Favorite Spot

I have to practice letting worries roll off me. The more I can do to signal to my worries that that is my intention, the better off I am.

I sit in the blue chair in the dining room at Plum Street, and the worries know it's time to clear out.

Summer Intermission

Right now, this summer is in six or seven drafts I've only begun with a title or a line or an image. The past month has been so full. Since school ended on June 21, I have seen so much of Morocco, Ireland, Northern Ireland, my own heart, my family. I don't have a mechanism to process all of what I've seen. I like to stare at things long, be in a room for a long time, have long conversations. In this deluge of sensation, where the plan is no more than a few nights in any given place for two months, I worry I will forget.

I do not want to forget a single bit of it, not even the stuffy and smelly queue Rachel and I waited in at the Fes train station: not even that memory.

I do not want to forget the smell of the market around the bus stop between Chefchaouen and Casablanca; dry dirt kicked up by vehicles, tanned leather, and bathrooms...

The relief of my friend's listening ear; my cousin's belief in me even when it seemed I had lost my mind; my aunt's joy in picking out dates and saffron in the market...

The sound of the endless ocean on the cliffs of Castlerock...

The translucent jellyfish on that beach, what the ocean must sneeze out when it's sick with jellyfish...

The sweet and sweaty heat of Washington DC when we came out of the airport and I stepped on my homeland's pavement.