The Lotto

“I can’t stand the hustle and bustle,” Wes said, the westerly ocean wind ruffling the wisps of white hair spilling from under his battered baseball cap and over the broken collar of his plaid shirt. I’d watched him start a roaring fire in a constant downpour in that shirt, tending to the splayed and cedar-skewered Coho salmon like a helicopter dad. The plaid shirt (and the Makah t-shirt underneath, depicting a proud, stylized thunderbird with a the gift of a whale in its talons) were still miraculously dry. If it could be said that a dark cloud hangs over those with a sour disposition, then Wes (though salty as the Pacific), seemed to exist under the perpetual shelter of an old growth cedar. In our layers of fleece and rain gear, my students and I looked like the wastefully over-packaged pieces of fruit one finds in Hong Kong grocery stores, and the cold wet still seeped in.

“K” is for Knowing (and Kardashian)

A few years back, when I was charged with caring for my young niece and nephew in Hong Kong while my sister and brother-in-law jetted off for a dream vacation in Bhutan (#sisteroftheyearaward), I suffered some serious delusions. I thought that amidst shuttling them around to their various engagements, feeding them, and keeping them clean enough to prevent their teachers from sending them home, I would get caught up on my writing. I would read a read a literary classic or two. I would meditate by the windowed wall while inner peace and the distant skyline of downtown Hong Kong lit my face with a transcendent glow.  Alas.