Love Me Tonight
Sometimes it all hits at once, the history of the world and humankind. It builds up over time, laying down easy; deep fleeting thoughts, like looking down while leaping over a bottomless fissure in the earth. There’s the thrill of leaping and never mind what you saw. Then it all comes, too much of it has accrued over time, and everywhere you look there’s some reminder of it. I’m in a black mood tonight, and I’ve put off writing for fear that I’ll scare my mother. But here I am. I’ve been circling the corral all day and there’s no room to gallop. So I thump at the keyboard. Every living creature on Earth dies alone. It was spoken in a movie by the actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who also played one of the cowboys in the film of Brokeback Mountain . I finished the Annie Proulx collection tonight with that short story. I sat at the table alone, eating and reading, and when the end came, and all that hurt and loss, I was thinking of my own life and the people I’ll lose and the chances I’ll miss an...