EAST COAST / WEST COAST

My daughter is flying home from Los Angeles this afternoon. As I write this, Flight Tracker has her 10,680m over southern Utah. She’ll be back in Canada in a bit over three hours. None of this is particularly noteworthy outside my own skull, except that I’ve been reading a lot this week about how ICE agents have now been deployed in several American airports. So I’ve been worried. My daughter’s passport and her skin colour mean she’s at very little risk. I get that. And it’s obscene, of course, that we can’t all say the same thing.

I’ve mentioned this so-lovely Hayden song before. Its rolling piano like a tide coming in, its deserted airport scenes so early morning, so drowsy and silky, so post-apocalyptic. The music and the lyrics and the video all slay me. You add to that mix a kid a few thousand miles away and it was a very contemplative, sigh-full coffee I sipped this morning in the window of my apartment, a fire-striped maple bug struggling mightily to climb the glass away from me and my anxieties.