we are not billboards, we are secrets and codes.

reality is a hard place to get to from here.

what dances on the sea floor: living organisms or mechanical animals?

There are many small monuments in the premises of Humayun's tomb. Of these, a square tomb with a double-dome called Nai Ka Gumbad or the Barber's tomb, built for emperor's favorite barber is an outstanding structure.

---

In many small Canadian towns and cities, there are small monuments, often near churches or legions, honouring the sacrifice of community members.

---

The walkway proposal would be patterned after the Sagan Planet Walk, which begins on the Commons and ends at the Sciencenter and is guided by small monuments and plaques describing the sun and planets in the solar system.

You wake up gasping, shivering, overarched, like a fish caught in a riptide. Sweat on your brow, moisture in the sheets, water spilling out of pipes, tumbling through the ceiling, dripping down the slick, shivering walls of white plaster.

You know that somewhere at sometime there was a rippling current of silver and moss that was tossed in the tides of an depthless, endless ocean that hugged the belly of the world and which today, right now, lies hanging above you, suspending in the dark.

"Can you put like a fuckton of mustard on there?"

"Excuse me?"

"Mustard. I want mustard."

I squeezed a bright strip of yellow across the edge of the sandwich.

"More than that."

I laid out another.

"More mustard."

I hefted the bottle and sprayed it across the bread several times.

"Keep going. Do I look like a woman? I said I want mustard."

The sandwich was almost entirely yellow now, the bread beginning to soak a little.

"That's good."

He lifted it up, a big glob spilling out the back as the bread felt the pressure of his fat fingers. He lifted it to his lips and took a bite, his teeth covered in yellow, a trail of slime streaked from his bottom lip to his chin.

I motioned to my own chin, trying to catch his eye. "You've got a little—"

"I don't clean the mustard till I'm done," he said. "I like to let it soak in." He grabbed the bottle from the counter and spread a little more on the edge of the sandwich he was about to eat.

I picked up a napkin and started to hand it to him. "But you should really—"

"Shut the fuck up," he said, taking another bite and then another, letting it drip off his chin onto the floor. "I fucking love me some mustard."

I looked down at it for a second, seeing the glob glistening there on the linoleum tile. "How is it?" I asked.

"It could use some ketchup."

Suburban Minotaur

Everything was fine on Rosemont Avenue until the Minotaur moved in.

Elms shadowed the block, big cars gleamed in the driveways, and traffic was leisurely and relaxed. Every backyard had a child, every living room a television, every mother made every sandwich without a crust. These were just a few of the reasons that made us decide it was a good place to raise our daughters.

But the Minotaur didn’t pick the neighborhood for any of these reasons. He liked it because it had long and winding streets, inexplicable dead ends and cul-de-sacs that seemed like they might somehow lead somewhere, anywhere, but just circled back around. Some people might call this poor neighborhood planning, suburban sprawl, but the Minotaur said it felt natural, said it felt right. He picked out the perfect cul-de-sac and hired a contractor by the name of Stephen Daedalus to build him a place in our gated community on Rosemont. It was a place he thought would make him happy, surrounded by a dizzying web of streets and signs in a tangled subdivision on the west side of town.

We had arrived less than a month before the Minotaur. A few of our immediate neighbors had come by to introduce themselves, but so far most of the block was unexplored territory, a blank map known only by the shapes of rooftops and the shades of cars in the driveway. The kids hadn't made any friends and we were afraid it would be wasted summer of videogames and boredom for them. The community pool at the end of the block, we hoped, would be a wonderful place to mingle and meet, but it was almost always empty. The girls would come into the house dripping and giggling, saying they hadn't seen another human being in hours, just empty streets left to bake in the sun. It left us puzzled as the month got hotter and a faint tinge of sweat seemed to hang and thicken in the low, heavy air. Turns out most of the neighbors had their own pools in their own backyards and had no need of the community space.

But once the Minotaur arrived, people in the neighborhood started talking. Neighbors we had never met started waving to us and whispering in conspiratorial tones, trading rumors, trading complaints: he was too hairy, too strange, he would drive down the property values. Soon, the neighbors we did know were introducing us to others, introducing us as a good, solid family. We started receiving fliers in our mailbox for meetings of the homeowners association, the neighborhood watch, and, even though school hadn't started, the PTA. What really bothered everyone was the sound he brought with him—distant pounding and digging that went rattling through the neighborhood early in the morning, every morning, and this made people angry. It seemed to start at the Minotaur’s place but as the days passed it moved further away, the banging now emanating from under different neighbors’ houses—pulling them awake at 5:30, dragging them from their beds and rudely throwing them into the waking world without remorse or apology. Mornings were ruined and people blamed the Minotaur even though the banging was now coming from below their own basements. Some nights there were other worse sounds—strange bellows and groans that echoed through the neighborhood, across locked doorways and darkened front windows.

All this and almost no one had seen him yet. Rumors circulated: that he was seven feet tall, that smoke poured from his noise, that his horns scraped the ceiling and dripped blood, that he walked around completely nude, his genitals covered only by a thick mat of dripping animal fur. We worried, the wife and I, about living so close to him nearly directly across the street and worried about the effect it would have on the girls, if maybe we had picked the wrong street, the wrong neighborhood, the wrong city. We worried he would lure them into his labyrinth. We worried he would eat them alive.

On a Sunday morning, I caught my first sight of the suburban Minotaur. He stepped outside, pulled his robe closed, and squinted in the morning sun. I called my wife over quickly and we watched together through parted blinds of the living room window. He waved at the old man across the street, who did not wave back, and went to pick up the morning paper, stomping around his front yard leaving hoof prints deep in the dirt, a stampede of little steps traced through the grass. He was very hairy but he didn't look like anyone expected.

"How come you ain't got no nose ring, mister?"

The Minotaur looked up from the paper in his hand. A little 7-year-old girl, the color of a sunrise, stood at the edge of his lawn watching him. We both gasped. It was Christine, our youngest daughter.

"Brenner also plans to recognize that the site was part of the Underground Railroad by erecting some small monuments."

"An extortion scheme, normally trapping a married man in a compromising position then blackmailing him."

"The Girl with the Temporary Hair"

a very real desire to go in opposite directions at the same time.

she replaced her eyes with mirrored glass
and asks you not to look away.

it was a luxurious disease
that kept creeping through her breast
her teeth stained with good wine
she told herself she was blessed

write a concept album of songs inspired by disgraced governors. "rod's [expletive deleted] theme", "hiking the appalachian trail", "emperors club VIP"

producing a nation of employees

"The Self-Thinking Thought"

Limits of Oceans and Seas

The man standing on the edge of the beach said he was there to change the sea. He was standing and staring into the distance when he said it—alone, watching the sunrise, dressed in overalls and a hard hat. The thin and foamy edge of the ocean lapped at the tips of his black sneakers.

“Sure,” we said. “You’re here to change the sea.” We laughed and shook our heads, walking further up the beach. It was empty this early, the sand stretching out, deserted in all directions, curving and arching and hugging the water like a child. The sky seemed sprinkled with blush and powder with wispy clouds strung out like crepe paper. You said it was your favorite time to be at the beach, before the crowds. We spread out our towel, put up our umbrella, and got to work on having fun.

