"A cunt hair away from perfection,
deadwood, a zen-like transformation
of consciousness.
But I know as much about zen as David Milch does opera--
nothing, or next to it.
Once, Li-Young Lee said "writing is yogic,"
but I quit yoga, too.
People hold themselves to higher moral standards when
they feel like they're being watched,
even by eyes that are fake.
But do the words I, eye, have the same effect?
What makes cunt the most offensive word?
A C, a U, an N, and a T that signify the last frontier
of American language Milch is forging, as though Swearingen
himself riding into the sunset.
Get it?
I looked at my family history.
My great uncle Ebenezer was a blacksmith,
and another, JP Hoy, a detective in Minneapolis,
who solved the famed case of the Murdered Dressmaker.
One obituary spoke of surviving life among the savages--
the savages of South Dakota.
My great grandfather owned a hardware store in Ravello
in the late 1800s that looked just like Seth and Saul's,
which reminds me of when I saw James Gandolfini on TV
in the crowd at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade,
smiling nothing like Tony Soprano.
A wet snow fell.
Men dressed as inflatable jolly elephants strutted
to commemorate the first parade 80 years ago, when
real elephants marched.
The unredeemable bookended by sentimentality.
That's what Barbara said about Tony."