An excerpt:

In prison they own your life. You’re not your name, you’re not your family’s name, you’re not your age, not your color, not your lineage, not your hometown.
You’re 30583-012.
Your daily life depends entirely upon the largess of the prison staff. The playing field is tilted in their favor, and if you fuck up and they catch you— and they always catch you— you’re going to lose out. You’re a pawn in a field of queens— an analogy that would be lost on most of the staff, who’d think you’re accusing them of being queer. They’re a reactionary bunch. The primary difference between cons and screws, besides the color of the uniform and the hourly wage, is a divine directive of control. Underneath, everyone’s just people.
Losing privileges like the weekly trip to the commissary is bad enough. Having visits canceled, phone calls revoked, mail call held— these are things you come to rely on, and when they take them away, you feel like shit and there’s nothing to break up the press of time. But for things like fighting, talking back, stealing, getting caught with drugs— the punishment is orders of magnitude worse.
The hole.
You can’t imagine what it’s like if you’ve never been.
Panic sets in. Closed spaces with no escape. Sweaty palms, trembling, chills. The walls close in. The food slot grins like a jack-o’-lantern, mocking— always mocking.
Solitary is one of the worst punishments you can get. Officially, anyway. Sometimes a convict who really gets on the wrong side of the corrections staff will find himself with a price on his head. And then it’s open season. There’s no surviving that kind of sentence. But mostly when you break the serious rules you wind up in solitary for a little while— just until you cool off, pal.
No contact with the other prisoners. No contact with the outside world. No fresh air. Limited contact even with the screws who only come by to fulfill mealtime duties.
It’s just you. All of you. Every one of you. All alone.
The food’s the same— just less fresh. The mattress is hard. The molded bed is even harder. The fluorescent lights colder. Bars replaced by stamped steel and rivets.
The funny thing about solitary is that it’s also known as protective custody. They put people in there who’d get mauled in the blocks. People like pedophiles, celebrities, snitches, cops. For them it’s a thing of survival. For everyone else the hole is a reminder of why it’s best to behave.
At first it’s a relief to get away from people for a little bit. There’s so much goddamn politics and games in prison, it’s exhausting. But after the first few minutes, when you count on your fingers and toes, and lose track of how many more hours you’ll be alone with barely more than a wingspan from wall to wall, awash in the sterile light of purgatory, hearing, seeing, smelling, feeling nothing but yourself, your yammering mind; it starts to eat away at you, and you lose track of the silence, silence broken only by the thud of your heart, the sound of your thoughts the rasp of breath, the drumming of fingers, the grinding of teeth, the crawling of skin, the periodic clatter of food trays; as you listen to your hair growing, scratch a thousand times across the same patch of beard, calculate how many cubic centimeters of air are in this sixty-four square-foot room, wiggle your ears until they hurt, brush each tooth for a fifty-count— and still not pass more than a few minutes of what turns out to be the longest thirty seconds of your life, repeated ad infinitum, a series of moments with no beginning and no end, all strung together, all so badly the same in their emptiness that you have to fill them in somehow; maybe counting to sixty sixty times; once… twice… three times… four… five… six… seven… eight… nine… ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen… fourteen… fifteen… sixteen… seventeen… eighteen… nineteen… twenty...twenty-one… twenty-two… twenty-three times, noticing how odd it is that the words for numbers have no quantitative consistency in structure or sound— like something you’d read but not yet understood in the Theory of Relativity about patterns and relationships of things and nothings— or maybe having the same dreaming moment over and over and over and over until the edges of everything blend together, or maybe puzzling through chess problems, writing letters to long-dead friends, fantasizing about burying your face in some tail, doing pushups and sit-ups and just pacing back and forth two and a half steps at a time until… hell, just doing it, just doing something, anything, everything to escape the nothing, and always questioning, always wondering, never ever ever ever quiet, as you sit there in silence saying nothing, voice cracked like old leather and impossible to regulate with no volume difference between thinking and screaming, thumbs aching from twiddling, toes tired from tapping; bored of breathing, bored of pacing, bored of thinking, bored of listening, bored of counting things, bored of being bored, trying not to think about the walls closing in, leaning in, reaching in; counting cinderblocks and wondering how often in life does a person ever spend more than a few hours at a time alone with thoughts, alone with himself, and there are moments of self discovery and inner peace and even something you might call enlightenment— according to the Dalai Lama—the awareness of being aware, the consciousness of consciousness, the soul soul-gazing outward, recognizing the body for what it is, and thoughts for what they are, and Being the entity behind the body and underneath the thought, and discovering that the inner voice is not You, but just an internal facade and a cloak of habits worn to protect your true self from drowning in the sensory saturation of the universe— but that it’s actually choking your experience— and that is terrifying until it’s uplifting, mystifying until it’s clear, impossible until it’s recognized; and Einstein’s ghost joins up with Jesus to explain that there is no white-bearded, robe-wearing, staff-holding Man in the Clouds, no sandaled ego sculptor with a mysterious name and omnipotent wrath— or compassion— no celestial control tower directing things; that there is only what comes out of and goes into the space between your eyes, that almost everyone has missed the point, and that prayer and meditation and self-reflection are three of the many words for the same thing, and it turns out this is heaven and hell in the same room, all contained in uncountable electrical pathways burning their way through some gray matter, a transaction conducted through a few gallons of the same stale air, and energy is matter and matter is energy, and while you breathe it in and breathe it out and breathe it in and breathe it out, you become the room and the room becomes you, until the circulation is visible like fingerprint whorls, and the spirals of the airwaves start to dance before your eyes and the whole cyclical nature of the universe becomes visible tangible audible olfactive tastable knowable, and you sink into it, riding the waves of awareness, not so much floating above your body, but flowing into the body so completely it disappears, joining in with something bigger— or not bigger, but a reality so microscopic it’s only theoretical, taking away the limiting factors of time and space, breaking down the elemental into its essential, and loving the Being loving the membership loving the absence of form, loving where, when, and how it takes you— until you snap awake—or rather drift off again— and your brain renews its filters for your sensory analysis, and you see only white-washed cinderblock, poured and painted concrete, a rolled-up mattress used for biceps curls, a splash of some food dropped decades ago, the nuts and bolts of incarceration; hear only the echoes of footsteps; smell only the heavy air and a perfume from long ago; feel only whatever you’re touching; taste only tongue and teeth like steaks and croutons, and this continues on and on, back and forth, forever and ever because there are no clocks down here, not even the count, count, count, count that serves as the slow pendulum of time upstairs, and just when you think you’re going to lose it again, a new idea that you’ve had before occurs, and the whole damn trip repeats itself— and you’ve exhausted only five minutes wallowing in the sentence.
You’re stuck in a picture. Twenty-three hours worth of eternity. Then escorted down the hall in silence for a solitary shower. Which is the only thing that goes by fast. And then more eternity. When you crunch it out like that, even a few days turns out to be a long time.
It’s possible to get years.

11/1/10

The city erupts. A sudden rush of noise, cars honking, people screaming, sirens wailing, flashes and bangs.
The Giants have won the World Series.
Car horns, some held long and loud, some staccato, all jubilant, all communicating the same thing.
We won.
The uproar continues. A SmartCar toots through an intersection. A taxi beeps past, ignoring the man with his arm raised in the air.
Explosions.
Fireworks.
Screaming citizens
The city is roaring, alive and cheering.
United.
A man whips a sweatshirt around over his head. A truck roars with delight. Deserted streets are packed with noise. A woman whips a sweatshirt around over her head. Screaming affirmations, yelling gleeful nonsense. Shrill.
Empowered.
A crotch-rocket revs. Giants flags flap. Fireworks pound overhead.
Someone drains a foghorn.
Each new stream of honking cars renews the jubilant cries of the pedestrians. Waves of glee reverberate through the streets.
Driveby congratulations.
Whistles.
The noise.
Even the cop lights look happy. People clap fives, cars rev, bicycles clang, and motorcycles honk.
I'm reminded of the sound of Endor after the Death Star was destroyed.
Fireworks.
Cheers.
Songs.
Elated bicycle taxis. Elated vagrants. Elated professed non-sports-fans. Someone blows a trombone. An SUV answers in kind. Drivers honk melodies. Passengers hang out windows. Pedestrians run alongside shaking hands.
Fireworks.
Cheers.
The clock sweeps toward tomorrow.
But Right Now the noise continues. A crowd moves past.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
A motorcyclist rips through, fist pumping over his helmet.
This is 50 years of waiting.
The Giants have won the World Series.
The noise.
The ebb and flow--but uninterrupted.
Ole
Ole ole ole
Ole
Ole.
The Giants have won the World Series. (and the 49ers stuffed Denver yesterday.)
Flags and hats and hands, horns and cheers and applause. United by sports. The team extended through the whole city. Joined in jubilation. Communicating through glee. Pedestrians responding to horns responding to cheers.
A high-riding pickup on fat off-road tires booms pas, open to the breeze and flying a huge SF flag on a tall pole. Groups cheer at each other from parallel sidewalks, hopping and skipping and cheering on the way home. A group of three stops in a crosswalk, waving signs and cheering at cars.
People share taxis.
Police allow rules to bend.
Everyone is happy to see everyone.
This is how is should be. The World Series should be every day. (But then it loses its power.)
Crescendo.
Fireworks.
A lull.
A truck blares through the intersection, renewing the noise. A Giants-decaled van alternates between gas and brake, simulating hydraulics. Nobody thinks it's lame.
It's awesome.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
A cop waves to a guy cheering out the sunroof.
"LET'S GO GI-ANTS!"
Fireworks.
Horns.
A train.
A cowbell.
The clock sweeps toward tomorrow.
Schoolnight.
Workday.
But Right Now,
none of that matters.

Two candles sit sputtering
on a short sheet of poetry
filled with longing
loving
craving
doubting.
The ticking tone
of a clicking clock
beats forth from the page
A rhythmic reminder
of achings past
The candles
seem immortal
and alive.
One tall and proud
One melted short and slouched
flickering with hidden drafts
Rendered visible
by fire!
And the cadence continues...
thump thump!...thump thump...
thump thump!...

The voice of the lyrical letters
whispers indelibly
inaudibly...almost...

