DAVE

I once visited a city named David. I know you think it sounds like a joke but the city really was named David. This was the only time in my life that I ever wanted to be named David. Or at least be called David, kind of like a nickname. And it isn’t that I liked the city–I really didn’t have any strong feelings about it. In fact, I just stopped for a little while in David to pick up a loaf of egg bread, a few slices of mortadella, a pineapple, a chocolate wafer, and the smallest bottle of olive oil that I could find.

If I had been named David, and if I had said “I am here” as I entered the grocery store to the cashier or the bag boy or to that scary guy outside the grocery store in David it would not have even made any difference because to the naked eye I do not appear to be David and so the response would have simply been a So What?

My parents loved me a lot but they didn’t particularly fancy any of the following people listed below and in alphabetical order:

David Brubeck

David Eisenhower

David Hasselhoff

King David (of Israel)

David Herbert Lawrence

David Lee Roth

Sam & David

If they had, my life might have turned out quite differently. I might have even been given a few slices of mortadella for free on occasion, perhaps even the smallest bottle of olive oil that I could find, at least once I produced my charge card to the cashier and smiled my smile of David. But still, I have no

Regrets: I am happy right where I am, and with the way things turned out. My life enjoys a constant, delicious breeze; the trees glow like emeralds; I have yet to be bitten by a scorpion; somewhere, someone loves me; living in a land of clouds, without a name, a mile, I think, above the sea, I; I; I...