My friend just bought a Triumph, and we go for a relatively short ride—one that clocks in at 112 miles—so we can explore an area east of Seattle with winding roads that meander through farmland and rivers and road-side coffee stands. There are a lot of winding roads, and it feels good to lean left and right and push forward through each curve into the straightaway. And there is that sound—the sound that wind makes when it rushes into my helmet when the visor is up—that reminds me of how amazing and incredible it is to be alive.

Before we hit the halfway point in the ride, when the overcast sky has yet to burn off, I have to pull over to the side of the road and warm my ghostly white fingers on my engine and wait for the blood flow to return. Soon we find ourselves at an espresso stand and drink coffee and talk about death and motorcycles and the inevitable end of our lives.

• I shot a gun for the first time in my life, and it convinced me that I should keep a gun at home for personal safety. I shot a 22 and a 38 and a 45 at a zombie target: her name was Becky, and I have this target hanging in the hallway that leads from my living room to my kitchen. Whenever I walk by I think about buying a Playstation3 so I can play Max Payne and Vice City and Mafia.
• One of my coworkers said that she loved working with me because she liked to watch the way that I interact with my patients. She told me that no one talks with their patients the way I talk with mine, which is to say that I get to know them rather intimately during our transports, and when it’s time for me to leave they hug me and thank me and hold my hand before they say goodbye.
• I stood in an aisle at a bookstore looking for a specific copy of a book by Carlos Castaneda. It has to be a specific edition of the hardback version so I can complete my collection, which I’m quite certain will be given away once I’ve completed the collection because I am not fond of stuff. And I think about that moment when Carlos ran down a hill, and I wonder if I could ever have his courage.
• When I get into my car for the first time since she left, I can smell something wonderful, and I sit in the driver’s seat and simply inhale for a few seconds. Then I realize that it’s her, and I think about how wonderful she smells and tastes and feels against the tips of my fingers. I could, I think, touch her endlessly and never grow tired of the way that her skin feels against mine.

The sun, after a while (a short while, really) is too much for me. I don’t have a problem with the sun hitting my skin, I have a problem with how bright the sun is and how my eyes are quite sensitive to the too-bright light. I have two pairs of sunglasses, each with different lenses: red lenses for days when the sun is all but hidden above the cloud layer, and darker lenses for when the sun is shining so bright that when I take off my sunglasses it is painful and almost blinding.

I drive home from the San Juan Islands after a great weekend with a group of friends that involved a small plane ride and a view of the islands from a few thousand feet in the air. The drive home seems shorter than I remember, and my phone keeps beeping from various people sending me text messages, but neither the music or the messages is able to hold my attention because in the distance I can see Mt. Rainier. And a few minutes later I can see the moon rising in the East, and it’s not quite a full moon, but almost, and I’m lost in wonder for a full hour as I try to watch the road and watch the moon and watch the volcano. Closer to home I can see a hot-air balloon rising in the East, like it’s heading for the moon and it adds to things that I am watching through the cracked, glass window that separates me from the air outside.

I think about Ansel Adams and how he waited for the moon to be in just the right spot before he photographed Half Moon Dome. He would often wait for weeks until what was happening before his eyes matched the vision inside his head and there was the subtle sound of a lens opening and closing. When I get close to home, the last freeway before I pull off on my exit, the moon is almost in the right spot where I would want to sit on a cliff with a large format camera, hunker down beneath a black cover and gently release the shutter. I wonder how far East I would have to drive before it was just right, shutter-releasing right, but it’s late and I have to work in the morning so I find my way home.

When I get home, pull a few things into the house and eat dinner, I walk into the living room and see something sitting on the couch that I don’t recognize because I’ve been home and then gone and mostly gone after that. I realize that a friend of mine has left something for me, and when I look at it for a while and try to figure out what it is I burst into a huge smile. She has brought me red panels of Japanese painted paper that are meant to be hung on a wall, like wallpaper, and it is the red that I’ve been looking for in terms of what color I want to paint my kitchen.

Often, coming home is filled with surprises. And now that I am on a stretch of ten days off, there will be a lot of coming and going and going back again, and my days will be filled with surprises as I aimlessly wander into the too-bright sunshine with my dark lenses, and maybe when I return home once the sun has fallen below my line of sight, when its time to take the sunglasses off, I’ll walk through my front door and find another surprise in my very dark house.

It’s cold outside, and I’m shivering a little, but it’s enough that when I look through the binoculars I have to hold my breath and force my body to stop shivering so I can see through the glass to the waning orb rising into the darkness of the night’s sky without it seeming like I’m looking at an old black and white silent movie with all its choppiness.

When I was young, maybe 10 years old, I got a telescope for my birthday or Christmas or for some reason I can no longer remember. I did the usual things that any curious 10 year old would do: I looked through the windows of houses and apartments to see what other people do when they’re inside their homes. And I stargazed and spent as much time as I could staring at the moon in all of its various phases.

Through the binoculars, I can see craters and textures and shadows. On one side it looks like someone with scraggly teeth has taken a bite out its side. This makes me laugh a little, and I stare through the binoculars for as long as I can before the shivering becomes too much.