Before The Aftershave

9/2/10

Standing here, watching the shh shh of this thin little blade against my skin, peering close and squinting, I feel a tremendous amount of power, and a looming loss of control.
As it glides over the contours, barely hesitating at each hair to whisper shh shh, bubbles of soap curl back to reveal shiny skin pink with freshness.
shh
shh
With an angle just right comes an easy stroke and the tingling freedom from stubble. But change the angle only slightly...
shh
The badger-hair brush slops on a foam of soap, warm and scented like an old chest found in the attic. A thin blade, scooped and shiny, winking under the light.
shh
Around the jaw, which shelters a hot grid of blood vessels, an impossibly complex circuit between jugular and carotid. A scarce few layers between life and a blade so sharp it's touched up on leather.
shh
A gruesome, frightening tradition; a dangerous desire to be above nature. How odd that it comes with scents of oak, a feeling like pine needles, and a flaring of nostrils smelling rain and fire.
shh
Miss a spot; pull the skin a different way, shh shh smooth like wood stripped of bark, feeling the cold and rebelling with a rustle. Twist and turn under the light. Shorten a bit here
shh
straighten a line there
shh
movements all defying the rhythm of blood underneath. The eyes ask a question. So easy. It would look like an accident. shh The power over life and death balanced between my thumb and forefinger, and resting lightly on my pinky.
Just like that...
It would be so easy. This choice--a hovering between outcomes, a weighing of explanations and reason. This choice is what it means to be human.

Civilization/Anacoluthia

Gar!
Moving what the god world. What is this shit?
The bus lurches through the intersection. Knuckles whiten on rails and stirrups. Feet stumble for balance. Someone honks. A service dog retreats against his rigid leash.
Whose Morgan seat and the goddamn worst peace.
Windows rolled down once again let in a breeze, and the pedestrian timer ticks outside. Sparks fly on unseen catenary wires, and zero emissions are released. Here we are: mass transit. This is [your stop]. A pair of Asian school boys get on, standing there looking up at everybody. Only one person looks back.
Hahaha! Ching shong dinga wonga. Heh heh.
Passengers get on. Passengers get off. The hydraulics kick in, and the bus kneels to accept its latest human inventory. The driver stares in jaded acceptance as dollars are pushed into slots, and transfer tickets are waved with halting confidence. He stops when he should, avoids bicyclists, and he nods or waves at commercial vehicles and cops along the way. The brakes sigh and snort, and the bus rolls forward again.
Hey lookit! Gotta garble and toss everything in the sanded hat. Every day like this.
Gar!
Every day, and aisle beach with the lingering chazmontz.
There's a constant web of communication among these packed-in dozens, a constant buzzing of silent discourse, as feet nudge away, hips twist almost imperceptibly, hands move back on rails, bottoms shift, eyes dart without lingering. Ups and downs, lefts to rights, boys to girls, men and women, ancients with children. A multitude of methods and a topographical hierarchy. And all focused around one dubious hub.
Sweet and stuck! Like a shifterly mother-ruck. Kids and then clouds. What's it all coming to? You're all fucked up.
You don't understand.
We don't get it. Just make room; leave a halo--and don't stare. He's just a human. Sort of. On your guard, but not pariah-izing. Wary but never condescending. And for god's sake, move back! This is just part of being in the city.
Gar!
Gar, gar gar, GAR!
Rumpled monger and drink some water. That's I say.
Everyone sort of holds their breath. Shallow huffs--just enough for oxygen. Muscles tense--touch no one!--and skin crawling. No one comfortable. Everyone dealing. The bus lurches around a corner.
Oof!
She screams shockingly, briefly, and cringes in disgust.
Gar. Umsorry.
A grungy water bottle rolls against ankles. Someone reaches for it gingerly, hands it across the aisle between two fingers now aching for a bar of soap. Nearby passengers reach for stop-request cords. Let us off! We'll take a cab. Or walk. How far are we? Which line is that over there?
Chuckling and leaning a clammy forehead against the overhead rail, the vagrant stares aghast at the reflection in the window.
We're all here.

The Ocean, at Night

There's something about a girl's hair when she runs naked through the surf, splashing through her lunar-shadow, frolicking in the cool night air. Arms crossed, I stand and watch, as she, silhouetted against the almost-full moon, skips through the white foam.

Then she turns and races into my arms.

Her fingertips leave dog-print patterns in the wet sand as she kneels before me, hair blowing in the breeze, skin glowing in the moon. The full kinesthetic experience surrounds us, embraces us, chills us, supports us, as we look around enjoying the view--almost hoping for a wayward observer. Behind us, the ocean crashes and broils, as it has for umpteen years, and as it will for eons--no matter what we do to it, no matter what we dump in, harvest from, spill on, or take away--as long as there's a moon to guide its ebb and flow.

When it's done, she slowly stands, sighs, and shuffles toward the waves, bow-legged, rinsing herself, cleansing herself, giving herself and me to the saltwater from which we came in bygone eras. A sacrifice of innocent proportions, unmarred by dogma or rite or law or sanctimony.

The tide wraps around her knees, as she stoops and splashes, digging her toes into the sand--or are those my toes burrowing in, up here beyond the reach of the water? I stand and watch, proud, happy; feeling something more than myself. She jumps and stomps both feet down, hair wild in the wind, arms flung out for balance. Wisps of clouds caress the moon, and the surf thunders over all.

Arm in arm we stumble home through loose sand and fragments of shells, as behind us, the ocean reaches out and calmly erases our footprints, knee craters, and elbow grooves. As if we've never been there. As if we weren't there now.

4/18/10

It's a log. Just a piece of wood, stripped of its bark and drying imperceptibly in the cool air. Once a growing thing, grains and veins flowing with water and life—now cut, sectioned, and alone. Just a log.

But then take a closer look, maybe squinting, and there's something else. A promise. A shape. It carries its own inspiration, and suddenly the tools on the bench vibrate with magnetism, crying for help: use me! Gouge, shave, and trim. Caress the shape from its hiding place; encourage the intrinsic design; open the doors whose outline is only just visible, and only to the seeing eye.

Curls of wood bloom and fall, liberating themselves from the amorphous whole and leaving behind footprints to what's hidden within. Bit by bit, shave by shave, the path spreads out, and there's something vague on the horizon, something coming into focus with the gnarled patience of its willow-tree former self.

This dip too shallow, this angle too steep, this knot rounded down, this edge softened up. The hush of sharp steel, the grunts and tuts and low whistles of exertion and complete absorption.

Shavings tumble and catch on hair, knee, knuckle, and carpet, hanging on to watch the birthing. There's a song, a vibration barely perceptible above the wind; a sort of keening that surrounds the scene in a concentration of focus and dedication of the senses.

A droplet of sweat turns a woodchip into a reservoir. Another splashes a tear in a newly formed eye, winking up and wondering at its place in the universe, an unattached piece of awareness, seeing but not yet registering.

Some careful wiggling with the tip of a knife, and sinuses are cleared. A lip curls into a slant. A chin appears, gouged into a pointed goatee, jutting forward. Sandpaper rubs a healthy glow in the cheeks. The nose wiggles—something's not quite right...

There. That's better.

Outside, shadows lengthen—but overhead, the light is steady. Creating in a created world, all the more real for being imagined. The light catches mistakes and reveals improvements. Shavings peel back from cheekbones and jaw, curving around ears and swirling into patterns of hair. An eyebrow arches, a brow lowers.

And then the sound changes. No longer the steady buzz of concentration, distinct noises murmur free with each slow slash, filling the air with burbling attempts at communication, rough-hewn words of anticipation and...something else. Something frightening.

What is it, that's trying to get out? And what happens if it finally does? Another notch across the grain, and a sharpening of the nose. The wood is warm, hot. Flaws melt away like wax, joining a discarded pile on the floor, and pulling away more and more of the wooden bonds that have kept this visage shrouded for so long. It's just a log...

Eyes narrow. Tools move on their own. A pulse. Breath. A voice. Hollow sucked-in cheeks and pale glowing eyes. Breathes in, and the carver withers slightly. Exhausted, he flags—but the wood whispers MORE. A veiner scoops out a furrow in the brow, and a sweep hooks the ear. All the better to hear you with...

The figure gains vigor as the carver huddles forward, panting and shaking. RELEASE ME cries the figure—just a log!—and despite himself, the artist peels wood back from the neck, strengthening muscles strained in twitching eagerness to be freed.

No more, please, no more, whispers the exhausted creator. You aren't what I meant to create. Not what I expected.

Then bows forward until foreheads touch with a surge of something like understanding, or a crackling acquiescence.

A moan of triumph, rattling windows and stirring the heap of shavings, unheard by the slumped artist whose tools clatter from unfeeling fingertips. Splinters and chips fall free of sweater and corduroy, joining the pile, waiting for broom or spark. The fiercely grinning face tilts and falls, cushioned by the remnants of its disintegrated cage, no longer supported by the rough hands of the carver, staring at the scuffed side of a shoe, unable to turn and look at its world or remove itself from the remains of its former cell. A shriek of anguish, and a scene frozen in time, susceptible only to further decay without the help of its creator. It's just a log.

