Captivation

What is a guy my age doing listening and enjoying music by Joanna Newsom who is my daughter's age?

We hate being captured, yet we love to find captivation. As I waddle offstage into oblivion there is precious little out there which captivates. That two twenty-somethings can captivate a fifty-something is encouraging.

I found something today. I went to the Library and pulled Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close from the shelf.

I have two nasty habits when I first touch a book. I want to see what the author looks like. I also read the last paragraph first. To the inside back cover. Mon Dieu, he looks like my oldest son! Jonathan is Jewish and twenty-eight years old.

Yesterday, for the first time in years I held in my hands my souvenir photo book from Kibbuz Magen. In 1969 I spent three months on this collective farm between Gaza and Beersheva herding and milking sheep. The handwriting was in the back or the book, which for Jews and Arabs is the front of the book. I needed to be reminded of this. Some drive on the left. some read from back to front or from top to bottom.

So, wanting to see what was at the destination, I started turning pages from the final page.

I knew the subject matter of Jonathan's second novel was 9/11. I will not tell you what is on the last/first fifteen pages of the novel, other than to tell you that, personally, it is my most enduring, recurring nightmare of what Oskar refers to as The Worst Day. Apparently, I am not alone in this and that is comforting.

While waiting for Goose to bring my Gumbo I waded into the Jonathan's/Oskar's world.

There is a riptide at this beach. I'm being pulled out and under.