“how we spend our days is how we spend our lives” -annie dillard
I used to play a game with one of my friends called “If I Didn’t Have Immigrant Parents I Would ___________.”
He said he would be a kindergarden teacher. I said I would be a novelist.
This game entertained us for hours.
We would discuss, in excruciating detail, how our lives would be. He would wear ties with cartoons on them. I would wear overalls. He would carry a lunch box to school. I would picnic a lot. He would sit Indian-style on a colorful carpet and sing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” in Spanish. I would sit barefoot under a shady tree and write in my journal.
When the game was over we’d look at each other and sigh. He would go back to computer programming. I would go back to studying for the LSATs.
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I once heard a joke that the first word an immigrant mom learns to say in English is “Harvard.”
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I once heard that Wallace Stevens brought two briefcases to work. One held his work stuff. The other held his poetry.
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Re-thinking stuff like,
Me
