Meier - Search Party

For Matilda and Wilf Among the flasks and vases, cobalt koi and dragons, the stillest of still things: five plain, domestic bowls,circa 1300. Unhandled, never filled, what life for them without that one life-giving thing the possibility of breaking? What are you doing, Daddy? asks the boy discovering his father in the long, west-facing garden. Just sitting in the sun, he answers, sketchily its too soon for his three-year-old to face Im savouring the last bit of the light, and so on. What are you doing now? the boy asks some time later, the sun-patch less an oblong than a square, though soon, in truth, rectangular again, but crossways now, a slab across the garden. And when the boy returns he calls out Why are you standing there against the wall, Daddy? then Why are you standing on that chair? Hair, of course, was a long-standing joke. They knew, these makers, that it neither falls in beads nor tidy rivulets; still, no matter symmetry was all they cared for.

Imagine then their shock when one among them cast a bronze whose weight sat firmly on its back leg, stood with hips at different levels, and whose head was turned a little to one side. Hooked by such aliveness, they couldnt help but notice that the slight twist which the head-turn set off in the body was not quite reflected in the torso; worse, they saw that their replacement of the dumb, Egyptian non-grin with a smile showed simply how lifeless was the face in general. How could it prove so hard, becoming truer, theyd wonder, each advance exposing fresh forms of awkwardness? Why could they not revert to what they knew, that plain, un-weathering look? What on earth had they begun?

Though real to me, my fear of things is not a thing, the dictionary of phobias suggests. Strange, since a fear of things on ones left is accorded a name, as is a fear of those to ones right. Perhaps its a strain of taphephobia where rather than terror of being interred under earth, alive, the fears not of mud but of stuff. Re-reading the list, I find that some might be paired: chiraptophobia (fear of being touched) and chirophobia (of hands), for example.

Poor loves. And then, how fitting that genio-, geno and genu-phobias (chins, sex and knees) come in that order. Not that its funny, of course. Consider, a moment, these: the anthrophobic, afraid of flowers; the cardiophobic, they who are cursed with a fear of the heart; optophobes, loath to open their eyes.

Stepping diagonally like a bishop, bedroom to hallway, lounge to kitchen, as this storey was once for some good reason lost to us arranged, you come out on the balcony. Facing it, one owner has lashed an awning (always drawn) across theirs, while another has pitched an ugly glass and aluminium porch.

The walls are shaded pastel, naturally, ochre or peach, or neither. Pot plants watch over any number of ways of hanging washing, while various pipes, put in post hoc, emerge like surprises. A vision in heuristics a mish-mash, not a symphony. (As near a creed as one might wish to get.)

Whispering, banknotes, handshake: some big plan his father all the boy has, since the shelling is taking care of. Yes, if anyone will get them out of here, then he will. Keep to the middle of the boat, his father tells him, hands trembling while he helps his young son in.

Yet by the time this boat-raw boy sees land and rushes to that side, along with the others, those words have melted and the boats half-under so this man, no more a father, will cry out in the water for his son, then by the waters edge, until the boy is spotted, towards evening the bedclothes of the shallows pulled up close around him.

The pavement/road distinction softened early on; and soon enough one shrub looked much like any other. A few things seemed to gain, however: garden chairs, for instance, showing off their plump, pristine new cushions. And still it snowed, till gross shapes only defined the simplifying world. This is more like it! all the tall things crowed, their voices shrill, then shriller, as if they now could never come, the thaw, the colour. To learn from one another,to grow, we have to risksharing antiquities, risktheir loss, theft or destruction, says my curator friend, remarkably, I feel, for someone so devoted.

And I think of what of mine is out on loan with you; and likewise what of yours I harbour in return. But, more, what rarer, frailer pieces I might entrust to your deep care, and vice versa, that our two cultures even closer grow.

Five hundred parents from a Midwest state are quizzed on if, and if so, how a baby can be spoiled. It turns out almost one in ten, yes, one in ten, believe that this can happen if a babys either rocked or held yes, rocked or held, rocked or held. Suspended in his racing-car-styled walker even on tip-toes just too tall for him he does not cry. A sound comes from the kitchen.

He beats the plastic dashboard with his fists, but does not cry. So it is nearly done, this learning to make do without soft things. Ask him in years to come about his childhood and he will answer, It was fine. Why? or I really dont remember very much.

A baby moves a mouse upon a table. On one screen (linked up to the mouse) a cursor mimics her movements perfectly; on a second, a cursor guided by a person gives a rough approximation only of her gestures. and Donald R., three babies who, for the first half of nineteen twenty-seven, are allowed to choose from cereals, meat and seafood, bone marrow, eggs, fruit, vegetables and salt what food they eat. and Donald R., three babies who, for the first half of nineteen twenty-seven, are allowed to choose from cereals, meat and seafood, bone marrow, eggs, fruit, vegetables and salt what food they eat.

And the result? They neither gorge themselves on the richer, sweeter stuff, nor starve. Free to discover what they know, they thrive.

A mum sits opposite her baby, cooing and playing normally. Then she goes like stone. And what the baby makes of all of this, how it responds, is noted down. And this is okay, since its taking place under prescribed conditions, and just once.

I mean, its not as if its going on undocumented, time and time again, not in a lab but, say, a kitchen.

All colour from the fingers, the palms, wrists, forearms even. Burning cold. And the toes. The heart, pragmatic always, electing to withdraw warmth from the farthest reaches. Sometimes, driving home, well play the question game and tot up what we have been asked, that afternoon or weekend, in return. Sometimes, driving home, well play the question game and tot up what we have been asked, that afternoon or weekend, in return.