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go back to the beginning. In some, God is portrayed as a father, in others, as a mother. When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.
    It’s different, of course, with the art monsters. They are always elsewhere.
    It was quite difficult to reach Rilke. He had no house, no address where one could find him, no steady lodging or office. He was always on his way through the world and no one, not even he himself, knew in advance which direction it would take
.
    This according to Stefan Zweig, one of his closest friends.
    The philosopher is traveling across the country, giving lectures at colleges. He sends me his new book. It is called
Stimmung
and refers to the state of mind that precedes a schizophrenic breakdown. It is accompanied by something known as “the truth-taking stare.”
    Everything seems charged with meaning. “I noticed particularly” is the refrain of those who are experiencing it
.
    I think the philosopher is a little bit famous now. Bright-eyed girls come to his lectures and want to talk to him about how paper thin the world feels. He doesn’t go out with them.He is holding out for someone who knows how to garden.
    I keep forgetting to get glasses. It makes my husband crazy. I ask my most stylish friend to come with me to pick them out. The salesman wants me to buy bright blue ones. Fashion forward, he calls them. My friend laughs. “I don’t think they go with the way you dress.” How do I dress? I wonder. Like a bus driver is the answer.
    Three things no one has ever said about me:
    You make it look so easy
.
    You are very mysterious
.
    You need to take yourself more seriously
.
    I get glasses that are a little bit fashion backward.
If your eyes are sound, your whole body will be filled with light
.
    Just after she turns five, my daughter starts making confessions to me. It seems she is noticing her thoughts as thoughts for the first time and wants absolution. I think she must beCatholic after all.
I thought of stepping on her foot, but I didn’t. I tried to make her a little bit jealous. I pretended to be mad at him
. “Everybody has bad thoughts,” I tell her. “Just try not to act on them.”
    At night before she goes to bed, we look at pictures of cute animals on the Internet. My husband shows me how far back the meme goes, all the way back to a big ugly cat saying: I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
    But my daughter is not impressed. “When can we see real animals?” she says. She wants a dog. We decide that for her birthday she can have a cat. Better for the city, my husband says. Why make a dog miserable?
    Sometimes she will come in complaining about seeing things when she closes her eyes at night. Streaks of light, she says. Stars.
    My husband has taken to calling me Bizarro Wife. Because when he decided not to drink anymore I talked him out of it. Because I saidonce that he looked sexy smoking. Because I’ll give him a blow job anytime he wants, but mostly am too tired for sex. Also because I’m always saying he could quit his job if he wanted and we’ll go somewhere cheap and live on rice and beans with our kid.
    My husband doesn’t believe me about that last bit. And why should he? Once I spent $13 on a piece of cheese. I often read catalogs meant for the rich.
    But lately I’m like a beatnik in a movie.
Fuck this bourgeois shit, baby! Let’s be pure of heart again!
    I have lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in years. She orders things I’ve never heard of, sends back a piece of middling fish. I tell her various schemes to redeem my life. “I’m so compromised,” she says.

17
    I’m spending a lot of time online trying to buy a deserted ramshackle bungalow colony. As soon as I find one (and the money to buy it), I’m going to get ten friends to stay up there with us all summer. Kind of a commune minus the hallucinogenic drugs and the mate swapping. My husband is unmoved by my scheme. “I don’t see how it will really affect