Stranger than fiction

A friend just told me that as a little kid, he climbed trees and howled like a werewolf. At five years old, he believed he was one. During full moons, he went out and climbed the tree.

Another friend described eating banana bread on the back of a motorcycle during a bike trip in Peru.

Who puts such things together? And yet these combinations are everywhere.

The more I let them enter my dreams, the more I consider: none of this could be scripted. Life is stranger than what I could generate with my own mind — if we permit ourselves to be as weird as we actually are.

Water

I was sitting in an Italian bakery in Lima, awaiting a very late flight.

The older man next to me was so engaged in conversation with his friend that I felt uncomfortable being on my phone.

How was I going to shrink into a screen with such relationity on display?

I started to cough mid-bite of my dessert. In an instant he looked over and offered me the glass of water on his table.

“Take this, I haven’t touched it.”

I immediately did.

And the crystallized humanity cut through my whole social universe.

I walked the street after, eyes wide. I was still recounting it to a friend after arriving in Texas.

How many days of tension does simple humanity generate?

Chaos and affection

There is water on my kitchen floor this morning.

My house is odd — tall, with very poor drainage. Mini floods happen. Weird corners of my kitchen turn into watery caves that will not leave.

I stood and asked myself, "But where does this water come from?"

It's like my kitten, always waiting at my door.

There is always a small drainage issue making footprints unavoidable. There is also a meowing creature that demands my attention at four a.m.

Why? Because she wants to play.

There is a permanency to the chaos and affection of life itself.

On its smallest scale, perhaps, it's the most visible to me.