Beach-House Reunion, Outer Banks (OBX), NC

One Fourth of July
Paul D Blumer

A fat yellow sun loitered at the edge of a wood-slat fence around the pool, understandably dawdling at the approach of evening. The heat had mellowed out, leaving us decorated with streaks of sea salt, patches of scarlet skin, and deep eye-wrinkles from laughing at the burning orb as we rinsed the ocean off in the pool. The idyllic summer vacation.
Just minutes ago, we were gathered around the deep end of the pool, watching Nate streak back and forth, working to break his own record of three lengths with no breath. This is what we do. Compete to survive. If you can't do it, we'll still hang out with you—but you won't be quite as cool.
There was the "three club," consisting of Nate and Erik. There was the "two club," which didn't exist, because just two was for chumps. The rest of us were in that club.
This is it, boys, Nate huffed, filling his lungs, I'm getting four.
Do it.
He reared back and launched himself in, wake churning a v-for-victory, as we chatted and gossiped, and watched him flip-turn perfectly against the back wall. Then again on this side. Streaking across with slow, deliberate strokes. Another perfect kickoff over there.
Here he comes. Our excitement buzzing with the cicadas. Almost there. He's got it.
The halfway mark.
Another lanky kick—two thirds.
The crown of his head at the surface like an otter. Wanting air so badly; discipline and machismo growling go! go!
Almost there. Arms reaching forward, fingertips stretching out, muscles straining.
And then a foot from the wall, he stops.
"What's he doing?"
Arms drifting.
"Dude, he definitely made it. I think we can give him that."
"Why doesn't he just touch the wall? He can easily reach it."
"I think he's fucking with us now. He's gloating."
"Is he...?"
"Wait, Nate...?"
He floats up and then rolls slightly over, sinking to the floor of the pool. A string of bubbles connects his mouth to the surface.
"Oh my god, you guys! He's out!"
"Get him up! Get him up!"
Thrashing, diving, scooping, dragging—a dead weight rises from the bottom, a dozen desperate hands scrabbling to help.
"No, like this!"
Arms crossed on the pool deck, forehead on forearms. Just like you're taught. Plant a hand on his wrists and hoist yourself out. Just like you're taught. Reach under his armpits; squat, twist, and stand up; get the victim clear of the water. Just like you're taught.
"Nate...! Nate...! Wake up, dude!"
"Please!"
Nothing else for it. Tilt his chin back. Look, Listen, and Feel for breathing. Just like you're taught. Just like you're taught. Just like you're goddamn taught! Find the xyphoid process. Position the hands. Just like you're taught. Only—do you go for the diaphragm and push the water out? Or compress the sternum and get his heart beating again? Which––? Wait, which––? Is this really happening?
Jesus Christ, what were you taught?
Just do something! Solar plexus. Push. Push. Pinch his nose, make a good lip seal. Breath. Breath. Listen for air. Breath. Bre—
He sputters, water burbling from his lips.
Turn him over! Turn him over!
Nate on his side, sputtering. Is this really happening?
"Cough! Keep coughing!" Screaming just like you're taught.
He retches.
"Fucking vomit, dude! Get that shit out!" Just like you're taught.
"Turn him over again, do it again," someone shrieks.
No, he's breathing. Let him catch his breath. 

"Puke it up, Nate! Wake up!"
He's awake. Oh my god, he's awake.
Eyes flutter. He rolls over, supporting himself on a hand. Sits up, elbows on knees, head in hands, drool and tears dripping onto the concrete.
Sputtering. Breathing. Blinking.
Alive for the sunset.

Sex

I'm writing a sex scene. This is among the most difficult of writing objectives, because if you fall short of the mark, readers become intensely dissatisfied, and are more likely to stop reading than at any other part. Sex is such an important part of our human experience, that in reproducing it, we are bound by several things.

Accuracy
A sex scene must not be unreasonable or beyond expectations. It must fit with the character as well as with his/her partner. It must feel natural, as though it were actually happening. It must fulfill both sides of the gender role, and must be a situation that can (or has) actually happen.

Allure
A sex scene must appeal to both genders. No one wants to read a sexual encounter that appeals to purely one gender. A guy must read the scene and get an erection. A girl must read the scene and become wet. The only acceptable byproduct of a well-written sex scene is a reader who sets the book down and looks around, wondering, "can anyone tell that I'm supremely turned on right now? Who's that guy/girl? Why do my pants feel so tight? Why is my skin tingling?"
and then reread the passage, thrilling and squirming at every paragraph, gulping and cringing at the need to penetrate/be penetrated.

Amazement
Readers need to stop halfway through, wondering how it's possible the writer knows so much about what he/she is thinking. A reader should be almost shocked at the closeness of the scene, nearly stupefied that the writer is so deeply connected with humanity to understand so completely what's going on on both sides of the slish contact between two people that the writer must be schizophrenic, or at least godlike in ability to round out the connection.

This is what I must accomplish. A weak sex scene is enough to destroy an entire book. It can be a make/break scenario within which, a reader's life can be changed merely through the emotional impact passed along by a few choice words.

How to make that connection? How to accomplish that accuracy, that allure, that amazement? Practice, practice, practice...

Shackled by rules and thoughtless law abiding.

A clot of vehicles sit waiting at a red-light, tapping fingers on steering wheels, resting hands and elbows on window sills, lazily rubbernecking passersby. The doppler whoop of a siren echoes off building facades, soon joined by a set of flashing blue lights.

A few cars edge toward the curb, grateful to be out of the way. Cars in the middle lane almost visibly freeze, as though the tension of their drivers had found its way through electrical conduits and into the cars themselves.

The police car brakes behind the mass of cars, trying to get through the intersection.

Wheretogowheretogowheretogo? The line of cars sort of vibrates, but doesn't budge.
It's a red light.
The police car leans on its horn, willing the sound waves to burst through the panic. The front car creeps forward.
It's a red light.
The horn blares. Everyone freezes.
The drivers in the cars wave their hands.
Go through! Go through!
The intersection is clear. The cop needs to get by.
Ignore the red light.
Frozen.
This goes on for nearly a minute before the driver finally swallows hard and edges into the intersection, at least enough for the car behind to zip past and the car behind to zip past and the car behind to zip past.
The cop tears through, fervently hoping he's not too late.

But Nature isn't an entity in the way you're espousing. Nature is a series of adaptations designed to keep the species alive. It's ingrained, not innate.

Kind of the opposite of original sin, I think people are born essentially blank slates. Every second of our existence, we scribble away at that slate, first with huge big swirls and then adding smaller, more complicated patterns between the chalk marks as the space fills up. Though it gets pretty crowded, there's always a bit more space to work with, until time dries out the chalk and it sort of blurs into deteriorating flakes.

But not before other people have seen and been influenced by the markings on your slate. And not before you've taught other people and fed to their experience.

There is no outside entity that lays out our path, except the entity of prior knowledge passed down.

Careful what you wish for, a rhetorical circle

You're always questioning people's ability to change. Stuck between a lefty brain and a righty attitude, you wrestle with the disparity and lash out. The part of your conscious that thinks, that really thinks--not the part that sounds the thoughts, or gives voice to the notions, but rather the deeper instantaneous thought--is at odds with your voice. You're suffering a crisis of Ego, homie, and that's pretty damn cool. Proprioception, awareness of Self--you're thinking about thinking. Seeing that the Ego and the Consciousness are separate subjects is the only way to really be aware. You're on the path to enlightenment--the first step of which is to realize there is no path.

What it comes down to is that the Ego is the front we wear like armor--or like fashion. Choose your simile. It's the consciously crafted work of art that is often mis-named and mistaken for "I". It's been passed along to you from your antecedents--family and otherwise--and much of it has to do with social interaction and self preservation. We become what we're supposed to be, photosynthesizing other humans' expectations. You are the current embodiment of a string of collective conscious, the product of experience clusters. In other words, pure learned behavior--there is no nature.

This isn't such a scary thing as it seems. In fact, pre-ordination, or my understanding of "nature" is far more frightening. Even though I am just the reception of a bunch of other people's experience, that means I am constantly, perhaps infinitely, subject to change. There's no such thing as a reaction I can't control with a delicate series of burning pathways into my brain. You can grow or sever any behavior you want to, because it's all just different degrees of habit. You are basically amorphous, if you can conceive of yourself as just a bunch of neurons and electrical impulses. That's so sweet! You can do whatever you want. You can change or not change, whether in a unilinear fashion that you seem to espouse, or in a chronic cycles spirals ebbs flows and orbits, like how I tend and try to see things.

But the question comes down to what about the entity that thinks the thought? It's so quick, so nearly instantaneous, that it's hard to recognize. We're so used to the sound of the Ego that we disregard the other, deeper, I. Become aware of that eye, and you'll be glimpsing enlightenment. It's not some kind of outside divine flashbulb brought on by any sort of set-out process of asceticism or sacrament or ritual or prescription. It's a process of making that recognition and awareness permanent instead of fleeting. Which, oddly enough, is a strengthening of a habit. Weird.

Lucky Me

I was reminded today, while strolling Scooter behind the country store, of a long-ago football practice when I found a genuine four-leaf clover while stretching. I was so excited by the find, and allowed superstition to trump healthiness, popping it into my mouth to absorb the luck. How could goose poop and chemical fertilizers faze me when I had such fortune? I think the luck is still running through me, branching hither and thither through capillaries and follicles and neuron pathways, guarding my soul. Life is grand.

New Experience

I was a bit nervous getting on the horse with no saddle and only a simple bridle with no bit and a tucked-in lead rope for reins. I really only pretend to know how to ride a horse, replacing ability with confidence and a john-wayne attitude that will probably get me killed some day. But I tucked the nerves down in my shoelaces and hopped on the rickety stool, grabbing mane and rein before throwing my leg over his back.

At about 17 hands, Duke stood a bit taller than most horses, but his demeanor made him an easy sit, and I relaxed my hips and gripped with my knees, clucking to get him moving. He snorted and walked toward the fence where the cow stood watching, rubbing her skinny horn against the post and flicking a lazy tail.

"Be soft with the reins," my companion called, "Give him his face."

I pretended to know exactly what she meant, and pulled the rope to the right, squeezing my heels to get Duke moving. He bobbed his head and paced the other way, toward the open field. I could feel his spine moving under me, and his muscles rippling with every step. Much more in tune than chafing atop a saddle, and even the lack of stirrups was no problem at this speed.

Naturally I kicked his flanks to get him moving once we made the field, and he trotted across. I wanted more. I kicked again, and he cautiously slipped into a lope, and I couldn't help but giggle at the smooth rocking motion and powerful grace beneath me. And then I started slipping.

I pulled back on the reins to slow him down, and he broke pace into a trot, throwing me forward on his neck, trying to squeeze my knees, but the change in gait threw me off and I was falling. I scrabbled for mane and threw my arms around his neck, but the trot jostled me off, and I was falling. I hit the ground with a thud, and twisted away from his hooves, envisioning myself as a bloody pulp and trying to catch my breath. The horse stood calmly as I pulled myself to my feet, laughing and feeling a bit sheepish. Across the field, the llama and sheep watched as I dusted myself off and hobbled toward the barn. Ready to try again.

inappropriate self-aggrandizing analogies

The other day I walked into the Apple store with my expired student ID to purchase a new computer.
"This one's expired, but I'm starting grad school in the fall," I explained, trying not to bite my lip and expose the stretched truth.
"Yeah? Where you going? Here in boston?"
"No, California. San Francisco. Creative writing master's." My heart started pounding around looking for some wood to knock on. I hadn't heard back yet from most schools, and my primal superstition floundered around for a buoy.
"Nice, man, nice. San Fran is sweet. I'm jealous, dude."
We talked about music and creativity and the world, and I eventually left with my new computer under my arm.

