It’s a little before 6am out here in the Mojave Desert. My work day ended a couple of hours ago and I’m drinking red wine before heading off to sleep.

Dinner consisted of tuna sushi rolls, duck liver mousse and Bubbies kosher dill pickles. Yesterday it consisted of cheese and crackers and sauerkraut, because that’s all I had in the house.

At the moment the house is perfumed with the aroma of a pot roast cooking in the Crock-Pot. It’s driving me crazy. It won’t be ready to eat until tomorrow but I want to eat it now, even though I’m not hungry.

There are spirits wandering around me, asking me to tell their stories. I’m resolved to tell as many of them as I can — but no more just now.  Now it’s time to say my prayers:

Grant to little children
Visions bright of Thee;
Guard the sailors tossing
On the deep, blue sea.