Last of the lukewarm mamas

Most curious, the way people from my past persist in my memory, the way they have their own secret little islands in the endless archipelago of my over-stuffed mind. Sometimes, when I'm traveling the islands carelessly, without any particular destination in mind, I will wash up on a little bump of sand, crawling with insect-sized crabs...

My wife says "the claws on my paws" or "the clause on my pause," or some other combination, and finding this remarkable, asks me to memorialize it in my blog.

...crawling with little crabs. How strange to be seized so suddenly with old, adolescent pains, like a phantom limb. I sometimes let myself get lost in bizarre, pointless regret, regret for losses that long stopped having any emotional meaning.

The dominant sensation of my life now is activity. I have something of the clear, zen mind of the athlete, as every moment seems to have its task and all my energies go toward its satisfaction. Moments of reflection have become so rare that their piquancy is exaggerated, as if my emotional organ has been blue-balled, its orgasm enormous and fecund.

This ends today's SAT prep.