Wandering where the lions are.

This one starts in Oakland on a cool, damp evening. We're hitting flat tennis balls over the net to all stretches of the court. Only five o'clock and the sun's going down behind a thick blanket of clouds over San Francisco. And up in the hills the houselights are watery in a lighter haze of gray. I'm like a dog on my side of the net, the dog that's been waiting for his owner all fucking day long... eager and upset and frantic. I'm running after every ball, running it back to the fence ten armlengths away. There's something inside of me that's trying to get out; I'm trying to wear it down. I smile and sweat awaiting the next ball, as if to wag my tail. I've done this before.

I think this is the night I beat it, but I had to go through me to get there... face to face. And so I picked up a wicked cold, a night soon after four blankets over the bed and I'm shivering delirious and half-awake, at war with some invisible aspect. And in the day my skin burns as I walk down the street and this facetious National song in my head.

I'm put together beautifully
Big wet bottle in my fist, big wet rose in my teeth
I'm a perfect piece of ass
Like every Californian
So tall I take over the street, with highbeams shining on my back
A wingspan unbelievable
I'm a festival, I'm a parade
And all the wine is all for me

We had some happy obligations south of the city, I mean south like Mexico. Way down in the bottom of the American boot, the legging or whatever it is. The ash settling on Orange and Bernadino; some mansion policies cashed in Riverside, Los Angeles. The drive down this way unimaginative, God's cutouts of earth and vegetation the color of cardboard. I imagined the smog caught in valleys encouraging to the imagination, like the voids of whites and grays in a japanese silk painting, or multiple endings of a choose-your-own-adventure novel. But I was too cynical to imagine anything more than the already true dust and wasteland and stripmall lying beyond. I drank tea and listened to Dylan's Time Out of Mind, that nicotine voice somehow sweet. My baby took a nap and I passed a lot of cars.

Four-hundred and fifty miles into the six-lane freeway network of SoCal, weaving between fine driving machines recently rolled off the lot. Cathleen's sister had dinner waiting for us in her cozy apartment, a strange mix on the stereo and a couple dewey bottles of beer on the table. I dreamt of shallow darkness and street vendors. I saw dust-laden soldiers thick with gear tramping through Nasiriyah and Baghdad. Something didn't feel right, there was something unsaid in my life... an inability to do anything but feel or not feel the atrocities beyond the bubble. Somehow not in conflict with the love abundant in my life, but nonetheless real. The sleep of NyQuil and safe harbor.