The way for the first time in my life, I felt like the right age at the right time, indulging without abandon in the small window that is my own youth. This alone, I came to learn, could be its own purpose.

If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.
–Leonard Cohen

Hours melted as I surfed with two of my heroes and a boy who didn’t understand the difference between the words, “today”, “tomorrow”, and “yesterday”.

On our last night together, before I flew overseas, I held him close, kissed his little nose, and taught him the meaning of the word “bittersweet”. 

That the world is so full of paper, and you have always loved to write.

If I am not, may God so put me there;
 if I am, may God so keep me.

“You write in time then time is gone and in trying to catch up you write a whole new story.” —Patti Smith

Hot air blows from his mouth down the metallic reed and music comes out the other end. He’s sitting on a wooden bench next to his friend who plucks guitar strings. A group of us surround a fire.

I’m on the other side, bundled up in an old Mexican blanket I found in the trunk of my car, half my ass falling through the dilapidated rubber strips of a stolen lounge pool chair.

Cool breeze, cool breeze

Rushing down her spine with both palms squeezed around the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz

Launched into Lisbon at the cool pace of a beating heart, I’m on the train, along the coast, heading west.