Excerpts

Washington state, fire evacuation levels: 

Level 1: get ready 

Level 2: get set, and 

Level 3: go. 

All of us have “go bags” to grab as we run out the door, filled with what matters most for immediate survival. Evacuation levels can and do change on a dime, sometimes in the middle of the night. We drive away from our home perched on the hill above a gentle curve of valley just ahead of receiving notice of Level 3. I do not permit myself a glance back. 

Just the other day, during an hour-long run with “All My Friends,” LCD Soundsystem, on a loop, one watched another fat raccoon amble down the trunk of a sturdy maple tree, swagger over to the sewer, and pour himself away. One should have taken a video, but one didn’t. One couldn’t—the sight of him pinned all one’s corners in place, legs frozen bent and crooked, arms stuck akimbo like a couple of to-do lists pinned to a bulletin board. One had never seen a raccoon in real life, and what a petty wonder, the way he moved—so lazily, like he’d woken up in the past and would be content to remain there, whole and unscathed, snug inside this handful of moments stretched out, sustained, swollen with every passing yet to come.

There are things you’ll never know. They are things that sit with you like the hard sliver of a popcorn kernel that slides between the gum and the molar. You tongue at them, at the swollen gum line, trying to pry them free. You are a person that likes knowing things for the sake of knowing them. Questions without answers rankle you. Those little pieces of popcorn kernels, for example? Those are called the pericarp. You looked it up because not knowing it irritated you.

For Prisoner #5, walking preceded The Walk. It began as nothing more than exercise.

What ultimately became a triumph of imagination and endurance grew from the mundane act of counting. With each trip around the prison yard, he moved a dried pea from one pocket to the other. 

In this way, Prisoner #5 never lost track of how many times he circled the yard.

It seems that all I know is here at Sukh Niwas; it is my entire universe.

I know that mango season is over, and the weather has cooled, and we are waiting for the guavas to ripen. This year it’s as if I’d never noticed anything before. Yet somewhere in my bones I know I’ve seen them before—the seasons.

They said he was named after a Roman consul. 

They said his roots were unknown.