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getting clearer, circling and homing in, until he was close enough to touch it.

As always, the preamble is the unnerving part. You’re not sure if you got ripped off, but OK, now the guys in the motorboat are whistling for you from just offshore. Right away they’re shouting: Don’ go near da blade! Step in quick, put on a lifejacket, put it on quick. Now! Don’ sit dere! Sit dere! When they passed us off to the parasailing boat the experience took on the air of a rescue operation. Turn around! Turn around and sit on da boat! Put this on and sit down dere, you first! There seemed to be an undue amount of process and gear. Why can’t we just be tied to the thing and spirited into the air? But then suddenly we were looking down at the shadow of our parachute on the turquoise waves. And suddenly it was over, too.

Lying on the upside-down, translucent floatie in the pool, I saw the multilingual safety instructions on the front backwards. Every language made even more foreign than it is. Turkish, Arabic, Portuguese, God knows what. We really are all the same. Just trying to get our kids entertained for a few hours on vacation. We’re all ignoring the same warnings.

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“I still call him regularly and check up on him. You can't just cast aside family members because they seem uninterested in you

The rasta in the West 4th Street station is playing a drum now, not a guitar. A single snare, strapped over his shoulders and resting on his belly. He plays it softly, near the edge. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. No accents, no rhythm. Just quiet, mindless beats forever. The equivalent of the single, droning chord he used to strum. I wondered what was going on in his head. Did he just want to make a gesture toward music, without caring about it, so he’d be perceived as more than just a panhandler? Or is this what music is to him? Does he think he’s playing? Then I got to thinking about the phenomenon of New York City characters. Did he invent himself? Did he find an open space to occupy? Is he the rasta with the drum, or the Rasta With the Drum? Formerly the Rasta With the Guitar? Do people talk about him? Is someone else writing about him right now? Is he somebody?

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no matter how much the people who elected them insist that it must be so.

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Bill was very happy. He had made a lot of money on his last book, and was going to make a lot more.

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“I'll call you later,” I said and idly looked up hotel prices in Central London

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In the apartment next door, the woman looked at a television set and spoke into a tape recorder.

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He smiled and gave Robinson a friendly nod.

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Two American presidents, several heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency,

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doctors will be giving the drug to real patients who are diagnosed with ‘flu-like symptoms’

Five Minutes Chance

As a last resort we had lunch at an anonymous Italian place in Hammersmith, no music playing. A strange couple occupied the table by the door. It was hard to know whether they were married or mother and son. They were disheveled. Their body language said we ain’t payin’. Legs stretched out too far. Chairs not facing the table.

The proprietor was the only staff. He alternately waited on us courteously and engaged in a strange dispute with the others. At one point the woman shuffled outside, probably to have a smoke. “Why are you her puppy dog?!” he snapped at the man in his weird Italian-British accent. “Why are you her poodle?”

There never was a reply from the shabby man. It continued like this—the woman returning, the man getting up to pace outside awhile, the man coming back, the woman leaving again. The owner chiding them vaguely—maybe for loitering, maybe for something more. They didn’t seem related to him. They seemed stuck to him. Always leaving but always coming back. Were they waiting for money? Free food?

Finally they shuffled down the sidewalk but you knew it couldn’t be for long. The owner peered unhappily out the picture window. The police had arrived to ticket cars.

“It’s ridiculous!” he declared. “They hide ‘round the corner. They supposed to wait five minutes, five minutes!” He shook his head.

Outside a young cop had his pad out and was moving in for the kill.

“They supposed to give five minutes after the cars run out of time!” he went on. I made some polite, assenting rejoinders: Yes. It is ridiculous. He didn’t seem to hear. He kept looking out the window.

“They supposed to give five minutes chance for people! But they hide ‘round the corner. They hide in the bushes five minutes and they come out!”

He kept staring a few more seconds then turned around to get our check.

“And a double whiskey for the little girl?” the bartender said after I ordered the pints. It was a great pub for a cold and rainy night. Intimate, convivial, hidden away on a back street. Framed newspaper pages lined the walls on the way to the loo. One was of Hitler becoming chancellor upon the death of Hindenburg, 1934. Propaganda Minister Goebbels issued the requisite niceties. All appeared to proceed in the correct way. How is anyone to know. Another one was of John Lennon’s death, 1980. Yoko weeping in David Geffen’s arms. It was hard to know which event was more dire.

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we put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the present rate, or an increased rate, or a decreased rate

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In his experience, many of the world’s greatest discoveries were made by men who would be considered mad by conventional standards.

Fuck 'Em

I got drowsy on the train and missed my stop. I got out at 15th Street, by the park. A fat guy sat on a bench, talking on his phone. As I approached I knew I’d overhear something great. Here’s what it was:

“They didn't much like Michael bringing the pizza in. But fuck ‘em. Who cares. Fuck ‘em.”

There was a guy on the platform this morning, zigzagging close to the edge, babbling. I was lost in thought until I realized he was coming my way. I backed away and hid behind a beam, a little worried that he’d be offended and lash out. We got into the same car and he sprawled out on the bench across from me, chanting and moaning to no one and nothing. He had a belt in his hand and began whapping the buckle against the back of the seats. It made a hell of a racket. He seemed pleased by it, like a baby banging on the bars of his crib. Others in the car peered over their books and tablets at him for a moment, then didn’t give it another thought. “It’s too damn early for this,” said a woman across from me to the right. We caught each other’s eyes and smiled just a little bit.

Sometimes when the computer gets stuck, you get that spinning wheel or whatever the case may be, it feels like time itself enters a strange, inhuman realm. Something that once took a tiny fraction of a section, directed by humans in programming language, facilitated by unimaginable processing power, now takes, potentially, any arbitrary length of time. Could be 25 seconds. Could be three days. Could be 5,618 years. The machine doesn’t care. It’s just going to do what it’s supposed to do. We constrain machines with our imperfect, wishful thinking. But they don’t give a damn.

I'm OK!

About a week ago on the subway steps I was in the crowd going down past the one going up. Two men passed by and the first one stumbled on a step, falling back a bit onto the second one, who helped keep him up. “I’m OK! I’m OK!” he said. Angrily. Like: I don’t want your help. It fills me with rage that you had to touch me, hold me like that. I can’t stand that I just needed you right now.