As the day got hotter, the crowds caught up to us—children clutching inner tubes and laughing and crying, parents spreading sun-tan lotion, teenagers with kites and volleyballs, all staking their claim on a tiny piece of beachfront property that used to be ours. I cut up strawberries and skinned kiwis that you had packed for our lunch, and we read and laughed and splashed and tanned.

I packed up our stuff a few hours later while the beach was emptying out. I was watching the ground, trying to avoid stepping on any of the soda cans and cigarette butts that lay scattered, half-buried in the sand. You nudged me and pointed. He was still standing there, the man who came to change the sea, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses that reflected the sun reflecting off the waves.

We stopped for a second, you looking at me, me looking at him, him watching the horizon. He noticed us, turned and waved.

“That’s creepy,” you said. “I hope he’s not here again tomorrow.”

He was there again the next day waving to us, only now he had 14 friends standing in a line, all dressed in overalls, hardhats and sunglasses. They all waved. Some of them had on clipboards, one used a theodolite on a tripod. They turned back to look out at the horizon. The beach was empty for miles in either direction—except for them and us.

“If any of them comes near us, use the knife,” you whispered as we walked up the beach. There was a slight chill in the air.

“You brought a knife?” I said.

“The one we brought for the fruit. To skin the kiwis.” You dug in the basket and held it up.

“You mean the table knife?” I said. Its dull edge and round tip gleamed in the sun.

“If it can skin a kiwi, it can skin a man,” you said and waved it at me menacingly.

“It’s like a Polaroid picture,” Mr. Lindsey said of his rough, spontaneous process. “I’m just trying to get the idea out before the inspiration is gone. Everything I do is motivated by the fear of running out of time.”

desperate and yearning to be anyone who has done anything, and to do everything that has been done.

climb into a forest canopy
build a ladder for the fire

You can’t hear it, but the Earth is constantly humming. And some parts of the world sing louder than others.

-Hello?

-Quick, tell me what to do with my life.

-Join the circus.

-Hate elephants. Hate them. Wanna punch clowns in the face.

-Ok, get married, have some kids, work a job you hate for 20 years to put them through school and hope one them eventually says ‘I love you.’

-Those kids will wind up drug addicts dying together in a ditch filled with dog shit. Next option.

-You sound like you’re freaking out.

-That’s because I’m freaking out, sweetie.

-I’m not your sweetie. We broke up, remember?

-I’m freaking out, stranger. I’m about to start throwing punches at work.

-Don’t do that. It’s a bad idea. What happened?

-Bad day. Filled with idiots. The usual, you know.

-Find a new job?

-Ok, there’s option #1. Already trying. Option #1 is to just keeping working here, going slowly insane while I apply for newer and better editorial jobs preferably at a university press, reading something interesting. I have been pursuing Option #1 for several months. From the moment I started. Ok, so that’s Option #1. Option #2 is sell all my possessions and move to India.

-Don’t go to India. The Ganges is filled with AIDS.

-Ok, so sell all my possessions and move to Prague. Maybe teach English.

-But then what do you do when you come back? Won’t you just be in the same position?

-Yes. That is the flaw in Option #2. I have a wonderful, life-affirming adventure but if and when I come back I need to figure this all out again.

-Can you do that? Teach English? You have no teaching experience.

-Don’t need any. There are companies that train you. I’ve got a cousin that did it in Thailand for two years. All need is a BA and American citizenship. Honey, I got both.

-Don’t call me honey.

-Option #3, honey. I go back to school for an MFA in creative writing.

-Why wouldn’t you go for a PhD in something? Seems like more of a career path.

-Which is Option #4. You’re jumping ahead now. The problem with Option #3 is that I am already 30 grand in the hole for loans for a master’s degree I don’t use and which I can not afford to pay back. The pros: I like to write. I want to write. I want to publish.

-You can do that on your own.

-Can I? I haven’t published anything yet, have I?

-I think you should get a PhD.

-And the problems with Option #4 are: what if I don’t get in anywhere; what if I only get in to bumfuck Nebraska University; what if there is no funding for what I want to study; what if I can’t find a job in my field afterwards, its very competitive you know, what if I can only find a job at bumfuck Nebraska University? I lived in a sleepy college town already. I did that already. For six years. That is over for me. I am on to other things. And if I really want to write shouldn’t I devote myself to that? To make a go of it while I still have the time and desire and talent and very little bitterness?

-You can take writing classes while you take PhD classes. I vote Option #4.

-Option #5 is I become a hobo.

-I vote Option #5.

-Are you fucking anyone?

-Ugh! Goodbye.

-I love you.

click

-Tell me what to do with all this life.

"Aspirin in the Afterlife"

"Perhaps the ancients had other skills, metaphysical ones, which allowed them to see the unseeable and base a pictographic language on it."

A Hunger for Sons & Daughters

They liked to strike in the early evenings—when children were still playing outside in the last fading light of the day, when parents were still cooking dinner, still closing up shop, still exhausted from their commute, from their boss, from their finances. They liked to strike in the early evening, their long black Cadillacs sliding like snakes down the open road, their swollen white vans crawling like lice down the soft suburban streets of America. 

While no one yet knows who they are, Peter Garofalo, 41, knows their methods. Mr. Garofalo, the owner of a tropical fish and aquarium supply store in Arlington Heights, IL, is a large but short man with glasses and a robust mustache that is tinged with flecks of gray. As he was helping his last customers of the day, a man grabbed his six-year-old son from the crowded courtyard of this suburban strip mall. “He was tired of sitting in the shop all day,” Mr. Garofalo said of his son. “I let him outside for a minute, just right out front. Told him to stay where I could see him while I rang out the last customer. I only turned away for a minute. When I called out for him he was gone.” There were throngs of people outside Mr. Garofalo’s shop, enjoying coffee from a neighboring storefront on a cool spring evening. No one said a thing as the van pulled silently away.  

Meanwhile, Melissa Green’s nine-month-old brother was snatched right from her arms. Melissa, 12, was standing on the curb in front of her Memphis home watching neighborhood kids play baseball. The game halted as a black Cadillac came sliding down the road. A pair of arms reached out of the rear passenger window and grabbed the boy. The car did not even stop. 

Susan Hempsted, 32, a resident of Levittown, Long Island, lost her four-year-old daughter in a King Kullen grocery store. “I let go of her hand while I asked a clerk where the steak sauce was. She was standing right next to me—until she wasn’t.” Ms. Hempsted ran through the store—her long brown hair swirling in a cloud behind her, her hazel eyes wild like an animal's as she screamed her daughter’s name down the aisles—until an employee made an announcement over the loudspeaker. Security cameras revealed that the girl was lured from Ms. Hempsted’s side by a man with a bag of gummy worms and a unicorn figurine.  

“I put up flyers immediately that same night,” Ms. Hempsted said. “But the only people who contacted me were other parents who lost their kids. That was when I learned how many children were missing.” 

These and thousands of other children have never been returned to their parents. They are victims of a new wave of human trafficking sweeping the country. Some of the children are thought to be sold to far-off buyers in Canada, Mexico, or even Jamaica. However, parents of abducted children who have investigated the matter say that most are purchased domestically by rural families in other parts of the country, places like Iowa, Idaho, and Appalachia. With the country in the grips of a harsh recession, the sale of stolen children is becoming a thriving business, they say. 

