Day 580, February 2, 2022 (2/2/22)

Be Sure to Remember

The crown of the Statue of Liberty, where my brother was too frightened to look out. The ramparts of the Great Wall of China, where I hiked listening to Simon and Garfunkel on my iPod to drown out the other tourists. The Samseonam Hermitage on Namsan Mountain at morning prayer where a nun sat with me and offered me water. The skin smooth stone benches in the concubines’ living quarters in the Forbidden City. The Muslim quarter in Xi’an where a boy sold me a rose to give to my girlfriend (she was not my girlfriend, but we pretended for a moment). The mountains of Guilin, where soldiers once hid, where painters retreated, where on a riverboat we ate eels. The observation deck on the Eiffel Tower, where we hemmed an hawed about whether we should go and how high we should climb. Sun streaming through the narrow embrasure at Castillo San Felipe del Morro and dragging my fingers in the bioluminescent bay of Laguna Grande while my wife paddled. Sliding my body into the scary waters of a cenote in Valladolid. Swimming below the ruins of a Mayan city in Tulum where the iguanas posed and flailed their tongues. The Black Feet Indian Reservation in Montana, where I ate Mexican food in a trailer restaurant where they posted the story of their sorrow on the walls. The bell calling people to a reading, the rope in my hands, the rhythm like a meter. A cold spring day in Glacier National Park where the wind blew my pen out of my hand over Lake McDonald. The washing machines and refrigerators carcasses tossed into the Grand Canyon. A small chapel with healing waters outside of Santa Fe where the lame could walk again. The Space Needle at night, too dizzy to navigate home. The Ford Theater for a production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. An abandoned mansion outside of Dublin where the weeds had grown so thick inside the house, they were all you could see through the windows. Backstage at Symphony Hall, where the exposed girders look like the raw workings of a subway station, or the framework inside the Statue of Liberty where the elevator ends and you just have to climb the stairs.

This morning walking down from my parking lot, the light emerging through the clouds.