To have dragged him from one country to another; it is a debt to him she feels she can never pay back. Surely, his peculiarities arise from the shock of turning his homeland into a distant and mythological place; a quiet and meditative culture exchanged for the brutish and loud New York City. Poor, sweet, Josephu, she often thinks. She of course meant poverty of spirit, but she also knew that if they could have more money then she might better protect him from the brutality of the city. But then he was never materially poor, not really. If he was poor he did not seem to recognize it. Every cardboard box was a fortress or the potential for a construction. Every paper towel tube was a rocket or a bullhorn. Every piece of bent wire found on the sidewalk was a sigil, a message, an antenna or a figurine. She bought him toys and while he seemed so grateful for the gifts, they most often sat unused in the corner of the living room. Perhaps the one exception was a large electric buzzer that had come with a board game. The game itself was discarded (too simple), but Joe would sometimes sit in front of the TV, some game show occupying the screen, and press his electric buzzer along with the show, speaking answers before the contestants when he could. He didn’t shout; knew the people in the TV couldn’t hear him. He could not be content with knowing the answer in his mind, but neither was there any hint of bravado:

Bezzzzz “1914.”

Bezzzzz “Mary, Queen of Scots.”

Bezzzzz “Zachary Taylor.”

Bezzzzz The Edsel.”

Correct answers yielded big smiles; incorrect answers resulted in one of three behaviors. He would lay his head in his hands and rubs his eyes or he would double-tap the buzzer Bezt Bezt (a kind of Pavlovian self-training) or he would stick his tongue out and unceremoniously, “Phbbbbt.” This last reaction was particularly useful when the correct answer was his second choice. Eventually, the game shows would give way to adventure and comedy and Joe would buzz his buzzer one last time in salute before turning off the TV.

The toys he did love were the toys that could come to life and he kept those in a large tin—a festive tin that once contained cookies for very special occasions— underneath his cot. He had all kinds of wind-up bugs and robots and things that weren’t anything at all really. They would jostle and bounce and do flips and all perform all manner of movement and acrobatics. He would spend hours in the playground pitting one against another; seeing which toy would win in a straight fight or which one would win a race. He knew the fast ones and the slow ones. He knew the strong ones and the ones which would do best on rough terrain. He knew what the gear ratios meant and which ones could achieve the most taut windings. It drove him to study the machines. Not a few of his lesser favorites had been disassembled, their parts scattered all in the bottom of the tin. He studied how a wound coil could unwind slowly and pull a small gear to make for a wind-up toy that would be fast but strong. He did not know where this wind-up magick was constructed (other than that it was somewhere in China) but he longed for a toolbox filled with nothing but gears and coils and housings and axles so that he could build entirely new creations.

Read the whole thread: The Hunger Engine

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