Deep Waters: My Last WordPress Blogpost January 24, 2024

Dear Readers, I am proud to have had this space to share my work and my writing prompts since 2009. And I thank you for following me here, for all of your wonderful comments and likes, and for taking the time to read my work.

I hope you will follow me to my Substack account, The Writing Catalyst, where I will continue to post my writing and the prompts that inspired them. I’ve subscribed you to the new newsletter free for three months. After that, you can continue to subscribe for free, or pay for a subscription; you can also unsubscribe. The new Substack site allows me to offer virtual writing workshops, podcasts, and so much more. I hope you’ll follow me there.

Thank you for being here with me all these years. Keep writing. Keep reading. And please, keep in touch.

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(The prompt: This piece was written in response to Adrienne Rich’s poem, “Diving into the Wreck”)

“Don’t write about her again,” my inner adolescent says, and he sounds like he’s almost pleading. “Nobody wants to hear about our dead mommy anymore. Especially me.”

It’s too early for a visit from this boy: 8:00 a.m. at the kitchen table. My journal is open in front of me, the pen is poised above the paper, my arthritic hand still stiff from sleep. Not you again, I think, with your full, dark eyebrows and your messy head of wavy hair.  

“Are you just going to ignore me?” he asks. He’s in that baby blue Disney sweatshirt, the one with the peeling white silkscreen of the castle on it. The sleeves are too short for him, but he never takes it off, even in the summer, because it brings out his eyes. Someday, I want to tell him, you’ll visit that castle in southern Germany, the one that inspired Walt Disney, and you’ll be so sick with food poisoning, and so filled with sorrow for the lonely gay king who built that place, you’ll never want to return. But at his age, it’s still a poster on his wall with a Hallmark cliché at the bottom; at his age, that castle is still a beautiful dream.

“I’m trying to write in my journal,” I say.

“I know,” he snaps back. “And I’m telling you not to write about her again.”

I’m remembering now the journal from our sophomore year in high school. Notebook paper bound by a simple green cover. We spent 15 minutes writing every period in my Psychology of Literature class. It was our private work; we didn’t have to share anything we didn’t want to share. I wrote a lot about John Lepsin, about his ice blue eyes and black hair, his big beautiful nose. I wrote tortured unrequited love poems that vacillated between raw desire and fantasies of revenge. But I never wrote about Mama. Only once. Something like, “Things have been pretty weird around the house. Mom has this memory disease and…I don’t want to write about this.” And so, I never did. Until my senior year, when I plagiarized the ending of a piece from the NYTimes Magazine my brother had shared with me. And then again in college, when I couldn’t write about anything else.

“I’m your scribe now,” I tell my younger self. “I’ve filled volumes of notebooks with sorrow and longing, with guilt and shame.”

“I know!” he’s says, slapping his pretty young hands down onto the table. “It’s too much! Stop already. Enough! Basta!” He sounds just like her when he says that, and I giggle a little. “What?” he says, suppressing a giggle himself. We are on the verge of busting up, like two kids in church.

“C’mon!” he says. “I mean it.”

But I am already writing. Mom would have been 100 today. He groans. If she would have lived this long, she probably would have been a mess.

“A beautiful mess,” he says out loud.

“Like you,” I say.

“Like you,” he says.

And then we dive down into the wreck together. It’s my job to shine a light for him. He closes his eyes, holds his breath, and down we go.

Still Wishing: Part Two October 3, 2023

Try not to play the same game you’ve always played: the swooning beauty in love with the butch guy. Try not to make up stories about who he is or who you are or who you could become together. Because that twenty-year gap and his job downtown are already working against any kind of a future, really.

Try not to think of the future. When are you happiest anyway? Is it when you look at the graph on your investments page and watch the line travel up and then down again? Is it when you think about ordering a turkey for Thanksgiving or imagine boarding the plane next week? No, it’s only when you are in the moment, when you look up at the floating clouds of fog, or sing along with Kylie’s new song, the gears on the car shifting with the beat, the wheels strong and smooth beneath you.

