The Critic

[a bit of flash fiction, may flesh it out when I have time]

Their Manhattan vacation was fairly ruined -- Ruined! The weathermen were predictably wrong, and a second Canadian stormfront made Ruin! of relaxed strolls through Central Park and explorations down the long avenues. But even worse, their host--and presumed trail guide--was called away on business at the last minute. "Of course you should still stay here while I'm gone! Just don't forget to feed the cat!"

This was their first visit to The City, and the twin disasters left them confounded and lethargic. They were shy and not terribly adventurous on their own, and the departure of their energetic and city-savvy friend soon saw them falling into old rituals. They watched endless hours of television (cable!), drank endless cups of coffee, and wine, cooked dinner and read books, and passed the cat from lap to lap. It was like they had never left home.

By Thursday he had had enough. That night they would go see a movie and then eat dinner at some obnoxiously-priced world-class restaurant.

"Yes, I knew it--tons of cancellations with the weather!"

"Are you sure you want to do this? That's an awful lot of money for one dinner. And it's still just nasty outside."

"C'mon, honey, I'm going to go all Shining if we stay cooped up here any longer. And yes to the dinner--why not if this is the only restaurant we hit all week?"

In the end she was persuaded by his repeated references to psychosis and Psycho. Clearly he needed to get out and blow off some steam.

The movie was a critically-acclaimed Hong Kong export, but it was inexplicably subtitled in English, Japanese, French, and Malay. The rosetta stone of text often obscured half the screen, and the film sometimes changed the order of text, leaving the couple frustrated and unable to follow either the action or the dialogue. He was livid. "Can you believe that shit? How the fuck could anyone follow that? I can't believe we wasted our money on that garbage!"

He wouldn't stop ranting as they exited the theater, continuing to bitch with ever-increasing ferocity as they huddled closely by the curb, under the cheap umbrella he had purchased that morning. His frustration reached fever pitch as taxicab after taxicab flew by, all occupied and seemingly eager to re-douse their already-wet legs. "Fuck! We're gonna miss our reservation, you fucking assholes!"

Finally a cab appeared with a lit sign, slowing to a stop in front of them. Just as he reached for the door handle, another man's hand cut out in front of his.

"Excuse me young man, but I believe this cab as mine."

The old man stood there with an imperious scowl on his face, his considerably younger wife standing distant and pretty under her own umbrella.

This man was famous.

But the young husband was past the point of deference. "I don't think so. Asshole." He shoved past the older man and almost threw his wife into the cab. As they pulled away he lowered his window and shoved out his middle finger. "Fuck you, Salman! Your last book sucked!"

smoke addiction (ii-a)

Under the awning of the smokers' section, we were all thinking the same thing: Where are the damn police and ambulances? A virginia slims had already dialed it in, but there were still no sirens.

Aston-martin was still oblivious to the rain and diluted blood that spider-webbed across his face as he slowly weaved down the hill. His shirtfront had blossomed into a menacing and slick black bib, the once-pink tulip in his breast pocket now just wilted black petals.

The chaos piled up on California behind him, as a cable car sat immobilized uphill from the little two-seater, unable to swerve off the tracks and around the sportscar's open door. It wasn't long before passengers sprung to the street on both sides of the firmly planted cable car. A patch of black and plaid umbrellas sprouted above the frustrated passengers abandoning ship and floated downhill with the stormwater. The cable car soon added its bell in accompaniment to the motherfucker sonnet.

"Someone should go close that door," said a miss parliaments, smartly.
"Yeah, someone," answered a young marlboro red. "Someone not me."
We all laughed. It was true. None of us wanted to walk out there when the entire point of being here was to keep dry while feeding the addiction. Besides, aston-martin was still barely fifty feet down the hill, and the guy was clearly in a bad state--who knew what he would do if you touched his car?

