Suicide suddenly seems very attractive. Guns are for psychos; hanging and wrist slashing for halfhearted gestures. I’ve always been terrified of heights and there’s no way on Goddess’s green Earth I’m spending my last seconds watching a sidewalk or ocean rushing up on me. I’ve gotten plenty of that in cold-sweat nightmares. Drowning is out of the [...]

“Maybe three months until you start showing symptoms, if that. From there, it’s rapidly downhill. Bedridden in six months. Your type of malignancy has a survival rate of about five percent at a year. There are always miracles, of course.” The studio bigwigs are also concerned about the deficit in law enforcement, which partially explains the [...]

“Sorrow sometimes teach a lesson well, And I know that good can come from bad So let’s look into that morning Star ‘Cause you know just who you are…” -Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, “All I Need,” Spirit of Music, c. 1999, Bob Marley Music “Well, I’ll be frank,” the doctor intones gravely, tightening the knot of [...]

“Do you want to talk about it?” Llewellyn inquires softly. She has been sitting patiently, while I absorb the implications of a lifetime. “Well-it’s just that,” I stumble, trying to distill my impressions into inadequate verbal code. “Okay, it’s like this-if you’d ever asked me who I felt to be the greatest English-language novelist during the [...]

Llewellyn gazes at me quizzically. “I just composed the first line of Ulysses,” I explain. She looks thoughtful. “James Joyce. I can see it. Desert Trance is very stream of consciousness. Maybe like Joyce on acid.” Not only that, I realize. “The books are structured alike, too. Eighteen tracks, eighteen episodes. A triad of protagonists made up [...]

Llewellyn’s job is to sort and search these files, divining interconnections between them and leading the mouse pointer to the likeliest prospects. It is an inexact science, to say the least-but, with history to corroborate recollections of notable avatars, it is actually less so than, say, psychology, in which my past-life regression therapist holds a [...]

She produces a small vial of amber liquid. “Laced with DMSO for fast action.” I stick out my tongue. “How deep do you want to go?” I hold up three fingers. She administers three hundred micrograms, more or less, first to me, then herself. The alcohol solvent mildly burns my tongue. I momentarily see stars. [...]

Maybe I’ll cast a spell when I get home. Haven’t done that in forever. Seemed easier just to buy things. My spiritual health, I realize with a heart- stopping flash, has never been more precarious. When did I get to be so…worldly? Somewhere between the signing and cashing of the check, I dimly recall. She answers the [...]

A lump rises to my throat. “What do you see?” Crazy Bear sees auras and animal totems, and is regarded by several mutual acquaintances as a gifted clairvoyant. According to his third eye, I am, like him, a bear; though he claims I am a diminutive, lusty koala, while he himself is a Ukrainian black [...]

He takes a scoopful of hummus with his pita bread. “The novelty wore off after a week or so. One day I scored a ten-dollar bill from this guy with his son. A cop had pulled him over for DUI, but having the kid in the car had gotten him a break. He was supposed [...]