When you fall asleep, I dress up in winter clothes and sing silently into all the mirrors. I pretend you're singing with me, batting at me with the end of your scarf or pulling my woolen cap over my eyes and dashing off to the next piece of silvered glass. You mouth the words and it looks like you're singing with my voice. We dance, carefully, trying not to slip in our socks. Our steps are slow and soft, each of us in the habit of performing unaccompanied.

I sing to the you in the mirror, the you that looks like me. When I finally return to our bed, I wake up often to peek over at you so I can catch you if you're ever singing back.

I don't want to hear any complaints from people who only have one child. Joshua has been sick so I've returned to watching him for the past couple of days. Ender is smugly healthy so he is still attending his daycare. Thus, I am left with an incomplete set of twins. Ah well, they didn't match up that well anyway.

Joshua and I have been having a great time. Watching television, eating our favorite foods, taking naps, chasing the dog, listening to NPR, dancing to TV On The Radio, and practicing walking. Joshua hardly seems sick at all.

Without his partner in crime, Joshua is learning that it's a lot harder to pull off the "I'll go this way, you go that-a-way" routine they've honed on me.

One kid. Psh. Easy living.

I stand in my narrow room and contemplate sleep. Shadows clothe my naked body. The computer screen flickers and I am stop-motion. It passes.

I forget sleep and contemplate strength. The ability to run and jump and push and pull, to shape the world, to destroy creation. Strength to strike a weary drum for hours and hours.

What is the howl for?

There is art on the walls, art I did not make but I pushed pins into the plaster wall to hold it up. The art, not the wall.

The computer screen spits colors and I am sine waves. Phase shift; hiding under bedsheets. It passes. I peek out from beneath my pillow.

All wrapped up.

Phase shift; I am asleep in a chair. I am an endless document that occasionally autosaves.

Resolution comes when I put my contemplation of strength to sleep. I dream of heroes and villains.

I am not in my wildest dreams.

It's only one of the reasons, but Melville's car is the fastest overall with the slowest acceleration and very good handling. Borges's car is the fastest off the line and steers all over the place. The blue car is the All-American, or in this case the All-Ruskan and Italo Calvino's car is piloted by an alien.

Useful Tip Fo' Life:

The crippling emotional discord brought on by prolonged contemplation of the labyrinthian nature of reality can be quickly dispelled by a few laps of F-Zero.

This is why I don't make a good English student. Whenever I hear a term such as "comparative literature" I immediately picture something like this:



I hope to attend the next conference on comparative literature where I will resolve disputes and turn a small profit by selling t-shirts that read "Let's Settle This With Hover-Cars".

Writer's Corner: It took me more than twenty minutes of furious internal debate to decide on the appropriate car for each author. At first I was heavily influenced by nationality but then I was like, "Fuck it, it's the future."

Okay, just touch the keys lightly and see what happens. Good, so far no spelling mistakes. That's a good sign. Let's see what I can still spell: Kumquat. Periphery. Glockenspiel. Fahrenheit. Occam. Stoichiometry. Platonic. Gimbel. Damn. Missed that last one. That's fair; I can't think of what a gimbal is.

But that's fine, I'm sure I'm not concerned with gimbals right now. How can I be concerned with something when I don't know what it is?

I should rest. I should put on my Batman pajamas and climb into bed. Wrap myself up snug in my thick red blanket with the tigers on it. Sleep and dream and awaken refreshed. It's the perfect plan.

I had a thick blue blanket with dolphins on it. I wonder where that is.

Why am I feeling this way? Maybe it's the Tolstoy...

I read a book today. Other than that I wasn't terribly productive.

I'm taking some medicine to help my attention span (such as it is) and I've been reading like a kid again. I'm irrationally opposed to any medical solutions to ailments that I don't consider life-threatening, but once I began to lose focus halfway down every page (not due to literary crappiness) I yielded.

In the past two weeks I've read Invisible Cities, Red Mars, a couple of Xanth novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude, re-read Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and I'm well into Valis by Philip K. Dick. On deck is Samuel Beckett's Watt since I've only read/performed Waiting For Godot years ago and I can't claim that I really understood it.

Rather than feeling satisfied by my literary gluttony, I am becoming more voracious. It is a pleasant gnawing, like being awoken by the scent and sizzle of a huge breakfast.

This is my last week of babysitting. When I began, sheesh, four or five months ago(?) the twins could do little more than lie on their backs staring up at me in their baby way, a mixture of judgment and acceptance. Now they're taking their first steps and hurling food like pros. They're also much heavier but my back never hurts anymore. Heh, I must have finally developed those lower back muscles. I could probably lift four, even five babies if I had to.

I will miss spending so much time with them. I will miss Ender's blatant defiance of my authority and how Joshua will crawl up and lie on my chest when he gets sleepy. I will also sorely miss my middle of the day nap.

Other matters await my attention, and my carefree days of frolicking, swimming lessons, and teaching them how to properly harass the dog are at an end. It may be for the best. I try to nurture their independence, problem-solving skills, and healthy suspicion of authority figures, but I worry that in time they may pick up my reclusiveness, moodiness, and ambush-predator approach to problem solving.

It has been my blunt realization that to be a better parent, I must become a better person. I don't think I'm that person yet, so it's best to bail out before anything's irreparable. I'm not too worried. We Lopez's are quite resilient.

I will miss my babies.