The rain picked up its tempo, the torrents now coming down in silky waves, undulating like syrup off a spoon. Aston-martin was now on his third stanza of motherfuckers, and we knew he had to wrap it up soon because his cigarette was now down to a little nub. He was almost to the last couplet when he was halted by another wet suit, this one belonging to a passenger hanging off the side of an overpacked cable car making its way uphill. Aston-martin's cigarette hand hit the outrigger's drenched knee with a sloppy thunk and that was that.

smoke addiction (i-a)

The brown haze is most apparent on mornings like today's, when blue sky fills the windowframe. I can get the physical evidence by wiping the glass with a clean tissue, but I'd rather leave it for now.

I don't know why blue smoke leaves a brown film, but I first noticed that peculiarity after we bought our first car. It was the cheapest new car in the entire auto mall, a basic blue saturn sedan, so basic that the windows rolled by hand and the muscle-assisted steering was sufficient reason not to parallel park on inclines. It was plastic and it wasn't pretty, but it was all we could afford.

We smoked like little devils in that car, especially during the long drives out of the district that became our ritual every weekend. The east coast carved out a nostalgic hollow in our chests that could only be filled by mountains, so we would venture out every Saturday morning, usually west, in search of calming elevation. We kept calm during the drives by smoking and playing dj with the discman, being in the not-here while waiting for the want-to-be-there.

I'm not a real car-washing guy, the kind of guy who buys special waxes and lovingly wipes down his car with his softest towels, so it wasn't until a trip late that first summer that I noticed the diminished clarity of the windshield. We were nearing Shenendoah when I happened to swipe my finger next to the oil-change reminder sticker. The clear ribbon of blue sky through the glass shocked me.

Like any normal dumbass with random OCD tics, I asked my wife to grab a napkin from the glove compartment, and I started wiping down the windshield with my left hand, the right hand still on the wheel with my cigarette vised between two fingers. My wife got irritated and then alarmed as my driving got more erratic, as I darkened the napkin first with side-to-side swipes, and then with up-and-down brushes. I was reaching for the lower left corner of the windshield just as we entered an unbanked left-turning curve. I oversteered across the line--toward the silver grill of a oncoming semi. I quickly swung the wheel clockwise, putting an ashy streak across my lap, and fishtailed a 180 into a fortuitously-placed gravel turnout. We sat trembling for a second before my wife punched my shoulder--hard--and made me drop my cigarette.

smoke addiction (iv)

One of the sensory pleasures of smoking not often discussed is the visual quality of the smoke. I particularly like cigarette smoke because of its subtle blue tint. Sorry, I'm not one of those writers who will track down the pantone number for you; it's just blue, maybe like a matte metal grayish-blue, maybe like a blue anodized aluminum tube with a satin finish that's rubbed over with a gray crayon, something like that. Anyway, it's blue, whereas cannabis smoke is about as white as a cloud in a kid's painting done on white paper, where the kid just leaves the cloud space and watercolors the sky around it. Cigars? Swear to god, the smoke is actually brown, just like the wrappers, although admittedly I haven't smoked enough cigars or observed enough cigars being burned to say I'm confident in that generalization.

Although, now that I've finished that paragraph and my high is starting to fade, my memory reminds me that not all cigarettes have blue smoke. When I was considerably younger and considerably more self-consciously pretentious than I am now, I smoked these really black tar and asphalt-tasting little numbers called sobranies. The paper was actually this dark, rich mahogany and the filter a metallic gold. (Gold! I felt like a bond villain smoking them in our small-town cafe. Maybe more like the son of oddjob in a witness relocation program.) Anyhow, those things were like angry dragons or coal-fired trains, pumping out a thick, velvety charcoal haze. The smoke strangely smelled nice, but it was not a pretty sight.

smoke addiction (iii)

We stood outside the medical center looking out across the dull layers of gray, white, white, and gray. I bummed a smoke from Ricky, which was fine because he bummed from me all the time. There is a special smokers' ethos--gotta share if you've got one to spare. We're all in this addiction together, so denying a brother or sister in need... well, there's a special place in hell for those bastards, and it probably looks like an infinite queue of happy smokers, none of whom has an extra cigarette to spare.

