Postcard: Super 8, Muskogee, Oklahoma

Crushing on A.D. Thomas--

Where it seemed before that the sky was bearing down on him, now it seems an innocuous wall, and what was beach and sea, perhaps a door.

--and Jasper Bernes tonight--

There's five billion shooters on the grassy knoll, dude.

--and Jude.

("make it better.")

Toast? For once upon a time, or as Burns said, for auld lang syne. Good vibes all. For now we are all acquainted.

Somebody kiss me in 45 minutes.

I should have warned you I'd drop out of sight for awhile. Not much access to the net from Del Rio, Texas, which is where I am now, with my mom and stepdad, my brother and sister-in-law and my nieces and nephew.

But it's Christmas Eve and I'm thinking of you. Kiss your babies for me, darlings. I miss you. I hope all is as well as you could possibly wish.

Me? I'm blessed.

Look for me the first week of January. I'll check in before if I get the chance.

Let's go then.

Stars and lore: would that someone could shut them up down there say the stars thinking of their light and of their right to pure light. The day was brilliant. My mind was so clear it hurt. Like a girl with a stick, like my head was a stuck girl. I watched for signs on the road and found them. I knew exactly where I was. It was the middle of the day and exquisite to see, to be subjected to it, to be eaten up by a ravenous it all bone and hide. Like a pinprick ripped wide open, impaled on a shaft of light. To begin with, against this, a stick is not much. A match is better, a whole book. Of which there is no end.

The little train that ran the thirteen miles between Metcalf and Clifton, Arizona

And something I didn't know: Jewish pioneers were responsible for the first railroad in Arizona.


I'm off. I'll be staying in Clifton, Morenci's sister town, where I also grew up. It's listed as a ghost town now. I didn't know. It died with the unions, it seems.

See you when I get back.