A bad omen this morning: As I tore open an English muffin—the authentic variety with no relation to Thomas—the muffin shredded into pieces. I don’t believe in omens, but the muffin shattered and that must represent something. Sure, people may say it’s only an English muffin, and remind me that I managed to toast and eat the broken muffin. To those people, I offer exhibit B: last night, while attempting to wash the fish caked dishes, I broke another large glass. First the glass, and then the English muffin, now do you see where I’m going with this?

My mind wanders because of a poor night’s sleep. I awakened at strange hours, and surrendered to wakefulness at four. Nerves hammered me down. I’m underway flying from Seattle for the first leg of the journey. (Why do journeys always have legs?) I’ll see Doolies in a few hours, and then we’ll prepare for the haul to Paris. I feel ready after skimming through the Paris section in Rick Steven’s France guidebook.

Below this line, nothing waits. I feel stretched across time, pulled by distance and velocity. Nights when no thought slips my mind; days when my mind doesn’t recognize thought. I draw words to see their shapes. What good are the shapes of words? Silence reverberates off my skull and I will it gone, replaced by dreary shapes.

She glanced through the index of a Ziploc bag. She searched and located the airplane pretzels on her weight-watchers card. No go. I sat scribbling to scribble, but my brain has no cares.

Richard studied his name in print. As he stared, the words became garbled and strange, the dark ink of the letters running together. He felt joy in the meaningless symbols, lifted the newspaper to his nose, and smelled the printed ink. His fingers were black. The paper published his article, his first published article. During college, Richard dreamed of writing articles for newspaper. The paper, the Ostrich Daily, was no thte type of newspaper Richard envisioned.

So it goes, with words on paper to hurry the time. He hummed and sang off pitch without diffidence or thought for others.

Snow covered the mountains and filled the lakes. With a fork, he dug valleys, creased hills, and lifted mountains from the potatoes and gravy, dumping packets of sugar at the peeks. Stuffed beaks sang of whistled nights and putty clogged the night’s sky. Geometric farms fill the vista. I forget how large LA is until I fly over it.