Down along the strand
Let me beep you back, in the middle of the evening, at the point when it switches to midnight on my clock, unexpected, disappointing because evening has given up, but there's so much remaining to be considered and shelved from the handtruck or arm-loads, stock that's not taken or bought but counted, priced and put away for someone else. I can walk quickly enough along the service drive and up the hill, but that's happy hour — one sneaker automatically in front of its friend on the sidewalk, forgotten for the duration, just tilting up, ahead — and not destination.
What I had planned to write about tonight was comma restraint. The sentence that prompted the thought got me at the end: "It affects me as one of those moments — certain sentences by F. Scott Fitzgerald, say, or the better turns of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers — when an oxymoronic American dream of aristocratic democracy comes suddenly, briefly true." The line "suddenly, briefly true" was no "suddenly, briefly, true." Coordinating adjectives win, and the appositive adjective loses. We come to each other not for self-emphasis, but to define the rest of it all. There are other sentences tonight. They can help someone else.
