Jacks from a German deck of cards engraved in 1545 (Wiki commons)

Lily’s crying upstairs now but it’s not the cries of a child, it’s the depths of horror, of hormones. She doesn’t seem interested (in an emotional way) in the bedtime ritual, it’s more transactional now—like anything, it doesn’t happen overnight, it’s painstakingly, deceptively gradual:

it’s like an animated short film, your life, a deck of playing cards with the same image but at slightly different angles to give you the impression it’s moving day after day,

but it’s why each day really is important, they all add up to make a picture—

and instead of going up to kiss them goodnight I let Dawn have her turn (she’s better at it, more in demand) and I go back down to the den, to the sofa, that’s slanted like a billiard table, where all the balls collect in the corner—and all I have to redeem myself is the idea of some art that really, at its core

is transactional.

Categories: poetry

Tags: blogging, existentialism, German playing cards, hormones, parenting, prose, the nature of art, William Pearse writer