“Yeah, I know a guy can get you a kid for maybe five, six thou,” said Jackson Nash, 42, a carpenter from Wisconsin. “Friend of a friend. Hear about it all the time. Dunno what they use the kids for, could be anything. Heard a lot of different rumors. Some say they’re using the kids to work the meth labs out here. Others say it’s cheaper and safer to buy some kids to be the farmhands than to hire them illegal alien workers. Get to work ‘em for years, ain’t even got to pay ‘em so long as everybody thinks they’re your kid. I also heard about this group over in the Dakotas buying up these kids to turn ‘em into a militia, take back the country. You know, heard a lot of things. Can’t say I really know for sure why or what’s going on.” 

Even the extent of the problem is debated. According to law enforcement authorities, the children are simply runaways. All of them. The White House insists there are fewer than 1,000 cases of human trafficking per year—a figure which they say includes not just children but also pregnant women, old men, and people in wheelchairs. Advocates for abducted children, however, say there may be hundreds of thousands across the nation, perhaps even millions. 

Samuel Montgomery, 29, whose son disappeared in 2007, has collected a list of nearly 2,000 children in and around Cleveland that have disappeared in the last two years alone. None of the children in his database have been recovered. “It’s like angling for a goldfish in the Marianas Trench,” he said as he pasted up posters. Mr. Montgomery is a tall man, just slightly overweight, his face long and his hands large. A young parent and a former advertising copywriter, he dressed in a combination of casual and business wear, an oxford button-down with a tie over baggy stained jeans and canvas sneakers. His backpack bulged with carefully-rolled posters, brushes, and jars of homemade wheatpaste. His hands caressed a newly hung poster that featured the word MISSING in capital letters above crudely-photocopied pictures of his son’s face. “It’s like hunting for an Indian Head penny in a pile of coins the size of the Earth.”  

According to rumors, the older children, less in demand on the market, can end up as prostitutes or indentured servants. Some of the children begging or busking in major U.S. cities are believed to be in the employ of the very criminal gangs that abducted them. Rumors also persist of a new blood sport gaining popularity in rural clubs, a variation on dogfighting that does not involve dogs. “I don’t even want to think about what happens to those kids,” Mr. Montgomery said , tearing up. “I like to think my son’s been bought by a lonely rich couple looking for a kid to take care of them in their old age.” 

Mr. Montgomery, tired of waiting for the police to take some action on his case, has started a support group for parents of stolen children, as well as a website, KidsComeHome.com. “We get almost no help from the police,” he said, shaking his head. “Usually they insist we wait 48 hours before we can even file a missing persons report. Then they say it’s been too long, the trail is cold, and they can’t mount an effective investigation.” 

Ms. Hempsted, armed with the supermarket’s surveillance video of her daughter’s abduction, met only official indifference. “They told me the video wasn’t enough, a face isn’t enough, that they needed a name too,” she said, pulling her large sunglasses off the bridge of her nose and snapping them closed. “If I had a name, I could find the bastard myself.” 

Mr. Montgomery, whose son disappeared from their backyard just outside Cleveland, said he called the police immediately. “They said they’d come right over so I went outside to wait. They never came.” Mr. Montgomery quit his job as a copywriter to continue the search for his son—his stubble is now a few days thick, his hair just past unruly and, as he says, his appearance is “probably inappropriate for the office, even in advertising.” When he is not postering, fliering, or otherwise searching the streets and the Internet for his son, Mr. Montgomery and his girlfriend, Wendy James, petition the local police station. “We cry and beg them to help,” he says, “and every time they say, ‘We don’t have the time to look into every runaway case.’ They say, ‘Just get on with your lives. He’ll come home someday.’ They say, ‘Why are you so hung up on this?’” Mr. Montgomery shook his head and looked at his feet. “I hate myself for losing my child, for letting someone just walk up and take him, but I hate the police more.” 

The reluctance of the police to investigate these cases is a topic of much speculation among Mr. Montgomery’s online support group. In most cases, he said, the police prefer not to open a missing person inquiry because unsolved cases can threaten their annual bonuses and the political clout of local commissioners. 

“That’s ridiculous,” said Richard Strob, director of the Office of Human Trafficking, a six-month-old government agency based in Washington. Mr. Strob, 38, wore a pinstriped coal suit, his hair prematurely gray but carefully manicured, frosted in place. He was not quite tall enough for his large oak desk and constantly adjusts his chair. “This problem of the stolen children is vastly exaggerated. These parents and all the news reports want you to believe this situation is out of control, that it’s some kind of epidemic. But the number of cases is actually on the decline.” When pressed for evidence of a decline, Mr. Strob, whose office is still mostly in boxes, offered the following: “Let’s just say its dropping by like ... fifteen percent a year,” he said. When asked if he was quoting official government statistics, he said, “Yeah. Sure.”  

“Strob is full of it,” said Zaxby Thomas, a legislator in Washington state. “You go walk around my district for a day, you won’t even see any kids. Half of them have disappeared or been kidnapped; the rest aren’t allowed outside anymore. You can see them peeking out of barred windows, straining for some daylight. There are black Cadillacs on every corner. It’s just shameful.”  

Mr. Thomas, 52, says he has been trying with little success to get the federal government’s attention. Last June, after he sent a report to the Office of Human Trafficking and received no response, Mr. Thomas started sending copies to the FBI, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Health and Human Services—any department he could contact, without results. “I just can’t understand why no one is paying any attention to this problem,” he said. “We need someone in the federal government who will fight for the rights of the people, someone who has a conscience. Someone like me. That’s why I’m making a run for the Senate next year. Vote for me if you value your children. Vote for me if you love your children. Vote for me if you want lower taxes!” 

For the parents of missing children, the heartbreak and the frustration have turned into anger. Last March, about 65 families traveled to Washington to draw attention to the problem of kidnapped children. They staged a brief protest in front of the White House but dozens of police officers arrived within minutes to arrest them. 

“It was unsightly,” said Mr. Strob, waving his hand as he walked down the halls of his office. “First the White House, then they were planning to sit outside my office next. My office! As if I had stolen their kids. We can’t have that kind of rabble out here. We’re trying to run a country, not a damn NASCAR exhibition; not one of those blood sport baby-fighting games they’re holding out in the backwoods these days.”  

Mr. Strob ran the fingers of both hands from his temples to the back of his head several times and sighed. “You know what rankles me most? None of the little placards or chants at their ‘protest’, not one of them, even mentioned the decline I was telling you about. What’d I say, twenty percent a year? You didn’t hear any of them talking about that.” He passed by an open door and stopped. The room was long, bathed in fluorescent light and filled with rows of new steel filing cabinets. Mr. Strob quickly closed the door but those tending the files looked naturally thin-limbed and unlined, short and shaggy like 12-year-old boys, six-year-old girls, and ages in-between. Mr. Strob smiled. “Those are our pages.” He chuckled awkwardly as he leaned on the closed door. He started walking quickly again. “Summer internship program.” 

