On this planet, right now, someone is doing something right. The epitome of right, perfection, in harmony with the moons and tides. This person does all the proper things: they donate part of their income to deserving funds like saving the rainforest and ousting John Ashcroft; they happily run their prescribed half-hour an evening, or maybe even in the morning, at 5:30, before work, slathered in sunscreen of course; they have a job, that they love, that doesn't take out their heart and soul and all their energy and leave them lying on the floor, staring at the carpet or ceiling (because both are off-white, a cream actually, and have an interesting texture) and thinking he won't be home for another four hours; thank god i can stay here like this until then. Someone, somewhere, is normal and okay and happy to be alive.

And this person, this safe and stable and smiling person, isn't even thinking about the beyond-normal things, like a bunch of short stories (what do you do with a finished book of poetry, anyways, when all you want to do is lay on the floor, synthetic pricklies at your back, and not think) and living off the fat life, in a phat cabin on some little lake that no one outside of Michigan (if even Michigan) has ever heard of because it's like being between two boards of sandwich, or foam, but let the lake be explained.

It is a kettle lake, leftover from a glacier, still fed by springs, a lake out of some movie but they would say that it took place in Canada or Kentucky, just like Lake Michigan in American Pie was obviously a cess pool, a Spanish-moss covered pond in the back of someone's uncle's house, because Michigan is one of those places where the epitome is always far, far away in another place. This lake is deep, and cold, so clear that swimmer's feet shine back at them, and it looks like you could sink forever, but you have to be out there before July and the summer people take over with their Jet-Skis and Ski-Doos and all the other poodles of boats. And this smiling and stable person, who's entirely safe when left all alone for weeks at a time, is richer than Stephen King and wakes up every morning in sunshine and sits on the deck with a cup of coffee and is happy to be normal, and sane, and stable.

My students write about seeing people shot, or brothers dying. In addition to sane and stable things, how they want to go to college and be successful and good fathers and mothers, they write about not opening the door of their apartment the first time that someone showed up full of holes and blood,and about how they would the next time, how they're scared because what about when it is their turn to lie bleeding on someone's stoop. In addition to stories about first boyfriends and teen pregnancy and should you date a boy who sells drugs? But they never write about sitting on the living room floor, for hours at a time, trying to move.

On this planet right now, someone is doing something right. All the things that need to be done are checked off, a refrigerator to-do list, and it's not a countdown sort of list, not a "I'd better get that done before" but rather a building up, walls of sanity, a room of their own, a place like a warm deck or cold carpet. They know if their place is on the floor, when it is time to be still, and listen, and stay lukewarm; they know that this, too, will pass. There is no hurry. I have four hours before anyone will be home. I don't have to move until then.

Someone, somewhere, is normal and okay and the epitome of happy.