It’s nice, you know, to be reminded of something, whether it’s bitter or sweet. A wine you haven’t tasted in years, the smell of firewood, or the rain. After a summer in California you forget there’s even such a thing, and then it comes in the middle of the night in a grand gust of wind, rattles your windows, rustles through the leaves. It’s been so long, and I was such good friends with it once: a kiss after months of solitude.

My senior year in college I lived with two friends in the upper story of a big house with a blue metal roof. That winter was rainy, even by Portland standards. In my memory that house is always shrouded in rain, and I am lying on my bed next to the heater trying to stay awake through hundreds of pages of assigned reading in Aristotle, or standing under the eaves smoking a pipe and watching the blue and gray smoke mingle in the wet air. I don’t know how happy I was at the time, certainly not as happy as I’ve been since then. But memory is strange like that: you remember everything, even disasters, for what it truly is, which is to say a miracle.

Tomorrow I leave for San Diego. Annual conference. Thirty thousand dorks, geeks, and nerds. We’re all mad, but I mean that in the best way. I rented a car and I’m going to drive down on the coast route; I’m not likely to have the opportunity to do that again. I need to find a place to camp round about half way there.