The fog in the streets that morning was of the low, wet variety that gently hugs the California coast on those days when the sun is going to roast the beaches, making the inland valleys unbearable. It would be a hot one in the field. Sure enough, just after Sandra picked me up in her battered old Audi and proceeded through Golden Gate Park to pick up Roberto, the fog began to lift.
A book’s characters always wait for us. No matter what happens to me during the day, Kerouac remains exactly where he was yesterday. He never moves without my permission. I reanimate him at my whim.
We need constant proof that we’re not alone. And if we don’t see a companion, we strain to hear one in the dark. And when there is no whistle in return? I’m here to tell you, we will make one up.
I was dressed and ready for church, waiting while the others bustled about in preparation, when a sudden conviction took hold of me: “I’m not going,” I told my mother.
Someone has died. Someone I loved the way I love my own hands. And I am alive in the bright, fading day, flying above the earth and sea.
I take the test, grade myself strictly, and add up the points. The result is that I’m likely an alcoholic and should seek treatment as soon as possible. I take the test again and grade myself more forgivingly, because forgiveness is a virtue.
The word fascist has lost all meaning. We need a new term to describe people who build detention camps for infants at the Texas border.
I imagine them sending me to live with a family that is not my own. I have protected my parents for as long as I’ve been alive. If someone comes after them, I have teeth.
With snow falling on blue spruce and a cardinal at the feeder and the fireplace’s crackly warmth easing into your bones and the final pages of a book about bears and the opening pages of a book about monks and no plans for the morning, the afternoon, the evening, tomorrow, next week, the rest of your life.
Running is better for me than church; better than counseling, pills, or meditation; better than diet plans or twelve-step meetings. Running keeps me literally on the straight and narrow.
