steam

It’s 9:05pm on Saturday night and I am sitting here alone. The only semi-good component of this scene is that I was able to get some Anchor at Primos, where I had dinner with my folks.

This time last year, well almost this time last year, my mom and I were in DC butter-knifing open a good bottle of white wine. It wasn’t as cold as it is this year. I wasn’t as worried about my future as I am now. Will I be a PhD student? Will I be selling air conditioners?

I was reading through Beryl Markham’s West with the Night again tonight, which is the most beautiful memoir I’ve ever read, and trying to find a quote for my manuscript. I thought if I found one I would start to feel better about it. Anyway, I did find something that I’m going to put as the epigraph for my first section:

There is a silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same.

I’ve been trying to figure out how someone like me, who has spent these years writing about water, is now writing about the Dust Bowl. Anyway, I guess I’ve figured out that the Dust Bowl isn’t really the point—and really, I am still writing about water.