His yellow taxi is parked in its usual spot between my apartment and the hotel next door. In the alcove where one building ends and the other begins, he unrolls his prayer mat and places it over the cigarette-strewn cement. He angles it towards the Blockbuster video on the other side of our mega-road, and loses himself in prayer.

I pass him on my way into the apartment, his lips moving in silence and eyes half closed.

If you ever ask him if heís been to Mecca, his expression will …

So, holding hands with two girls who may be unable to think really of my reluctance to dance, the metal bugs on my teeth, how I would smile tightly, queerly, without eyes; holding hands with them, I circled the fire—and there’s this one photo of me, blurred by the heat from across the way, plus the smoke and sparks, the distance and the double-grain of the 800 film and the Thrifty digital processing, with lips like a red fingernail clipping, tall and stupid with discontent, holding hands without feeling.
We make …

What is it about high school that enables it to crush and demoralize, depress and provoke, to turn you into the most awkward, solipsistic version of yourself even years after you’ve left its halls behind?
Why does even the proximity of those who made up the social pressure cooker of our adolescence evoke such pangs of intense feeling when we haven’t spoken to them for years and, let’s be honest, never spoke to them much back then either?
These were the thoughts that flooded my head as I stood in the corner …

I coast down the hill near my house - I’m not looking forward to climbing it tonight. Maybe I’ll ride back on Hayes Street instead.

In The Realm of Small Talk
Hard-Won Success
Co-worker: Hi! Me: Hi!
Co-worker: How are you? Me: I’m fine, how are you?
Co-worker: I’m doing well. Me: That’s good. Well, see you.

We have chickens in our backyard. Two hens. One corner of the yard with a little house where they roost and lay eggs is fenced in, but during most of the day they roam all over the yard.

Dasha - Russian, in her mid thirties, unmarried. She used to work as a waitress but now she teaches Sunday school and relies on her faith to see her through caring for her dying mother.

Today is Wednesday, April 11 – quite the mixture! Wednesdays are fun because they’re the most colorful day of the week - darker than Mondays, yes, but lighter than Tuesdays and Thursdays. And I don’t have to try very hard for them to be green. They’re never red or yellow or purple, just green. And April is one of the most colorful months, too! Of course it’s silly to compare days of the week with months, but it can be done. April is lighter than Wednesday, and never green! If …

These are a few of the dreams I’ve had over the past few weeks.  I actually started writing a more straightforward piece about what I’ve been up to in the waking world, then I realized it was boring as shit.  I got a job, I do some things, blah blah blah.  But I have had some pretty weird dreams lately, and I’ll tell you three of them.  These strange narratives of my brain are open to interpretation.  Perhaps a dream provides a window into my true being in a way …

We were outside of Joe’s Pub minutes before the start of the show, with 10 other helpless hopefuls, ticketless and eager for any way in.  My partner in crime, Annie Abrams, and I had come to see Leonard Cohen and a female vocalist he planned to introduce, by the name of Anjani.  Of course the show had long been sold-out. To further fuse our desire to see Leonard and friend perform, we had spotted pop culture icons Elvis Costello, Lou Reed and famed producer of Allen Ginsberg’s “Holy Soul Jelly …