Whirlwind

“Oh shit, my coffee!” Followed a second later by a thump as the paper cup of Dunkin Donuts java, balanced and then forgotten on the BMW’s roof, toppled over in the slipstream and sent a brown cascade down the rear window. G. hit the brakes, and centrifugal force sent a wave of steaming coffee forward and through the open sunroof to rain down on yours truly. Laughing my head off. Nine on a cloudy morning, somewhere in Maryland, eighteen hours or so until Ben’s wedding – an event that ended up going off without a hitch, on a sun-dappled bluff on the Maryland shore. Everybody shrugged into tuxes, looking ready for a James Bond audition.

At a meditation party on the Upper West Side – a large ground-story room, white, bright with candles – the only sound coming from the garden on the other side of the open French doors, rain dripping from the trees – until the sound of humming starts up, twenty people in the lotus position trying to reach the frequency of the universe.

A. and I dancing across the red-girder tangle of the bridge at midnight, oil tankers slipping beneath in the dark, the J train rumbling by in a hurricane roar of light.

This is your life, and it’s ending one moment at a time.