Finding My Way Back

 
I’m in San Diego, sitting on the patio of the condo we’re borrowing from gracious friends, listening to the city—the stadium is to my left, and further that way is the convention center, and the Gaslamp with its million restaurants and costumed tourists is to my right. Will is paging through his ComicCon packet, plotting what he’ll do with his Thursday badge. There’s big nerd energy in the air, and it’s lovely.
 
It’s also 70 degrees, I’m barefoot, there do not appear to be any bugs, and the slightest breeze occasionally rustles past. Did I mention it’s lovely?
 
This is the first thing I’ve written in a while that wasn’t a business plan (more on that eventually) or a lesson plan (teaching a summer session class; 7 days/3.5 weeks to go!), or something for my teaching portfolio that is due September 1 and which I’m determined to finish very soon. In other words, my creative brain is rusty.
 
I worry sometimes that I’ve lost the knack for it.
 
And then on the way here, I thought about writing a flash fiction piece about a guy who doesn’t want to go on vacation because he hasn’t pooped and doesn’t want to use the airplane bathroom. (Believe it or not, this was not autobiographical.) I didn’t write it, but for a few minutes I allowed myself to inhabit the world of this non-pooper/non-vacationer, and how mad his wife would be, and how everything could go slightly wrong National Lampoon-style as a result, and this made me smile.
 
**
 
Someone on a balcony far above me is talking, and the acoustics are such that it seems like they’re right behind me. It might even be a television, the voice is that modulated, like someone reporting on the stock market.
 
Will went in and came back outside and said that his arm was itching, and it almost looked like hives, or maybe hive singular, as it was just one raised welt where he was itching. Or maybe something was implanted under his skin by an alien being, something that has been slowly altering his DNA and making him into a half-vegetable/half-man and he’s only just now becoming aware of it.
 
See? Fiction is fun.
 
And it’s probably not even hives.