[raise high the roofbeams. the catcher's in the rye]

Okay, okay. Now, I don't want to pretend to know The Way of Things. Or to say that the hard gets easier, when it doesn't. Where are Rod Caufield, or Franny and Zooey Glass, when we need them? Salinger's agents of the unpretentious, calling out the phony to disown it.

On East Mountain today, we walked the road along which the Tea Fire (has it been over three months already?) swept. The cloud-strewn ocean and Santa Cruz islands, the very ones where once the dolphin-girl made her way, shone blue in the distance. Walking, Stacey turned toward me. It's too short, she says. Words falling out of the blueness. It, this, is too short.

And I, I who would even dare to turn away from the ocean, glittery and captivating as it is: I know what she means.