The horizon, distant as it seems

This summer, American roads will be sliced in two beneath the thin wheels of my touring bike—South, beware—but I will not be doing so as a leader. While we are not stretched beyond our capability to stretch, or stretched and broken without a pillow beneath, this has marked—apart from Starbucks and a single film job—an entire year of being turned down by every job I have pursued.

Yet I am in Europe, carving the wood of new history with a good friend. “Married and Ravenous” is drawing baby breaths in Jacksonville, FL after a painful, three-year labor. Moreover, there comes in DC a Luthien, a beautiful young girl with a pink face, held by Andy and Tawny, the beautiful, young parents. She poops well, says Andy, and the storks continue to fly in and out of our stories, bringing greenery to new fields, and enlivening what we left in fallow.

Though I’d tempted to think so, my stork is not caught up in a jam upon the Gulf Stream. Accents remind me of that, as do our stunned, non-English faces when Mike needs to erase some pencil markings and looks up to ask, “Does anybody have a rubber?” No, the blessing is here, but I look forward to the time when my bundles of joy are less apt to be dichotomous: to walk me picturesquely through the mountains before the zenith explodes from deep wells of TNT, minions reaching for the coal deposits buried deep within.