Take a deep breath.

Try to do a little better.

It feels light, daddy!

And this is how all his days begins. Everything light. Innocent and unencumbered, he arrives happily into the day, the world immediately swirling all around him. He drops a leaf into a flower pot filled with rain water and marvels as it vanishes and then reappears, bobbing on the surface.

He rubs his body against the prickly, green of a hedge, calls to a cat watching from across the street. The moss on the trees we pass, like something of the night lingering into day, and Jones trailing his hand over it.

It was an autumn cool morning, the dew still hanging off leaves. The air was light and clean and felt as if it came from very far away, and Jones’ eyes were so wide and bright they were like gravity– everything bending and speeding toward him.

A plane flew overhead and he froze on the sidewalk, pointing at the sky. He was blown-away and kept looking over at me to make sure I was seeing this miracle, too, this burning bush. I did not know how to explain the sky, or tell the story of how humans achieved flight, and so I just said, “Plane!”

He blinked into the sun and sky, continuing to look up through the green infinity of leaves, waiting for whatever else might streak across the sky. Squirrels, like shadows, jumped from branch to branch, and as this early light hit the red brick of the houses across the street, an old, prosperous looking man stepped out of his front door and got into his sports car. He’d traveled great distances to get to this beautiful autumn day, and he might have been wondering how many more of these good days he had left. He started the car and pulled out of the driveway, at which point three birds suddenly burst from a tree. Jones was amazed again. “Tree!”, he shouted, but his eyes were following the birds, each one of them off to unknowable adventures.

Jones stopped to examine every bush on our little journey, every forgotten thing on the sidewalk. He was so happy and slow up the street, so mindful. He wanted to meet it all– the college-aged woman struggling slowly along on her morning run, the two dogs being taken for a walk, the discarded table left broken on a tuft of grass, and the truck, the dazzling truck that rolled heavily by like some sort of glittering robot. All of it, each and every precious thing. And then we came upon some flowers and he stopped again, pointing at them, “Mommy!” he declared, “Mommy!”

And yes, yes, of course mommy was a flower. Nothing in this universe yet separate from anything else, and everything proof of magic.

Dressed in some flavour of active wear, they looked like they were heading off to play Ultimate or maybe run the steps at Casa Loma, something sporty. She was very pretty, while he looked like your average 20 year-old guy still trying to figure out who he might be. Both of them were smiling, but his grin was goofy, almost excited, like he simply could not believe his good fortune at being out with this girl. After about half an hour they came walking back, but this time she was holding a little bouquet of wildflowers that had clearly been picked from a yard just up the street. Their smiles were different now, everything shining. This sunny, spring afternoon will travel with the boy for the rest of his days, a perfect moment when something beautiful started to come alive– a point of light he will always return to.

The team was stripped of federal protections for six of its trademarks, including that of their cheerleaders, the Redskinettes. Now this doesn’t mean that the team is going to have to change its name any time soon, but it is one more example of the ever-gathering disapproval that’s raining down upon them. Apologists can argue all they want about the true etymology of the word Redskin, or that the name is meant as an honorific rather than a slur, but it’s irrelevant.

The Native American community, a small and not particularly powerful minority in a vast and powerful nation, have made it clear that they find it an offensive racial pejorative, and that in and of itself should be sufficient motivation for Daniel Snyder, the white, billionaire owner of the team, to step into the world the rest of us live in, or at least the world we hope to live in, and change the name.

