the improbability of meeting

i'm having a real run with the used books of late. a hot streak. this little kid in my cafe just said that this is the best day of his life. middlesex was three dollars at counterpoint records, huge cookie dunked into a glass of milk and ice cubes at the bourgeois pig while waiting out traffic. the password that night was rollinginthemud, one word. two veggie burgers! my friend sings from this counter here. yesterday between business meetings i was in the beverly hills library scoring the sun also rises for the old three dollars again. the lady sitting distant behind the low desk was old, she was gonna give me eighteen dollars change from my twenty, but like neurotic knight in shining armor, inner dialogue reverberating through lifetimes in the seconds between, i refused to let the error slide and made sure to pay her full price. i grew out of the night without a line like those twisted branches decorating the garden room of that tree house for rich people. three of us guys in a photo booth trying to find document of ourselves. the ask was two dollars here, perfect condition paperback, plus tax. i'd read this little number and the papa novel several times each, but twodollarsc'mon! these stories familiar and new, well written, are happening amongst something very much the same.

the end of the brain/heart vacation

there is a window greased and free-flowing within its frame. when you open this window the entire world floods into your home and heart. chaos runs amok in these moments before you're supposed to have the planet over as houseguest. this old man sneezing into his newspaper dozens of times. nina simone singing "you kiss me and with your kiss my life begins". a forty-three minute recording of my father monloguing about the layers and layers of his fascinating times and life, bits and pieces, that make one heck of a meeting room pitch from Beverly Hills Adjacent to Mid-Wilshire and up to Century City. i watched the sun setting from a pre-tragic boardwalk, glowing orange yellow, the final brilliance lowering down behind mountains like a gentle pit of faraway light lava.