For the Kims

It goes like this, we the legions of peers and denizens of any city. We of the tarnished and mildy insufficient glitterati, making the ends meet and making families makeshift and biological, but making it nonetheless, astonished and sort of shell shocked at the magnificence of our accomplishments, no matter how minor and no matter how feeble. We were never going to be anyone's greatest generation. Many of us were lucky enough to cobble together a few shards of art and a dismal amount of faith to make clusters of tribes of the perenially disenfranchised, because that's what we've been reduced to, the Us against the Mighty Them.

And then there was snow and a late night and children and a shortcut through the mountains. Just like the movies. And we watch the internets safe in our perches. I flew over you, flew over the wilds of Oregon from Portland and was dazzled by the onset of darkness and the wildness in the sky, I flew over you as surely as the crow flies after having surreptitiously wept in the airport ladies, maybe I was crying so hard for you and maybe I was crying so hard for my grandmother who would die later that night, or maybe I was just crying for the man who just drove off without me, forever and ever without me.

But it's not like the movies and it's never like the movies. I was reading trash and wishing for more wine and you and your children were burning your tires and having a conversation I hope to never have, all because of a wrong turn. What kind of fucked up cliche is that, really what kind of fucked up cliche is that. Where is the justice and and where is the righteousness in that, where is delivery, where is the angel, why does the father die delirious in the woods face down in the river. How would you ever find the peace in that, how could you ever make peace with that. A wrong turn, one wrong turn could cost you your life, one wrong turn and you are a fatherless child, one wrong turn and your wife will have ten thousand questions and eleven thousand queries spoke unto the serious depths where the questions beckon and linger but the ghosts keep their cards close to their chests.

There is a metephor here about the ruthlessness of nature, but here I am not going to crow about it, in this case nobody had it coming, in this case it was four stranded and hungry people pleading for life, and three of them made it with ingenuity and the father, the father he died looking for help. So James, Godspeed, go from these icy waters onwards and upwards, watch over your daughters. And for you Kati, you of the store down the street, go fearlessly into the future, go with your girls and go with all of our glad tidings, may love find you and hold you close.