4-1-01 Su 9:53 AM DST

Spokane River, June '97

If still waters run deep, do turbulent rivers run shallow?

I go to make breakfast. I get out the eggs, salsa, tortillas, butter, etc. "You want me to make breakfast?" asks the wife.

 "OK," I say.

"Let me get out the stuff because you always take it out and leave it on the counter.

"I just take out whatever I might use, and I always put it away after I eat. What's the problem?"

"Could we just have one day where we don't bicker," she says.

This gets to me. I don't bicker. I'm not a bickerer. I know when I'm dealing with someone to stupid to argue with, and I stop talking. Her comment insults and surprises me. We don't bicker. We have our icy silences, but we mainly get along pretty good. Very occasionally, we have a spat, but here she is making like it's an everyday thing.

And this is the --what?--incredible thing about a woman: She's got me bickering that I don't bicker. I decide to stop talking entirely. I cook the breakfast. I burn the potatoes because I'm busy putting cheese and onions away and washing the knife as I go along. I couldn't get the block of cheese to fit in the Glad bag. Whatever. I set out two plates. She picks at hers. She leaves the table. I feed hers to the dog. 

I finished reading Cities of the Plain last night. I thought it was terrific. That finishes The Border trilogy. I'm such the lesser writer. Magdalena and John Grady and Eduardo were killed, but Billy lived to be an old man. 

“You cannot bear the world to be ordinary.”

“But what is your life? Can you see it? It vanishes at its own appearance. Moment by moment. Until vanishes to appear no more. When you look at the world, is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered? How are they separate?

 

“Each man is the bard of his own existence.”