The luck of a red-eye makes you wonder if it is a delusion you’re experiencing from a lack of sleep, or if this is that “God” that they speak of, entertaining himself at the expense of your confusion and misery.
Of the many untranslatable phrases of my life, “paradero” is among the least translatable. It’s Spanish for “the place where one stops,” but it is so much more.
The summer I turned twenty-one was also the summer I spent readying myself to leave California. Perhaps most difficult was leaving the Pacific Ocean, the body of water I felt so certain I belonged to.
I was six or seven, and I stood a little ways from my father, who was grasping the handle of a small navy suitcase in one hand and, with the other, knocking on our bathroom door. His face was stoic, unmoved by the reality of being cast out, exiled from us.
The city is distracting; if you make poor enough decisions and don’t think too hard about why you’re starting to get death premonitions, the monotony of it all can feel like a footnote.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen….
And also…
God,
Please, please, please,
give me big …