The Old Mule

A list from July:

1) Santa is a son of a bitch. He's probably holed up in Missouri.
2) People need to stop talking about unicorns.  
3) If a man get's drunk and feels better about life, does that make him a hobbit?
4) Why would a thoughtful person run for mayor?
5) Should I water my fern with the bird nest in it?
6) Mammals are not fish (see: Taijii, Japan; The Cove).
7) Why do people not go outside anymore?
8) The Oregon home depot ran out of air conditioners.
9) Some rocks float.
10) The customs guard in Istanbul had no idea why I had an old horn in my suitcase.
11) Swine flu is worse than it sounds.
12) Charlotte customs agent Irving wanted to know why I went to Cambodia. Alone.
14) I am 34 and I believe in ghosts.
15) Someone wrecked in to my truck with a tight gut shirt and red sunglasses.
15 1/2) Someone stole my truck with the hide-a-key
16) Alaska is much farther than you think.
17) El Paso is terrible.
18) Juarez is the end of a flat earth.
19) No where is enough and
20) Ed Abbey, where are you now?

It's midnight on Wednesday in the middle of July and I am 34 years old inside an old wooden house with an empty bird feeder and more books than I could ever read. I have moles in the grass. I like them. I also have a power line that has loosened itself from the pole and is dangled on the roof of my old shed. Above which runs the phone line which is not being used, and above that is a tangled canopy of sugarberry limbs, a red oak, cherry laurel. But this has not been as season of planting. The weather is right, soil's good. But the mind is the thing. A man needs to set out to do something, turn air in to breeze, wear down the handle of a shovel. But to do, you can't think. And all I have been doing is thinking.

I returned from Istanbul in an aisle seat. I dreamed the whole world was gliding in a flat chute right over the Bosporus sea. We all piled in, nicked our heals on a spire, had a sandwich for the ride. But more of me stayed behind than I could coax back home.