A hoop-shaped vine, somewhere off-trail in Graves Farm Audubon Sanctuary, Haydenville, MA. These vines tend to get me in trouble. Whenever I run into one, I am compelled to try to leap and swing off it. Half the time they don’t hold my weight. I took this lying on the ground. Got a mosquito bite right in the ear for it too!

A little altar I found on an island in Dead Branch Pond, Chesterfield, MA. Found a kickass beaver-chewed staff there too, seven feet long, tooth marks all over it, weighed like ten pounds. I left it leaning against the trail post adjacent rte 143. If you know somebody looking for a staff.

The planters’ moon, reminding me to buy seedlings.

The apple tree in my backyard, on a 16 second exposure, same night as the full moon. This is going on my computer background.

So because I happened to be in the right place at the right time, I got the chance to put a new ad for the Homeless Moon chapbook in the upcoming LCRW 22. As a result of the very spur-of-the-moment nature of this windfall (I literally heard about it, sat down to design an ad, and handed it in an hour later), not even my staunch allies, the lunatics, have seen it. But the one person who did (the incalculable Jedediah Berry) assured me it was pretty darn cool, and even expressed a kind regret that there wasn’t anyplace else to show it off.

“Aha,” said I, “but there is!”

Hope you like it.

Arg arg. I am sucked in again. Via Kate, may the patron imps of intelligent time usage curse her name.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by some group’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, and italicize the ones you own but have not read.

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is like Tale of Two Cities as written by an acid-tripping Hemingway. Or maybe a severely opiated Nabokov? A stone cold sober Tom Robbins born in 1920?

No, no. None of those is right. I’m terrible at these. Where’s Justin when you need him?

On hearing this unbelievable news, Fedina wept with the facility and abundance with which women of the people weep over the troubles of others. Her tears fell on her child’s little head as she lulled him—as warm as the water grandmothers take to church to add to the cold holy water in baptismal fonts. The baby fell asleep. The night passed, and they were still sitting as if under a spell when dawn drew a gold line under the door and the silence of the shop was broken by the baker’s girl tapping at the door.

“Bread! Bread! Bread!”

It’s a surreal, exhaustive depiction of the relationships between the most bottom-scraping urban detritus and everybody else at every level of society in the capitol of a petty third-world dictatorship. There’s some satire, a bit of fatalism, a surprisingly well-veiled socialist agenda, and a ton of great, very real characterization painted with astonishing economy. And every once in awhile the streets rise up into anthropomorphized whirlwinds and woosh around the city wreaking havoc and crying like lost children.