“You have to see it to be it.”

I saw a mother, but I didn’t want to be a mother.

I saw a bad father, and it made me not-want to be that either.

I didn’t want to be a Shenkel-Elder, or even a genial hardworking One-Eyed Struglinski.

I saw Abbey and Thoreau and Abbie Hoffman only in print. That was a start–maybe I could be in-print too?

Much later, I heard Scott Carrier, and I said yes to being that, or rather … I recognized that he was probably what I had become anyway, both in the sense of soothsaying and in the way of Wreckage. He and I, growing in a certain Southwest way at roughly the same time, were on parallel tracks, both glancing off the beast of NPR according to the laws of social physics.

Having bounced off and abandoned the beast, we both saw a good share of professors and thus became that too. This time, I was better at It than he was. But not all that much better.

As far as I know he’s been silent for a long time now.

I have this, and a video now and then.

We both have a decade’s worth of endgame to sort out.

God bless us every one.