Anyhow, this was one of those really cold days, the kind where we did the let's-try-to-hold-a-cigarette-while-it's-thirty-below dance. Like most Inupiat dances, there wasn't much foot movement--it was more like a one-cigarette juggle: right hand in pocket, left holds the smoke, right holds the smoke, left hand in pocket (at that point I wasn't skilled enough to do the Clint-style no-handed cig-hanging-from-the-lip maneuver--the smoke in my eyes got too irritating).

We danced and smoked looking like two michelin men, me because of all the extra clothing and Ricky because, well, because he was Ricky: typical Inupiat, 5'7" in all directions. Unlike me he also had a good shield of wind-blocking facial hair and a quality, hand-made Inupiat parkee, real seal in the body, and a thick beaver-fur hat. He also never tired of the same old eskimo joke, pointing across the Bering: "It's the damn Russians making it so cold. Be warmer if we nuked them."

A third and a fourth smoke came out of his pack as he told me why he quit drinking the previous spring.

"I took my pfd check to KIC and got the fastest snow-machine they got. Arctic Cat, racing one, thousand cc. Got real drunk and then rode toward Noatak. Real fast, there was a big big hole in the ice, I jumped off but the cat--" he made a loud *click*-- "I cried all week. My wife got pissed too, said she'll beat me if I do it again. So I stopped. I only drink beer now."

smoke addiction (ii)

A previous Tuesday, I was huddled with some fellow addicts under an awning by Kearny and California, as the clouds drowned San Francisco. It was the normal scene, an assembly line of one-cigarette characters. The marlboro men have the least endurance. Next come the women with lady smokes, virginia slims and somesuch, some longer than... some other dude's penis. Me and my kind last the longest, american spirits, organic, which means they burn slow and it's like guaranteed to give you less cancer.

I'd shepherded a couple acts already when a loud SCREECH-THUMP did a two-step between the raindrops. All the necks turned like wheat in a shifting wind, directing eyes to the white aston martin that had just planted its nose into a massive pothole. The bald driver got out, he was in a light gray three-button with a pink napkin in his pocket, and he started stumbling down the hill, shouting MOTHERFUCKER!, as his suit quickly darkened from rain and the blood dripping down from his forehead. The napkin was soon black like the asphalt.

We in the smokers' gallery were most impressed: his fingers still gripped a cigarette and he had the sense or practice to shield it from the downpour by cupping it backwards in his hand. After every third or fourth motherfucker he took a powerful and dramatic pull, before exhaling the smoke of the fourth or fifth motherfucker.

smoke addiction

My windows are filmed with the grayish-brown haze of six months of american spirits. I'm sure it's from the smoke because the panes are darkening on the inside. I try to quit the habit, but like most addictions it will likely only happen if the cigarettes literally get up and leave me.

Oliver Sacks, the neurologist, wrote a great description of addiction. I chopped it up into a poem:

Addiction
Is
A self-induced catatonia
A repetitive
Action Action
Bordering on hysteria.

It's pretty dead on. It's most apparent on rainy days when me and my fellow addicts huddle under every available awning, shuffling, shuffling to keep our catatonic feet out of the wet. We pass forth lighters and dark wit, trying to forget how fucking retarded we are, staying dry to kill ourselves. Hysterical.

Noctilux

UNBELIEVABLE. It couldn't be. Not at a garage sale.

OF course, this was more like an estate sale, no matter what the sign said. No cheap porcelain figurines, no landline telephones, no cables with connectors that might have been useful if your computer was from 1995. No, this was... amazing. A dozen milk-crates, maybe more, packed with mint condition LPs, most in their protective plastic sleeves. The hipster kids were already doing a bit of passive-aggressive elbowing to get to the goods. NO FUCKING WAY, Sgt. Pepper! White Album! MONO! I envy the kid. I really do. The vinyl monos? Are you kidding me? I wished I still had a turntable. Sly, Marvin, Ella, Pink Floyd, a ton of old Chess pressings. This old lady had it all.

