Birthdays are ghost bounty hunters that track you down to ask, "Que pasa, baby?

As an English major I was familiar with the stories of dozens of writers trying to get their work done among the multifarious diversions of the world and the hurdles of their own vices. A professor had said that what saved writers is that they, like politicians, had the illusion of destiny that allowed them to overcome obstacles no matter how nominal their work.

Birthdays are ghost bounty hunters that track you down to ask, "Que pasa, baby?

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

This infantile sense of order tended to infect my life at large. Up at 5:30 a.m., coffee, oatmeal, perhaps sausage (homemade), and fresh eggs giving one of the yolks to Lola. Listening to NPR and grieving more recently over the absence of Bob Edwards who was the sound of morning as surely as birds. Reading a paragraph or two of Emerson or Loren Eiseley to raise the level of my thinking. Going out to feed the cattle if it was during our six months of bad weather.

Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot.

The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.