Coincidenta Oppositorum

I recently came across papers with my grandmother’s birth dad’s name on it. She was adopted at age 1.5 and her unmarried mom also had another daughter by the same man, that daughter was put in foster care. When I googled the name of my grandmother’s biological father, the only thing that came up was a listing for a grave. He was buried next to his wife, I don’t know what I was expecting, but not that.

“When times were good and there was money to spread around, these were the towns that proved Marx wrong, that managed to increase the proletariat and simultaneously, by calling it middle class, to co-opt it. Such towns were organized around the sedative idealization of team sports, which were believed to develop “good citizens,” and therefore tended to the idealization of adolescent males. During the good years, the years for which places like Lakewood or Canoga Park or El Segundo or Pico Rivera existed, the preferred resident was in fact an adolescent or post-adolescent male, ideally one already married and mortgaged, in harness to the plant, a good worker, a steady consumer, a team player, someone who played ball, a good citizen.” Reading Joan Didion on Super Bowl Sunday...

Reading M Train: Patti Smith writes that she's not interested in symbolism in books then a few pages later there's William S Burroughs who "enjoyed a little target practice and was still a great shot".