THE house was in beautiful shape. Not one of those new buildings that just screams cheap imitation, this was a real edwardian from before the quake. The trim was gold and crimson, not at all faded, like shield walls of lacedaimonian hopla, red lambda lines popping out brilliantly in the sunlight; there were delicate egg-and-dart mouldings around the windowframes, an architectural design motif in use as far back as the minoans. I always liked seeing that. The tiny garden on the other side of the stairs was in disrepair, but you could tell it was laid out by a real gardener with a keen eye, not someone just seeking plant density.

AND there was the art. Not the stuff people buy at target and put up in their bathrooms. This was work by legit street artists. Doolittle. Campos. Plasma. For years I've seen many of their murals and sidewalk art up and down the mission. Their paintings are haunting--moon-eyed alien figures cavorting with feathered traditional dancers in mexican villages, giant cats taking up an entire half-block of building, massive tiger faces interwoven with human faces, human hands, the brilliant orange and deep blacks just mesmerizing with their intensity and delicate touch. Some oranges fierce as hot coals, others delicate like california poppies, it reminds me of one of my favorite phrases: chromatic spray ...like a paint-laden top spraying color in an infinite spin. I feel like I'm slipping into a Terry Gilliam film when I see them. A girl was holding a Campos canvas, four by three feet, a deep blood red background and a pale alabaster figure reclining in the foreground, his body wrapped in thorny vines, some of which pierce his skin and from which blood flows in little streams. He's looking off into the distance, where stand a receding row of columns, each enclosing a taut black figure. I didn't care what it meant, it was stunning. I envy the girl. Another girl held an old victorian window-frame, glass intact, onto which Doolittle had painted a brilliant neon aqua robot, menacing red and yellow eyes, massive teeth, molars really, chomping down on a tiny heart. It too was stunning. I envy her too.

ONE of my favorite movies in grade school was The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It shouldn't be surprising, since the first movie I ever saw in a theater as a child was Gilliam's Time Bandits. I didn't understand half of what was going on at the time, but I fell in love with the fantastic worlds coming alive--a chromatic spray--on that big screen. My favorite part of Baron Munchausen is when the traveling party descends into Vulcan's smithy, where they are surprised that the god spends his days running a lucrative arms dealing business. He proudly shows off his wares, until they come to his latest creation, a prototype ICBM. It kills the enemy, All the enemy. And their wives, children, sheep, cattle, cats, and dogs. Everything. A terrible act, all accomplished by just the push of a button. The little girl is shocked. Who would ever want to do something so horrible? It takes all kinds.

AND then I saw it. Thick black metal barrel. Just a squat tweedledee on a table next to the stairs up to the owner's place. I couldn't believe it was just sitting there, ignored. The caps were on. Good. I opened the front cap and looked at the massive convex face, no scratches no pits, smoothly alternating purple and yellow lines in the reflection. Coating's still intact. I took off the back cap and pulled out a gray card. Slowly tumbled the barrel in my hand like a top losing momentum. No fog, good.

TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. Um, ma'am, I'm sorry, but, do you know how much it's actually-- I don't care. It's my husband's old stuff. I don't want it anymore. Eyes turned away. A hard edge, but not angry. Strange. I didn't want to argue with her, but it would be wrong to take this thing for such an absurd price. The barrel wasn't in mint shape--the brass was showing through some rubbed paint near the shade mounts; it was clearly the tool of a real photographer who used it, not a collector's piece. But the glass was perfect. I ran as fast as I could.

BOKEH is a word often used by photographers. It refers to the out-of-focus areas of a photo when a narrow depth-of-field isolates an object or plane in focus. But no one can really explain what good bokeh is, it just is. Most people describe it as Aesthetically Pleasing. Smooth and soft shadows, easy transitions between dynamically varying lights and darks, no jagged or harsh grain. But these are just general and vague descriptions: like all such things, beautiful bokeh depends on the eyes. The same photo will elicit a hundred different opinions about the quality of the bokeh. And every lens has a different bokeh signature, which can change depending on focusing distance, the aperture, the object being shot, and even the film used. One photo may show outstanding pop in the foreground image and a calming bokeh, and the same shot taken with different aperture and shutterspeed settings might reveal a jagged and harsh background. Even then, some people like harsh bokeh. It takes all kinds.

