Freak Flag

I was a little big hungover this morning after a wonderfully friendly reading in Williamsburg last night, after which I reconvened with some batshit crazy friend of mind from high school who I nomered "The Unlikeliest Attorney." I mean, fifteen years ago this guy was growing hydroponic in a warehouse in Brooklyn and next thing you know he's a public defender. This morning I woke up on the floor (intentionally) of my parents' apartment, where they had kindly laid out the spare mattress in what they call "the library"--which really is a room lined with books. Among these books I noticed three copies in a row of my dad's only one, published in 1973 by the Sierra Club. It's called Unreal Estate, (har har, and that's the point of this post) and it's an expose of a certain bunch of real estate scams going down at the time. Knowing my dad, it's probably a pretty dry read, but unfailingly accurate and even-handed. He's a Libra. Right there and then, with my right temple alternately on fire and impaled by an ice pick I had a revelation: EVERYTHING is genetic. Or let me rephrase that as a question: IS Everything Genetic? Did even my helpless and unremitting fondness for punny or just jokey titles ("Laconic Parkway"; "The World Is My Cloister"; "Autobiographia Copularia"--these are just a few of my gems) come to me the same way my large hands and skinny ankles did? God knows my dad didn't walk around the house punning or even just being humorous with any regularity. He's a Libra.