I have come up with a few suggestions, which I now offer:

1. The Washington Cherry Blossoms

2. The Washington Indigenous People

3. The Washington 1%

4. The Washington Spooks

5. The Beltway Snipers

6. The Washington House of Lies

7. The Washington Interns (Defensive line known as The Stained Blue Dress)

8. The Washington Anthrax Attack

9. The Washington Department of Doom (Defensive line known as Homeland Security)

10. The Washington Freedom Fighters

*********************************

Adega

128 Palomino Drive

San Francisco

415. 866. 2014 (Reservations recommended)

The fish’s head, with eyes as gleamy as Brigitte Bardot staring up at you from the beach, the waves washing against her legs like the breath of angels that always knew your name and your love and your god, and the hot yes and now of it,

had been set on the bottom of the bowl so that it looked up at you as if asking you the question you always knew that one day you were to be asked, and beside it the chef had placed another piece of trout, this one rolled with herbs and sea salt and smoked just to the point of ruby-hued doneness, like a sunset fallingfallingfalling and then rising, now within. It was one of the most exquisite things I ate last year, and I would return to Adega in an explosive, radiant, madly speeding BOOM. Highly recommended.

New Town Coffee House

98 Madison Avenue

Chicago, Illinois

(Phone number not available)

Careening into the New Town Coffee House the first thing that struck me was how the sunlight exploded and ran about the place like a mad, dizzy child hungry for the face of God. Hungry? Yes, all my life hungry, hungry for it all and more, hungry for her hair curling around her chin hungry for the broken promises and the industrial man hungry for all the images through all time spinning like daisies, hungry for a grilled cheese sandwich? Yes, Please! I ordered one straight away, my need for it an electrical current ripping through my body like sex, but I had to wait, I had to wait, I had to travel back in time, to the cow before the cheese, to the wheat before the bread and it was too long it was too damn long and so I spun out of there flashing flashing flashing.

The girl in front of me in the line-up was squarely built and dressed like a farmer. She had the red hair of an outsider and looked quiet, like she was still trying to decide who she was to become. On her right wrist there was a tattoo, a vividly green box with the word LIFE beneath it– a rebellion of optimism. You could see how the liberty of a new city and the excitement of an unwritten life, just now, finally developing, was animating her eyes, her eyes, which were so alert and watching everything,  just waiting for what was to happen next.

These are a collection of Taliban Tweets:

The Taliban cannot tolerate biased media.

Too long have we been mocked and misunderstood.#Unclesamisunclean

8 puppets killed, 3 vehicles destroyed in Langham battle: bit.ly/XnJr2m

Victory! A Mujhadeed has seized a motorbike from the unholy invaders!

Invader General Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress’s family or stoned to death.

Mondays always make me feel blue, and this cold is not helping. Sinuses clogged.

@Puppetobama what sort of man would kiss another?! It is unholy!

I do not like the rain. May it rain on America for an eternity!

An invading infidel walks into a market and asks for nuts and the patriot vendor says, “ We have no nuts, puppet!!”

The Taliban has enduring patience and long-term Jihadist strategies against the malicious plots of the enemy!

Mortars hit infidel invader camps. The Blood of our enemies flows: bit.lu?MoYr6h

I fear that one of my wives has fallen out of love with me. We used to laugh together so much, but now, never.

The Taliban will not abandon the struggle for freedom and will not pardon you until the withdrawal of your last soldier. #Unclesamisunclean

RT: America you are a Big Mac! Fat and greasy!

Taliban fun fact: The Pathans are notorious for family feuds, often the result of disputes over zar, zan or zamin – gold, women or land.

@anglinajolie You are a whore.

A woman is like having a flower. You water it and keep it at home for yourself to look at and smell. It is not supposed to be taken out of the house to be smelled. #truth

Landmines eliminate 2 US-nato tanks in Khan-e-Sheen district: bit.ly/SFi7oA

2 puppets of special-forces killed in bomb attack.

RT The Lakers have contacted Phil Jackson. He’s reportedly interested in the job. #WeWantPhil bit.ly/SWgLK8

@Amir Please feel free to DM me—bored at work.

Taliban shout-out to Aarif who proudly declared that he had killed seven male members of a Mahsud family for having insulted his wife, and so far only his brother had been killed in the revenge!

I wish Taylor Swift were one of my wives. I would cover her in the finest raiments and play for her the rubab.