Today I packed up the computer and left starbucks, heading home to change for work. In the lobby of my building I hesitated, weighing laziness and apathy before checking the mailbox. There was a large envelope addressed to me from California College of Arts in San Francisco.
My heart thumped in my throat, and my knees threatened to give out as I opened the envelope in the elevator.
Dear Mr. Blumer,
It is my pleasure...
The rest faded in an adrenaline haze as I stumbled into my apartment, reminded of Saint Elizabeth.
Where are you going? What's in your apron?
Just roses...
Let me see.
She's caught. Her husband will be furious when he sees the loaves of bread stuffed in her apron for the poor. She sighs and drops her apron, bracing for the worst. Her husband stares agape, quizzical and at a loss for words.
Dozens of roses cascade to the floor at his feet. He stoops and lifts one, burying his nose in its delicate folds. He meets her gaze with a glint in his eye and a smile to match.

Okay, so it's a totally inappropriate analogy, but the relief she must have felt probably pales in comparison to mine. A weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and stressors suddenly seem weak and trivial. So thank you, CCA, thank you for lifting my spirits and whiting my lie.

Nostalgia

I got to thinking about a particular summer I had, realizing with a truly painful jolt how great it had been. And then I thought about another summer I had, actually wincing about how great it had been.
Nostalgia can be physically painful. It can also lure one in like the sirens, spinning deeper and deeper, reflected in a distant smile of whimsy.
It has a very different emotive from daydreaming about the future.

Life Falls Under Catch-22

There's a funny thing about being a driver: lot's of down time. It seems like an exciting job, and it can be a lot of fun, if the money flows, but there are elements of boredom. What it amounts to is that every single job is horrifically boring and below my capacity--bar one. And that one is hard because at the moment it doesn't pay the bills.

Damn you, Murphy! Damn you to a boring, fiery hell.

On Being Studied

My alarm goes off early. Gratingly, shiveringly, numbingly early. I groan myself out of bed and flip it off, waging a silent debate about hitting the snooze button.. It's 8am.
I'm on my way to participate in a psych study looking at the effects of a certain ADHD drug on driving concentration. I haven't started the meds yet. I hop on the train. The commute nods past, and I arrive at MIT. After just one misturn, I wind up in front of the lab building and hike up the stairs.
I locate the room easily enough--a candy-apple-red Volkswagon beatle hunkers in front of a big TV screen, poised at the center of a web of wires. A tall girl with what I call 'hacker hands' stares at a computer monitor until she notices me waving at the door.
"You Paul?"
"Sure am," I yawn. (an aside: did you yawn reading this? I yawned writing it. Every time.)
She has me fill out a questionnaire. I probably lied when it came to how drowsy I'm feeling. Then she hooks me up to an EKG and a breath-depth sensor, and tapes a sweat-measuring pad to my fingertips. Make a fist, she says, wrapping the wire up my knuckles onto my wrist. Tape. Arm straight out. Tape. Put your fist on your shoulder. Tape. She leads me into the car.
"Should I buckle up?" I ask, reaching for the belt. "Force of habit." Wouldn't feel comfortable driving without the comfortable weight of the seatbelt. Something akin to the leaden blanket at the dentist.
"Some people do; some people don't," she chuckles. I buckle.
She adjusts the volume and the camera aimed at my eyes. I adjust the seat and wish I had functional sideview mirrors.
"There will be an accurate rearview mirror picture," she assures me. One glance makes me a skeptic.
The gear shifter is nonfunctional.
The stereo doesn't work.
Roadsounds comes from speakers.
The pixellated viewscreen is tiresome and uninteresting, aside from some moving objects designed to catch my attention. At least the pedestrians shuffle across the intersection just as the lights turned green. And big vans are parked in front of stopsigns, blocking half the view. And construction cones spring up like mushrooms after a thunderstorm.
The worst thing about it is the lack of feeling. Forty-nine percent of the driving experience is absent. There's no rumble of the engine, no rush of wind. No connection with the car, no sixth sense of periphery. And no acceleration, up or down. It's flat, and it makes me heartsick. And slightly seasick. It's not driving. It's a mockery. Plus it puts me to sleep, and I struggle not to nod off. They're going to see everything on the cameras. Damnit.
As it turns out, I get bonuses for not getting in crashes, for not getting caught speeding, for not going over the time limit. I lost half my starting points, mainly because of trying to shift lanes without a sideview or blindspot window. With all due respect, that accident was a fault in programming. I glance in the mirrors and see gray carpet and a few posters on the wall. This is pretty difficult.
At one point I had to make a hands-free phonecall, being told and memorizing information, and then relaying it to the voice-activated device.
At another I had to play a pattern game, listening to a series of letters and saying, "check" when a Q was followed three letters behind by an A. Question and Answer. QED. Que? Oh man, I most definitely have ADHD.
TIJQIEJAcheckEIJAJQIQIEJAcheckJEIOQEQEUTAcheckEIAJLAAIEJQIEPAcheckIPQRMSAnd so on.
I miss a couple because my mental priority stayed on driving. Of this I am distinctly proud.
I fill out another questionnaire about my experience, being more honest on the drowsy section. Comments/Suggestions: Maybe position a fan outside the window.
I pocket the bonus $10 and head off to breakfast, itching to get in my own car and drive.

Girls girls girls girls, why are you so magnetic? What is it that shoves me and you together, regardless of feelings or convenience or rationality? Where does your power come from, that I'm so enchanted, so enamored of our interactions? The magic of pulses throbbing together, eye contact and skin-to-skin electricity, throwing caution to the winds, and making fools of us all.
It's like a chess game going on all around me, churning calculations, learning from mistakes, bending the will, and making the move, withdrawing and staring in eager concentration waiting for the next turn. But every piece looks like me. All I can see when I look at you is warped reflections of myself. Smiling hair-preening eye-batting conch-shell reflections, mocking the loneliness of being human.
We all just want connections. To get close. To get inside. What we have now is a paltry substitute for interspective. But god save us all, it's what we've got, so let's indulge.
There is only me. And underneath that, there's the consciousness that recognizes the me. Everything else is a shade of my perception.
But what a pretty shade, girl. You get one kiss...

Don't blink

The view from my window is priceless. My desk fronts against a three-paned window almost six feet across. At a certain angle, the view is all I see, except for off-white blurs in my peripherals and a cherry-colored accoutrement-cluttered lap to remind me I'm still here.

Across the way the Prudential Center rises into the blue, reflecting a sun-tinged liquid pillar with space-age lines and a swelling presence. Its back building rises even higher, like a sager older brother. The street corner at its base supports a few trees, and its cobblestone surface looks smooth and soft, like an old carpet.

Or is the Pru more incoming than upreaching? Abutting the crossroads with an entrance awning like a cattle catcher thrusting forward, the Pru sprawls back a whole city block, connected to the next block by a skywalk. Like two self-sustaining space ships, you almost expect the Pru and Copley to blast off at any moment. Escape pods of society, exemplifying the culture.

The traffic pattern at the intersection feels like perpetual motion, tick-tock with a new representation of time. Everybody is trying to get somewhere, but they just keep twisting circles and circles around the city, magnificently complex gears in the timepiece of the city.

Windshields, headlights, rims all glitter in the sun, avatars of people wefting their way through the warp of pedestrians, weaving comet-tails of stories.

Shopping bags, school bags, bag lunches, bag ladies, shoulder bags, baggy eyes--everything down there has its meaning, its reason for being arranged at that point in this moment. A trolly tour jangles past, pushing a yellow light to keep the tour moving steadily.

A building rises up next to me, thick concrete framing business-like layouts, ever-shining fluorescents cowering from the sunlight.

Movement catches my eyes--all three of them. A peregrine stoops away from a chasing swallow, doubles back toward the office building across the way, and circles back again, as if trying to get to something. What is the swallow hiding? Or is he just being a dick. Maybe the swallow is stealing the peregrine's nest. Or maybe protecting his own. Who am I to judge? So it is and so it shall be.

I have so much work to do on this freelance assignment, but all I want is to write some fiction. Making a living means losing the living. I should've been born a hunter/gatherer--but then the stories would all be oral, passing down through the collective conscious, sending waves of character down through the ages. Ancestry.

If i could otherwise devote the time I spend at work, I could get some serious progress down on what I really want to do. Could get those chapters rolling in. Start collecting those rejection slips to climb their sickly pink mountain to the heaven of publication. It's just a matter of catching the groove. But Catch-22 has me firmly in its clutches, and it's loving every minute of it. Cheeky bastard.

Time to work.

Therapy

It's gone. They stole it. They stole my fucking car, and now it's gone. Here I sit, face a blank page of crestfallen disbelief, passive and empty to any onlooker. I'm wearing this vacant mask to hide a molten core of rage, whose burning I can feel between my straight-line lips and in the whorls of my ears, and thumping against my scarf. But to you I appear impassive, bored.

But it's gone! I can see the little punks, rummaging with glorified coathangers between window and door, racing to see who could pop the lock first. Their flushed faces, heady with anticipation, hearts pounding.
click!
"Got it, boy," one proudly croons, dropping his jimmy and yanking the door open.
And then they're inside, talking excitedly in whispers, as they rifle through my CD collection, steaming up the windows with their nervous breath, pawing through my worthless possessions and trying to rip out the radio.

Where was I while this was going on? Probably asleep, alarm set and dreams churning, ready to spring out of bed for an honest day's labor. I wonder, did they leave the door open for a quick escape? or close it against the cold? How long did it take to splice the appropriate wires? Did they grind the sensitive clutch? Probably. Little punks.

A Honda Civic, whatever its benefits, is notoriously easy to steal. Oh my god I can't believe it's gone! I've seen a towtruck operator jimmy one open in a matter of moments, as I sipped a coffee on a restaurant patio along the street. Guy barely even looked at what he was doing.

Where were the cops when they stole my car? Probably munching Dunkin Donuts, or busting up drunken pedestrians on their way home from the bars. What are the chances they stopped any real crimes that night? Care to bet?

So my car's gone, my plans canceled--a contract broken. I'm sharing this cold aluminum bench with an ugly dwarf of a man, a shriveled old hunchback in a tattered Patriots sweatshirt whose primary movement seems to be squirting jets of tobacco juice at random intervals in the general direction of a crack in the sidewalk. The bus should be arriving at any moment, but my hands flex with longing to grip the steering wheel, to make my own way at my own pace.

