Cawing and swooping. Cawing and swooping.
—Jack Spicer
A simple twist of fate can
take you places unimaginable.
This is good. You are better off.
You learn. You lose all of your
friends. You come back to life
alone. Your family and your
family (which you might have
always thought was the imp-
ortant one) disappear. You
walk around from one office
to another asking for direc-
tions, and you get some, and
you keep doing this, as if ex-
ploring the secrets of a city
you love, only to be at the
same place you were a
month ago asking the same
question you asked then, only
you’ve been so many places
you don’t even remember
that you were here before, ask-
ing the same question, and you
get a funny but familiar look from
the woman behind the desk, taking
all precautions to hide behind her
antiquated computer screen, only
to be told to go to some other place
and ask another question. You realize
then, aha! I’ve been here, you even
remember the question is the same one
you are about to ask the familiar face
that you have only just glimpsed as he
is taking precautions, too. A cinema,
your favorite sushi joints, a hop into
a Zipcar to head to Sonoma, for may-
be even a weekend, or only a day, some-
times along but usually with friends,,,
with your boyfriend with whom you are
happy,,,, You start a business, let’s
imagine it is for profit. It is still for a good
cause. You rake it in, take a vacation some-
place you have never been before? Sure,
Barcelona, Madrid, Vienna, Budapest,
Shanghai, Rio, Lima, Mexico City,,,,
But you're in a gondola in Venice, you’re
debating the Eiffel Tower, afraid of heights,
you’re writing poetry at the Places des Voges,
literally sitting on the ground writing while read-
ing your favorite poet to read, while in Paris,
because he spent a good portion of his own
life there. You’re on a cruise ship filled with
guys, about to dock in Puerta Vallarta, it is
not your first trip to Mexico this way. You’re
watching the Amazon burn, it is hot as hell
but you are enjoying this new adventure,
which is about as far away as you’ve
ever been before from anywhere, and it
feels right. You are on a leaky boat melting
into the boiling Amazon reading a book,
the pages of which are burning, but each
only after you finish reading it. It is a book
by Robert Heinlein. You get the feeling
you have read it before, but it is a good
feeling. Unlike the feeling you had sitting
in the Places de Voge (nausea), Venice
on the Gondola (horrible stomach bug),
Rome (the flu). You are walking the streets
of Paris at one a.m. looking for a pharmacy,
but nothing is open (the vertigo that came and
went in your early 20s — you just turned 40).