Try to be present today, when he is home with what you hope isn’t Covid, when he calls you gorgeous, when he sends an emoji of a little yellow face kissing a heart in your direction. Can you allow yourself to dream about feeling his skin again without worrying about what he wants, what fantasy you should try to be to deserve love and affection? Can you state what you want instead? Skin against skin, his a French vanilla, his lips like a split plum. Maybe you can find your way back to desire without thinking about traveling the world together or having romantic dinners downtown. Maybe you can do again what you have always been so good at doing: creating an island in the middle of all this chaos for the two of you. Maybe you can stop berating your silver hair or your softening neck and embody the body he sees, the one you still feel inside these older bones, these sore tendons, this stiff back. You don’t have to be Snow white singing into the well anymore; your handsome prince isn’t coming to find you. But maybe you can meet yourself and your lover somewhere in the middle of middle age, maybe you can be coconut cream with flecks of raspberry, maybe you can explore this delicious treat the way you explore a perfect piece of cake. Not chocolate this time, but French vanilla. Something sweeter than you’re used to.

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The writing prompt this time was the ice cream menu below, and a report from The Guardian that research shows ice cream makes you happy. You can also see the prompt from an earlier post, which is referenced in the title, here.

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· PEANUT BUTTER SUPREME—Three dips of peanut butter fudge ice cream covered with peanut butter topping, hot fudge, Reese’s Pieces, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MELTDOWN—Three dips of our creamy vanilla topped with hot fudge & warm caramel over a split banana

· DIETER’S REVENGE—Three dips of our creamy vanilla ice cream topped with hot fudge, chocolate chips, crushed Oreos, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MINT CHOCOLATE SUNDAE—For a cool treat, three dips of old-fashioned mint chocolate chip ice cream covered with hot fudge, crushed Oreo cookies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· GORILLA’S TREAT—Three dips of fresh banana ice cream over a split banana covered with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a cherry.

· SOUTHERN TREAT—Three dips of our famous butter pecan ice cream (made the old-fashioned way) covered with butterscotch topping, chopped almonds, whipped cream and a cherry.

· NUTTY BUDDY—Three dips of our famous peanut butter fudge ice cream covered with hot fudge, peanuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

· CMP—Three dips of our creamy vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate syrup, marshmallow topping, peanuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

· TRIPLE CHOCOLATE SUNDAE—Three dips of rich chocolate ice cream (our own recipe) topped with hot fudge, chocolate chips, chocolate jimmies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· MOCHA MADNESS—Three dips of our homemade coffee ice cream topped with chocolate sauce, chocolate jimmies, whipped cream and a cherry.

· BANANA SPLIT —Vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream over a split banana, topped with pineapple, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce, whipped cream and a cherry.

: Still Wishing: Part Two

Tiny but Mighty June 14, 2023

When we left Venice, everyone was gathering portside, where cocktails were being served in colorful acrylic glasses. And even though the beautiful old city was glowing gold in the evening sunlight, most of the men on this gay cruise were chatting and flirting and ignoring the gleaming facade of St. Mark’s, and they barely noticed the pointed tower on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

My friend Ron was occupied with someone half his age, so I wandered up to the bow where I could be alone, a rarity on a cruise ship, and noticed the thick cable attached to the tiny tugboat below. Though they are problematic in so many ways, what I love about being on a cruise is that you feel the immensity of the machine beneath you; it’s hard not to feel awe at the engineering feat of such huge ship. But at that moment I was equally aware of the tough and powerful little boat below that was safely guiding us—pulling us, actually—out to the Adriatic Sea.

I’ve read that tugboats are often driven by a single captain, and that person can spend entire days without interacting closely with another human. In other words, it’s a fine line between solitude and loneliness in the day of a tugboat operator. Perhaps that’s why the man driving this tugboat looked up at me; even from a distance, I could see his head turn toward me and nod. 

It was one of those times in my life when I was fully in the moment, when I felt the beautiful connection to a stranger that always feels spiritual to me, inexplicable. Those little moments that remind me how humans are connected in ways we often cannot put into words.

My love for this tugboat, and this tugboat captain in particular, was wrapped up in my love of tugboats in general: tugboats crashing through the ice to create a safe pathway in the Arctic; tugboats pushing a ship 180 degrees, or backwards; tugboats bright red and waiting in the harbor below the Oakland Bay Bridge ready to fight a fire on any ship. They are, I think, heroic.

As a child I remember Little Toot being a favorite story, because as a diminutive boy, I was always drawn to stories about something small that made itself known as strong and capable, like the tiny people who live inside a dust speck in Horton Hears a Who (A person is a person no matter how small). Tugboats feel like more than a metaphor somehow. They embody something I want to believe about the capability and the strength of what may seem like small, insignificant people, places and things.

Anyway, that moment in Venice is etched into my memory forever, because when the cable was released, and the ship was safely out of the harbor, just before the tugboat turned back, the captain waved at me and blew the deep, throaty horn of the little boat below and I squealed with delight. I clapped with glee, just like a child.