MY card was out of my case before I was even in the door. HEY, lawya-MAN! Hey, Jaffar, how're you doing today? Dude, checkit: I got back wit my Lady last night! That's great, J-man, how'd you swing that? Check this: I found this old photo when me and her went to Santa Cruz last summer--you ever ride the coaster? when you get near the end, they got these cameras, see, and they sell you the picture, so I took it and put it in a frame I got down at that store down past brannan, and that, roses, my best falafel, BAM! Hot Night Last Night! I busted outlaughing. Jaffar was really hilarious and just ferocious, love, life, falafel, didn't matter, he jumped at it like it really did matter. I bought a coke and some smokes because it's pretty rude to come in just to get cash from the ATM. J-man, I'm happy for you--glad you got her back. You Know it man! and hey, come back after three, I should have some fresh falafel out then. Will do, Jaffar, see you later. He gave me his big open-mouthed grin and thrust his right fist in the air. I would be back. His sandwiches sustain me.

I gently put it down on the table. Four-hundred dollars. Half my month's rent. Really stupid since I had to watch expenses as of late, but fuckit, when was I ever going to come across one of these that didn't cost the same as a down payment on a new car?. She just took it and put it in her gray box. Looked away. Nothing. I wanted to say something, maybe offer condolences, but I was just another stranger taking away her dead husband's things. I walked away. I thought maybe I should send her money in installments to make up for the deficit, but really she didn't care about the money. Sending more money would just be an installment reminder of the stuff she was trying to forget. Cruel. Maybe I'll wait a year and just send it anonymously; maybe she won't make the connection. Maybe. As I walked away, I wondered what happened to her husband's photos. I felt dark, and I needed to find a dark place, fast.

NOCTILUX. The name is instantly recognizable to most seasoned photographers. Old rangefinder hounds especially speak of it in reverential tones. There is no production lens like it, and its uniqueness is on display right on the barrel: 50mm, 1.0. ONE POINT ZERO. That's a full two stops faster than the normal prime kit lens that comes with starter cameras (four stops faster than a zoom), a full stop faster than the "fastest fast lens" of the competitors. It's the difference between using a flash or shooting in moonlight, candlelight even. The name really says it all: night light. Canon once made a 1.0 lens, but it was widely regarded as a dog, totally unusable when wide open, which is the entire point of having such a huge hunk of glass. The Noctilux is different, it was made to be shot fully open, in near darkness.

IT'S one of my favorite bars. It's not particularly nice inside, but it's pretty friendly, and it also doesn't have a particular crowd. You see the hipsters, the college kids, the old drunks, the mexican guys who haul groceries back and forth for the local bodegas, other working guys, and sometimes guys like me. The bar is shaped like a big horseshoe, so it's pretty hard to avoid looking at other faces and making eye contact. It really tends to facilitate interesting conversations. And the music is good too.

TO the left of me were two girls, punk-hipsterish, early-twenties, one with kool-aid hair, tartan plaid miniskirt, the other full of piercings, black skinny jeans. Cute. But what drew me most was kool-aid's boots: they were green patent leather knee high boots, with neon orange zippers that ran all the way up the back. I had never seen anything like them. They were discussing the best burrito joints in the neighborhood. I waited for a break as they were talking pork and chimed in that guadalajara had really good carnitas. It was all good. We didn't get into a burrito jihad, and they told me about a few places I hadn't tried. Crystal castles was playing and we talked about music for a bit. Piercing girl was a DJ and loved sampling motown into her trance mixes. I tried to think what that might sound like, but I couldn't wrap my music brain around it. She promised to send me a track through email so I could listen for myself. I thanked her.

