These fat chalky pills I take for my fucked-up shoulder cannot be mixed with alcohol, and so I am for now a man with one fewer vice. There is something immensely reassuring about the act of ceasing all booze consumption and finding it makes little practical difference in my quality of life. I dislike being at the mercy of my vices, although like everyone, I often enjoy being at the mercy of my vices.

Night blur on the ambulance: run and run. I see many things, some terrible but always in their own way wondrous.

In Senegal the Wolof would greet all significant events with the same phrase: Yalla baax-ne. Whether the rains are merciful or a child of eight dies of cerebral malaria, God is Great. I remember when Elizabeth rode her motorcycle to my village to tell me about the car accident. While we sat in the sand at the edges of a massive desert, our friends were being airlifted away. M would soon die and J begin her slow climb back from the mute stupor of brain damage. I tried to explain to my Senegalese mother that my friends had been terribly hurt. My mom shook her head, "Yalla baax-ne." I thought Yalla was anything but baax at that moment. I thought God should shove his stupid, cruel surprises up his celestial ass and go pick on a deity his own fucking size.

People are always trying to pick fights with God, just because he's so much bigger than we are. He's just doing his job. Models stay thin and beautiful because it's their job to personify a social construct of beauty. God has one task, and that's being bigger than anything else.

I see many things, all somehow wondrous. I hold a hand shaking with seizure, or look at the perfect splintered hemispherical imprint that a head has left in a windshield. I don't much believe in God, but I know Yalla baax-ne.