“Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise, this grand marketplace lovingly stocked with every sublime thing.” ― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

I don’t have any videos of my grandparents. None of my mother. I barely remember having a camera, but for the one I ordered from Bazooka Joe. It was plastic and I ran over it with my bicycle only a week after receiving it in the mail. And maybe this is why I remember everything. It was only my heart recording. (And I don’t say everything here, as if mine the only truth, but rather that it was, is, my everything. What else could it be?) I suppose I knew, that we all knew, running (chasing really), barefoot in summer’s grass, that we were indeed forever on this “brink,” so close to missing out on the daily gift. 

It was just the other day that I told Dominique about how I never see birds on my morning walk. Flocks fill the trees in our garden, but when I get to the gravel path, they all seem to disappear. The valley that I wind around each morning is filled with green. With trees and bushes. But not birds. I don’t know why. And just a day after this “other day”, I was walking the same path, listening to a podcast with George Saunders, and there it was, birding about my stride, a lovely, fluttering gift of sublime. My path was stocked.Even on this graveled path, socked and shoed, I could feel my youthful toes wiggle in summer’s youth, still joyfully chasing this beautiful earth, this beautiful day, this beautiful moment. Having need 

to stop it in photo or video, not even if I could… 
I’m nearly out the door now. Just a few more words to type before I step into the sublime…