Status Updates From This Must be the Place

And it seems to me, as I sit there, among the ornamental hedges and genuflecting chrysanthemums, as I spark my lighter with a shaking hand and inhale the smoke, that my life has been a series of elisions, cover-ups, dropped stitches in knitting. To all appearences, I am a husband, a father, a teacher, a citizen, but when tilted towards the light I become a deserter, a sham, a killer, a thief.

A tide has rushed forward, then pulled back out, and whatever was beneath it is altered forever. […] She is searching the windscreen now for my face, wondering why I am not moving forward, but from where she is standing, the glass is opaque with the reflexions of clouds. From where she is standing, I might not even be here at all.