Art Galleries and Barbeques or when it was Summer in San Francisco

Her nose hung up hooked by some invisible fisherman above the rafters and down the shaft of her nostrils she glared at me and said, "yes, they teach appropriation at those institutions." The word hung about her upper lip for an instant like a glove held in the hand that …

Two Hasty Lists on San Francisco

I still haven't written on the subject of San Francisco. There are still so many places/things I haven't seen/experienced, that I feel like I haven't yet earned the right. But until I feel justified to write an actual post on the city, for those curians (those who are …

If I had to choose, I think I'd choose to be a Swiss expat.

Coming Soon?

So curious..

What does all this mean to you?

What are you doing here?

There's a ghostly fog above me punctured by the extended arms of man, shooting upward from the sea, lifting cable and asphalt, towering above the greatest of our efforts, above our births and deaths. I saw a plaque …

Texas is the Reason

We people. Hairless bipeds. Crapping, eating, sleeping, waking, loving. We of flesh, bone, ligament. We bound to earth, bound to will, bound to fate. We each naked beneath our clothes, each homeless without our homes, each alone without our families, each futile without …

My Free Wifi is Gone

A camping mat is a hundred times better than a cardboard box. There's a humongous Goodwill store down the street. I bought a chair. There's a cramped little Pho restaurant at the base of my apartment that sounds and tastes just like Hanoi.

I have a phone interview …

A Hard Bed to Sleep on

There's a place in downtown San Francisco at Market and Sixth that rents live/work lofts designed for artists. They have a kitchenette, shared bathrooms, fresh paint jobs, friendly staff, great location, high ceilings, cheap rates, and no furniture. So this night, my …

The path becomes a place

The zen of train windows. Blur of grass and tree and dust and mountain.

Neighbors from strangers. Don't know their names, but them sleeping there gently head on shoulder. Arm crossing the invisible boundary where the arm rest should lie to find comfort in the warmth of …

We Must Constantly Be Jumping Off Cliffs and Developing Our Wings on the Way Down, K. Vonnegut

My bags are full again. Zippers bulge like cheeks full of air, eyes popping, waiting to exhale. On the living room carpet pieces of remaining luggage, the stragglers, the weak limbed gimps, left behind, to fall prey to the hunters, the savage beasts of arbitrary …

Even a morse code message into black arctic night supersedes silence, when the time comes for speaking

No ghosts will ever linger in these halls. No handworn shine will grace these doorknobs. No twilit luster of aged floorboards. The closet hinges, when they rub, will never voice the concerns of departed strangers. They will never be more than an irritation in need of …

Would that we could see one another face to face

As mirrors see them.

Would that we could sit and listen. To the truths in each line. Slowly unwinding. Like a ball of twine with all the time in the world.

Would that emerging was not bound, galley-slave to the departing. See him there peeking out the porthole. He'll be a …

Preparation for a returning

What is return? Tell me.

I might say that I returned a book to the shelf. I mean that from the same place I previously lifted it, I have, after some period of time, placed in back again. Implicit in returning is the idea that the object's content has remained unchanged. …

It's not finished

It's not finished.


It's not finished.

It's not finished.



It's not finished.

Bangkok MBK

Bangkok by morning. Slept as I haven't in weeks aboard an overnight train from Chiang Mai. For eleven hours out cold. Spent the morning in the park and the day in the mall. I smell like I came from the sewers. Everything is dirty. I need a bath badly. Maybe it's …

At Last, I will not Return Unscarred

Liberated in the winding mountain roads, he sped, two-wheeled, youthful and invincible, around curves, passing cars and pedestrians. His aviators gleaming, his hair a long, brown, bellowing flag of freedom. To the temple he was bound and at the feet of its 306 stairs he …

Thailand, My Mistress, at Dusk from Pai Canyon

Everything now so golden, so pure. Dangling earrings, shimmering gown, she covers her glowing smile with her hand and blushes, and I love her all the more for this act of false modesty. Valleys and mountains of joy form as the tectonic plates of her face dance to some …

Yes, as it should

We trudged through the jungle for two days, slept in a bamboo hut in a village, swam in a mountain river, ate traditional Lao food with lots and lots of sticky rice, drank Lao Lao, that putrid powerful homebrewed rice whiskey, with the chief, waded creeks, pulled …

It's hard to be optomistic when you still feel ill

LUANG NAMTHA, LAOS

I wish I had some amazing bit of insight to share with you, my ever faithful reader. But would you like to hear about the slow death of idealism? Or of my failure to find that which I was seeking? What that was exactly, I cannot say, though perhaps one …

To Lao

HANOI. VIETNAM

Before me looms a monumental 24 hour bus ride from Ha Noi to Vientianne, the capital of that forgotten gem of South East Asia, Laos.