Beans for Breakfast

Sunday evening, Mari’s birthday party. I wait for the bus, eyeing the weekly flea market in the dry cleaner’s parking lot (still open after dark). I buy a stack of party hats. “Do you know where you got these?” I ask. “No. I don’t,” the seller admits. “I’m sure they’re clean though.” My bus never [...]

I’m poking around in the road construction debris looking for a shot. An SUV pulls up, stops in the middle of the road and a guy, 30ish, rolls down the window. “Hey, if someone is told ‘You should check out Capitol Hill’, where would they go? Is that it?” he points back down the hill, [...]

What is it called when you spend months boiling something over in your brain – not doing anything about it? Then one day you get up and in a flurry of activity you get that thing you were thinking of started. Based on outward appearances it might look like you’re acting on a whim, but [...]

It’s cold and rainy out and I can’t exactly send Robert out – he has a cold. But I do, I send him away with a few dollars during the afternoon hours that I’m out. He’s going to the Hurricane Cafe, he tells me. The flat grey sky and steady drizzle give no respite to [...]

I was almost hit today, right as I was stepping out of the Japanese noodle place. I was already reeling from an awkward, “We’re walking directly toward each other – should I move out of the way or should you,” encounter and I saw something falling right in front of me and splotch on the [...]