it has been 12 years, 34 fortnights and 140 light-years since i have written last. I know the light-year is a unit of distance -- take it easy.
since i have started writing and sharing stories with my friends, i have focused primarily on my travels, where i am bombarded with new information that requires parsing and digestion. this newness, coupled with my solitude, moves me to share and to write to all of you. like i'm writing letters to you. imagining us in a warm bar on a wintry day, drink in hand, describing how people smoke cigarettes while taking a shit in israel, or how the brazilians are weary of penny-pinching transvestite homosexuals.
all of these stories are written out of need, and yes from a sense of responsibility. i must share this with my friends, they need to know! they are written from a compulsive place, fueled by the urgency and potency of the thought, the obsessive worry that if i do not capture this moment right now, in this space, it will be lost forever.
in my "real life" this urgency is lost. the moments melt into each other and while they still require parsing, and fuck yes, they require sharing, i seem to defer this process to actual face time with you , drink in hand, looking into your eyes and laughing it up. but something is lost in translation, and something is certainly lost in time. the word persists the memory, and while i have no illusions or delusions of immortality, i love my stories and want to see them again and again.
so yes, friends, we are back. we are using the royal 'we' now, because we feel strong and powerful, and because we have been reading the most recent salman rushdie book , which involves akhbar the great, onto whom rushdie casts a number of existential problems involving personal pronouns. i was reading this book today on the 30 stockton, on my way into work. the 30 stockton, for those of you who dont know, runs (surprise) down stockton st, through the heart of chinatown. when i sit down on this bus every morning, i am usually lucky enough to get a seat. by the time we get to chinatown, it's like we are all of a sudden in china. not in a metaphorical way, an underage olympian kind of way, or a mu shu pork kind of way (this wold be interesting) - in a literal, 30,000 chinese folks in this bus kind of way. today , im reading this book and i cough. a chinese woman to my right says something to her friend and starts waving her hand to shoo my cough away. so here i am, sitting on this bus, one of 30,000 people crushed in, feeling slighted, mainly because we have to look up from our rushdie, and now we're eye level with a 45 year old chinese dude's balls. bad idea. at stockton and jackson, i had no need to cough -- in fact, my earlier cough was more philip morris than TB -- but the personal sleight was too much so i coughed louder. the response from my right was as expected -- crazy starts waving fanatically in my direction, looking away and yelling at her friend. i just didnt get it -- what did she expect on the 30. why not wear one of those goddamn moon suits and be done with it? no wait, a mouth mask, a gas mask and a moon suit. that should do her. at stockton and clay i started losing my shit -- coughing like i just swallowed the whole plague, reaching down deep for some phlegm, scaring folks who weren't so interested earlier. coughing loudly, grabbing the seat for leverage, covering my mouth -- sort of -- but letting my target of misaffection know that she best watch the fuck out for me, because i'm strong and powerful, and my lungs will move you. someone gets the message , chatters something impossible to her friend, jumps up and melts into the 30,000 strong.
friends, we are back.
