Big Sur
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I long… I long to breathe in my son’s boundless energy – his youth and exuberance about damn near everything, while I still have the chance. I long to walk in England and get all giddy on Baker’s Street, to explore the pubs and streets of Ireland, while I still have the chance. Let me
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The smell of stale cigarettes and cold coffee filled the hot Buick Park Avenue. Its air conditioner died a year ago. I was grateful for the bit of breeze I felt on my face when I climbed from the driver’s seat. Covering a jumper on Midgley Bridge wasn’t how I wanted to start the morning
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The road map of my life I’m told it began in California and from my earliest memory that’s been the case. Happiness blossomed for me in California. I liked everything as a child and I quickly became a pop culture fanatic, devouring everything from the Six-Million-Dollar Man to standing in line for the 1989 premier
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Damn you, Aquaman There is a kind of hunger for free time. Real free time. Without the damn dishes, the weekend laundry, or any chores whatsoever, without feeling pressured to write by my own OCD mind and just read any of the books I feel like reading, or paint. Or write. Or all of the
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Shove it in with a shovel-spoon One bag of macaroni shells A stick of butter A block of orange (radioactive orange) cheese THESE are the things that subdued my anger, my sense of indignation at the world, and put an end to my whining to this very day. These three things my mom combined when it
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The creature made a move. It wasn’t much of a move, but it totally counted. It’s pale, fleshy head with almond shaped eyes (if almonds were the size of watermelons) nodded in my direction. But hell if that scared me. I’m an American. So keeping my iPhone as steady as possible in my right hand,
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Nog and sap Anticipation in the house was almost palpable at Christmas time. Decorations, the large real tree, the Burl Ives and Bing Crosby holiday records; these were all lugged out of the big blue storage trunk the first week of December. Back then Thanksgiving actually included decorations that kept the event separate from Christmas.
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Sand and Budweiser I wasn’t sure it was a good idea at the time, and I couldn’t have been more than six. Uncle Vince, a family friend who wasn’t my real uncle at all, once held my brother and I by our ankles over the roof of a K-Mart while it was still under construction
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sunshine and gulls It’s skies are crawling with gulls. They sit on every streetlight – along Fremont and up the city’s spine, Broadway (now also called Obama Way). For Seaside, tucked nicely between Fort Ord and Monterey, it’s a fitting new name. I kissed a girl for the first time at Martin Luther King Middle
Patrick Whitehurst 