In some cases, local officials have even been reported as encouraging people to buy children. Michael and Betty Nguyen of Lincoln, Nebraska, said that after their three-month-old daughter was abducted, a local sheriff conducting the investigation came to their home. Mrs. Nguyen, who underwent a tubal ligation after the birth of her daughter, Linda, recalled the officer’s visit. “He said, ‘Don’t cry, stop crying, you can always buy another one.’ Then he slipped me a card with a phone number written on it.” 

Rumors of larger government involvement circulate among parents who are growing ever more desperate—whispers of government experiments, of an army desperate for child soldiers to police Afghanistan. “Oh I heard all that stuff, but none of it’s true,” says Graham McNeill, an unemployed chef in Buffalo, NY. Although not missing any children of his own, Mr. McNeill, 39, regularly follows news of the situation and keeps in touch with Mr. Montgomery through KidsComeHome.com. “I’ve even heard about the anti-government militias people think the kids are being trained for in the Dakotas. No no, it’s the government alright, but not what you think.” He leans in close and whispers, “What they’re really doing, what they’re using these kids for, is a program to repopulate New Orleans. Start the whole city over again with a brand new government-approved generation of residents.”

It was on hearing such rumors that Ms. Hempsted traveled to New Orleans seeking her daughter. “I stood outside every kindergarten I could find, every preschool, every park, just calling her name as school let out. But it’s not true.” Ms. Hempsted wiped her eyes, drew a deep breath and continued. “I never found her. They’ve got kids turning up missing down there too.” 

Other rumors find their way to official channels. “I heard a lot of these kids aren’t even abducted,” said Mr. Strob, hanging a dartboard in his office, across from his large desk. “What I’m hearing from a lot of these local sheriffs, and this is from the street, is that the kids are just runaways. Does this look good here? Anyways, they say it’s a conspiracy. A conspiracy of runaways. All these kids are organizing and running away from their parents together. What we got is a case of bad parenting, no white vans involved. So much for the abduction theory, am I right?” 

Mr. Montgomery has heard the rumor as well. “I heard the ‘Children’s Crusade’ rumor, yeah. Several different versions of it showed up on the KidsComeHome.com message board. I heard they were congregating in Detroit, taking over vacant buildings and old factories in abandoned parts of town. Living in communes, trying to establish a new society, Lord of the Flies-style, in the ruins of the old.” Sweeps by Detroit police have uncovered no evidence of a new society.  

KidsComeHome.com continues to attract new parents with new tales of woe—Mr. Garofalo just discovered it—but so far it has turned up no children. Parents of the missing are not about to give up. Like Mr. Montgomery, they post fliers in places where children congregate or are thought to be sold; like Ms. Hempsted they travel the country to investigate every rumor with even the slightest plausibility. A few who run shops—like Mr. Garofalo’s aquarium supply store—have turned their storefronts into missing person displays. “We spend our life savings, we borrow money, we will do anything to find our children,” said Mr. Garofalo, touching his graying mustache. 

For his part, Mr. Garofalo continues to hold desperately to a thin edge of hope. His windows are plastered with posters decrying his plight. Photos of his child adorn different fish tanks in his shop: goldfish have his son laughing, tetras have the boy hugging a puppy, guppies feature him laying in a pile of stuffed animals. But one tank has a picture of Mr. Garofalo himself—clean-shaven, young, and much skinnier, but still wearing the khakis and striped sweater for which he is known. He tends the fish inside meticulously. "These are the zebrafish,” he says. “A zebrafish can regrow its own heart.” He smiles as he watches the fish kiss the skin of the water, their stripes shining like shadows dancing on the surface of rippling coins, like streams of gold buried under the silt and sediment of a river of ink. 

He replaces the top of the aquarium and rips his picture from the glass.  

the wind is dressing in your clothes

on the lookout for predators and enemies
we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces

they don't sing in captivity

It was a winter of disconnection, loaded and heavy, and we were finally coming out of it, heads held like something had changed, hands held like something was different. It was a winter where people realized their prosperity was a joke, their ideology a lie, their work meaningless, their children ugly, their country broken, and their fears wasted on petty things—balloon animals, termites, cannibals, the flu. There were prophets and presidents and pariahs all shouting their prescriptions from pillars they personally placed on every street corner but no one was there to listen.

And then there was Rose, standing on my corner. She was a girl who lived down the street from me, only I didn't know it. If you went to the end of the block and made a left, her house was right there. We spent some time analyzing our similarities, half-joking and half-astonished. We were both relatively new to the city, both had spent unproductive, demoralizing seasons of unemployment before landing our current jobs, both of which were in publishing. We were the same age, both had bright yellow bikes and lived with roommates who had cats. We liked similar music, the same books. I asked her if I should be scared, if she was about to pull a "Single White Female" and try to become me and take over my life.

"I think you'll be disappointed with it," I said. Because I was.

"I'll wait to decide," she said, smiling over bright red glasses. "You’re a single white male though.”

“Am I?”

“I think so. I’ve never seen that movie.”

“Neither have I.”

But when we found out we lived in the same neighborhood, on the same block, I did get a little scared. We were either characters in a romantic comedy, marionettes on cosmic strings, or else she was a goddamn spy.

We started to see each other every day and I learned things about her, over tea or Thai food, things that scared me more. I learned she played guitar. I learned she tried to decipher her favorite songs, singing along in a soft, uncertain voice over shaky chords that were never quite right—female singer-songwriters, '90s rock bands, girl punk bands, and '50s rockabilly. I learned she tried to write short stories but left them largely unfinished or unstarted. In her career she wanted to work with fiction, with long novels, important epics of surrealism and absurdity that made statements about contemporary society. Mostly she worked with pet guides and novelty titles.

She was short, well-proportioned, her light brown hair chopped and sprawled in an adorable way, bangs uneven, but perfectly so. She had slender hips and copper-colored lips. She was small but small in a cute way, like something out of woodland folklore—a mischievous elf or a sprite, the kind that would lure unsuspecting medieval children into the woods, never to be seen again—or something more perverse. She wore bright colors, mostly: turquoise coats, red glasses, aqua t-shirts, pink leggings, gold scarves, orange knee socks. The colors she chose should clash but they all seemed to go together, all the same shade of different primary colors, and they made her glow and glitter, visible in a crowd, sun-drenched in grey winter.

Stuffed on tea and Thai, she walked me home from her house. We turned the corner and went the 115 feet down the block to my house, staring at the tops of the houses, at the roofs of our neighbors, comparing the peaks in silence. We walked through the gate. She pushed it closed, letting it click behind us. She stood about shoulder-height with me, neck craned up, watching me, perfectly motionless—legs, fingers, eyes, all painted in stillness—only a thin stream of steam escaped from her lips, drifting up and untangling slowly.

"Well," I said. Fumbling for my keys.

"Well," she said smiling.

The downstairs neighbor turned on a lamp inside, casting a bright rectangle around us. The light played across her neck, sliding down her temple, her chin, her throat, touching her soft skin.

"So, I—" I said and coughed.

Her eyes, framed by those big red glasses, were locked on mine.

"Uh huh," she said, waiting. One hand was squeezing the other. She bit her lip.

