Ten.One Thousand & Two

1. I hear him saying something quietly, and then I hear the coughing. 3:44am.

2. I close my eyes and hear the cough again and get up to get him cough medicine. I try to go back to sleep but google cough remedies and double-check COVID-19 symptoms because that is what a worrier does.

3. I close my eyes but don’t really go back to sleep.

4. So much coughing.

5. This morning, a whole family of snails. I watch the smallest one climb the stacked landscape pavers. How slowly they move.

6. It must be how I chugged that beet juice. I hope it’s just that.

7. I forgot how time-consuming this particular kind of work is.

8. I love the parts of our ride where Mt. Diablo is in view. No clouds. Not as quiet. More people out post-lunch? There are new blossoms on some of the trees. A lonely lemon in the gutter.

9. He asks me if I want the rest of the Syrah. Of course, I want the rest of it.

10. When the message gets repeated to you over and over and over again, and you realize you just gotta do it. However you can, in whatever small way you can, just do one simple thing to stay connected to it. One simple thing to move it forward.

Ten.Nine Hundred & Thirty-Three

1. The dream. I want to experience just the last few minutes of it over and over again. I replay it in my mind before getting out of bed. There are just certain things you need to hold on to.

2. Make coffee. Clean the kitchen counters. The granite in this kitchen was never sealed or never re-sealed and so it’s pitted in random places. Which means that every time I run my fingers across the countertops I think there is food stuck to it. This drives me bananas. I can never tell if they’re clean.

3. The sound of the coffee percolating. I think back to our conversation when I said something about how it’s not even just the drinking of coffee that’s become a ritual, but the sound of the coffeemaker that brings about some peace, offers some grounding.

4. Game day.

5. I thought it was Wednesday?

6. If nothing else, it’s just good to have an ally, no matter the result.

7. I keep myself from reaching out to grab one of the calamari. I assume that if I could have eaten some he would have told me to dig it. PIctures first.

8. Truffled popcorn.

9. The baby cows are no longer babies anymore.

10. The boys are travelling all over the place. But we finally win a game. Maybe his method is slow and steady.

11. The story is right here. The story is right here.

Ten.Eight Hundred & Thirty-Eight

1. Oh, good morning, rooster.

2. Fog hanging low. The cafe is fuller this morning than the last few times I’d been. Black coffee and a bacon and goat cheese empanada. The flurry of Spanish circling my ears. I’m reminded that we have a lot of learning to do upon my return,

3. Return. Not thinking about leaving just yet.

4. She pulls out a bowl of pomegranate seeds and adds it to the bar that is already stuffed full of scones and hard-boiled eggs and flaky sea salt, granola and yogurt, and local unfiltered apple juice.

5. A deer darts across 128. He turns back to look at us as we move along.

6. Two more deer. These, I didn’t see. They stop and stare at us again. Remember to look up Deer medicine later.

7. It’s just the two of us, and a young man with the chef, and this is actually the most perfect thing, A private pasta-making class during which we drink Scharfenberger and sparkling water. We make farfalle and pappardelle and the one that looks like a chicken gullet. He brings us oysters—my first time eating them raw—and then a salad with more pomegranate seeds and pickled butternut squash and roasted delicata with a ginger dressing, and then our pasta to which he’s added shrimp seasoned with a piment d’ville. And then a plate of figs drizzled with honeycomb.

8. Delight while under the blanket on the sleeping porch. Her in her bath with her glass of Syrah and her book. The sounds of the cats chasing one another through the leaves.

9. Notebooks full of stars.

10. A whole sky full of stars. Billions of them. I feel even smaller at this moment that when we overlooking the gray waves of the sea. Why does this have to be the last night?

Ten.Seven Hundred & Seventeen

1. Soft morning light coming through the slats.

2. Not a sound. I hear only my own footsteps and the chatter of birds.

3. Bacon and biscuits. I scramble an egg for myself. Drink orange juice while I stir with the rubber spatula. It’s still just the two of us awake.

4. The best thing about summer is when they figure out how to sleep in.

5. We make the tart crust. I haven’t made crust by hand in so many years. I hope it turns out okay.

6. She talks me down off the ledge. I avoid the shame spiral. I draw up solutions, invision best-case scenarios, land on the language of what I want to feel instead. Generative. Yes.

7. It’s coming back.

8. The more I do, the more I feel my way into the calling. This is a dream that’s never left.

9. They call me on speakerphone to ask if she can come over for dinner. Of course. I decide we’ll eat at the big table. I gather the dried baby’s breath and the wilting crown of vines and set the table.

10. Semantics. This is the power of words. As important as the words: context—the context of the work, the context of the life of the person who is engaging the work. Does a person have the ability to see where their personal context lays a filter over the work? Furthermore, what is “bad” and what is “good”? Depends on context. Maybe too many years of study has me living in only gray. Nothing is black and white. There are no clear-cut answers.

Ten.Seven Hundred

1. Slow.

2. No one wants to eat the leftover bagels. I don’t blame them. I blame the teenagers who made these bagels.

3. Redesign. The thing is that I know I’m going to drop in numbers again but I still need to do it.

4. Sweat.

5. He asks me why we have to have people over again. “Because this is what we do! We like to host people! So you have to clean your room!” I tickle him until he gives in.

6. He comes up to my eyebrows now. He will be as tall as me by the end of summer. I have no doubt.

7. It’s a bad sign when all of the carts are gone.

8. I’m worried that there are not enough peaches. No cast iron this time.

9. “Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.” - "The Shared Patio,” Miranda July

10. I tell them how fortunate they are to have had dinner with two winemakers in two weeks. Last week, Mr. Sean and this week Mr. Santiago. I kind of can’t believe it myself.