So long, I worked, to afford that car, that unattainable luxury, and in the space of a few minutes, some delinquent bastards have gone joyriding, squirming their illiterate baggy jeans on my seats, smearing their fetid sweat all over the dashboard, cursing my boring music taste and wishing for some innocuous bumping hiphop.

Worthless wretches. The short-sighted government would have been better off subsidizing their mothers' abortions instead of sucking eggs on a stupid vacuous issue. Because you, John Q Taxpayer--rest assured--will end up paying for these assholes to eat three-square and sleep in sheets. I can only dream of the violent pain and irrevocable damage caused by their shower rape. I can only wish I could watch them get caught and fucked.

But for now, I suffer, the wool-blinded fodder of the American Dream.

On this cold bench I sit, listening for the grumbling diesel of the bus, feeling the hollow sucking of my soul where all my hard-earned material manifestation has been yanked away at the whim of some brat who can't see enough past the end of his fat nose to care about the harm he's causing another human.

What would his mother say?
Hell, it's probably her fault.

A young man joins us on the bench, baggy jeans flopping against the seat. I wonder if his cornrows make his scalp cold. He thumbs a cellphone, not meeting my eye as he sits. I pull out the police report and reread it for the umpteenth time, hoping for a clue, or a new bit of information, or something that doesn't tell me my car's gone without a trace and there's not a goddamned thing I can do about it. It'll probably show up gutted--
"Hey, man, you got the time?"
I turn to the youth next to me. He's holding up a darkened phone and looking at me quizzically.
"Uh, yeah," I say, looking at my cellphone. "It's nine forty-five."
"Hey lemme get that," he says, nodding at the phone.
"What?"
"Give me your phone. And your wallet, man."
"What?"
"Motherfucker, quit fuckin' around. Give me your money and your phone, and whatever else you got." He stands up, threatening.
I frown and glance toward the old man, who's up and shuffling down the street, leaving me alone with the kid. He hold out an orangutan paw, pale palm stained and clammy.
"How about right now," he mutters, twitching his fingertips as if to say Gimme or Come Here. His other hand is behind his back, ready to pull a knife or a strap.

My insides boil over, but I keep a sheen of fear on my face, the only emotion these dustbunnies understand and respect. I rise to my feet, hands out disarmingly. I don't want trouble.
"All right, all right," I nod. "Here you go. Here's my wallet."
I reach back for my wallet and shuffle closer.

Suddenly I'm upon him, throwing my entire weight behind a right cross which connects CRACK on his chin, and following through. He stumbles back, and I swing around with my left, smashing my fist into his temple. He drops to the slushy sidewalk and I'm upon him, fists flailing, red mist rising before my eyes DIE you fucking worm piece of shit--my fist again and again, socking wet and hard into his ugly brown face, drawing back and throwing myself down again, fists elbows fist fist fist blood spraying teeth bared screaming MOTHERFUCKER venting DIE as if he were the accumulation and effigy of all the evil in this world, CHOCK chock thuck tap thap the back of his head cracks and spills red DIE on the pavement, wide wet eyes cross lose focus, arms fall to the draw of gravity as his body gives up, and still I DIE thrash and flail and mash his face again and again with raw knuckles elbows bleeding breath ragged DIE DIE DIE as he goes limp beneath me, my knees soaked through with melted snow and hot blood, heart thumping fists pumping, rage throwing fireworks at his eyes, unseeing eyes, and his head cracking against the pavement with each savage blow, brap brap brap as my fists take on a life of their own, skin splitting, teeth flying, tongue bitten through, skin rent torn and bruised, losing shape just a DIE mass of blood and cells and follicles of DIE misdirected youth and MOTHERFUCKER DIE poor timing as a victim turns around, refuses to bend once more, and becomes the murderous unfettered vengeance of
"Stop!"
uncountable robberies and thefts and rapes and murders DIE and victimizations and rage as I sob and scream and thrash this fleshy pulp against the wet pavement, spilling blood and mingling slush and gore and pent-up anger resentment loss injustice and I'M GOING TO KILL THIS KID ignoring the little nagging voice You're Going To Regret This voice as I pound and pound and
"Hey, stop!"
pound and ignore the spinning world around me, focused only on the utter destruction of this worthless bag of petty crime, this blight upon the imperfect rest of humanity, the embodiment of all that's wrong in this world, and I'm going to KILL IT--

Until I look up into the cold cyclops eye of a Beretta and see this kid's homie trembling behind the trigger. He's dressed in fear and stolen Timberlands, bowing under the weight of golden chains forged in hell.
"Stop it," he says, as I sit there poised over his friend, with a ragged bloody fist. All I want is to be home and none of this ever happened. All I want is to strike again, though there's not much left to hit, I realize.
A sneer twists my lips, and this new kid twitches
FLASH

Curtains

The city is never quiet. Windows thrown open to counteract overzealous radiators let in incessant noise, the slap-slap of joggers, the grumble of wheezing trucks, the shriek of distant sirens wending through traffic, the caterwaul of vagrants bemoaning fate—all adding a throbbing life to the heavy atmosphere. Caves of steel and brick and concrete, lurking hulks feeding on tears and joy, on beating hearts and humming minds, vicarious testament to the need to live forever.
A gust of wind billows a curtain; a moth flutters toward the light, the one irresistible mainstay in its tumultuous life, a promise of…something unfathomable. A dozen tea kettles scream. A hundred babies wail. A thousand night-shift alarm clocks wait in silence. It’s the gloaming, a time of magic for some, work for others, and just another hour ticking by for most.
There’s no way to know the approach of a life-changing moment. No way to calculate a point of no return. There is no white light, no paragraph break, no director’s cut. Nothing but a constant medias res, as we go dancing, shuffling, running, tiptoeing, and stumbling blindly through an existence which makes sense only because our scattered neurons follow the paths of habit, laid out because, without a pattern, without our self-scripted ego dreams, there is nothing—only the chaos of everything. No beginning, no end, and barely a middle.
From the window, the chirp of a sparrow, triumphant in the discovery of a morsel, the shaky promise of another day or two. The whistle of wind through an alley. The rustle of today’s newspaper, archived and forgotten.
Footsteps on the sidewalk, the drone of a hybrid engine. A cough. The friction scuff of tires locking over pavement, a sharp hiss of drawn-in breath. (…!...) The slow-motion curl of a wood shaving, tumbling free of the stick and falling toward the fire. Asphalt and rubber, molecules scrambling together, daring to resist. (No—!) A streak of black on white crosswalk paint, just slightly smoother than blacktop. A chain of reactions. The window lets in the night, a multitude of stories, sounds, smells. (Oh god, please don’t––!) shhtKRCK!
Sound amplified by savage significance, a nightmare crunch rooted in memory and not-quite-captured by movie soundtracks or jumbled letters. (Oh my GOD! Please no…) From behind screen windows, hearts pound, stomachs fall. Trembling lips parted. A dozen breaths bated. A hundred ears strained. A thousand years crawling by (Oh my baby! Oh god no…) a car door opens (What did you do? God what did you DO!) frantic strangled apology and a little girl crying (Oh my GOD my BABY!) delirious 911 call, street names and a little girl crying (Please, please, hurry, my daughter’s been hit…) flashing lights, uncountable heart-choked necks craning toward windows and a little girl crying (We were in the CROSSwalk you fucking asshole!) (What happened!?) I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m sorry so so sorry please I’m sorry (Where does it hurt baby? Oh my GOD!) blue lights skitter against brick walls, reflecting willy nilly off glass windows and a little girl crying. Her hysterical mother, stomping around, arms in the air, screaming and cursing, and her little girl crying, traumatized and needing calm, safety, love, a sturdy embrace, sitting on a cold stone stoop without her mother’s arms to keep out the chill, a little girl crying who needs to be told It’ll Be Okay, Baby, You’ll Be Fine, Love, swathed instead by an infectious litany of panic and fear.
Windows stealthily slish shut, closing off the scene, private now and none of our business. Blue lights bathe family rooms, kitchens, dens, hallways, but can’t compete with televisions. Can’t compete with post-climax voyeuristic embarrassment. Can’t compete with It’ll Never Happen To Me, fading already into memory and vague silent promises to be more careful. Even for those three, mother, daughter, driver, the moment will deteriorate, filed away as a Count Your Lucky Stars, joining the infinite stored experiences that mold and define and lead to…what?

"Hey, I'm looking for S.J. Is he here?"
I can't hear a goddamn thing over the thumping speakers. A platinum blonde bumps me hard, apologizing with a smirk and glancing at her overflowing cleavage. If I'd been carrying a drink, she'd have spilled it. I shake my head, and she frowns quizzically. Fuck off.
I tap a man on the shoulder. It's busier than I'd have expected for a Wednesday, but he turns away from the bar.
"Are you S.J.?"
"Nuh uh," he grunts, pointing. "That's him."
I push toward an enormous white striped shirt wrapped around a jiggling man with a jolly cast to his rosy cheeks. He's waving his hands telling a story to a small fellow with salt-and-pepper hair perched next to him.
"S.J.?"
His brows knit as I extend my hand.
"I'm Paul, from the bartender website."
He hesitates..."Oh! Hey, how are you? Come on, let's go back here."
Hoisting himself down from the barstool, he leaves his story hanging and leads me to an unoccupied table near the back of the room. Various patrons reach out as we pass, and he applies high-fives, nods, and words of encouragement where appropriate. A slim brunette in fishnets and a shredded wife beater blows him a kiss from behind the bar.
We chat for a few minutes about home and how the bar became the Michigan spot in Boston. He's owned The Place for a while, though it only recently joined the ranks of maize and blue, and he hates Ohio State already after only a brief time as a proximal fan.
"You'll start as a bouncer," he says, waving a meaty palm, "and a barback, before moving to the prime spot. It gets pretty crazy here, so you learn the ropes first."
"Cool," I say, struggling to stay nonchalant.
"We like Michigan alum here. You'll love it. Excuse me."
He heaves away, and I sit stunned for a second. I get up and make my way toward a tub filled with beers and ice, tended by yet another fox.
"S.J. told me I should come grab a beer."
"Sure," she chirps, and cracks a Corona. S.J. comes back with a few sheets of paper and has me fill them out.
"Shifts are nine to two," he says. "Can you come in on Saturday?"
"Absolutely. I'll be here in the afternoon anyway, drowning my football sorrows."
"Good. See you then."
He disappears into the main room, leaving me to fend for myself amid the pixies.

