Bread and Bread

If you think about the game , you've already lost. That's the whole game. You might approach someone, perhaps at a party— perhaps there is brandied eggnog, or maybe it's a cooler full of beer, juice boxes for the kids, in celebration of the end of soccer season, or a savior's birth, or the strong possibility that soon the days will get longer. You would say, "You've lost the game," and it would be true because now you've passed the torch of consciousness like a virus to the person closest to you. There's no winning the game. It was invented by the British, of course. Land of fog  and consumptive moors, land farmed to the bone.  Maybe this resignation  is what happens after you conquer a continent or two, leverage a famine to your advantage, make the locals bring you tea. And still it tastes bitter, and still your wife finds you a bit disgusting  and your children grow up and write books about the terrible things you've done leveraging that educ...

1. the tired ones I was on my way to the ATM when I saw Tara.* She was camped out on the sidewalk next to the bus lot, and if I didn’t know her, I would have walked right by her, the way I do most of Chinatown’s street-corner characters. Someone had brought her a cup of water and a takeout box of food from the café, and someone had given her a black and white umbrella, which she shifted from side to side as she talked. It shielded about half her body from the sun. She talked rapidly but lucidly. She seemed annoyed at having to reside in her body. She was dressed as she always was, in black track shorts and a black tank top that showed the marks on her skin. From what? I’m not sure. From a hard life, I guess. Her hair was short and neat, graying at the temples. Skin shiny in the sun. “I’ve tried to die so many times,” she said. “Why won’t God just let me go? I’m so tired. I was supposed to die three times.” A few weeks ago, she’d been doing okay, coming to Homeboy’s ...

If you like hookworm and Honey Boo Boo, you'll love this book. I only finished one book in the whole month of February. And when I say that to people, in my usual self-flagellating way, they’re like, “Yeah, but you have a lot going on.” By which they mean cancer. I think what I have going on is Words With Friends and an inability to go to sleep without watching bad TV on my laptop. Of course, these things are not unrelated. I’m helping my aunt build a website for her therapy practice, and in going through “other resources” links, I stumbled on a quiz that told me there was a good chance I was mildly depressed, but I should consult with a professional to be sure. Part of me was like, Fuck, another diagnosis? Another part of me was like, I’m only mildly depressed? Well, that’s pretty good. You could live your whole life like that. My belief that It Doesn’t Get Better—which is also a stubborn refusal to put all my eggs in the Future basket, when who knows if that basket even ...