I took the train from Salt Lake City to San Francisco.  Sleeping through half of it, I woke up to the news of a death and the landscape of central Nevada slipping by.


In the suburbs of Salt Lake, I am a visitor from a distant place, someone who lives in Babylon, who doesn't own the correct clothes or the ability to speak the same anymore.  They have supplies are laid up in basements and closets, carefully marked and maintained, waiting for the day.  But the day doesn't come, though they know it will.  They love me, but they don't understand how I can live without this preparation, so close to Gomorrah, so close to the end.