A day for Sue

I don't remember much about how I felt on 9/11. When I see photographs of young children in the arms of firefighters at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing, the pain is remote, foreign, wholly unattached to me like the blood running true from a clean paper cut. Yesterday I will remember forever. I will recall every word of the story of how my friend Susan fell down the steps of her New York City apartment, how she became brain dead, how they took her off life support. Her story, lovely by virtue of its ordinary grace, ended at the mercy of gravity. She will have no more memory to give, no more headlong glances into the future, no more breakfasts, lunches, or dinners, no more friendly nothings on her facebook wall, no dancing, bad mornings, better nights, forgiving laughter, exaggerated opinions, morbid curiosity. To say that she lives on in us is no more than vain hope, the selfish clingings-on of we cripples to mortality. She was good, and there is no more.

Camp food

In theory, I love camping: the great outdoors, the smoky fire, the challenge of cooking. In practice, camping is tough to defend: the mosquitos, the boredom, the lack of running water, the going to sleep at 9, the bastard hard-as-shit ground, the freezing your ass off no matter how warm your sleeping bag. I justify its drawbacks with the Calvin's Dad Defense: It'll be good for your character! Unfortunately, my character likes an Ambien (there were none) and an airbed (nope), a flashlight (cell phone) and a comfy chair (log), to be able to put up with that bullshit. At the end of the night, we fell asleep to the dulcet tones of a parent spanking her child and a banjo whose strummer had the enthusiasm of a Baggins drunk on adventure.