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The prompts for this piece included the attached Google doc (“Tugboats: Tiny but Mighty”) and the Google slideshow, “Tugs.”

Slideshow: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13ddqLm_IN6VKtEIdlsKTspyDfSVg69mxbwc4zNTNcUM/edit?usp=sharing

Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10YVlf2tHGoUaqcAdoAnIrF-KAUXpjFGSCu4Vv1JF1YA/edit?usp=sharing

The Return of Sound April 4, 2023

Yesterday I heard the wild parrots screeching across the sky, and the hail coming down onto a metal roof. I heard someone whispering in the corner of the classroom between student presentations, and a bicycle coming up the street, then whooshing past me. These may seem somewhat benign to you, but for nearly two weeks, because of a middle ear infection, I could not hear at all with my right ear. Two weeks ago, what is now only a soft bit of white noise, was the pulsing of fluid and the beating of my heart and nothing else. My electric toothbrush was an annoying vibration. I could not hear the wind rush past me.

Every day, my hearing returns more and more and it’s miraculous, really, this world of sound we live in, the one I took for granted. Until last week, singers sounded tinny and childlike, so listening to songs with lyrics was unpleasant. My own singing voice was foreign and buried, so there were weeks without music or harmony. The rushing water in my sink finally sounds like fluid, and not like crackling paper. I can hear the bus at the bottom of the hill humming at first, then the engine purring louder as it climbs up, up, up. It turns out that the lonely dachshund on a deck nearby is still yapping at passersby. And today in the grocery store, I felt the once muffled voices in the next aisle break through a shroud with the clarity and pleasure of good old eavesdropping.

Even my loud neighbors are bringing me joy.

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The writing prompt for this piece is below.

Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it represents. It is derived from the Greek ónoma meaning “name.” and poein, meaning “to make.” It literally means to make the name.

Here are some common onomatopoeias:

splash smash bang drip gush kerplunk slam plunk buzz whack  wap growl  pop   squeak  clip-clop

mumble hush boom tinkle clang moan groan murmur slap crunch boom bam wham plop kerplop                  

For this exercise, please begin with one of the words above, and place us in the middle of a scene with the sense of sound. Allow your writing to take you on a journey; don’t be too concerned about where you’re going. Just let the sound take you somewhere, and write into that place. Consider the action in the following sentences to lead you into a scene:

A plate is dropped on the floor.

A balloon just burst.

A gun shot rings through the air.

Someone is eating something crispy or crunchy.

A bright light is switched on.

A fierce dog is behind a rickety fence.

Somewhere, a small bell is ringing.

Finding Hope in the Rubble March 10, 2023

I’m trying to get used to this new world.

“Can we postpone our call?” my friend in Seattle writes. “I need to go to the gym and get some exercise; I couldn’t go out for a walk today; the air isn’t safe to breathe.” Fires? I write back. She sends a thumbs up emoji.

Later, on my own walk, I spot several giant green parrots sitting in a Cypress tree behind my neighbor’s apartment building. They have red cheeks and are softly cackling to one another as they preen. I love seeing them there, and I also feel the world tilt: these birds are not native to the Bay Area. They are descendants of escaped pets, birds that were smuggled in from Central America.

A few of my closest friends have a “You can’t control everything,” kind of attitude, but it feels like they’re really saying, “You can’t control anything,” and we can argue semantics all day long, but it means something, doesn’t it? That they’ve given up, or that they might prefer to just get stoned and binge watch a new series?

“I won’t pay for Netflix,” another friend says. “It’s too expensive.” Meanwhile, he’s finishing an eighteen-month remodel on a multi-million dollar house in the desert, while I’m trying to pay off the Visa card I used for my new desk chair. Everything is upside down. Comedians make fun of Margery Taylor Greene as they show footage of her latest campaign ad: she’s shooting wild boars from a helicopter with a semi automatic weapon. I don’t think it’s funny.

What you can do? (sic) my brother’s Italian tailor used to say. That question resonates with me. Because doing nothing just isn’t acceptable, as far as I’m concerned, but I also know that you can’t save everybody (or anybody, really) and you can’t, as my sister used to say, bleed for everyone either. You can’t save the world all on your own. But I am not willing to accept this dystopian narrative as set in stone—or silicon, as the case may be—as awful as it might seem. I refuse to give up on this one precious life on this one precious planet (but please, by all means, reserve your spot on Mars, with a layover on the Moon).