My palms felt hot. Her skin looked like it was carved of white wax or soap. I leaned in a little. She closed her eyes but didn't move. I stopped, uncertain. She opened her eyes, saw me paused, suspended, right in front of her. I didn't realize I moved but there it was, a warm rush as our lips touched. Her eyes were still open. So were mine. Her lips felt soft and humid, like bathwater down the spine, like clouds of tea suspending in glass—soothing, scalding, delirious, and caffeinated but solid too. Her eyes closed and I put my hand on her hips, felt the glide, the bend, the ache of them pressing gently, pulling closer, her body against mine. Her mouth gained confidence and power and she seemed certain, more certain of the kiss, more certain of her chest pressing against me. She bit my lower lip, soft but insistent, pulling me closer. I felt her leg rubbing softly on mine as she grabbed my coat, pulling me down and into her mouth. My heart felt hard and huge, like it was eating my chest.

I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. Sensation rushed back in, sharpening and flooding, lucid but bent and warped. The light in the house was off now but a man with a dog walked by and he turned his head and stared directly at us as he passed without breaking his stride. Rose noticed him out of the corner of her eye.

I was confused watching the dog walker, watching the little dog sniff at the edge of the concrete, confused because it was almost midnight and really, who walks a dog at midnight. I turned back to her. "So do you—"

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to come in?"

Her eyes flicked to the ground and then back at me. "Maybe. Maybe just for a bit."

I smiled. "Ok," I said, head spinning, heart pumping hard.

"Ok," she said.

We walked up the stairs and into the dull house, down the dark hall to my room, plastered with old posters and maps of places I'd never been, scattered with scratched records and books I hadn't read yet. Our coats came off as the door closed, her shirt came off as the lights went off. Glasses on the floor, her tongue in my mouth, hand under my shirt, heavy breath in my mouth. My hand was down her pants feeling rough and soft skin, feeling elastic and cotton and stubble. She pulled back and looked me right in the eyes, took a deep breath and said, "I can't. I just. This is, this is too much." She touched her face.

Her skin looked soft in the dark, like there were feathers hidden underneath; her breasts young and uncertain. They looked like they needed hands on them, around them. My fingers were still in her underwear, her pelvis in my palm. She closed her eyes, pushing her hair off her forehead. I tried to catch my breath as she got up to leave—picking up her glasses from the floor, untangling her bra strap from my shoulder, finding her coat and her shirt and reaching for the door.

"I'll walk you home," I said, grabbing my shirt and feeling like something was missing.

"But its so far," she said. I smiled, not sure if she could see in the dark.

We walked the 115 feet down the block and turned the corner to her house, staring at the fences of the houses, at the gates of our neighbors, comparing the hedges in silence. We stopped in front of her door.

"Well," she said. Fumbling for her keys.

"Well," I said and smiled. We kissed again, our breath mingling and rising up. Her nose felt cold on my cheek. It was difficult to stop, hands groping, tongues touching, blood pushing.

"I'll call you," she said, pushing away. "Ok?"

"Ok." I could feel saliva streaked across my cheek.

"Just to warn you, I tend to like guys that ignore me," she said. "You should wait till you hear from me." The door closed behind her with a slap.

She called the next day.

Vladimir Nabokov once said that the purpose of writing and of storytelling is “to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

the key to survival--in a factory, in an office, in a boardroom or a classroom or the bedroom--is to dream.

all of a sudden and for the first time, I felt my body moving from inside.

"Plans for Impossible Cities"

"Stewart Stevens and His Fabulous Bird Whistles"

"Vessels for Baal"

She touches the bruised spots
and wasn't it fun?
curiosity undiminished
she resets the horizon

He writes of avoiding his desk when inventing, avoiding the connotations of serious endeavor, of earning a living. “I wish instead,” he writes, “to be irresponsible, rash, associative, dreamy, impish, brainy, intuitive, and stupid.”

-Steven M. Johnson, inventor/author/cartoonist/former urban planner.

A Proposal on Taking Your Newsmagazine to the Next Level, 2

I spend my days at work staring at computer monitors and shuffling papers, trying to pretend like there's some desperate, important reason that these papers need to be reordered, very loudly, right now. They've been on the desk for over a month; I no longer know what they are.

I spend my days at work staring at my coworkers wondering about their lives, wondering what sequence of events could have possibly led them to Talking Drum, wondering why they would need to slum it so low and filthy. Imagining their secret lives, their private follies and vices, wondering what kind of people they were when Mr. Charles's back was turned, when his eyes were away, when they breathed free air and lived on their own time. I see Fate prowling libraries and comic stores, bike shops and online dating sites. I see Jerome drunk and stumbling, puking in an alley, holding a stereo over his head outside some girl's window in the 1980s. I see Kittie Lee draped in leather, flat on her back singing murder ballads to a mirror hung on a stone ceiling.

I spend my days at work composing tiny stories, stories that fit neatly onto single sheets of paper. Stories about roses growing from the top of a mother's head; about fish pouring from a priest's mouth; about young boys living in subway tunnels, living off dog meat and day-old doughnuts, tattooing each others with images of crows circling five-spointed stars; about the hilarious fate of the Collosus of Rhodes; about urban trolls selling hot dogs and prophecy; about a man whose social life is impeded by his enormous beard which is perpetually and permanently on fire; about a company marketing taco-flavored pizza and, six months later, pizza-flavored tacos; about psychic hospitals and seahorses; about postmodern novels sitting on the burning shelves of the ancient Library of Alexandria; about men with holes in their chests filled with nothing but tiny moving creatures and spreading black ink.

I take these single-sheet stories and distribute them one by one, leaving them in people's deskdrawers, in the bathroom, in the mailslots of other businesses in the building, taped up in the elevator, folded under the wipers of random cars in the parking lot, in Sammy’s Super Sandwiches, in the Subway or the Chik Fil-A, at Father and Son, at Algino's, maybe at Baja Grill or the Kitchy Kitchen. Anywhere, really. I take a stack of every story I've written, the complete works of me, I take them up on the roof and let them blow away in the wind, to the four corners of the city, to the bottom of the lake, to burn up in the center of the sun.

Then I go back to my desk, back to work, back to staring at computer monitors and shuffling papers.

Maybe you can read them some day, when we're together again.

* * *

"What the fuck?" says Jerome.

"What?" Kittie replies.

"Someone left something in my desk again. Something about seahorses having sex in living seas of tea. This shit doesn't make any sense," he says, shoving the paper at her. "The last one was about a kid with no eyes being abandoned by his mother behind a Dairy Queen shaped like a Disney castle."

"Hey, I got one of these too," she says. She looks over the sheet. "Where do you think they're coming from? The janitor?"

"What janitor?"

"Wait. We don't have a janitor?" She pushes her glasses up on her ridgeless nose.

"You think this building would have a janitor?" says Jerome. "Does anything in here ever look like its been cleaned? Do you think Mr. Charles would ever spring for cleaning service?"

"Who then?" says Kittie, kicking at a dust bunny.

"My guess is the white guy, " he says.

I look up from my desk and swallow. They're on to me.