I sit in my tent for awhile and stare at the moon, watch it rise and change color, turn more of a deep yellow and a deep red then back to mostly white. And it grows smaller as it rises higher into the sky. I sink my head deep into my pillow, and watch the moon as my eyelids get heavier, and as soon as I think it’s time to find my way into a dream-filled state, there is a shooting star that falls just below my vision of the moon and I pull my head up quickly, try to see where the shooting star has fallen and it seems so close, but not close enough that I could run through the sage and the brush and the dirt and the sleeping rattlesnakes to gather the space rock into my hands and carry it safely back to my tent.

Then I fall asleep in the cool night air with the light of the moon blanketing me with warmth.

It’s warm outside—mostly I am annoyed by the blinding sunshine whereas the heat has yet to piss me off—and I tool around the city on my scooter and feel the way air feels when it passes over my skin at 35 miles an hour. This delights me to no end, and I think about riding and riding and riding until I run out of gas or time or space, but this won’t happen, can’t happen, and so I focus on the things that I need to do for the day.

Once I get to the pub, I realize that I’ve forgotten to bring a Canadian nickel, which I need to buy a piece of artwork from my bartender, who is selling things that he drew on the back of a coaster for “one Canadian nickel.” He has placed his pieces along a section of wall near the bar, and there are seven in total, and they are crass and bold and absolutely wonderful.

I ask the waitstaff if they have any Canadian nickels, and the answer is “no” but one of the waitresses acquires a one cent Euro piece from a patron at one of her tables. I have never seen anything related to the Euro, and it is smaller than an American or Canadian penny. I offer my bartender my one cent Euro for one of his art pieces, which causes him to blankly stare at me for a solid two seconds. I tell him that he needs to do the math, because maybe my one cent Euro is the equivalent of five cents Canadian. He goes to the computer, looks it up and informs me that my Euro is no good here,because it is not even close to having the value of a Canadian nickel. I tell him to look at it, and maybe the aesthetics might win him over. Sadly, he hands back the coin and I wait for my friend to come who will have a handful of Canadian nickels, even though this feels like cheating. I harass him for awhile, and he finally concedes and let me have the “Fucking Loser” piece of my one-cent Euro piece.

First Trish arrives, then Kurt and finally Bobby, whose taken the bus from across the water, and his suitcase, he tells me, weighs 50.4 pounds. He huffs it to the pub, and we talk about things and drink and eat and laugh and there is a large moment when I realize that he’s moving, as in away, as in he will no longer live down the street and meet me at the pub at noon. While I do not go to the pub to be social, I have developed friendships there, and while I do not generally miss people, his absence will be duly noted.

Cathy walks around with a plastic bag full of buttons in a variety of colors that say “FUCK CANCER.” I buy one for five dollars to help benefit a friend of ours who is going through cancer and has no money to pay his hospital bills because his last employer cancelled his insurance while he was going through chemotherapy. There is a benefit for him in two days—this involves a band and a lot of fun and a shitload of alcohol—but I can’t make it because I have to work. Bobby buys a button, and the bartender asks him what color he wants, to which Bobby says “whatever.” This causes the bartender to give him the Miami Vice colored button with pink and blue. The three of us laugh and grin and later Bobby drops his button into his curry and there is more laughter.

When it’s time to go, time for Bobby to make his way to the airport, we walk outside, me and Trish and Bobby, and there are hugs and kisses and conversations about future events, and then it’s over and the goodbyes pass and I start my journey home.

It’s not hot anymore, the sky isn’t blue anymore, and I am thankful that the sun is hidden behind clouds and and a slowly darkening sky. It’s just cool enough that I need to wear a jacket to ride my scooter home, where I turn on the fan in my bedroom and push the heat into another room, out the through the open window and into the night. Then I settle into bed and think about how nice it will be to sleep in a cool room as I fade into sleep. In the morning I’ll ride my motorcycle for as long as possible before I need to return home.

When I get home, I think about going for a run, but it is only going to get hotter as the day progressses, and I become aware of how I’m not in the mood to run in 92 degree weather. So I slide onto my scooter with a t-shirt and jeans, cruise along main streets and side streets and alleyways. The air feels cool against my skin, and I smile and laugh and say things out loud—sometimes a passerby will hear me and this makes me laugh louder and I grin and sometimes wave—and after the cafe and the bookstore and the art store, I find myself at my favorite pub where it is too hot and too sunny, but the beer is cold and the conversation with friends is immense.

At home, standing in the almost-just-right-coolness of my kitchen, I call my best friend who is getting married soon, and she asks if I would officiate her wedding. This brings me to tears, and I choke up for a bit and we talk for a while longer, and I think about how amazing it is to have these kinds of people in my life.

