from “Walden Pond”
Patty Nash | Walden Pond | Thirdhand Books | August 2024
WALDEN POND
Some dad recorded his baby’s gurgles and set them to the tone of “Thunderstruck.” I wondered how much time it took, seized my luck, had a beer and followed it up with some strawberry sorbet. Ah, summer. Life is what happens when you remember May 2012 in pure dread and fear. Life is also what happens when you say “I simply cannot deal” and defer, tuck spaghetti bolognese in napkins, I’m truly excellent at that. I was living apart from companionship, in the sense I had decided to divest from that of which I was part. Then I realized “Damn, that’s fucked up” and ruminated, chewed on grass like a lilac cow in the Alps. Except then I was in Washington State. Things change so incredibly quickly. That accent’s not from here, but hardly anything is. The issue with so many contrarians is with everyone with a bone to pick a bone to, there are no bones left. It’s best to pluck pink rhododendrons on the sand peninsula with green kitchen scissors and pray the inevitable tsunami won’t wash it all away. It would be too bad for Jake The Alligator Man, a paper-mâché (?) allegory for how we are never just one thing. My father never divested from this fully either, but for when the laminate tiles literally shifted on this peninsula we were on, and our neighbors screamed at us from the bed of the truck. “We’re fine,” yelled my father, just totally gone. His brother Bob showed me how tectonic plates work with the palms of his hands. Nothing he said was false. I went outside and tap-danced on wooden planks, I sang along to “Singing in the Rain” in the rain. I slipped out, that’s what I hear, on my bum. I looked up from my book.