Welcome to Naval Gasing, I'm John Dickerson.

Note Book 75, page 6, September 5, 2021.

Oh my God, we dropped our son at college and our dog is dead.

Anne.

Anne is my wife. You'd like her. She said this one Sunday in 2021 while we were reading in the living

room. There are at least two kinds of living room declarations, the first of which this is not an example, punctuates

a tense domestic exchange, maybe an argument, I am not a broken toy that needs fixing.

Or if you wouldn't interrupt me with your hostile questions maybe I'd be able to explain.

On stage this kind of spiky comment causes a pause, actors, hold in the silence. You hear the seats creaking as the audience shifts in

discomfort. In the text, this is the passage college students uncap, the Highlighter

for. A second kind of living room declaration does not create a silence but takes

place after one. It is prompted by a surprise pang that arrives out of nowhere like an arrow shot in the

sideboard.

On September 5th, 2021, we experienced a declaration of the second kind in our living room on 74th Street,

New York, New York, where if you leaned over just right, you could see a sliver of the Hudson River

through the yellow leaves of the fall trees in Riverside Park.

The play in which a second order declaration of this kind takes place goes something like this.

Scene.

The wife reads on the living room couch.

The husband reads in his favorite chair.

He is the kind of husband who has a favorite chair.

Silence for a little bit longer than the audience can stand.

...