It starts with a slight tremor. Across the street a pedestrian sign chirps, "walkwalk...walkwalk..." A man stoops under the weight of a shabby army retail jacket, singing a ditty and shaking a Dunkin Donuts cup of change. I'm right with you, buddy, though the change I collect is of a different mint. The plate-glass window of a burlesque bar reflects my jaunty grin which parallels the brim of my hat. A cycling student--Harvard--weaves in and out of traffic, white iPod headphones streaming out behind. He turns a corner sharply, stabilizing with a scruffy Chuck Taylor on the pavement and narrowly missing an old lady leaning on a Red-Sox stickered walker.
The tremor builds to a rumble, the rumble to a roar, until the sidewalk seems ready to buckle. Sunlight glitters on the Charles, interrupted by a pair of rowers skimming the surface. A gull swoops in for a closer inspection of a bit of flotsam on the bank.
Then like a healthy nor'easter, the noise dwindles as quickly as it arose. The following stillness disgorges a score of bag-toting commuters, spilling out of the sidewalk like ants in the wake of a lawnmower. A little boy looks around in wonder, right arm stuck straight up over his head secure in his mother's gloved hand.
The streetlight flicks green again, and people hustle across as cabbies suck their teeth impatiently. A girl in a red skirt over black leggings catches my eye, tugging at her London Fog and smiling demurely at her shoes. I swallow a few words and walk on, still swelling with confidence with a delightful phrase ringing in my ears. Well I'd like to offer you a job...
Someone waves a pamphlet in my face, and I hold up a hand. No, thanks. This is something I've become an expert at over the years, dodging and skirting the multitude of do-gooder interested parties.
"Hey nice hat, man!" someone calls.
"Thanks," I tell the world.

This is wonderful! Color swims before my eyes, a spiraling never-ending swath of change. A groan of tedium escapes me, lost forever in the ether as I giggle and slap on some more paint. Giddy, excited, thrilled that I'm finally going to capture this project I've been thinking about for ages and bring it from an uncertain sketch on gridpaper into a fullfledged magnificent wall-embracing landscape of delight and suffering and loss and gain and past present future, deep, flat, infinite, infinitesimal, concrete mortared with whimsy.

But alas, Blue bailed and left me awash in insufficient-black and rubbish-purple. So it's suspended one more day, and I turn, tail between my legs, to another creative project. Sigh.

Sometimes I think I understand how my snake feels when he's about to peel out of his skin.

Everything wavers and shimmys, dancing jive in the heavy warm atmosphere, this cave, this shelter, this haven. And now replete with totemic jabberings, layers of mistakes folded and folded and folded until it resembles the picture we seek. If I were a cave-dweller, I'd simply run outside and collect some more berries to crush into dyes. Sadly my commerce is confined by convention and dictum, for the benefit of us all.

Enchanting. The room breathes around me, murmuring in time with the music and the cadence of my typewriter--somehow still going while my fingers flit across these electronic and far less satisfying--though immensely more roguish and complex keys.

The last few cherished drops of Glenlivet tremble goldenly in a rocks glass, as I fight to maintain control through the silly vibrations. Absurd, absolutely. Tides crash and recede, blending with the scotch and the music and overall incomprehensibility of everything. A crescendo--my god, I think spellcheck's up and bailed--of inspiration and unsatisfied creativity, I'm positively trembling as if I were cold or excited--I can't tell which. I could explode or shrivel, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference to the universe, which is why I love the thing so much.

My own words here, represented out of the 001010000110101011 randomness, blinking and wondering what's going on, and what all these silly preconceived patterns mean. Maybe the programmers have an idea of what it's all about, the Matrix of life on a molecular (or smaller) level, bewildering, inspiring, frightening, confusing, enlightening--and all so deliciously mundane. Just a hodgepodge, an endless supply of information drenching me at all times, sifted and sorted by the bureaucracy of my being into neat little pigeonholes whose meanings and connections I keep in line.

The wall giggles with its spirals of black and white, swathed over with an ugly purple, and suddenly I long to throw myself at it, to smear and lavish paint upon it with reckless and hopeful abandon. I need blue! Bring me blue!

Purple, I have enough of.

I try not to ascribe to favorites, but I'm rather inclined to agree with myself that Glenlivet is my favorite label. It's a classy heavy-green bottle, a pasted-on label whose script and color make it seem two-hundred years old, and a signature to boot. I bow to the marketing gods who've created this one. It appeals to me in a way that old Johnny Walker never could, no matter the color of his boots. Just so happens the product they're selling is also damned decent. Phew

Rosetta dances at my touch, shining and bright with our mutual red excitement, though she sometimes gets out of hand and skitters across the desk--get back here, sweet thang, let's make words. And the little red Buddha laughs on and on, knowing far more than anyone gives him credit for. Words topple and jostle, pause and linger.

I want something that's my own. Something not borrowed. Temporary as I want it to be, fleeting as it probably is, but in the moment, just as solidly mine, my own, as any dream.

Someone wrote about a dream machine. Plug it in and go for a whirl. Plug in the coordinates, chart the stars. Delight in it, spin in it--but don't bother trying to understand it. When you press its magic, try to conquer its secrets, it's gone. Suddenly, as if it never existed. Did it?
Ask Ray Bradbury.
But damn if anything mapped doesn't lose its mystique, its charm. It joins the mundane, relegates itself to the dusty shelves of what has been.

Is that how I would turn out if I became what I dream to become? Nonsense. Drollery is as part of me as my red blood cells. I could never turn it loose, no matter the weather.

The dimensions of my mind are so hard to capture, so hard to turn concrete, so hard to share. It's immensely frustrating, and though I profess a certain ability with the language, I sometimes find myself so incapable of producing, of expressing what I actually wish to say. Sometimes I wonder if language itself is to blame, if interaction has become too defined, too clearcut, too free of the raw, the purity of connection.
Or maybe I'm just being silly.

I'm entirely dissatisfied with the mechanics of this dancing typewriter! How can I fix it in its place so it stops scattering papers and ideas all willynilly into the abyss? Would fixing it halt its mystique? Would Rosetta stop flourishing if I tied her arms to the bedposts? Bosh!
But it is obnoxious that it won't stay in one spot.

I'm churning through typewriter paper at an alarming rate, an unprecidented rate (on this desk at least), and I can only hope it's the shadow at the entrance to the tunnel (which eventually leads to a Light, even if that's just a freight train coming your way).

Glenlivet's dry now, and nary a trace of relenting in the upsy downsy vibrations of the eve--hedging towards morning now. The verdant bottle saved for just such a moment, any in a multitude of millions, the cascading joy of recognition that this second, this instant is precious. This...this...consciousness, this present is as holy or unholy, as mundane or sacrosanct as every similar and infinite Here and Now.

Ellusive. Ignored. Forgotten in the helterskelter rush of life.

'Stop and smell the roses' doesn't mean pause and place your nose to a flower, though it does mean that, it means take each moment as its own, apart and independent from the rest, though coinciding and flowing in some kind of crazy pattern to which we all ascribe.

Everything's so visceral. So real and unreal, so unceasingly weird.

Grant me a studio. An untouchable sacristy for an outlet, a place where I can really just be and be and be and unfold.

Sometimes perfect phrases suddenly burble out, as if a stack of moments connived to bring it forth. I love this language.

My god, it's going to feel so lonely and new and incomprehensible and unreachable and remote and infinite and impossible and scary. I'm so excited I can scarcely contain myself!
And yet, of course, I must be humble and ever mindful of the delicate processes that brought me to this point. And every subsequent and preceeding point, tipping or otherwise.

Oh glorious! When fatigue overtakes me, i'll simply click Post, without even scrolling up to see what I've done. Incapturable and intransigent, unrepeating and forever lost...

So many tools I yearn to capture for writing. Colors. I long for a better vocabulary of color! Hindered by the power of suggestion of colorblindness (or maybe the verisimilitude) but suspecting that an inordinate amount of color names are merely poetic descriptions of the same, I've not embarked upon a journey to discover just what is meant by mauve or eggshell or offwhite or any other term.

So strange how everything sort of settles back into normalcy, comfortable and cozy. And yet the spirals and paths ignited will continue to burn, until I'm done with them. Just as I've always done.

Crawl

Hot. So hot. The very air presses down, stifling lungs and crushing spirit. Tiny arm hairs shrivel away from the glare, melting and abandoning skin to fend for itself. Pores ache to release moisture, open and gasping. Perspiration escapes as pure vapor, not even bothering to hang around long enough to cool. What are you doing here?
Blistering sand shifts underfoot, and there's no way to tell what progress you have made. It's all the same, stretching and blurring, on and on. Endless waves of tan, lapping in a slow undertow, heaving with the rise and fall of ragged breath. Nostrils crackle, and lips split. Tongue feels big and important, swelling in self-satisfied ignorance of its dire predicament.
Sky so blue, searing like a butane flame, pinpointed at the white-hot sun.
And endless thoughts of water. Lakes and rivers, streams, springs--drops of rain...puddles...condensation on a glass of iced tea...
A rivulet of sweat. A tear.
Stop!
Walk and walk, keep the sun behind and hope ahead. But the sun seems everywhere. You're inside the sun. Walk and walk? More like slide and slide, shoes filled with sand, toes scuffed and blistered. Turn and scope the progress, a shallow wrinkle stretching as far back as the eye can see, fading with a whisper as wind sifts sand to erase the path as if you'd never been. And maybe you haven't. How long for skin flesh and bone to crumble and become uncountable grains of dust? What is time out here?
And to think just hours ago you were on top of the world. Suits. Bottled water. Airplanes. Air conditioning.
How did you get here? Well. That's a long story for another time. Besides, why bother? All there is is shifting sand, blistered feet, lips, eyes. Any words would come out as a croak of desperation. Why not just give up and lie down to sleep?
And then there she is, right there! Or just over the next rise...? Smooth bronze skin, thin fingers wrapped around a clay jar overflowing with clear cool water. Taste it. Feel its salvation spreading through every inch, every cell. At last. Take it slow, no sense in wasting it trickling down your chin. Savor it and respect its elemental necessity. Seventy percent. Replenish and swallow, swallow, swallow.
But then you blink, and throat's dry as ever. The lady has vanished in all her glorious perfection. Vanished with her earthen jar. Vanished with her water. What would possess her to appear so, just in the nick of time, holding forth deliverance only to withdraw it at the very last moment?
Don't...collapse. Don't...give up. Hope...lives. No. So hot. So dry. There must be a trickle somewhere. There? Here? Anywhere...?

