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Day 1003, March 13, 2023

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A little more than a thousand days… I have been thinking about how memories do not become stories until you write them down, or perhaps recite them over dinner and a drink, or sing them in song. Until then, they are just temporal wisps of existence, like the day before yesterday, or the meal you shared ten years ago at the restaurant where you still always order the same thing.The peanut noodle salad sprinkled liberally with scallions and undercooked broccoli. It would be just a meal if not for the retelling and revisiting.  I missed the 1000th day, choosing instead to celebrate the birth of two of my children (twins), and then after over filling myself with bulgogi, pajun, and bibimbap, settled into dozing off in front of the television.  I remember becoming a father like those stories you read about where mothers pick up small cars to save children pinned underneath (there is nothing written about what kind of negligence caused a child to be pinned under a small automobile)....
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Day 999, March 9, 2023

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Look to the Stars There is still the beating heart.  The weary day is not so terrible,  it is just soft and pliant  like the sugar wrapped around a big industrial sized taffy machine.  Sometimes it is hard to tell what will make one  day worth more than another.  A few minutes of imagining an old lady  in a nursing home  meeting her lover for breakfast in the cafeteria.  Producing something that did not exist before.  A chicken’s morning nonchalance.  The scallion stems sitting in a jar of water.  Even with the evidence,  it is all too easy to forget and treat the day  as a thing dreary  and consumed like a bowl of raw sunflower seeds.  A vocal coach will hold sessions with the stars  in their hotel room.  Someone to remind one how incredible this life is.  All your life  you have dreamed of this moment.  And now you are here.  Sometimes we forget that. 
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Day 998, March 8, 2023

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 Simile Sometimes there is quiet for many days,  there is no more room in the voicemail,  the fortune cookies remain uneaten,  the ears chirp with fields of crickets.  A dog is licking his bone,  occasionally jawing the hock,  but mostly licking.  The fire is an even glow,  not too hot, not too cold,  it is like the log has turned to charcoal  and there is a nice even burning,  proper and genteel flames,  not reckless and unruly  like in the morning with the vent open.  Some days it feels like someone  has served a large plate of banana pudding  and I do not like banana pudding  or damp vanilla wafers  and so the day becomes like riding an escalator  when you have a headache.  A long escalator,  like in the subway in DC.  The stop near the zoo and the conference hotel.  It is a terrible thing to have the stomach flu  while staying in a hostel.  When the kids ...
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Day 997, March 7, 2023

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Bands I’ve Known (Part I) Running Water (I think?) In high school, just after learning how to strum a few chords, we started a trio with Brig and Anne. Brig had an older brother who taught him how to play a few lead lines to songs like “Friend of the Devil” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” Anne could do some justice to Joni Mitchell and tried to get us to do some Jethro Tull. I followed Anne around like a puppy dog, but she wasn’t interested in anything like that from me. I thought Brig was a guitar genius. We taped together songs ten pages long and spread the sheet music across the stage when we played… our vision was that good.  I played my Uncle John’s old Yamaha guitar which I had slapped a Jerry Garcia sticker on. There was a little removable sound hole pickup that I used.  Electric Mayhem Began in a college dorm room where Claiborne, Skagg, and I played a 45 minute purple haze. I knew Skagg from the football team where he had rung my bell with some hard as stone hits. Cl...
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Day 996, March 6, 2023

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Namesake The children are grown.  Funny to imagine walking through a grocery store with one strapped to my chest in a snuggly.  I was watched last night by a baby in a high chair, while its parents feasted on a hotpot and assorted side dishes. The baby waited for my acknowledgement before turning back to the task at hand. It took three waitstaff to clean the table, chairs, and floor after they were done.  When I visited China, the babies didn’t wear diapers. Their pants were convenient, and when they had to go, they went.  We learn from the things we are allowed to, not from what we are prevented doing.  We didn’t allow Disney and Barbie. I don’t recall it being an issue, but we probably would not have allowed guns either.  After I left home, all the chickens were slaughtered. I could not bring myself to kill the perpetrator, so she and her babies continued to propagate. I had cut a hole into the wall of the coop and inset a Pyrex bowl, held in place with s...
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Day 991, March 1, 2023

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Divination What happens when we reach 1000 days of the pandemic?  How long has it been since your last haircut?  Do you remember when I fell and first hurt my foot?  The days are like small cat pills held in the palm of your hand.  There used to be so much more hope and optimism.  Now, there is just enough,  most days.  Did you pay attention to how much that meal was?  I did not.  Sometimes hunger is a good substitute for love.  When I was a child we would go to the penny candy store  and buy everlasting gobstoppers that changed color as you  trained your mouth to fit.  Multicolored, candy flavored, drool.  It was enough to lure one across town on a yellow Schwinn  with a black vinyl banana seat.  With a few nickels, a dime,  you could buy a decent day’s worth of dreams.  Sharing was bad etiquette.  I have a small catalogue of ailments that resemble a gamers die.  A Korean game of yut nor...
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Day 978, February 15, 2023

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Folding Chair A woman wrote about an old folding lawn chair,  a beach chair.  The aluminum tube frame,  folding.  The nylon strap webbing,  frayed and splitting   at parts making sharp prickly ends.  Maybe there were weathered  real wood arm rests.  I loved pressing my face against the sun-warm webbing,  the chair folded flat.  A boy could make it tip and tilt until he was comfortable,  twisted and contorted  until as much of his body was touching the chair as possible.  He imagined being entirely wrapped in the webbing like a bright yellow mummy set out in the sun.  It is a bright warmth  like a roasted water chestnut wrapped in bacon.  I also liked the chairs woven out of narrow PVC tubes.  To push one’s arm between the wide weave  until it dangled under the chair,  brushing the grass with his fingers,  digging into the coldness underneath the sand.  He is tanned and skinny an...
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