12.15.2025

What beast stalks the shallows, I says to myself I says. A sandpiper zips across my path. Pearls of melted guano pockmark the beach, the churny hardish clay-type stuff between soft sand and wet tide lands. I don’t know the words for ocean things. I made a pact to stop looking everything up, to stop asking this computer to bail me out when I’m not sure what or how to say. Less scary than satisfyingly reckless. To make a mistake and charge ahead, disregardfullessly. Against insecurity for years I stacked reference books around me like castle walls. Cleaning out whole shelves at Myopic or Powell's in an afternoon. Encyclopedia Britannica, the entire set, last update circa 1993, classy burgundy-bound volumes displayed in rough handmade wood wall boxes screwed into studs through drywall, until the Great Collapse of 2011 when it all came down. I imagine the crash was loud as hell but thankfully the dog and I were at the park. Tape measures with historical events plotted out for easy reference. Road maps from everywhere with roads or without. Dungeon Master's guides and Oxford quotation dictionaries and catalogs of arcane theories and ridiculous inventions. In case I needed to make something right or win an argument or write a trivia question for that night's game, the one I told myself every week I was going to prep for on Sunday and emailed to myself to print out at Kinko's on the way to the bar.