An entire lifetime ago I drew up a pretty goddam great version of the Jabberwock in black and white ink, framed it, and gave it to a girl I loved as a birthday present. It was a cool time in life. Her dad was a famous Italian chef from Naples who owned this big place in Stowe, Vermont, Villa Tragara. We’d get dressed up, get real high, and go in there and after a heroic song and dance by the staff, they’d open the hatch to the wine cellar and go down there and get some big bottle of Italian wine for us and bring it up and we’d order a bunch of food and gorge and get nice and drunk. Her dad had this mushrooms on toast dish with cream and cognac that still makes my mouth water thinking about it. She was into wearing those old tight velvet pants on her big, round ass. Me, I was a skinny line cook at a joint in Burlington called Trattoria Delia, who wondered how in the hell I could ever get so lucky. Twenty two years old and we thought we really knew everything. Cocktails to start, then some good wine, then espressos and something strong that burned the membranes of the throat for a final quaff. I remember being in the car with her one night after one of these excursions, she was driving, a light snow had started coming down and I told her I loved her and she got real quiet, said nothing in return, and I thought to myself “Why the hell would I ever say anything so stupid like that?”

After two months on paternity leave, I’m back behind the stick. I missed the end of citrus season. No big deal really, and returned right when the good stuff, namely the stone fruits, started to arrive. Yes. Cherries. Peaches. Nectarines. Plums. All the weird hybrids that come from combining them. The pluots. The Chectarines. The Cheaches. The Chummies. The Necums.

Oh, and apricots. Love me an apricot.

So, you ask, what is like having a newborn, taking two months off courtesy of California’s paid paternity leave program, and getting four to five broken hours of sleep a night? It’s just as fun as it sounds. The days tend to blend together like ranch dressing if you forgot dill. Time has no meaning. I developed a penchant for narcolepsy. At first, you snatch cat naps whenever you can, then, you acclimate a bit, your nerves are still raw and you can lash out at a loved one for no reason or forget many semi-important details very often and in the back of your mind you’re always thinking two things: 1. How much of my life is being whittled away by this? 2. It makes sense they use this method to torture people.

I’m not complaining. I love my life. It’s full. That’s what you want. Trust me. Those without kids usually have a dog or two. It’s human nature to want to take care of something and watch it grow, even if it’s a garden on your patio. Yes, I do like to jest that five to ten seconds of pleasure leads to a lifetime of irritation and annoyance. As biological creatures who spawn from one another’s love juices this is how we operate and continue on. It’s lizard brain programming. Shelter, food, some sexy time. Survival. Keeping the gene line flowing. You see a girl, she’s got some nice hips and smells good, she’s funny and nice to you and your basal ganglia is already doing the subconscious calculations for you whether you like it or not and then maybe you buy her a drink one night and one thing leads to another and you’re both horizontal, naked, and forgetting all your woes for the night, maybe even the morning. Then you’re back in your routine, at work, whatever, and to pass the time your mind wanders to the previous night and puts a smile on your face as you go through the same old hum drum shit you’ve done for years.

You see, if there’s nothing to look forward to, you’re already dead in the water. It’s what Lester tell McNulty in season 3 of The Wire. “A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It’s the shit that happens when you’re waiting for moments that never come.” So go out there and live and find someone that ignites your loins.

Anyway…This post has already derailed…But I’ll jump off to another subject for a moment, so allow me to rant a sec…

Yeah, if I hear another Gen Z-er complain about their life of staying up late and playing video games, sleeping until 2 p.m., showing up to work late…I’m going to rip their head off and shit down their neck. The older you get, the lower your tolerance for the young. It just happens and then you have a couple of “Get off my lawn” moments and the cycle repeats throughout time and space.

Ok, thats out of the way…

…The more I think about space, shit man, the more I believe less in evolution. Remember now, evolution is a theory it’s not proven like a law. No hear me out. I don’t believe some almighty, omnipotent deity created everything either, but if you keep going back to when evolution supposedly started we were all just some amoebas? But where did the damn amoebas come from? They say there was a spark, like a bolt of lightening hit a pool of primordial ooze and then voila! An amoeba! What the hell? And then we’re supposed to believe dinosaurs and giant sloths came from all of that? And humans? I don’t know man. I’ve been doing some more research for my latest novel…Yeesh. The vastness of space is really, really terrifying and unreal. It literally hurts my brain to think about it and before you ask, no, I don’t have my own theory about aliens and Earth being just some giant experiment…I really have no idea. I mean, these are the great questions we can never answer. What happens when we die? Where did we come from? Are we alone in the universe?

I won’t go too deep here but think of the billions and trillions of galaxies out there. Now, think of our own, the Milky Way. Ours contains 100 billion stars. The closest of these stars is called Proxima Centauri and it’s about 4 light years away. With the current technology at our disposal it would take 70,000 years to travel there. 70,000 years. Our own recorded history goes back a few thousand only. Believe it or not, there’s a few exo planets out there circling Proxima Centauri. These are planets in a certain zone like our own. What the scientists call the Goldilocks zone where the conditions for life are just right. Yeah, I bet you didn’t know that we need gaseous giants like Jupiter to help balance out the insane gravity of the sun and pull us out a little ways. These gaseous giants like Jupiter and Saturn also catch any crazy stray asteroids that may be headed our way. So, when looking for the prefect conditions for life, we also look for these big boys because without them, we’d be screwed.

I guess I’ve gotta pull this all back together somehow. Maybe I’m saying life is precious and fleeting and the way it came together was nearly impossible, so take a step back, a deep breath or whatever you need, and allow it to happen. Tell your loved ones you love them, find the gumption to go ask that girl or guy out because at the end of the day, in just a couple of generations, unless you’re a horrible dictator or very important historical person, you’ll be forgotten and we’re all whirling, spinning on a mudball at 1000 miles per hour, hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour around the sun, a gigantic ball of hydrogen and helium going through constant nuclear fusion in order to provide us with enough light radiation to grow plants (apricots) and give us warmth. So the next time you get all worked up about something stupid like your coffee order got screwed up at Shitbucks, or your roasted chicken at some restaurant is taking longer than anticipated, take a second and chill, dude. Before you know it, you’ll be on your death bed looking back and all you’ll think about is why you gave certain things such attention and other things not so much. It’s the great mystery.

To quote The Prince one more time, “The secret to life is about wanting what you already have.”