Wednesday, March 29
HOW I BECAME IMPOSSIBLE I was born shy, congenitally unable to do anything profitable, to see anything in color, to love plums, with a marked aversion to traveling around the room, which is perfectly normal in infants. Who wrote this? were my first words. I did not like to be torched. More snow fell than was able to melt, I became green-eyed and in due time traveled to other countries where I formed opinions on hard, cold, shiny objects and soft, warm, nappy things. Late in life I began to develop a passion for persimmons and was absolutely delighted when a postcard arrived for the recently departed. I became recalcitrant, spending more and more time with my rowboat. All my life I thought polar bears and penguins grew up together playing side by side on the ice, sharing the same vista, bits of blubber and innocent lore. One day I read a scientific journal; there are no penguins at one pole, no bears on the other. These two, who were so long intimates in my mind, began to drift apart, each on his own floe, far out into the glacial seas. I realized I was becoming impossible, more and more impossible, and that one day it really would be true. (Mary Ruefle)