Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

Two sounds in the house lately: clanking barbells and electric guitar behind garage and bedroom doors. J.’s mesocosm failed; he flagrantly excused himself on the basis of gender, as the gathering of mud and spores, weeds and worms for “nurturing” is not the métier, apparently, of boys. Dear A., I myself was quite taken with the idea that we can bring a world to life like animated toys, a sealed jar sustaining frog and fen. So much for that. It’s the fall equinox: the radio broadcast Vivaldi twice. I know the change by the slant of light— slant of light + concerto. The clocks quietly gallop. Maybe it’s the promise of achieving equilibrium, under tight conditions, of carbon and oxygen in give and take. I’m in dire need of —what to call it?—magic. I worry that Zoom is ruled by djinn that filter out the wavelength of love and so I wear my evil eye jewelry, as you advised, against being too much in view: that tiny frog on display …. (like the specimen I saw once on a man’s gold ring in Italy. Who could wear that showpiece of the atelier? Only, perhaps, a witty prince.) Personal adornment is out anyway. Yet the citrus trees have kept up appearances (no shortage of lemons). I watch the progress day after day of those novitiate spathes that erupt from the peace lily…. a summons from the offices of mediation. (Laws are stipulated by plants too. See stipule). Occasionally a rare aircraft lights up the tropopause. Where is the workshop of the soul? His bed, I averred. You laughed. Those late spring nights the street was overrun with frogs, I walked with care: a purse, a pulse … a pulse-in-a-purse mimicking the heart that skipped a beat or made a choice in error it couldn’t, then or now, reverse. Cold-blooded hearts everywhere I stepped! Lentil-colored, stippled, with the froideur of the ex-lover. What’s one more plague? Outside, it’s too hot. Summer’s overslept, a season out of touch with the calendar. The strip malls, dear A., exude nutmeg.