Finding Momentum

Sun­day, I get a call from Mike. “Hey Drew, lis­ten I gotta talk to you man,” he starts. But this time, his voice is dif­fer­ent: wea­rier, on eggshells. “I’m at Alta Bates right now. My brother Wayne’s in the hos­pi­tal. He’s on his way out.”
“Oh, my God. What hap­pened?”
“He’s got an infec­tion, and it’s been bad Drew, […]

I have never felt so small, stand­ing under the African sky. I wish you could be here to see it; sprawl­ing dia­monds falling out of the Milky Way, mete­ors arc­ing over­head over stac­cato light­ning beats. Bolts. This moment feels like a mem­ory, déjà vu reversed again. Tomor­row, I will wake early and have cof­fee. Tonight, […]

 
See more of my Shang­hai pho­tos »
I am at the clothes mar­ket on Christ­mas Eve, try­ing hard not to feel fool­ish. It is dif­fi­cult because 1) I have ter­ri­ble Man­darin abil­i­ties and 2) I’m really not that inter­ested in buy­ing any­thing. The ven­dors believe oth­er­wise, con­vinced I’m play­ing games with them. “Come on,” one of […]

“Lis­ten, Drew” Mike tells me, “They cut off my gen­eral assis­tance a long time ago. I got no money to pay the phone bill.” We’re stand­ing in front of the ghetto again, and Mike’s pac­ing back in forth in front of his milk crate. He rat­tles off a long list of errands he’s got to […]

With a City like this, calami­ties are bound to hap­pen. A elderly man slips down a nar­row stair­well and dis­lo­cates his hip. Sirens inter­rupt throngs of hun­gry shop­pers as two lad­der trucks rush down the Mar­ket. A red-headed biker car­oms off a dis­tracted SUV, and snaps his col­lar­bone. Blar­ing phones put 911 oper­a­tors on edge. […]

There is noth­ing ahead but fire­light, sweet chamomile tea, four ounces of froth and eraser dust. Sud­denly, we too are chil­dren; we too are pop­pyleaf flow­ers rid­ing rogue gusts of unbri­dled wind. The solace you seek lies one octave above, above the cloud cover, above the sor­row and heavy mat­ters of dirt, scan­dal and earth. […]

I. When the rest­less­ness again enters my legs
We dare do what mere men dare not! We linger in the rain when moth­ers world­wide would frown, wag­ging their fin­gers at us chil­dren lol­ly­dal­ly­ing in the pud­dles, stomp­ing on muddy daisies, the rain soak­ing our pores. We run exclu­sively when it’s wet, through throngs of umbrel­laed passerbys […]

Let’s love when we’re young, and let our freck­les shine in the dark. Let’s love hastily and reck­lessly because we fear the cousins of the unknown. We might stum­ble and we might fall, but we have time, fear­ful, dread­ful time on our side.
Let’s love when we’re old, and let our wrin­kles count our bot­tled years. Let’s […]

Six AM sun still slow
bite the chill of morn­ing air and
a win­dow left ajar
sirens and city noise are your ser­e­nade
as you stretch and shake off
cob­webs of yes­ter­day.
Seven.
–8/28/2004

There are four of us in this room, keep­ing the six-o’clock watch mark­ing the sun’s descent in this myrtle-green night­club under­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion to a sacred space, saw­dust fill­ing our nos­trils and uncov­er­ing shafts of light leak­ing from sky­lights (and I sneeze).
One cor­ner of the room is a cafe in a half-constructed state with orange walls, […]