There were a lot of advantages to having shoelaces.

But not once did we mention heaven. The next day we bought another one.

I am one one millionth of a ratings point. A little flash of electronic blue against the wall of an otherwise unlit upstairs room at night. Walk by on the sidewalk feeling lonely, then see that harsh spark of indigo spring from the dark window above and

I laugh too loud cause the world looks good that way and for a minute we both make funny sounds just to exercise our vocal cords and see how close we can come to the line without crossing.

Your son is six feet tall in the sixth grade. By his sophomore year of high school, he outweighs you by a hundred pounds. He's been offered four football scholarships and one for a sport he's never played. Every morning his mother, your ex ex-wife, makes his breakfast of a…

and we got the apartment, which was on a street that backed up on an alley situated, as it turned out, right across the alley from the very first Hari Krishna house, where they would wake up at four every morning and begin their maddening chanting: Hari K

I watched haunted as my pearl tooth circled the rotten porcelain sink. I could feel my hair thinning and my pale skin suddenly felt too loose.

Carl and Dolly were actors. Dolly was offered the lead in a porno film, but she turned it down.

And without further ado, The Author.

Her dress swirled around her as she stepped into the ballroom, looking every bit as sultry as her recent Playboy cover...

That night we slept on the floor of Kirk and Maggie’s apartment and listened to them arguing all night about art and life and love. Ah, me, I sighed, the sad soul of America! I thought of Walt Whitman. I thought of Allen Ginsberg.

Going to catch Ma a fish. Won't be special like Tom coming home. But she won't have to feed it. She can eat it.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the small mirror on the adjacent wall and find myself becoming shy at my own reflection, which is ludicrous in theory, shying away from oneself, but as I lock onto the few freckles I have spread neatly on both cheeks...

The world moves its roving glass eye around in front of you like a dog trying to flip over a frisbee, as if trying to show you how the loveliness of all things here and yet there, from an anything goes, different, always shifting,…

So if we all have an idea what goes down when the young person at the cash register (the registerista?) asks, “Can I help you?” then we all know there’s a different way to habla at Seattle’s gift to the world.