And no one will remember us, who we were or what happened here. Sand will blow across Pacific Avenue and against the windows of the Moonstone, and new people will arrive and walk down the beach to the great ocean. They will be in love, or they will be lost, and they will have no words. And the waves will sound to them as they did to us the first time we heard them.

William Kittredge's 'Hole in the Sky' is one of my favorite books. Ian Frazier's 'Family' I adore.

Some trees love an ax, a drunk old-timer mumbled one night at the Tap, back when she still went there, and something in what he said rang true, but when she later remembered what he'd said, she disagreed and though instead that the tree gets used to the ax, which has nothing to do with love. It settles into being chipped away at, bit by bit, blade by blade, until it doesn't feel anything anymore, and then, because nothing else can happen, what's left crumbles to dust.

Public speaking, for me, or speaking even in front of a handful of people is my greatest fear.

In college, I would follow Bob Dylan around, and I would show up to a concert, and he would sing some song he hadn't sang in a long time, and it would speak to something, and I would think it had some great fateful implication.

Navigating a nonsober world of restaurants and bars, dinner parties, and benefits is like anything that requires practice. Like tennis or a foreign language, it gets easier the more you do it. But like all beginnings, it can be awkward. You stumble, you worry, and then there are unexpected moments of grace that give you the courage to keep going.