Chickpeas

Stan and I have officially begun our new installation of the annual 'Summer Walk' series. We began the series last year upon landing back in Nashville amidst financial ruin and general heaviness of heart. As my body was still readjusting to the physical realities of not awakening with a quart of liquor still coursing through it, I would inexplicably rise at 6:30 every day, unsure of what to do with myself besides stare at the walls of my father's basement guest room. Daniel Tashian began inviting us to go on his 7:00 AM dog walks, rather ambitious affairs that really got the blood pumping. Suitably inspired, Stan and I soon initiated our own particular routine involving the creation of a portable cup of coffee for me and the installation of a plastic poop bag device on the business end of Stan's leash.

I quickly began to appreciate the mind-clearing effects of a good Summer morning constitutional, that wonderful amble through the steamy awakenings of nature, the universal coming-to, the infinite uniqueness of every single pile of animal excrement. Predictably, Stan was more than happy to establish a circuit of the surrounding streets and parks on which he could definitively make his presence known to the other canine inhabitants of the neighborhood. We were, in short, re-establishing a presence on the local scene. People were beginning to talk. More than once, at the coffee shop, passing the playground at Dragon Park, we heard the unmistakable whispers, the clandestine mentions of a 'comeback.'

A year later, we have graduated from the paternal basement, once again leading relatively 'adult' existences on the first and second floors of a house that we actually pay rent for. Surrounded by new and old friends on a regular basis, we have managed to resist the occasional temptations that would beckon us back to the darker corners of our history. This morning, proudly observing Stan raining down a great yellow disaster upon the neighbor's chrysanthemums, I was struck by the triumph of it all, the deafening trumpets of restitution. As the Dalai Lama once said, "We're back, motherfuckers. Watch out."