"The old man that's always in here to tutor Mr. Charles' daughter. Guy creeps me out. He's always asking me about the mall and web design and cartoons. And he's always got a stack of papers with him. All hunched over carrying that briefcase. I bet he's the one leaving his perverted weird stories everywhere. I bet he forces them on Alise."

"Oh come on," says Kittie. "I wonder where they're coming from." She took the story and pinned it to the wall, under a framed cover of Talking Drum with a picture of the president of Ghana on it.

"Who knows, but I'm gonna beat the crap out of them when I find them," Jerome says, turning back to his computer. "What was yours about? The story you found."

"A perverted old man who gives weird stories to a little black girl."

"Whoa. Seriously?" Jerome looks up and looks worried. He touches the back of his head.

"No, it was about a day in the life of a lynching tree in the deep south. When the tree rustles its leaves, it's trying to scream the word 'no.'"

people prize what they don't understand almost as much as what they do.

there is a sea within the sea that holds perfectly still

an astronomy class was the closest I ever got to believing in God.

write a story where sleep is a real substance (possibly produced in a factory) and the supply is running out.

write a novel that functions as an enormous palindrome.

The Office of Human Trafficking, 1

From a short story I am working on that was inspired by a NY Times article about a wave of child abductions occurring in China. I thought it would be interesting to transpose the whole thing to America and play with the absurdity and tragedy of it:

---

Some of the children are thought to be sold to buyers in Canada, Mexico, or even Jamaica. However, parents of abducted children who have investigated the matter say that most are purchased domestically by rural families in other parts of the country--places like Iowa, Idaho, and Appalachia. With the country in the grips of a harsh recession, the sale of stolen children is becoming a thriving business, they say.

"Yeah, I know a guy who can get you a kid for maybe five, six thou," said Jackson Nash, 52, a carpenter from Wisconsin. "Friend of a friend. I hear about it all the time. Dunno what they use the kids for, could be anything. Heard a lot of different rumors. Some say they're using the kids to work in the meth labs out here. Others say its cheaper and safer to buy some kids to be the farm-hands than to hire them immigrant workers. Get to work em for years, ain't even got to pay em so long as everybody thinks they're you're kid. Also heard about this group over in the Dakotas that're buying up these kids to turn em into a militia, take back the country from the liberals and United Nations. You know, heard a lot of things. Can't say I really know for sure why or what's going on."

Even the extent of the problem is debated. According to law enforcement authorities, the children are simply runaways. All of them. The White House insists there are fewer than 1,000 cases of human trafficking per year--a figure which they say includes not just children but pregnant women, old men, and people in wheelchairs. But advocates for abducted children say there may be hundreds of thousands across the nation, perhaps even millions.

Samuel Montgomery, 29, whose son disappeared in 2007, has collected a list of nearly 2,000 children in and around Cleveland who have disappeared in the last two years alone. None of the children in his database had been recovered. "It's like looking for a gold fish in the Marianas Trench," he said as he pasted up posters. “It’s like digging for a single needle in a haystack the size of the planet Earth." The posters featured the word missing in all caps above crudely-photocopied pictures of his son's face.

According to rumors, the older children, less in demand on the market, can end up as prostitutes or virtual slaves. Some of the children begging or busking in major US cities are believed to be in the employ of the very criminal gangs that abducted them. Rumors also persist of a new blood sport gaining popularity in underground rural clubs, a form of dog fighting that does not involve dogs. “I don't want to even think about what happens to those kids,” Mr. Garofalo said, tearing up. "I like to think my son's been bought by a lonely rich couple looking for a kid to take care of them in their old age."

A zebrafish, for instance, can regenerate large regions of its own heart.

there are two kinds of prisons.

you are under surveillance.

"What they [are] really doing here is telling the creation myth backwards as the symmetrical conclusion to the history of the world. Escaping exile in an alien dystopia, human beings storm paradise and, upon reentering, tear off their clothes without shame. God's judgment is overturned, nonsense is unlearned, a woman presents an apple to a snake, symbolizing the release of nature from the yoke of human will. Genders cease to be rigidly defined, each person becoming a complete unity of masculine and feminine characteristics. Finally, in only seven days time, the entirety of the old world is unmade, and on the last evening the lights of all cities, no longer powered by vast unsustainable infrastructures, blink out one by one."

-Greil Marcus, reviewing Expect Resistance.

bury your weapons in the cemetery. say a prayer for ignorance, for arrogance, say a prayer for opulence—for all that's softly passed.

notes are a form of literature.

write a story where the setting changes from winter to spring in a single day. the morning starts cold and dark, snow drifting down from above, the trees outlined like chalk bodies. as the day progresses, it gets warmer. slush puddles form in crevices and on street corners, large chunks of snow start melting and falling from the high places, raining down from the trees, dropping like bombs. by the afternoon, water is dripping everywhere from all surfaces, seeping through roofs and spilling down gutters, dripping from eaves and running down the streets. chunks of snow bursting off the tree limbs and dancing in the sunlight. little piles of snow still left in corners and shadows. By the time of the late sunset that evening its all gone, and people take off their coats, the air no longer coloring their breath. have this follow the emotional outline of the characters (obviously).

listen to Astral Weeks, especially "Sweet Thing," while writing.

the end of the world as you know it is not the end of the world.

there's more to life than you ever thought—it can be lived more deeply, more gently, with a greater sense of fear and horror and desire than you ever imagined possible.

She listed her lovers on a yellow legal pad in pencil. The wild ones and the fearful, those she had to teach and those that taught her. Those who clung and the ones who kept a frightening distance. She drew a star next to those that stayed. The ones who left--gathering her sheets around themselves like burqas, like cloaks, only to drifting down through the floor and out through the door, leaving a painted trail through her home--those names she slowly crossed off.

“There’s no such thing as remorse,” she said and hands you the note.

perfection is a bad habit.

Wind Fish

So I kind of forgot about this. It's a post I made on a friend's blog called "Things You See While Eating," which is exactly what the blog's about--kind of a sociological people-watching experiment. Here's my contribution, semi-based on reality, semi-based on improv class (so its a bit silly), and semi-based on Link's Awakening.

http://thingsyouseewhileeating.wordpress.com/

---

Chicago, IL

It was the kind of place that was painted bright pastels, the kind of place where the staff was enjoyable rude, the kind of place owned by oily curmudgeons and wide-eyed cranks and reformed dreamers, the kind of place that made a mean turkey sandwich. I went through them pretty quickly, cycling through every sandwich shop in the neighborhood a week at a time. But this place, this was my new favorite because I could get both potato chips and potato salad—because potatoes are too delicious for just one kind.

With snow on my shoes, I trudged down the steps to the current week’s favorite basement sandwich shop. I sat down with my order and I dipped the potato chips in the potato salad and wondered at the true goodness of potato magic. The sandwich was too salty, the pastel rainbow on the wall looked more faded than usual, and I wondered if it was time to move on and start dining at the place across the street, Farakan’s Deli Dog.

I pulled out my current book, something about the Spanish Civil War, and tried to disappear. I try to evaporate right there, to slip back to 1938, to feel the sand and the sun and the oil of the rifle sliding between my fingers, to hear the sound of military chants floating on the air of Andalusia, to try to forget that I work beneath florescent lights.

