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S | Jan 25 2003

Sophia and I went for a walk in the West Village. I showed her the apartment where e.e. cummings lived for forty years, 4 Patchin Place. As we walked, I taught her how to write haikus. She already knew what they were but didn’t know the number of syllables in each line. Soon everything she said became a haiku:

I need to pee bad
Where’s a place to urinate
Without buying stuff?

My hands are frozen
Did you hear?—frozen solid
Like hands made of ice

Soup is the best thing
Well, it’s one of the best things
Anyway it’s good

The soup poem was written in a restaurant called Sacred Chow. There we decided that everything good begins with an s—soup, sleep, showers, sun, and sex—though not necessarily in that order.