growing into a name

one of my pet obsessions is my childhood. i think i could say with a fair amount of certainty that all children exhibit various neuroses, with some transforming said neuroses into less suspect behaviors and others repressing them into tiny packages which explode during stressful times in their future adult lives.

it's always so disarming to find the childhood inside of an adult's eyes, as the days progress i find that i'm less troubled by children then i used to be. sometimes i fancy that you can see the sum of all of a person's childhood in their eyes and laughs and movements and their very being. as g. said in class today, all it takes to know a person is to see them live out two weeks of their life, all three meals, all their interactions. and i see it in y., in her healthy walk and her manner of breathing. this is a woman with a memory like a crystal goblet of wine. nothing artificial, nothing diseased. she told us about a drink in russia for sick children called oxygen cocktail and how she used to read up in a tree.

i saw a little boy today after work, stopping in the cafeteria. he was purely absorbed in looking for the perfect purchase. there were only three people in the cafe besides him, and we were all looking. he was so nonchalant too, and so secure. he asked the price of everything and considered. i looked at the cashier to see if she were looking at him in suspicion of stealing and she did, several times quickly. i looked at him openly. he was very attractive, i always found focused people to be so attractive. as though attention were a deep inner pool, a swirling magnetic field.

now i see childhoods everywhere. it creates such a strange feeling within you, as the repellent voyeur, as the invisible one to be held responsible for all the unanswered questions. i can't stop seeing it now, all these children-adults, all these girlwomen and boymen. all these transformations. we are always becoming