July 4, 2011 - Breakfast

These are the new facts embodied. There are two human beings being grown there. I am developing a keen sense of the new facts. Everyone is telling me that the new facts will change me.

What does that mean, that I will change? It implies a certain fundamental self. Like one day I was ice and the next day I melted. I don't really buy it. I have a million different parts that make me up, like a big clear plastic box filled with fireflies.

I keep thinking about the stories of men who walked out. They went out for cigarettes and never came back. They never said goodbye. Sometimes they showed up years later to see what happened. You heard that story all the time. Mothers too, sometimes, but especially fathers. "I'm going out for cigarettes."

You could just go to Florida or California. You wore a hat. What was that like? How could that happen? My father left for a week when I was twelve, came back six months later--although he called and sent cards from Florida. What sort of deal did you make with yourself to pull that off? I feel as if I'm missing something. Even among my friends with the worst possible marriages it's inconceivable, that male disappearing act. It seems to have gone out of fashion. Maybe because everyone stopped smoking?

What is that like, in the sun and fruit trees? You have a booth at the diner. No one asks.

I'm sure somewhere among my friends are secret children and many affairs, too. People hide things, some better than others. But never walking out.

There's a baby shower coming. This is everyone in the family's last chance to be who they are in relationship to the current arrangement of millions of personality parts. They'll leave us gifts so that as we adapt to new circumstances we do not forget who they are--so that we remember them, and when we have adapted, we remember that they are in the family. This is why we have birthdays, as well, so that the monkeys can remind each other of their connections.

After they leave after the baby shower it will just be us, and so I have to arrange these parts of myself, again, and basically for the last time. Because one thing we have learned is that dads, once established as dads, never, ever change.

I will do a good job of it, and be less tired and more healthy, because once the new facts are here there's no hiding from them, and not much sleep.

Weight: 335 lbs