I have absolutely no idea how to live into the future when at times everything already feels like it’s crumbling around us, or is so covered in graffiti that we can’t even read the freeway exit sign beneath it. And yet, surely these fifty-seven years must have delivered me some sense of wisdom, some gut feeling about participating in community gardens, and frequenting farmers’ markets, and reading thought provoking stories, articles, listening to lectures. Some part of me knows that you have to seek out the teachers, the lessons, the opportunity to move beyond sleazy erotic massages or horror themed Hulu originals, or loud motorcycles, long lines at fast food chains. You have to find the homemade falafel stand in the corner or the parking lot, the one with the handsome man who is willing to tell you his story of survival. How he beat the odds, how he fled everything he knew and loved for freedom. How he never gave up hope.

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This piece was generated in my writing workshop at Laguna Writers. The prompt was the five word free write (see a detailed explanation of that prompt here), and the five words were, Wild Parrots, Avocados, Grey, Fire, Reaching.

The Way Forward (A Prayer for the New Year) January 1, 2023

Tell me how to mother myself on the days when a young man in class won’t pay attention while I’m talking, and instead of rolling my eyes at his immaturity, I ask myself if anything I’ve ever done in my long career as a teacher has ever really made a difference. Show me how to make the list of ingredients from memory for Pop’s lasagna, even though I’m not eating cheese or wheat or beef right now, show me how to find a way to recreate something warm and comforting that would somehow be equivalent without confusing my gut. Let me see red sauce instead of simply seeing red. Help me find a cashew cheese that actually melts, lead the way to the boxes of red lentil noodles, remind me to add a splash of balsamic instead of red wine. Sit me down in time to enjoy this meal.

Remind me what it was about San Francisco that I fell in love with all those years ago, when I was a teenager with a wild cloud of wavy chestnut hair and I had my whole life ahead of me. How we traveled by car across the country and arrived at that sparkling bay and that fantastic old bridge. How we ate from little paper cups on Fisherman’s Wharf, bay shrimp and crab cocktail, little oyster crackers, warm sourdough bread with butter. Take me back to Ghirardelli Square that first time, the golden lights spelling out the Italian name above the old brick structure, remind me that buildings, like lives, can be rebuilt, renovated, reborn.

Tell me the story again of how my parents fell in love with this city fifty years ago, the clang clang clang of the trolly, the bells ringing out over the Stanford Court with the Tiffany dome at the crest of Nob Hill, where the view in all directions looked like a postcard. Remind me that it still does, even on the days when I am driving in my sensible purple car past tent cities, or slamming on the brakes because someone on a scooter has decided that stop signs don’t matter anymore. When I feel like the air controlled bubble I am floating in could break down any day now after nine years and 70,000 miles, and it seems impossible to imagine buying a new car in this economy, in this historical time in our troubled lives.

Don’t let me yearn for the old days, like a wizened old man, let me accept that they are gone. And teach me, someone, some ancestor—Mama, Merijane, some good ghost—please teach me how to see the way forward with the same light and hope I had looking for my first job thirty years ago, when I was twenty-seven, trudging through a rain-soaked SOMA in secondhand clothes. Don’t let me cling to these three decades of loss and change. Instead, shine a light on the path ahead, even if you don’t come with me, shine a light, please, so I can find my way through.

I want to be able to hold the memories like something precious, a sleeping baby or a favorite old book, and at the same time, I want to look ahead, not constantly behind. I work so hard not to feel regret, to instill hope in others, even that boy today in class with his stupid smirk. Even him. Help me find the way to see the path ahead, just a little of it, and to not be so afraid of the dark.

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The writing prompt that inspired this piece was 4 x 4:

Generate four lists:

1. Four cities you are familiar with (they do not have to be cities you love)

2. Four colors

3. Four people you love or have loved

4. Four favorite foods

After you’ve generated the lists, take one word from each list, and create four new combinations. 

Choose one of the combinations that interests you the most, and come up with a few descriptive words or sensory details that you associate with each of words in that list. Don’t think too hard or write too much. This is your prompt.

Now write for 20 minutes: anything that comes to mind. Don’t worry if the writing takes you somewhere unexpected.

Dia de los Muertos November 2, 2022

I imagine them together now, in a way that might seem childlike to you. She with her wavy hair tucked behind her ears, and he with those thin lips that disappeared when he smiled. They were just bone chips and dust in Ziplock bags the last time I saw them. I was surprised how different their ashes looked: his were brown and heavy, hers were light and soft grey. We mixed them together.

