these things are honest and beautiful

24Mar08

“The Knox County Public Library only has one outlet and to plug into it you pretty much have to sit inside the potted ficus tree. The Knox County Public Library has not been renovated since my last visit in 1988. The Knox County Public Library probably has not been renovated since 20 years before my last visit and has modernist chandeliers that they could ebay for a grand. Despite it’s old timey ways and well thumbed large print editions of George Burns All My Best Friends the Knox County Public Library is the only place in town with wi-fi and the New York Times. My grandma is still alive. Every day my aunts and dad configure a plan, shifts in six and eight hour stays, and what if. If she dies today, if she dies this week, who will go where, and the latest on what she said, what the doctor said, what her vitals were, what they are now, and how much medicine when? Being here feels like being on tour. Sleeping in impossible positions on chairs and couches, with jeans and shoes on, breaking a nights sleep up from 2 to 6 am and 8 to noon, and then waiting, waiting, waiting broken up by bouts of consensus-taking and fast food salads. It feels impossible to work on the book, to read–to do anything but wait is to assert that something else matters in the face of this slow, informal consideration of love and family and mortality; this is the real work.”

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