Glenwood Power Station Mash Up 3

Does that make me a parasite, then, that you are instrumental to my joy?

Naru exceeds Calvino's imagination.

The jazz drummer says he is an artist, not an entertainer because it is the artist's job to wake people up. And entertaiment? Sometimes you need to sleep.

Say you are occupied, never conquered.

Glenwood Power Station Mash Up 2

Earth is a squat, said the South African musician between sets at Weeksville.


I don't know if I believe this yet, was my way of introducing an utterance that I had not written through first.

Is it the same with you as with songs?


The renowned artist was a fraud. But it wasn't his fault. It was the people who celebrated him.



Diets are the purification rites of the damned.


I'll relive today if you're in it this time.

Glenwood Power Station Mash Up 1

Innocence lost: The moment a child looks to you, to see if you will witness her cry.


Fear: superstition without the belief in luck.

We're not through yet. I haven't wounded you there, or there.


Speak less frequently if you wish to be heard.



Some towns feel like isolated incidents.


Objective: manufacture more serenity.

Notes from the Red Door Tour

On Sunday I joined the Red Door Tour in Chinatown. The group met on the corner of Allen and East Broadway, in front of an empty lot where a Chinese grocery store had recently burned to the ground. The clapboard barricades advertised a Japanese vampire movie.


The tour guide was a squat, though not inelegant Chinese woman who balanced a pair of imitation Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses on the upper register of her perm.




You may not be able to tell from the modest exteriors of these homes, the tour guide said as we paused before a triptych of effusive garbage cans. But the inhabitants of these red door apartments have experienced glorious strokes of luck over the years.



“Five people in this house won the immigration services’ Green Card lottery. Unbelievable! They call themselves the ‘Green Five’ and meet once a year at the Red Lobster in Times Square to celebrate their good fortune.”




“A woman on the second floor of this apartment gave birth to three sons, each of whom went to Harvard and did not major in liberal arts.”




“Red is lucky – where does it come from? It is a story that can be traced back to ancient times.

“A young scholar in love with a beautiful courtesan spent day after day composing what he hoped would be the most beautiful love poem in the world. He hoped to present it to her on a scroll of paper tinctured with dew drops and peach blossoms and tied with a braid of his own hair. For two months, he had been whittling the proper metaphor for the curve of her eyebrows.


Through a hole in the wall, the courtesan spied on his impotent labors with mounting turbulence, flipping her silk handkerchief back and forth like a dolphin at a marine amusement park."




“A monkey watched all this unfold atop his perch in a persimmon tree. He found the goings-on so comical that he began rocking back and forth on the branch with laughter, the force of which shook him loose from the tree. Yet the monkey, being a monkey, greedily refused to release the fruit from his hands as he hurtled to the ground. He absorbed the impact entirely with his ass and scampered away unscathed, his bottom reddened.


“‘What a lucky monkey am I! he screeched, causing the scholar’s brush to ricochet across the rice paper and the courtesan to bite down on her tongue, drawing blood.”




“Of course I can speak solely to the luck of those whose legends were told. There are countless others whose private fortunes and joys can only be imagined. Perhaps two lovers possessed of a byzantine sexual fetish found one another without the guidance of the Internet. Or a troublesome cyst that had lodged in the center of a man’s back for nearly half his life burst without incident.”




“Some red door houses, like this one, have Dark Luck. You may delight that your children speak so fluently, indeed, thoughtlessly, in English, only to have them lance you with their canceled sitcom barbs, skulls perpetually clamped between earphones. Or say your husband wins 10 dollars from his first Instant Scratch-off Game. He spends the next 20 years scratching that itch like a skin disease.”




“It won’t do you any good, kissing it and rubbing it like that. This isn’t some Irish stone or African American tree stump. The Chinese believe you have to enter your luck, inhabit it. Feng shui: maybe you’ve heard of it?




“You are asking yourself if such a person called ‘Poop Dick’ exists. He does. Why he was called that when he lived here as a boy doesn’t concern us. Most likely he was either too tiny or too fat; possibly he smelled bad.


“Some of us are born leaning forward like hood ornaments, our ears flattened back with the wind. Others are scrawled on the backs of envelopes or born with wings of lead.”




“To answer your question, yes, I lived in a red door walk-up for many years.

“I am not one for philosophy. If you’ve found that thing to love, you are lucky. It doesn’t have to be a person. It can be a purpose. You will know what it is by your fidelity to it."




“Is it my great fortune now, to be standing here with you sharing the great history and culture of the Chinese people? If it is not, what is it?”

A Friend of a Friend

A friend of a friend swallowed a boiling dumpling and died of throat disease
A friend of a friend lived with three other women in a house in Baltimore that rented for $200
A friend of a friend took a bottle of Prell to bed, groaned all night, thinking it was liquor
A friend of a friend is always in some hapless shit
Backstroke in good luck or stretched out on the devil’s work bench


A friend of a friend’s penis tapered like an anteater’s nose but that was no problem
A friend of a friend fizzed momentarily in a motel jacuzzi with a serial killer
A friend of a friend perished in Jonestown
But another friend of a friend joined a cult that grows organic vegetables, no big deal
A friend of a friend rolled over and smothered their sleeping infant
A friend of a friend counted to three and the bullet just grazed his left cheek
A friend of a friend lost her scalp to farm equipment, now wears a wig
A friend of a friend is rewriting the dictionary with their true meanings


A friend of a friend stroked out, went from blonde to brunette overnight
A friend of a friend married another friend of a friend and made babies
A friend of a friend huffing on the stairs realized he was a ‘frail elderly’
A friend of a friend put everything he owned on craigslist then vanished
Terrible things! Wonderful things! Things made real in this life
By the friends of friends, those monstrous, worldly beings

A Medical Procedure

After some deliberation, I decide to have my head surgically removed, even though the procedure is not covered by my insurance plan.

At my first public outing with my new look, public reactions range from stunned silence to aggressive indifference.

A woman I know vaguely from weary laps around social circles nibbles on her greasy samosa and compliments me on my summer get-up.

I discover that, even without a head, it is still possible to nod with rapt interest at what someone else is saying. I use my hands to indicate my sympathies, shock, dismay – a full canopy of emotions under which we both seek shelter from the awkwardness of staring vacantly in a corner.

Two drawbacks: One, I can’t laugh, which I make up for by slapping my knee and rocking my upper body backwards in my chair. Two, I can’t kiss, but I find that lightly pressing and twisting the recipient’s lips together between my thumb and index finger is an acceptable substitute.