Upstairs in my bedroom it is exceedingly hot and I go to install a fan in the window, so I pull back the shades and all of a sudden the room is filled with sunlight, and it is almost too much. My bedroom is usually dark, the light blocked out by black-out shades. Whenever someone comes to my house, which is not very often because I am not fond of having people in my house, they always ask why my room is so dark. I look at them, a bit blankly, and I don’t say anything because there’s really nothing to say about that. Last week, when a friend was standing in my bedroom, she asked if she could open the curtains to let the light in, and I said I’d rather she not do that. Instead, she opened the curtains in my kitchen, which I found just as annoying, but she had asked to open them and I said that it was okay so there is no justification for my being annoyed. After she left, after we hugged and I watched her drive away, I closed the curtains as quickly as possible and there was an instant sense of relief.

I love Seattle, for the rain and the gray and the mountains and the water and the salt in the air that sometimes makes me stand in my backyard and stare into the night sky for what seems like half a night. When summer comes, there is so much sunshine for so very many long hours of the day that it becomes too much for me. Whenever I take road trips I usually find myself saying “please let it be raining, please let it be raining, please let it be raining” as I find my way back into my state, my city, my neighborhood. It is not that I am a vampire, as much as I think being a vampire would be rather awesome, it is simply that I am not very fond of light, at all. I don’t like lights in the house, I don’t often open my curtains, and I cannot be in sunlight without sunglasses.

I put a fan in the window and all at once there is cool air flowing through my room, and it feels so damn good against my too-hot skin. I text a friend of mine, a very dear friend, an old friend whom I only recently reconnected with, which is followed by a phone call which is followed by hours of laughter and honor and a feeling of delight which is followed by grins on faces while falling asleep. Sometimes people feel like gifts to me, precious gifts that remind me of how incredibly delightful it is to be alive—that and the cool air blowing through my window in the darkest part of night.

I drink chai tea and write and listen to music with no words and watch the people come and go. I have to crank the volume on my headset to its highest level just so I can hear the music, because the television and the fans and the regular coffee house noises are all competing for space inside my ears.

Some people sit for hours while others sneak in at random moments, ask about the score, slide into a seat and capture as many minutes as their schedules will allow. I wonder how so many people can be here for so long without needing to go back to work. Maybe this is what you do when you love something so much—you find a way to pull it into your life by taking a longer lunch break, taking the day off, bringing your laptop so you can get some work done, taking a little longer to buy a cup of coffee and blaming any lateness in getting back to work on traffic and sunshine and maybe a flat tire.

I know a couple who’ve been married for some 20 years now. I see them often at my favorite pub during lunch, and for the first year I thought they were having an affair, because who meets another person at a bar for lunch, engages in a really tight and intimate conversation with light touches on the arm and the hand, and ends with a warm hug and a tender kiss? Last winter, after imbibing more than usual, I told them I thought they were having an affair and they laughed and said they’ve been having an affair with one another ever since they got married. This made me smile. He said it takes about 35 minutes to drive to the pub, where he meets his wife, who walked from her job just around the corner. He said he checks his calendar and his email and makes sure there isn’t anything pressing, then he heads out to meet his wife for as many minutes as possible before he has to return to work. Whenever I see them I think about how much they love one another and how they make room and time to meet each other for lunch at their favorite place. This is what you do when you love someone, right? You clear your schedule, even if it’s only for an hour or two, and you sneak away for an afternoon of warm kisses and good conversation over food and beer.

More people pile into the coffee shop, and this involves a lot of squeezing together on the wall-length bench seat so everyone can sit facing the television. A woman walks in carrying two purses of different sizes, and I wonder why she doesn’t just get a slightly larger bag and condense everything into one. But women are like that, aren’t they? They need a lot of purses in different sizes and a different pair of shoes for each day of the week. An ex-girlfriend once told me that a woman can never have too many shoes, and I have found this to be true for most women.

There is a point somewhere in my sitting here when more than half of the patrons in the coffee house leave, and when the owner comes to clear my dishes, I ask if the game is over. He tells me that it’s half time and I smile and think about how this is what you do when you love something—you find a way to pull it into your life, and sometimes all you need is a few minutes, a few goals, a few beers, a lunch break with your wife, a warm kiss.

The other day one of my dear friends introduced me to her mother and said: “She’s the one I told you about. She’s the type of friend that I want to be.” She has said this before, and each time she says this I think that she has found my doppelganger running about the city during the darkest part of night. And my doppelganger, I think, is the opposite of who I am, of who I think I am, of who I see myself on a daily basis. I want, often, to merge with this person.

Today I spent some time with a friend who is becoming a good friend who will become a great friend. We talk about relationships and friends and dogs and bartenders. And later, when we’re old, I’m quite certain that we will meet each other somewhere to enjoy a pint of beer and talk about philosophy and politics and what it’s like to be the age that we are.

I met a woman who was not quite half my age, who was 27 weeks pregnant, who had a heart rate that was clipping along at an insane speed of 220 beats per minute. We talked about life and heart beats and babies and things that matter in life. I walk away thinking about her smile and her simplicity and her ease. And I think about how I need more of these things in my life.

I met a woman who helped me understand what it’s like to feel honor and respect. We talked about the body, about good things to put into the body, about how it seems natural to waste obviously precious moments of life engaged in obviously shitty moments of crap.

I met a woman who made me think that the kind of love that I imagine is the kind of love that I will find.