We threw white roses into the water, something I learned from the Brazilian goddess Yemanjá, via Africa. It felt ancient and important. The pounding surf washed the flowers up against our bare shins, along with the ashes, soaking our rolled up jeans.

Sometimes, when I think about them now, they could be calacas, the bony espiritos from Posada’s drawings. Mama could be Catrina, with her big hat and long gown. Pop could be wearing a scarf, smiling now without lips, driving a sports car. In my dreams, for years after Pop died, they were always hanging out together, offering me champagne, reassuring me. We took long train rides together, in which they inquired about my siblings like gossipy old aunts, and once Mama showed up to a party to try the brownies I had made, because she wanted to see what I’d done with her recipe.

I can’t say that I believe they are in Heaven, but I also don’t believe they are nowhere at all. Reincarnated? Maybe. I feel like their spirits are still somewhere fleshy and warm, like those sticky nights I spent with my first lover in Mexico all those years ago. The ceiling fan whirling and whirling, the sheets cool and slightly damp, our naked bodies entangled, sleep fractured, nearly impossible. We were floating together, but we were also part of that mattress, that tiled floor. The rest of the world had fallen away. That’s how I think it is for them now. Two lovers, alone at last.

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The writing prompt that inspired this piece was a “collected poem”: a poem created from many lines from several different poems. See below.

Grief

Anything you lose comes ’round in another form

Pink roses and white roses

those words were all that was left

Certain phrases, topics, must be approached with care

People are good

they offer up their pain

I imagine you

When you died

What’s unsaid is palpable as dignity, as death

All motion stopped when he died

Long-faced irises.

when you had to be helped on with your shoes

before you leapt off

Mums

Anything you lose comes round in another form

When grief sits with you

you hold life like a face

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come

and giant sunflowers

I will love you

Pink roses and white roses

Anything you lose

again

“Grief” contains excerpts from the following poems:

“Cantaloupe,” by Lee Robinson

“April,” by Judy Bebelaar

“The Thing Is,” by Ellen Bass

“Moment of Inertia,” by Debra Spencer

“Making Things Right,” by Barbara Bloom

“Return I,” by Elisabeth Stevens

“What People Give You,” by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

“Unmarked Boxes,” by Rumi

Magical Thinking June 20, 2022

My sister recently shared a modern version of Disney’s Cinderella trailer from 1950. What I imagine was originally a corny 1950’s soundtrack for the two minute trailer was replaced by a modern remix, no doubt to reach a more contemporary audience. “They ruined it,” she said. Earlier, we had serenaded her fiancé with an a capella version of “I know you (I’ve walked with you once upon a dream)” doing our best to harmonize. “Very nice!” he said.

If you’re not familiar with it, the narrative of the song is love at first sight, with a kind of 1950’s emo set of lyrics that confirm the person of your dreams can literally appear before your eyes, and so you should trust your gut when it comes to that first hello.

After another glass of wine, I soothed my sister’s soul by finding the original version of the trailer, complete with a late 1940’s choir singing that very song and nailing the crescendos, as only those hired to sing on a Disney soundtrack can. “That’s more like it!” my sister said, then busied herself with the dishes.

I watched it again, with the volume turned down, and remembered how fantastic that film was to me when I was just a little baby gay boy. The magic of the fairy godmother, the rags-to-gorgeous-gown transformation, the sweet mice as friends, all that pink and blue, and the gleaming white castle in the distance. It’s the prince of course, who steals the movie, with his broad shoulders and thick dark hair. The prince, who really says nothing except, “May I have this dance?” and then literally sweeps old Cindy off her feet.

You know how it ends: the glass slipper, the evil stepmother and selfish stepsisters outdone by kindness and courage, and of course, happily ever after. Boy was I stuck on that one my entire life. My sister—who is planning her third wedding—doesn’t like it when I get academic and psychoanalyze fairytales. She detests the violence of the brothers Grimm, and prefers the sanitization of Disney to the real thing. Any argument I might have made in the past about the meaning of the story—that sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are allegories about young women growing into sexual beings, who can only be awakened by handsome young men—were dismissed as too serious or no fun. And she’s right, of course. I am too serious, and sometimes, at least when analyzing narratives, I am not much fun at all.

