“There’s one thing I learned from Jim: it’s that everything’s important.”
–Mary Lindsay Dickinson

My son and I are rushing to get out of the house. I am holding us up. I can’t find a pen. I need a pen. I need a pen because it is past time to make out the rent check. I could justify this scramble with the fact that we just moved in, and things are mostly still wrapped in boxes; but, for someone who writes, this is not a valid excuse. In the survey where you have to list six things you could never do without, “pen” is always my first answer, and here I am without one. So, who am I now? This is the new crisis as I rifle through drawers and purses. Circling this strange room, filled as it is with everything and nothing, who the hell am I anymore? I remember a time when once a month I would return hundreds of clickable ball points boldly stamped DINER on their cuff to their place of origin. Has it finally happened? Is it possible that there is not a single shitty DINER or Marlow pen in this house? Not even an even shittier estela pen? This epiphany tempers my frenzy, and the shame that was becoming a low boil in my cheeks cools out. My writing didn’t stop. My life in one kind of service, and the perks and pitfalls that are attached to waiting tables, is at least on very extended hold. And for that, I have absolutely no shame with which to burden my son. I start to relax, and then my fingers grasp something familiar: a pen. In the bottom of the last dirty tote bag is one lone plain clicky black pen from estela. Never say never: that was my Dad’s cautious advice last week. And even though every bit of adolescent mouthiness I have left immediately went on guard when he said it, i kept it to myself.
I was born in hardiness zone 10a, where my parents are from, but I was raised in Zone 9a. My son was born in Zone 6b and that’s where he will grow up. 6b has distinct seasons: warm summers, a real autumn, and long, cold winters. Bulbs grow in 6b; citrus grows where I’m from. On a recent vacation, I took him to one of my ghosts: a state park in 9a with grounds that sprawl down and around a ravine that was constructed as a Works Administration project in the mid-1930s. Tiny springs bubble up through white sand between cypress knees and banana trees. When we were little, my brothers and I would scramble through the as yet uncleared bramble and vines, sinking to our ankles in the cold, clear water, pretending we’d been caught in that impossible danger that was still part of our childhood worst case scenario lexicon: quicksand. On this recent visit, running up side trails to take a peek at tiny vistas I’d memorized over long summer afternoons, I kept getting left behind. I couldn’t take the length and tingle of it in fast enough. I had slammed into a wall of memories of having crunched slowly over every inch of this place while my brothers were off conquering things and my parents were working on their jogging.

Walking through Bushwick tonight, I made plans with myself to go jogging when I finally got home. What actually happened: I’ve been sitting here on the couch for about an hour listening to “Doolin-Daltin.” And then “Little Wing.” And then, uh, “Shadow Dancing.” Whatever, it’s basically a perfect song. Sometimes that’s just what happens. Start listening to a song and, instead of wearing it out, you just can’t start over fast enough. Push play–okay this is the last time, you promise yourself–but you don’t stop. Why? Because it comes back. Intact and unchanged every single time. Still there. My cat sits on my hair because he’s convinced I’m passed out, but I’m wide awake. I pull myself free and press play again with toes pressed hard into the far end of the couch. Eyes closed tightly. Practically holding my breath. Whatever it is that I hear in this stuff, goddamn. I wish it would manifest.