The jinx is broken. On my way home from school this evening (because CUNY has a calendar of its own, and sometimes a Thursday becomes a Monday––make up for Presidents’ Day) a conversation from two weeks ago on tripping as one walks and biting one’s tongue as one eats came back to mind. It was circulating with thoughts on Joshua Clover’s poem, “The Dark Ages” and on a story I had just read from the New Yorker: reflections at an older age on youth and how it feels like when one is old.

At the back of my mind were thoughts of a birthday party I had briefly gone to yesterday in Dumbo––two doors away from where I worked shortly last semester for a friend. The celebration of my professor‘s 70th birthday––it was very cool of him to have invited such a diverse group of people.

All these infused with earlier views from this morning’s reading on Frank O’Hara, and how he died at 40. I wondered if I should cover my head as it was drizzling, but after taking a good look at the dirty, melting mountains of snow on the sidewalks, I reached the conclusion that perhaps it is relevant that no matter how long one has been walking, one is still likely to trip, or fall. It is not funny––or perhaps it is. But laughing at that which one does not understand is a survival mechanism, or at least one for staying out of the mad house.