I asked kool-aid where she got her boots. I got'em in austin last year at southbysouthwest, aren't they cool! I told her that she had great taste and that I had never seen boots so strange and stunning, and that if it didn't creep her out I would like to take a snap of her boots. It's always a good idea to ask, even if on the street, lesson learned from a trip to seattle a few years back--just because you have the legal right to do something doesn't mean you're not violating a social norm. Some people don't care, but others get really upset, as if you're really stealing their souls. Kool-aid was actually very flattered and proud to show off her boots; I could tell she really loved them. They spoke volumes, both to her and to others. Snaps. They went back to talking, this time about boys. Whenever they laughed in unison it made a really lovely sound, like that waterfall I really like near emerald lake up in sequoia. They were really nice.

THE Noctilux's bokeh is often admired for its highly Aesthetically Pleasing quality. Many say the bokeh signature is as unique a triumph as the speed or flare suppression. Fully open, out-of-focus elements are rendered in a delicate and swirly haze of light and shadow. Candles glow as if through a frosted bell-jar. Background figures ghost in place, enveloped in a thick fog. Nothing harsh at all. Painterly. And the sometimes surreal and dreamlike bokeh is even more visually stunning because of what the Nocti does to in-focus subjects. Fully open and at most reasonable shooting distances, its depth of field is astonishingly narrow: as one photo writer put it, "measured in inches, not feet." Subjects truly Pop. Out-of-focus areas descend into the swirly bokeh so quickly that at minimum distance a coke can's sharp letters fade into impressionist smudges. Very unique, strange, and to many, beautiful.

I asked Tanner to change the music to something more modern. I thought you loved the Beatles! A voice to my right boomed in: Kid's right. One of your speakers is out, and those old stereo records ain't like today--they just put singin' on one side and music on the other. Right now we're listenin’ to Eleanor Rigby and only hearin' Paul, nothin' else. You are So right! I was so busy I didn't even notice! I'll go see if Ian can fix it. I looked at the man, Old, black, big guy, receding hairline and a shock of hair in the back, tired. He was maybe in his fifties, a working guy having a couple quiet beers after his shift. He was in street clothes, jeans, but they were neat and still fresh--not what he wore to work. Hey, you knew that, about the Beatles! Son, I got all these old records.

I stepped outside and lit a cigarette. Deep inhale.

Hey, DICKHEAD. Standard black hoody. Followed me out of the bar.

Slow exhale. Yeah, can I help you?

I saw you in there, ASSHOLE, taking shots of *boots*, poser. Now you're gonna use that fucking garbage glass when you got one a these?

He swung his bag around--a really nice leather number, really nice--and quickly pulled out a black paint M3--with a Noctilux attached. It was the newest version, the one with the integrated shade. His kit was in great shape, even the black paint near the advance lever was pristine.

You got one a THESE--why would you fuck with that weak shit? poser.

Sorry man, just... playing around today. Nice M3 by the way, I had one but didn't like carrying a meter when going light. What do you use?

His eyes flared red before rolling back. Meter? Fucking TOOL. Real photogs don't... whatever, you wouldn't get it.

He and his Nocti went back in.

Deep inhale.

I started walking, time for falafel.

I guess it takes all kinds.

a rabbit's tale

THE new neighborhood was a dream: San Francisco's famed gingerbread rowhouses, fresh paint, well-tended front steps, a real dream. Kids skipped around making up inventive jingles about any odd thing that was just odd enough to sing about. Rosy-cheeked ladies hung their wash, aligned in beautiful harmonies--polyphonic, almost Arabic--bits of andalusian mosaics and their mesmerizing chromatic spray. The weathered old crooner who sat on his porch at night with his ancient guitar, strumming, lulling the neighbors to sleep with songs of timeless beauty. It was indeed Grand, a welcome song of clarity and beauty in a life that had become oddly disassociated. For weeks things had just seemed off, not right, not real.. It's strange to be a stranger in your own life--maybe in this neighborhood I wouldn't have to be a stranger anymore.

BUT just as with any move to a new neighborhood or city, you learn things about the place over time, things that weren't apparent at first glance, What is what and what is Not. And some things were out of place: The busted up shack in the middle of the block-- probably hadn't been fixed up since the big quake--and the old guy who came out to the front porch every afternoon, dressed like a halloween devil, shaking his plastic trident and screaming obscenities at the neighbors. There was the cranky old crazy lady who donned a different wig every day and shrieked at the kids to stay off her lawn. Every neighborhood is weird in its own way I guess.

