Tang and I are getting along just swimmingly,


whatever that means (I hope it’s not like the salmon in Eagle Creek lying dead after the 1000-mile trip upriver just to drop trou and lay some eggs). The Food Fights (FFI & FFII) have nearly ended and an eerie peace settles over the land. Thank God for other people’s mothers. It was touch-and-go for a while. I knew when she called in her mother that the tide would soon turn in my favor. Mama don’t bite the hand that feeds. We almost split over irreconcilable similarities- selfishness, stubbornness, childish expectations, etc. It could have been another case for the epicanthic folder, file it away and try to forget. We now realize we’re made for each other, I the blue-eyed lightning to her brown-eyed earth. Understanding comes little by little, though theoretical physics would probably be easier. At least there’s no three-body problem here. She doesn’t even get jealous now unless I flirt with Death. That’s her turf (Forego the antibiotics until you need them. You can kiss a TB victim on the lips in her deathbed and still not get it if you play good defense). So finally we signed our own little Treaty of Tortillas of 2547 (Buddhist Era), based on Spain and Portugal. Basically, she gets Time and I get Space. I get to work on projects on four continents without a moment to spare. She gets a three-bedroom house in Chiang Rai with all the time in the world. Hell of a deal. She gets egg fritata in a tortilla a la Espanola; I get corn flour hydrochloride in tortillas a la Mexicana. Talk about papal bull… We meet at the crossroads in the hypothetical fourth spatial dimension of a flat universe curled up over itself in the shape of a torus, also known as the Krispy Kreme theory of the universe. I guess it’s better than an anniversary dinner at Stapleton airport in DEN while taking mutual stopovers on separate flights, like with one of my previous exes. People ask me how I can dabble in the UK while working in the US while staying in Mexico and living in Thailand; my only answer is, “practice.” Hopefully I can insinuate myself into a side-trip to Turkey and maybe dip down to Greece next year (hold the Macedonia) if I can play my frequent-flyer cards right. Hey, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. The combination of cheap flights and vanishing oil and lingering traction-era-phlebitis in my right foot (soon to be a major motion picture) sends a clear signal to me.

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