“Yo, I ever tell you bout Johan?”

The voice was not Castilian.

“No, man. You never told me about no Johan.”

I looked up. It was these two guys, a big one and a little one, sitting at a table across from me eating pastrami sandwiches and talking loud enough to fill up the basement room, their vowels hanging from the ceiling, their saliva dripping from the walls, their laughter tunneling through my ears. Didn’t they know the Anarcho-Syndicalists were about to be routed by the Fascists? Can’t they shut up for one minute while the war reaches its inevitable and bloody turning point?

“Let’s go, bro. Who’s Johan? Lay it on me,” the little one said waving his hand.

These two guys. The little one looked like he wanted to be the big one. They were wearing overalls and workman’s boots, both with paint and plaster stains all over their clothes, heavy coats hanging next to them.

“Johan was this one, this guy, that Mindy used to know in college,” the big one says, biting into a potato chip. He’s bald with a beard.

“Oh man, how is Mindy? You really lucked out with her man. She’s really got the uh—” The little one made a squeezing motion to his chest. “You know?” He’s clean-shaven and wears a beanie cap with a hardhat sitting on the table next to him. His overalls fit better and look newer than the bigger guy’s looser, more frayed clothes.

“Hey man, lay off. That’s my live-in girlfriend you’re talking about there.”

“Yeah, well don’t think I ain’t takin’ a turn at her when you’re done.”

“Ay! What’d I just say?” The big guy pounds the table making the hardhat jump.

“I dunno, you were saying something about some dude named Jamal or something.”

“Johan,” the big guy says and glowers at him. “So Mindy used to know this guy. Said he was studying to be a marine biologist.”

“Mindy went to college? Man, brains and beauty, bro.” The little one motions to his head and his chest.

“She was there for like a semester before she dropped out. Then I think she used to just hang out wit her college friends for a year even though she wasn’t in school no more.” The big dude took a sip of his drink. “So anyway, this Johan. The dude liked whales and the college had a whale tank. It was a weird place she went, there was like a whole freakin’ zoo and a seaworld in there. Guy got in the habit of whale watching. He’d roll out of the dorm, ride his bike down to the tanks and just sit there watching them for like hours at a time.”

I was listening now. I was still holding my page open, still staring at the words like I was reading but my eyes were silent and listening.

“He didn’t have many friends or nothing. He was friendly with some people in his classes and some of his teachers or whatever, but you know, what she was saying, he didn’t hang out with anybody. Didn’t go to the bar after class or nothing.”

“Maybe that’s why he was staying in school and Mindy had to dropped out,” said the little guy.

“Yeah probably. No friends to drink with, I’d do homework and watch whales too.”

“Or at least watch some Van Damme movies or Skinamax or something.”

“Yeah, really. So eventually this Johan guy started getting in the tank with them,” the big guy took a bite of sandwich and continued with his mouth open. “With the whales. Even though only the caretakers and like the professors were supposed to be in there. This guy would climb into the tank every morning when no one was looking and swim with the whales.”

“Nobody kicked him out?”

“Not at first. Guess they didn’t have the heart. She said this guy was like a dolphin. He looked like he was traveling through the water without moving his hands or feet, he’d just kind of glide. He’d do rings around the whales and only come up for breath as often as they did. Like some kind of merman.”

“Or a mermaid.” The little guy held up his arm and let the wrist go limp. They both laughed.

“Good one,” the big guy shook his head, put a chip in his mouth. “Every day this guy was swimming with these freakin’ whales. She said crowds started forming not to watch the whales but to watch him slide through the water, grab onto their fins and pet them and everything. She said it went on like that for months until one day he refused to get out of the water when the caretakers came for feeding time. They called in campus security and everything. It was a big deal. The crowd started chanting ‘Attica’ and shit. And the next day, the crowd showed up but he didn’t. He just stopped coming. Dropped out of the marine biology program. Straight up switched his major to genetics.”

They sat there eating for a while. “Was he tryin’ to genetically engineering himself into a whale or something?” said the little guy.

“Actually, and don’t tell Mindy I told you this, cause she said it was all just a rumor, but it’s the opposite.”

“What?” the little guy said around a mouth full of pastrami.

“He decided the whales were too much like human to be animals. He was trying to free them from their bodies, from their whale-shaped prisons.”

“Oh, gimme a break.”

“I swear this is what she said. She was still hanging around the campus now and she said everyone was talking about it, everyone was saying ‘whale-shaped prisons’ and talking about weird genetic manwhales walking around pretending to be college kids. Any time they didn’t like somebody, or wanted to stop hanging out with a kid, they decided it was cause the person actually was a secret manwhale freed from his ‘whale-shaped prison.’”

The little guy rolled his eyes. “This guy turned the whales into people?”

“Said they were better than most of the regular people he met,” the big guy looked at his watch.

“Well you can’t argue that. Look at all these assholes,” the little guy waved his arms around the deli. “I wouldn’t mind having some whales in here if this is the best we got.” He looked over at me and I quickly averted my eyes back down to my book.

“You keep it up you’ll have as few friends as the merman. So,” the big guy took a sip of his soda. “Nobody had even seen this kid in a couple months when she says people heard these weird sounds at night, and shadows moving across the moon. The next day there were a bunch of smashed cars and some broken pavement out in the parking lot of the aquarium. Looked like a hurricane had torn through or whatever. And inside, the whales were gone. Poof, just gone.”

“And where was the merman? That Johan?”

“When they finally found him he was naked, wet and shivering, and standing at the top of the campus radio tower staring at the sky.”

I closed my book and went to throw away my garbage.

“What?” the little guy said, eating the last of his chips.

“Said he’d succeeded. Johan said he’d set them free.”

“You telling me those whales flew out of there?”

“I’m only telling you what Mindy told me.”

“So what happened?” the little guy said.

“I dunno. That was around when she stopped even going to the campus. I was thinking about it though. About how nice it sounds.” The big guy touched his beard and looked at the hardhat. “Just watching whales swim around, no home but the water, no worries but when you’re gonna breath next, all the fish you can eat. That’s gotta be good.”

They got up to leave, not bothering to pick up the trash on the table. “Yo, you think Mindy slept with that Johan guy?” the little guy said.

“I dunno. But if she did I’ll fucking kill her,” the big guy said with his hand on the door.

“Then I’ll have the corpse to myself. Lookout world!” said the little guy as the door closed behind him.

I picked up my coat, felt the hole in it and put it on. After wrapping the scarf around my neck, I stepped outside. At the bottom of the stairs leading back up to street level was a puddle of black silted snow that had melted and pooled. The air was cold and blank like a razor blade. I started walking up the steps and thought through the windows in my life: the bedroom that looked out on a brick wall, the lunches that were underground, the office that looked into another identical high-rise.

My breath was a fog that uncurled itself away from my face and hung suspended for the second before it disappeared. The air was mirrored and glacial, a shade that sparkled clear and ancient like blue Antarctic ice. And I stood there shivering and I lingered, staring at the sky, waiting for whales.

Susan liked to think of herself as a pair of gossamer wings startled by their own impermanence.

