyde and &c. and then much later much much more and worse in years to come, for example a baby duct taped to the window, a family dressed up as zebras and smiling, a young man on a pedestal holding a parasol and a fan in an uncertain future everybody whispers Hey you know what that is that’s now.