Seventeen
Going Through Old Notebooks Part 44: Magical thinking.
I wonder sometimes, if I could just stay sleeping long enough, if I might wake up seventeen again; that time might flow backwards, and I would wake up back in that old life, with my childhood dog still alive, and my parents in their forties. Me, a teenager in a corduroy jacket, who could subsist on sourdough bread and hot chocolate and no sleep, or sleep for twelve hours straight if I wanted. A creature of ocean and forests, warm dry hillsides and cold wind; those days of diamond clarity, out on the Northern California coast, those windy, rainy, January nights, and where they sometimes deposited us; the coffee shop in town where I’m pretty sure the Gipsy Kings had been playing on a loop for years.