*Sigh*

A groan of tedium escapes me. The Road is calling my name already. Just six weeks back home and I'm already scratching my veins yearning for a fix. Wanderlust. A funny term we came up with (or at least proliferated) years back while roaming the nice quiet boundaries of the suburban golf course under the stars.
You stand up on the hill and gaze out picturing a pack of savage dogs bounding near, thrilling on the rush of adrenaline as your muddled mind perfectly conjures the feeling of the chase. But alas, the illusion is easy to break when you remember there's leftover pizza in the fridge just a few steps away from the TV.
Adventure in a neat little paper package.
I experienced a real adventure this summer, and there are so many reasons to jump out again and get dirty. A million little reasons to go, and only a handful keeping me back. Maybe some fear, maybe some loathing, but mostly i'm all caught up in this whole owing-money thing.
My thumbs itch, and my imagination soars, while my mouth yaks and spins, and the red ledger slowly ticks back up to zero with the sweat of my brow and the blister-juice of my hands.
Soon...

What I need is a good sidekick (or partner in crime) to complement my angle. Someone to argue with; someone who disagrees with me regularly.

A Swift Farewell?

28/July/2009 9PM
Finally back in Bogota! The 20-hour trip extended seemingly indefinitely. As I stood on the bus to disembark, a young fellow said, "Follow me, I'll show you which bus to catch to Candelaria," without me even begging for directions. The Transmileno seems pretty efficient, run like a subway with tickets and turnstiles at the entrance, rather than on board in a frenetic pocket-searching melee amid all the other passengers. The buses even look like subways, molded-plastic seats lining the walls, broad tinted windows, two segments separated by a plastic accordian lined with metal surrounding a circular pivot in floor and celing. The line map even resembles the one in New York.
We chat for a while on the bus. He's on summer break from college in Amsterdam, vising his family, the coast, and the jungle before returning to his studies.
I tell him I'm an English major, which narrows nothing down as far as my job-market choices. Teach English, he says, or translate. How's your SPanish?
Indeed, how is my Spanish? Seems alright. Could use some improvement...but can't we all?
I should have steered our conversation towards an invitation to crash on his parents' couch, but i missed the opportunity, and as he got up to get off, he took my email and said, "If I ever get down to Brazil to open my bar, I will give you an email."
"Yeah," I retort, "and maybe by that time I'll be teaching English down there and I'll help you find a place."

Now I'm back in the Platypus awaiting five AM. Another traveler is heading to the airport in the morning, and we've agreed to share a taxi. I don't have enough cash left for my own. I'd have had to go out in the dodgy small hours to catch a bus. This way I'll arrive two extra hours early. Christ.
It seems appropriate to be sitting at this table which bears my initials carved in three months ago. Sometimes it seems like a long time, and sometimes but a flash. Looking back I wish I'd been better about keeping notes, since everything not tied down will be lost overboard. Oh well, next time. I guess I can keep an appendix for retrograde remembrances.

Little ants trotting across the page following the scent of dulce-de-leche crumbs. The clock ticks on the wall next to the big hand-drawn map of Bogota. Which someone spent an inordinate amount of time on. The kitchen is locked, and I'm denied the coffee which made this country famous. This cookie is dry in my mouth, and I desperately wish for something hot to drink. I'm alone in the hours between the civilized bedtime of those with something scheduled tomorrow and the return of those out partying. At the moment I'm not yet tired. Time will soon begin its slow decline to standstill while my eyes droop and the words of my book melt together and mingle with the roman numerals passing in the distance.

I hear nothing except the ticking clock, the faint murmur of nightduty Spanish, and my slow-thumping heart. My eyelids feel heavy, like pillows. Similes come slowly to my weary mind. My skin feels greasy, and I can slmost still smell the grit of travel under my fingernails. Hair clings to my head or stands up crazily. Glasses slide interminably down my nose. I regard the clock through the small lenses. Three more hours. A book lies finished on the table before me. Another one sits in my bag waiting. I'm suddenly no longer very tired. I just want to shower, to change my clothes. In flipflops, my toes are cold and slightly sticky. How long can I spend in the shoer? Depends how hot it is...

A hot shower rejuvenates me, gives me a second wind. I have the hot water tanks all to myself, and take full advantage until my fingertips turn to blanched prunes and my toes regain sensation. Returning to the common room to start a new book, I stumble upon a group of three returned from the bar, nursing Aguila beers.
One fellow from Philidelphia--or was it Pittsburg? I said the wrong one before and he took offense--one bloke from northern London, and a girl from Switzerland on her way to study in Barcelona after B.A. The usual assortment.
They were in the middle of arguing about football--both kinds at once; that was the argument--when I walked in with my Michigan Football T-shirt, prompting the American to proclaim his alma-mater allegiance in red and white. I tell him that while the Badgers have done alright against us in the past couple seasons, we're still overall better in football, academics, and intangibles. He retorted something about cheese and beer. I said nothing, only chuckled and daydreamed of a nice Bell's Porter.

As I watch the minute hand crawl around the American's watch, I realize I'm not at all tired. He stands me a couple of beers as five o'clock (am) rolls around. The guy from San Francisco I'd agreed to share a taxi with steps in groggily. How fitting that I began my journey with someone from California in this hostel, and I'm leaving the same sorta way. He pays for my half of the taxi, leaving me enough cash for a coffee and empanada at the airport.
I'm offered an exit row, and I accept, picturing my heroics in the event of a crash...or at least first one out the door. However that goes. Fighting down the prickly feeling of a bad omen--so far the night has gone rather too splendidly after t he late arrival of my bus--I wait for the counter to print my ticket. Oops, she says, looks like it's already been taken. Fine by me. I prefer to be crushed up against my tray table anyway.

The staffat the airport seem eager to try their English, while I desperately cling to Spanish, feeling my vocabulary already slipping away like grains in a glass.
Tick tock tick tock: the digital clock on my phone makes no noise, as surreal seconds slip silently toward takeoff, passing unnoticed like so many stories and memories. This whole trip already come and gone like a flash in a pan; I close my eyes and the purple stain dances across the backs of my eyelids, brilliant but transient and already fading. Can I capture its essence like a few photographs valued at a few thousand words? Or is it already too late...?

At the gate they turn me away. Too early. I sit across the way on a stiff woven-orange chair and rest my eyes. My heart pounds rapidly, sending extra oxygen to my overwrought brain. Soon it will start trying to dream, deprived of sensory-organization down-time for...who knows how long. At least 24 hours since my last snooze. And then just a catnap.

As soon as they open the gate for my flight, I stand and shuffle to the desk.
"Listen," I say to the pretty girl with more eye makeup than she needs. She blinks and smiles. "I'm recovering from malaria, and I desperately need rest." I smile back, wanly, exhaustedly, expectantly.
"Of course," she says, checking my ticket. "Go on ahead. Have a nice flight."
"Thanks," I yawn, and head down the tunnel and up the aisle, collapsing gratefully into my seat. Some minutes later a very attractive girl sits next to me, but my headphones are already on, and I probably won't bother trying to talk to her. The sirens of sleep already have me in their grasp.

We fly through some billowy stacks of clouds, approaching Orlando. Cuba lies well astern. The plane trembles as the windows are obscured by milky vapor, and in clear patches, I can see a rainbow far below, a streak of color across the pale green land.
Houses arranged in subdivisions; lakes glittering; a grouping of baseball diamond, softball diamond, football field, and track: a high school. America looks gorgeous, and I am looking forward to arriving at home for some well deserved rest before launching into the Next Thing--this time with some income!
But I will miss South America and all the adventures I've had, the lessons I've learned, the people I've met, regrets and triumphs: everything.

It just gets better. Weather over New York decided to shit on my homecoming parade, keeping the plane on the ground in Orlando until it was far too late to make my connecting flight to Chicago. We finally land at JFK at about the time I was supposed to land in CHicago. Grateful for cell phones. Thanks for the smooth welcome!

At customs, an older fellow greeted me, flipped through my passport a bit, and said, "Welcome home."
"Goddamn," I grinned, "I like the sound of that." And so here I am.

And that was supposed to be a nice Greek circle, closed and neat. But it's starting to look more like a spiral as I sit crosslegged in the JFK airport about to board a hop to Boston and catch an am flight to Chi-town.
I make contact with Erik and stifle my surprise when he eagerly agrees to meet me at the airport...if I ever get there. I'm losing track of my space/time orientation, sleep starved and weary. But Boston will be fun...if I ever get there.
Porr David has to get up at 4 to drive out to pick my ass up. Just think of it as a wake-and-bake adventure, I tell him. My ankles itch maddeningly, and I wonder if I'm bed-bug bit. Fucking hostels.
I'm having a bit of difficulty with English, expecting all the time to have to negotiate travel difficulties beginningwith "Hola, buenas, tengo un problema..." but everyone here speaks English, and it's hard to get used to.
To top it all off, my dying phone, battered and abused by travel, has very little charge left, and I'm constantly fighting to keep from smashing it with a well-placed elbow, since it barely works anymore. What luck.

I hate the woman sitting next to me chatting hoarsely into her rhinestone-encrusted cell phone. Her blonde hair is piled on top of her head like straw as she whines about the recent rain ruining her do.
She has the voice and tone of a 19-year-old sorority girl, but she's about twice that age. Blah blah blah, she says, spewing gossip and filling the air wiht idiocy. The PA interrupts to announce the arrival of our plane, and people all around me start stirring. Oh my god, she just said "whatev." I want to throw my phone at her temple.
Everything feels a bit surreal.
My feet fall asleep, and I relish the anthill rush of prickly awakening. Time to walk.