I’m still waiting for a Disney movie about a same sex crush and ends with the main characters going off to separate colleges in the end (like real life). But no matter how much Disney disagrees with Florida’s conservative governor, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

What I want to say is this: Cinderella fucked me up. It fucked me up. Because I grew up believing in love at first sight, and happily ever after, and that big one: a man will come along and sweep you off your feet and take care of you for the rest of your life. I spent my 40’s with someone completely ill-suited for me because we were both convinced that fate kept bringing us together (and maybe it did, but now I know it was trying to teach me something very different from what Cinderella taught me).

I much prefer films like Pixar’s Up . At least that one is more like real life: grief and broken dreams and the willingness to love again, to keep your heart open, to go on another adventure. To not become a bitter old man because you have loved and lost. Let’s sing the theme song to that movie, shall we? Let’s all harmonize to that one instead.

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The prompt that inspired this piece was a music prompt: Orla Gartland singing, “Why am I Like This?”

Love was blind, but now I see March 3, 2022

The idea behind this prompt was to freshen a cliché and have some fun with it. The original phrase is “Love is blind.” But I thought it would be fun to take out the word “blind” and try filling in the blank as many times as possible.

Love is _____________(not blind:, but what other ways might it be disabled or challenged/challenging?)

We all came up with lists. We read a few from our lists, and then chose one and ran with it. We wrote for about ten minutes.

Here are a few from my list:

Love is a cry baby

a gutless bully

an old porn star

a one note wonder

a night of bad karaoke

a prude with coffee breath

a pile of dog shit on the hot pavement

a terrible rash 

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What I wrote is below.

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Love decided to go into hiding, at least that’s what I tell myself. But maybe I’ve stuffed Love in a box in the attic and am hoping he won’t be able to get out again. The last I heard, Love got run over by an SUV; it was a hit and run, and Love broke several bones, was in a wheelchair for a while. When we last spoke, Love was limping around, but was driving again, running errands and healing bones.

Just to be clear, it wasn’t I who ran over Love and just kept driving, but sometimes I wish it was. Don’t think poorly of me, it’s just a metaphor. Love was always so good at taking away my agency, my personhood. Love loved to call me a bitch and a little girl. Love was toxic masculinity in the flesh, and I let him rule me with his deep voice and big dick. Love is really just an abused little boy, watching his father throw his mother through a sliding glass door. Love was only three when they left him in daycare all day at the casino, and he had to pretend he was four (because that was the minimum age). Love was almost saved by a social worker when he was 14, but then his mother said she was abused when she was a child, and Love fell under her evil spell and decided to feel sorry for her.

And now you probably feel sorry for Love, don’t you? See how insidious Love is? Even though he took my youth and splattered my romantic dreams all over the windshield, you still feel sorry for him (and not me). That’s okay, though. I know the real story, and Love wasn’t worth saving. It was either Love or me: there was only room for one of us in the lifeboat. So I pushed Love into the water. Don’t worry. Love can swim. He’s already on another shore destroying another island. Love is relentless, that’s what Love is, but at least he’s not my mine anymore.

Sweet Dreams February 1, 2022

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022)

This piece was prompted by a quote from the late Thich Nhat Hanh:

“Because you are alive, everything is possible.”

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“Here’s how I imagine it,” Ricky says. We’re talking on a screen with 6,000 miles between us. “You move to Italy and settle into your own little stone house. I head over to Paris to pick up Eddie, and we get on a train to meet you in Italy.”

Eddie lives in London; Ricky is in Berlin.

“Why Paris?” I ask. Ricky can’t stand Paris. Dog shit and rude waiters. Those are his main complaints.

“I don’t know. Because I want to meet him when he arrives on the Chunnel?”

“Okay.”

“We take the train to Rome, and then transfer to wherever you are in Italy.”

“That’s a long train ride,” I say, knowing it’s over 11 hours. “Why not rent a car?”

“This is my fantasy, okay?” he says, a little annoyed. “In your fantasy, you can rent a car.”

“Okay. The train is better for the environment,” I say, trying to smooth over my annoying interruptions.

“Exactly,” he says. “When we arrive, you have a beautiful spread waiting for us: local cheeses and meats, local wine from the winery where your Italian boyfriend works—”

“Oh, I like the sound of that!” I say.

“Well, I know how you are,” he says. “And bread of course, which you’ve baked yourself.”

“Nice. What about dessert?” I ask.

“We’ll bring dessert from Paris.”

“Ooo la la!” I say. What I really think is, After a whole day on a train, even the sturdiest eclairs will be soggy. But I don’t say anything. This is his fantasy about our reunion, and in his fantasy, we all live in Europe, and travel at the speed of light.