this page intentionally left blank

"The Enigma We Answer by Living" by Alison Hawthorne Deming Einstein didn't speak as a child waiting till a sentence formed and emerged full-blown from his head. I do the thing, he later wrote, which nature drives me to do. Does a fish know the water in which he swims? This came up in conversation with a man I met by chance, friend of a friend of a friend, who passed through town carrying three specimen boxes of insects he'd collected in the Grand Canyon— one for mosquitoes, one for honeybees, one for butterflies and skippers, each lined up in a row, pinned and labeled, tiny morphologic differences revealing how adaptation happened over time. The deeper down he hiked, the older the rock and the younger the strategy for living in that place. And in my dining room the universe found its way into this man bent on cataloguing each innovation, though he knows it will all disappear— the labels, the skippers, the canyon. We agreed then, the old friends and the new, that it's wrong to think people are a thing apart from the whole, as if we'd sprung from an idea out in space, rather than emerging from the sequenced larval mess of creation that binds us with the others, all playing the endgame of a beautiful planet that's made us want to name each thing and try to tell its story against the vanishing. ________________________________ I love extended weekends. They are like mini-vacations that don't cost anything. My surgery went well on Thursday despite the mental discomfort having a need stuck in my eyelid multiple times to deaden the nerves brought to me. When they draped and clamped the lid for the incision, I could still feel things I shouldn't have been able to feel, so they went in for round two. I actually heard the doctor tell the nurse, "no, no that won't work... we need a bigger needle". People just aren't supposed to hear those things. Believe me, I would have been better off not hearing that. They patched me up like a pirate afterwards and I made my way home... sans parrot and 3D vision. My mother and step-father arrived on Friday afternoon with my grandmother in tow. I had asked about her coming earlier, but the answer was a definitive NO. I guess minds were changed. It was a pleasant surprise and quite delightful to have her around the house for the weekend. We attended the arboretum on Saturday and cooked at home both nights of their stay. I picked up some fresh, organic salmon fillet to grill on Saturday evening. We visited a lot and played cards... which EL and I love to do. It was a successful visit overall in my humble opinion. One of my favorite moments of the weekend was Sunday evening when I realized that Monday was a holiday. What a great feeling! I learned this morning that Oasis burned down last night/this morning. I haven't been there since my groomsmen and I headed out for drinks and sunset the week of my wedding. It is absolutely freezing in my office this morning. FREEZING! I'm shivering. I have to service an account in San Marcos tomorrow, so the road trip will be early. I need an MP3 player in my truck. I think I want one of these for my birthday... heh. I need more coffee. I do. Really.