If things look bad, just turn your kaleidoscope around.
Earthquakes have deeply affected ostrich chicks (something I didn’t know because I’ve never given much thought to them). If you know anything about plate tectonics – a constant process that builds mountains and moves continents – you know that it describes (or rather, explains) the large-scale motions of our ever-evolving landscape. Since ostriches are flightless, they’ve been scattered all over the Southern Hemisphere. Their history has gaps that time cannot erase.
I thought about deleting this blog, breaking the beast I built when I was just eighteen – a dropout, a girlfriend – but then as I stood there last night, watching the ostrich chicks waddling around in their tank, I thought - I started this thing because I wanted a place to lay my life down. I still want that.
So that’s what I’ll continue to do.
It was just last week that I took the wrong bus and ended up in the Mission in the middle of the night. When he found me at the bus stop, I’d been sobbing – little kid sobbing, like my dog had just gone off to live on some made-up farm – and he asked my name, my problem, my confusion. I couldn’t name it, but I could wait the 15 minutes with him until the next bus. Everything felt like a big joke, the kind you tell at parties where you don’t know anyone but the host.
He was a stranger, mid-twenties, just off work, and he told me not to worry, like it would help, like I’d believe him if only I really knew him. But I don’t really know anyone, and that’s the thing. That’s what I said. He told me his first name, and here’s his neighborhood, here’s his favorite food. What were mine? He found me at the 33 when I meant to get on the 24. Christ, he could talk.
I didn’t know whether to hug him or punch him in the face - I wanted to do both.
