1. Appalachia (so patient). “As soon as we’re out, we’re kickin’ our way back in.”
2. Kickin’ our way back in.
3. The Royal We.
4. I-81.
5. Bryce Harper’s stirrups.
6. De-camping.
7. Pizza Deliverance. Particularly “Box of Spiders” and “One of These Days.”
8. Poems.
9. Kiki Petrosino’s Fort Red Border. Particularly the Valentines section.
10. Sun.
11. Orbits and inner circles. Also no-muss nuptials and the symbiotic partnerships they seal. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and health. The day-to-day subtle magic of that.
12. Time travel. (“As soon as we’re out, we’re kickin’ our way back in.”)
13. A new Michael Ondaatje book. To look forward to.
14. Modern medicine.
15. A breakfast burrito. At Gillies. Mmm.
16. The New River Valley.
17. The Shenandoah Valley.
18. Mountains.
19. Road noise.
20. My new shoes. They are secretly orthotic. Not that this is a secret I am keeping from others. (Obviously.) That this is a secret they — the shoes, that is — kept from me. For a time. But then I had occasion to don my red Chucks and soon my arches sang the secret of their new rivals like (achy) canaries. Or something.
21. The Dorothy Jemison Day Theater. At the Alabama School of Fine Arts. All that and a bag of chips.
22. The Alabama School of Fine Arts. Working there. All that and a bag of chips.
23. Lebanese Taverna. Particularly the Fatteh Bel Djaje. Mmm.
24. Fresh Off the Bun. Particularly the Vietnamese Tacos. Mmm.
25. Cheaper money. Vis-à-vis my mortgage.
26. Which is to say: Fannie Mae!
27. Sisters.
28. Brothers-in-law.
29. Dolphins. Particularly the fact that they evolved from land mammals. (Which is crazy.) Thus more or less proving that the little space alien men who come to take us in our sleep are really just us from another dimension, after we’ve evolved to be way uglier and punier but also way smarter and (somehow) truly capable of withstanding the rigors of lightspeed. (Not that dolphins are ugly. Quite the opposite. Plus they’ve evolved so that they can pick up sonar with their — wait for it — teeth. Not even lying. That’s totally true.) Or, I mean who knows? Maybe lightspeed is just this quaint anachronistic superstition wherein we labor under the misconception that we have to go really fast to get where we’re going in the fourth dimension. But maybe, you know…maybe it’s not like that at all.
30. Which is to say: what all we don’t know.