Marbles

Pre-dawn. An unseemly time of day. I should have been sleeping. But there I was, showering, dressing, driving – all before the sun fully rose. Too early. But, to be fair, Long Beach at 6:30 in the morning looks almost romantic. I’d never been in Long Beach that early in the morning.

Wait. Yes, I have. The summer of 1995. Let me purge it from my memory. Let me forget the yellow street lamps, the surprisingly easy drive to the freeway from the part of town where the crafty lesbians run their cafes with such managerial skill. Let me forget the way the drive north always got sluggish at the airport, or at some invisible horizontal line extending east from the airport. Let me forget her not because I’m married now (and happily so) but because I was wayward then. Ten years is a long time. It’s like a decade. Let me forget.

Okay, I’ve forgotten.

What was I doing in Long Beach at 6:30 this morning? A better question would be: What was I doing in Seal Beach at 6:45? And so on.

Changing the subject. It’s okay that the Timberwolves have done nothing this off-season other than hire a new coach, lose Latrell, draft another 6’5” guy, and resign their 10th man, the oft-mentioned Mad Dog. They have the foundation. Last year was an anomaly. The coming season will culminate with a long playoff run. KG is at his career peak. Wally has stopped caring if anyone likes him. Sam may actually be healthy. And sure assuming that all of you know whom/what I’m talking about is a pretty big assumption but it’s an improvement over the first four paragraphs today, isn’t it?

I’m in Los Angeles now. Downtown. Where the streets have names. It’s almost a nice day, if only the temperature would dip a few degrees. I finally got that second draft of that almost-interesting report completed. I’m reading six books. I’m blogging three times a week, on average. What more could I need?

Ten years. I look better now. The hair is still strong. I drive almost the same car. I eat better. My shoes are still good. I walk with more purpose. Then, I wrote poems called “Marbles” and “Riverside” and “Breakfast Is A Woman.” Today, I write The Mango. And other things (the script, the new short story about the picture frame-obsessed Rastafarian, and the policy paper). Today is better.