Monday, September 17, 2007

When I graduated from college my father gave me a small gold coin, stamped with an Indian head and the date ‘1853’. He said his dad had given it to him when he graduated from college. I kept it in a safe place. Last year I looked it up on-line, and found out that it was a reproduction made sometime in the fifties or sixties, having little “numismatic value”. His dad ran off when he was a kid. I affixed the coin to the wall of my office with a bit of blue putty.

To its right is a picture of a Barry Bonds cut out from a newspaper about three years ago, beginning to yellow. In it, all eyes look in the same direction: the catcher just risen from a crouch, the umpire taking off his mask, and Barry Bonds looking at what is probably a home run. The bat floats an arms length in front of Barry, captured in mid flight almost perpendicular to the ground. You get the sense that the blurry crowd in the background are all watching the ball as well, ten of thousands of people looking in the exact same direction.

Hanging from the trunk of wires that runs from floor to ceiling in my office is a half-inch think piece of blue and white rope. My step-brother asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him rope, which I didn’t really want, but liked the sound of saying; a kind of test to see if anyone’s listening. I’ll ask for things like a tooth brush or a bowl of cereal and end up with a wallet and a nice pen. I’m not complaining, I think it’s funny. It’s a nice piece of rope.