The Boston airport is closed. I stay alive with single-serving snack packs and caffeine. I yield to the surreality of the predawn airport where everything is in stasis and a ghostly pallor illuminates the lost souls wandering in search of connecting flights.
I keep seeing people I know, and watch as they turn to strangers, unuttered greetings dying softly on my lips.
A security guard strolls past, impossible chin protruding past his blue smokey-the-bear hat. He disappears as scrolling marquees catch my eye. Pretty colors.
Janitors whistle as they push mops and buff floor tiles, Red Sox caps pulled low in the chilly sterile air.
My teeth feel mossy, and my breath tastes foul. The guy next to me on the plane smelled like a freshman. I briefly consider killing the taste with vodka, but opt for toothpaste instead. THe bars are all closed.

My body feels the pull of acceleration as the plane roars down the runway, but then I jolt awake and realize I'm sitting in the lobby in an uncomfortable chair, trying unsuccessfully to fade into sleep. I start to wonder when I'll meet Tyler Durden.
Trying to tally the hours, I realize it's July 30th, and I should be home in bed. Best estimate: 50h interspersed with less-than-adequate catnaps.

I wonder if I could leap behind the Dunkin Donuts counter and start the coffee brewing. Would they mind?
I also briefly consider riding around in a wheelchair, but abandon the idea to laziness.

Daylight, and the airport awakens to swelling swarms of people. I stir myslf and join the correct flow, finding my gate. The metal curve of the bombilla mate straw in my backpack causes a brief panic among the redeye security team, but we sort things out, and the heavy-lidded surge continues.
I locate and drink a large coffee, chasing it with some oatmeal before sitting to wait at the gate. Time flickers past, and I find myself in my window seat, twitching awake to stare out at the looming jet engine as the flight attendant passes out soda and coffee. I turn to my seatmate and ask the time. One hour to go. Barring, of course, any unforseen snafus.
The morning sun shines a brilliant blue, and Tyra Banks smiles her famous grimace on the TV in front of my face, talking to an absurdly pale zombie-flesh woman with sunken eyes and lank brown hair. Tyra, wearing a ring the size of a pizza, appears to be saying something rather droll and witty. I switch the channel to football reruns.

Last look at the land

How fitting that I'm spending 20 of my last 36 hours on a bus. A bit of a shame, but what can you do? That's travel departure. It tends to be rushed and tense, exhausting and infuriating, and mostly rather dull except in moments of frenzy. At the moment I'm just glad to be under airconditioning. By this time in my journey I've been having to carefully weigh and craftily justify every penny spent.

On long busrides you go to sleep with music in your ears and wake up sometime later in eerie silence cushioned by the rumble of the road and the occasional snore from other passengers folded into nearby seats. Choose another album and drift off again, waking up later remembering only a song or two. This repeats indefinitely.

The AC gets cold as time wears on, so you put on a jacket and roll down your pantlegs, hugging yourself with clammy arms trying to get your head comfortable. Now and then you wake up and the bus is stopped, letting folks on or off, filling up the tanks, opening doors to policemen for inspections.

In typical South American efficiency, the bus has broken down, and we're stranded sans spare a few hours from Bogota. I'm feverishly glad I decided to give myself plenty of leeway between busride and flight home. Bored, the men outside rock the bus like a cradle and piss on the tires. I guess they don't make the connection that they'd have to handle those tires in the event of a flat.

On his belly beside and under the back of the bus, a man fiddles with tools and lugnuts while the driver kneels alongside shouting instructions. An ambulance shrieks past. We're also stuck in a long line of vehicles, presumably an accident-caused logjam. Salesfolk dart hither and thither, taking full advantage. Here it's food vendors. At home: lawyers. Even if they get the repairs done, we still aren't going anywhere.

I fill my pipe with the last of my tobacco and sit outside on the hill, puffing fragrant smoke and watching the fellows under the bus. In front of me a boy breaks a twig into increasingly smaller fragments.

The side of the bus is decorated horribly ironically; a picture of a supersonic airplane superimposed over the globe. The name "Concorde" in dashing red letters over a swath of green. Now being passed and left behind as traffic picks up once again. The vendors tramp off, chuckling and joking. And here we sit.

Someone once asked me do I liken myself a Tom or a Huck. I was stricken by the question as deeply philosophical and a bit mind boggling. After forming my own guess, I asked what she thought. She told me I was born a Tom but on my way to becoming Huck, a dreamer trying to put some plans to action.

Tom's a bright sumbitch, but gets caught up in his schemes and grand plans at the expense of others, while Huck is more simple and just ups and goes, taking adventure in stride. Tom is more wont to build an adventure, beginning to end, wrapping the whole blasted thing in neat little bows and ribbons. He, like I, has a swollen sense of drama.

As I sit here scratching away, I reckon she's right. But then the question arrises: whom do I want to be?

Another Concorde bus finally swoops by, and we continue on our way to Bogota. The countryside rolls by, rocky hills, patchwork fields, jungle slopes--and I realize with each passing fern and banana tree that these sights are my last. I simply cannot believe I'm going home tomorrow. The realization twists me up. I will miss this place, this pace. I'm ready for home...sometimes.

Clouds hang low over the valley, slinking over peaks and gulleys. I don't want to deal with the waiting--waiting for morning, waiting in a taxi, waiting in the airport, on the tarmac, for my connecting flight. Travel itself, point A to B is a bit of a void wherein time disappears and nothing quite happens. Even the world outside the vehicle seems frozen or at least unreal, like the movie playing out on the screen above the aisle.

Premature nostalgia

27/Jul/2009

I suddenly realize, with morbid regret, that no matter how I try, I'll lose so many stories, anything I've not written down. I'm truly amazed by my poor notetaking skills, both in general and on this daring jaunt which, I vividly discover every so often each day with pounding nostalgia, HAS HAPPENED and I'm about to be going home. It's rubbish. Absolute rubbish.

I'm reminded of the mortality of this trip just now and my note-taking by a story being told to my right about a guy being rolled on the street before arriving at his hostel to sit on the toilet shitting out his guts and puking in the nearby shower. How many times have I heard a similar story and feared the worst every time I shat a little loosely? No one wants the Screaming Eagle, but we're all aware of its hovering existence.

Stories circulate through the Culture of Travelers, making the rounds with quiet changes and subtle cultural tweaking across borders, through translations, and over time. Remarkable the stories one could collect given time enough and diligence to observe by first-hand gonzo experience. The Culture of Travelers is a remarkably vibrant entity, existing just beyond the awareness of those who've never been, like the world's biggest mushroom, growing just below the surface.

You hear the stories and nod, learning the lessons and vowing never to get into such an imbecilic situation, until you find yourself the victim of a brilliant scheme by the universe designed to test your sense of humor, aplomb, and grit. Everything balances itself out if one's focus isn't chokingly tight. We're all a sort of quivering mass in the personified muddle of space, time, life, economic cycles, ideas, and miscellaneous extras. I haven't quite figured it all out yet, but I will someday, even if that day is after my strings have been assimilated into the twisting chaos of the particulate realm of the subatomic.

Confront the Fear

One evening as we sat on the beach sipping rum, we saw a boy standing at the lapping edge of the water, crying and tiptoeing onto the damp sand, but turning back at the first touch of water. A plastic bag thrown in by an older person, presumably a father, sank, shining faintly white under the dark water.

I turn to my British mates, one a junior highschool chemistry teacher and the other a sardonic computer guy who used to rock dreads, and wonder what's going on over there. The boy's plaintive cries reach our ears, and I stand up, resolute to sate my curiosity.

"I'm going to help him," I say, draining my dixie cup. I roll up my pant cuffs and saunter over.

The boy stands barechested wearing boardshorts past his knees. His belly bulges slightly, unaware yet of the idea of the sixpack.

"Qué pasó? Qué pasó, chico?" I call.

"La bolsa," he blubbers, tear-streaked cheeks glinting in the moonlight as he points at the bag. "I need to get it. Swim to get it."

"Porqué?" I ask.

"Mi padre...la bolsa...pescados...enojado!" he wails, little-kid Spanish fading into incomprehensibility.

"Tranquilo, chico," I urge, biting back laughter. We'd speculated this was some sort of rite of passage or cajolery by his dad to get him past a fear of water.

"Hay aguas malas y no puedo nadar," he whimpers. Bad scary water lay just a few feet past the submerged bag, surface hidden by shadows from shore.

"Tienes miedo?" I know how to deal with kids' fear. He nods dramatically, clasping his hands in front of himself after flapping them once in consternation.

"You can do it," I say, stepping into the surf. "Mira, I am going to come in with you. Then you can go?" He nods again, venturing into the gently curling water. By this time, the bag has drifted deeper, lulled by a riptide.

"No tenemos mucho tiempo," I warn; better get it now. I know he wants me to reach in and get it for him, but I think we both know that could never happen. Prime Directive sort of ideal. Minimize direct influence. I coax him in further, water lapping up my rolled pantlegs (These good old pants! I shall miss their constant greasy company!) He comes within a finger's breadth of snagging the prize, earning steep praise from his father, the gruff sort of approval boys live and die for.

"Ah, very close." He backs off, and looks up at me dolefully. "Try another time." You can do it, you are strong. Mira, your arms. Flex. Musculos. I pop my biceps and he grins, pointing at his own wiry upper arm. But mine's soft, he whines. My god, how to explain the mechanics of muscle movement to a little Colombian niño, barely old enough to blow his own nose? I get the point across, and he concedes that he is big and strong.

"I will be right here," I promise, "if anything mal happens."

He ventures forth again. Shit, the bag's drifted much more. He's in gentle high-tide swells up to his armpits. At this point, he might not get the bag. But gah! so close. Come on, little man, you can do this. Be strong. Quick! I send mental blasts of telegrams, but my accuracy is off, and he backs off again, pulling at my arm.

"Por favor!" he cries, "won't you get it señor?" I realize with amusement that he's calling me usted. It sounds different, more genuine from a boy of five than from an ingratiating street vendor. Alas, I cannot. If this is a test from your pops and I ruin it, I'd never forgive myself for contributing among other things to the pussification of the next generation. My friend, I tell him silently, if you can't get it now, you will next time.

He gives up, and we turn back. The older guy who'd thrown the bag in turns out to be the waiter/owner of the restaurant where we'd just eaten pizza, and in fact is the boy's father.

"Muy cerca," I shrug. He almost had it.

"Ge got closer when you were there than before," he smiles, "He has made progress with your help."

I laugh at the praise, embarrassed. "I remember when I was five, how scary the world was."

"Si," he nods.

"Proxima vez," I suggest. Next time. They both agree, and Papi scoops up the shivering boy in a towl and bears him toward the house and an awaiting bowl of soup.