Wordsmoker

Thanks. I’m not sure about the strength part. I learned to look off screen like he did. I never saw what was in front of me. I would cover a political convention by interviewing the guy selling balloons. I would never deal with whatvwas in front of me, and that carried through all my life. Caused me a lot of personal woe. When he wasn’t looking off screen thinking of communism and worrying about McCarthy, he was being silly or oversharing with me. ( I had to learn it someplace).

He was a good father, in his way. Taught me peripheral vision. Taught me to see what cops see. A prosecutor told me that a few years ago. Helped me as a novelist, but didnt get me the About New York column. Silly of me to think I might get it. He started looking me in the eye and talking directly 8 or 9 months before he died. Well, at least he got there. I wish he was still here. I miss him terribly.

@ uncivilly obedient:

Thanks. I actually put some work into those few words. But it’s an example of my longer note above; it makes the point only obliquely.

@ misslinda: He wrote on the back of it, “My shadow.”

@ VoxPopuli:

But it permeates life, including (or especially) my tendency to be drawn to people on the edge — artists, writers, performers, the wounded.

You guys.

Kidding, okay, kidding.

To an extent.

The Leonard Cohens. The Douglas Adams’s, he being the only one I have ever read who combines my love of the periphery with a certain bizarre humor.

I’m fascinated with “House,” and while I’d like to think I’m House I’m really Wilson. I stand there and watch, vaguely amused, sometimes victimized, enabling.

Here’s a Douglas Adams moment from my father and me. When I finally concentrated real hard to address what was right in front of me …. forced myself to focus … he was on his deathbed. I said “I love you,” pushing the words out. His eyes flashed toward mine, and then he looked up at the ceiling, the same sort of look as in the photo in Boston, lifted the corner of his oxygen mask, and said “likewise.”