SO like any well-intentioned neighborhood ingenue, I thought I would say something. Hey, buddy, pipe it down; the kids are just having a good time; they're just kids, let 'em play. But from experience I knew that that was just a formality: the notice, a cease and desist letter--it never really works, but it's a necessary step in the process of conflict resolution. But unlike a normal conflict, I couldn't exactly threaten litigation--what would I do, sue a crazy lady for being mean? And it's not like I would go over there and get into a fistfight with an old loon, even if I let him use his fake pitchfork. So my next thought was to talk to the terrified kids: Don't worry about these jokers; see that devil? he's just a clown, you can tell from the cheap dime-store make-up and plastic props; and don't worry about the crazy old lady, she thinks the sidewalk is her lawn and everyone should stay off it; besides, she sits in a wheelchair because she has no feet; couldn't catch you anyway.

AND something else was off. Maybe it was the strange wink in the neighbors' eyes when I complained about the bad seeds. Others would (though somewhat calyptically) roll their eyes. And it did sit, troubling but undeciphered, somewhere back in that part of the brain where you process language: The off-ness, the something-is-not-quite-right feeling. Because I've always been very well-attuned to people's patterns of speech, their voicing, the little clues they drop in the way they say their words, clues that are as obvious to me as lighting up a billboard that says I am Lying. It's what happens when you grow up as the not-white guy, the immigrant, the outsider, trying to fit in in the whitest of white towns and the whitest of white schools, places where it's assumed you must know kungfu if you're asian. /hey bruce lee kick this brick/ When you start out in life with a sameness deficiency, you quickly develop the skills to read people: friend or foe, good guy or bigot, sincere or patronizing. And liars are just like poets: bad liars, like bad poets, think that a convincing lie is just putting together the right words from a thesaurus. They think they're saying Truth, but in reality they're saying Not-Lie.

FOCUS always hits the mark with a resounding slap. There's only one point of optimum clarity and precise focus with optics--there may be significant hyperfocal range, but there's always just one point on the dial that is optimal for recording a given image at a given distance on a plane of film, and the rest is on a falling slope of line resolution.

I suppose I should have paid attention to that nagging little fleck of sand in my brain, the one that said, Hey, something is not quite real here. Everything I looked at looked clear to me, real. But being lost in the giddiness of novelty and enthusiasm, I wasn't seeing the edges that were all ablur. The point of focus had the kind of line resolution any photographer would approve of, but as soon as the eyes turned away the object was lost in the bokeh, a haze of soft shadow and ambiguity.

THE most terrifying and most alienating moment in any dream is not when you see the first oddity, or even ten oddities. A dreamer can withstand any bizarreness or combination of absurdities that would break his sanity if seen through real eyes. No, the moment where the dreamer is truly shocked is when he realizes that he's been struggling to grapple with and eject these unreal interlopers from his dream, but in reality he is the interloper, and all the fantasies know that it's the dreamer who really doesn't belong.

I guess I should thank some of the kinder neighbors who woke me up when they said Hey, take a closer look at the grain of sand--maybe it's a pearl and maybe it's not. Like any decent analyst (or reader who is confused at the end of a novel), I went back and reexamined my preconceived notions. Turn the clock back, flip back through the pages, fingers on the REV and FWD, compare this to that, what am I seeing and what did I miss?

AND like that crisp snap on the ground glass of a hasselblad, I finally saw it. I had walked through that neighborhood and not put it together, just like a dream where your mind adjusts to the unreality, makes the strange feel normal, appropriate even. I saw the images now: The house with the couple who were always playing cards, a hare drinking tea, smiles hanging from trees with no cat in sight, kids stuck on the same patch of sidewalk despite running all out, and of course the strange little men who would stand in my path, and no matter how many I kicked down, new ones would pop back up. Five of diamonds, eight of spades, joker.

SNAP. I'm awake.