She lived on the fourth floor of a walkup apartment on the bad side of town. She kept the fridge stocked with apples, lemon juice and cartons of lo mein. The water was a force, a breathing, aching force in her life. When it rained, the walls would sweat and the corners would leak into the buckets she never moved unless she was emptying the water into a kettle to make tea. The toilet pipes groaned and bent. The tub dripped at all hours, its large claw fingers clutching the damp ground. The air was a feeling that touched her skin, chilled and moist as it crept backward into her skinny bones.

She held her dreams in a mattress on the floor of the living room. The windows of the bedroom were covered over with cardboard, cloth, and plastic sheeting; memories hanging from strings under burning red lights.

Most nights she felt alone, as though the solitude were a blanket she could wrap around herself. Most nights she felt like her lungs were made wax paper tied up with silk thread; if she breathed too quickly or too deeply she might punch a hole right through them. Each breath was a gift, like the heart of a newborn bird beating too fast, like cracked pearls choking a painter's brush, like seaweed, like arson, like anger, like dreams of desire and the old reassuring way the hands of someone else used to fit perfectly and comfortably around her neck.

Susan liked to think of herself as a pair of gossamer wings, waiting for the wind.

Favorite Records of 2008

Sorry. Kept forgetting to post this!

20. Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life
19. Man Man - Rabbit Habits
18. Hauschka - Ferndorf
17. Deerhunter - Microcastle / Weird Era Cont.
16. Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron & Fred Squire - Lost Wisdom
15. She & Him - Volume One
14. Bound Stems - The Family Afloat
13. Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual
12. David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything that Happens will Happen Today
11. Los Campesinos - Hold On Now, Youngster...
10. Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover
9. No Age - Nouns
8. Amadou & Miriam - Welcome to Mali
7. Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances
6. Deerhoof - Offend Maggie
5. Jay Reatard - Singles 06-07 / Matador Singles '08
4. High Places - s/t / 03/07-09/07
3. Fleet Foxes - s/t / Sun Giant
2. Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing
1. Dodos - Visiter

“I knew it was coming,” said Gloria Chilson, 56, the former owner of the house, as she watched strangers pick through her belongings. “You take what you can; you try not to care.”

am i the only one whose heart breaks just a little listening to Sam Cooke's "Having a Party"?

to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves

She dreams in photographs.

The Tomb of Roland Burris: A one-act play

Based on an actual conversation at work.

Me: Did you hear about Roland Burris’ tombstone?

S: No, is he dead?

Me: No, unfortunately he still breaths our air and drinks our water and it looks like he will soon be our US senator.

S: How unfortunate.

Me: Isn’t it? Anyways, turns out the guy bought himself a plot and erected a mausoleum to use as a family tomb.

S: Sounds gothic but not that unusual.

Me: And the guy had the words ‘Trail Blazer’ carved in big block letters under his name followed by a list of his many, many accomplishments with extra room left for whatever he might do in the future.

S: You’re kidding. What kind of achievements are we talking here? First man on the moon? Getting his GED?

Me: 'First African-American to: serve as Illinois state comptroller, serve as Illinois attorney general. First Non-CPA member to: serve on the CPA board.'

S: That’s an accomplishment?

Me: Well he blazed the trail, sure. He was the first. The level of hubris is almost unfathomable here, like something from a Greek tragedy.

S: If only this were the Trojan War, I’m sure he would have already been brought down by his pride. That or by a griffin or a hydra or something.

Me: Maybe by Cerberus.

S: Sure, three-headed demon dog, that would do the trick.

Me: So I figured now is the time that I should invest in my own plot and tombstone and put all my extraordinary accomplishments on it. That way history will never forget my intense and immense glory.

S: So maybe just a small 8x10 headstone for you then?

Me: I was think more like 15-foot tall obelisk made of volcanic rock. That way there will be four sides on which to record my historic deeds.

S: How about a normal-sized tombstone that’s just 15-feet thick. That way people will notice your accomplishments when they trip over them.

Me: Another good idea to consider. Maybe I’ll just have a statue of myself standing holding two stone tablets with my list of accomplishments on it. Like Moses.

S: And clad in flowing robes and a beard. Hey you could get the guy who did the Michael Jackson statue on the cover of HIStory.

Me: Or the blind girl who made that godawful plaster head that looked nothing like Lionel Richie in that one Lionel Richie music video from the ‘80s.

S: I understand she’s hurting for work these days.

Me: I don’t think I want to be as humble as Burris either. I’ll include accomplishments that I haven’t yet accomplished. Yet.

S: Give yourself some motivation to get out there and really strive.

Me: Sure, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. ‘First man on Jupiter, first Caucasian-American to lead the NAACP and/or the Nation of Islam.’ Now that its engraved in stone I kind of have to do it. No more sleeping in on Saturdays. 'Star of The Goonies.'

S: Well, what with all these accomplishments your engraving costs are going to be unreal.

Me: Maybe I’ll save some money by just scrawling all my achievements in marker on a piece of cardboard and leaning it on a rock.

S: Or just use the office printer to print up a list of accomplishments and just tape it onto a marble slab.

Me: It’s a laser printer, right?

S: I believe so.

Me: I’ll just send the marble slab through the printer, let the lasers carve it up for me.

S: Lasers are so awesome.

Me: So is Roland Burris.

A Proposal on Taking Your Newsmagazine to the Next Level, 1

I keep telling myself that things could be worse. They could be so much worse than smooth jazz. I imagine pregnancies and broken fingers, birth defects and rapists with bad breath, death, dismemberment, and smiling Republican presidents. I imagine being asked to 'rock the vote.' Yes things could always be worse, but when I'm sitting beneath those flickering fluorescent lights in that cold and barren building, sitting with the ugly white glare of the computer all over my face and the smooth jazz pouring all over my ears, I just can't deny it to myself any longer. This is the fucking worst job I've ever had in my whole life.

I mean, keep in mind that I worked at Burger King when I was 16. Remember that? I would come home every night with grease dripping from the ends of every hair. Keep in mind that I worked as a deli slicer in college. I would come home every day with the stench of meat encrusted into my pores. It was terrible. You remember. But this, this is so much worse. Every day that I'm here I wish I was cooking burgers for fat suburbanites instead.

I work 40 hours a week at a newsmagazine targeting the African diaspora community in the city. I know that doesn't sound bad but trust me. When I answer their internet ad for an assistant editor they say they're getting ready to launch a new magazine for ethnic families. The magazine is going to be called 'Ethnic Family'. Only it turns out I'm not editing at all. I'm writing. I'm writing product reviews of 'gifts for dad' for the holidays. What kind of ties do black fathers want? What kind of aftershave are Hispanic uncles dying for this season? I didn't know that generic holiday gifts had any particular ethnic angles to them but now I have to find them, figure them out, explain them, and play them up to try to sell lucrative related advertising.

So every day I sit here and listen to smooth jazz and want to punch myself in the throat for the low, low cost of only $8 an hour.

I should have never left you.

flowering orphans chained to the broken drums
know the mirrors hidden in the back of the sun
asleep in black clouds they say cut off your wings
in the parish of sorrow you must sing
of seaweed and sickness that quickly depart
the angry perfume that spills from your heart

its just a sympathy for the strawberry
its just a synonym for the soul

an economy of animal mysteries.