Last Lecture

On the bus between Gatwick and Heathrow I talked to a Texan married to an English accountant living in Romania, which is full of feral dogs; she has to walk with a stick.

For Mother's Day I went to Minnesota, where my mother made a whole set of chip and vegetable dips and then tried to make an "Obama Girl" of my father's 88-year-old mother from Mississippi. We did women's work: cooking, cleaning, and worrying in hushed tones over my grandmother. My cousin came over with his babies, who have the biggest heads. My estranged aunt took me shopping; she's on the blood type diet.

LA has been subject to some wacky weather. Hydration is my ardor and my arbor, but when I drink coffee the task becomes all but arduous. I sit on the floor of my room amongst all the wreckage I've accumulated in my life, begin to sort through it, and, overwhelmed by a heavy feeling that it's all too easy to go home again, break into heaving sanglots de fou. Costco brand green tea's got me trippin like ritalin, when it's ready it looks like a swamp. In each package, underneath the nylon sachet, lies an excess sprinkling of fine green powder, I rub it on my gums.