Whitman's Sampler

There's a woman at the coffee shop I'm sitting in who has a screaming baby. Screaming really hard and loud and persistently. I have my headphones on, music also loud, but I still hear the shrieks. She is walking with the baby cradled in her arms, and also looking at a menu, which she's holding with the tips of her fingers. The baby's screams are not going to come between her and some eggs. I'm impressed.

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Some remake of "Under the Milky Way" just came on my Pandora. Why would anyone remake that song? It's just not a good candidate for a cover. It's the kind of song where, no matter what you do to it, it will still sound exactly like the original.

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Yesterday I felt, toward the world, a throbbing tenderness. I wanted to hug objects, books. I wanted to become a foster parent. I wanted to hold everyone's hand, touch everyone's face, hear everyone's saddnesses. It was this strange, upward expansion, like the beams inside me had been lifted, the roof taken off. Today, I am getting hammered back into something. It's okay. Ongoing construction, etc.

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Another woman has joined the woman with the screaming baby. The baby is quiet. The women are eating. Between songs, I heard the second say to the first, "...just call me, I'll come right over." And the first say, "Even just for an hour or something." And the second say, "Just so you can get out, yeah, for like an hour." A man across the room has just received his food and is taking a picture of it.

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Thinking a lot about religion. Like why a sixty-year-old black woman's religiosity is more socially acceptable, or something, than a twenty-something's. Like how some religions are somehow more palatable, or aesthetically pleasing, than others. Like how religion is a form of indexing, imposing order. Books are so religious, in this way. No matter how they want to capture or imitate or create flux, they are, necessarily, stoppages. Two covers, pages sequential.

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Baby screaming again, and second woman now walking with it.