God lives in my refrigerator.

Dear Tallulah,

Seems as if the first days of spring are just out of reach now...the evenings smell of roads still to be traveled.....the sound of new leaves blow in the trees like an unsettled feeling in the blood....the desire to get in a car and just drive.

A man and a dog descend their front steps. The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk. Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find. This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change. But in his sense of the season, the man is struck by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid until it seems he can see remembered faces caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pee on all the fire hydrants we can find. Let's dig holes everywhere. Above the house the man notices wisps of clouds crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie, he says to himself, a movie about a person leaving on a journey. He looks down the street to the hills outside of town and finds the cut where the road heads north. He thinks of driving on that road and the dusty smell of the car seats.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers. In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark. Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder, where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights, shine like small cautions against the night. Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down by the fire and put our tails over our noses. But the man wants to drive all night, crossing one state line after another, and never stop until the sun creeps into his rear view mirror. Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill and there, filling a valley, will be the the lights of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside. Let's not do anything tonite. So they walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep and wants to hit his head again and again against a wall. Why does it all seem so difficult at times?
Over a cup of coffee or sitting in the park or walking the dog, he would remember some incident from his youth - nothing significant - climbing a tree in his backyard, waiting for the coach to blow his whistle, sitting in a parked car with a six pack; memories to look at with curiosity, the harmless behavior of a stranger, with nothing to regret or elicit particular joy.
And tho he had no sense of being on a journey anymore, such memories made him realize how far he had traveled, which, in turn, made him ask how he would look back on the person he was now, this person who seemed so substantial. These images, it was like looking at a book of old photographs, recognizing a forehead, the narrow chin, and perhaps recalling the story of an older second cousin, how he had left long ago to try his luck in Europe. And he saw that he was becoming like such a person, that the day might arrive when he would look back on this present self as on a distant relative who had drifted off into uncharted lands.
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich. Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen. And that's what they do and that's where Kevin finds me, staring into the refrigerator as if into the place where the answers are kept - the ones telling why you get up in the morning and how it is possible to sleep at night, answers to what comes next and how to like it.