Vivid Dreams X

August 25, 2016 I’m seated on a barstool, not five feet from a low stage. Toni Halliday and Dean Garcia of Curve are there, tuning up before their set. Never heard Toni speak before, only sing. And as she calls out the mic check, there’s an awkwardness about her that is just plain charming. […]

Vivid Dreams IX

November 30, 2016 I find myself in the most casual of clothes. Jeans, t-shirt. Worn, comfortable shoes. Socks with holes at the big toes. They’re clean, though you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking. Old stains have set, impervious to laundering. At fifty paces, you might think I was homeless. I’ve given up, you […]

A Familiar Beauty

You’ve never met before, and it takes you a while to realize it. Uncommon. Remarkable. Familiar. Warmth and a genuine smile. Simple grace that’d be wasted on film or TV—subtlety no camera could capture. Polite questions at first then she digs a little deeper. Deep enough to tell you she’s interested. Not in your job, your […]

Vivid Dreams VIII

Ok, so spoiler alert: it had Mark Zuckerberg, Johnny Depp, and me in it. Two out of three were robots. The Johnny Depp part was brief. He breezed through the same tourist shop I was in, babbling like Jack Sparrow, wearing a lot of loose clothing and eye makeup. And he said to no one I […]

Vivid Dreams VII

I find myself in the back seat of a limousine, looking through the side window. The streets outside are humming with big American cars, all steel and chrome from the seventies. They gleam like new. Cyclopean stone buildings squat along the boulevard like engineered mountain ranges. Fortresses of turrets and parapets. Buttressed cathedrals. A crucifix and haloed dove on every vertical […]

Vivid Dreams VI

November 1, 2015 A dream after the end of the anthropocene. Civilization has collapsed and mankind lives like rats in the bones of cities. I find myself in a stone castle, a vanity fortress built by an obscenely rich man. His bones lie unburied and scattered in the yard. Did I kill him? No. […]

Vivid Dreams V

A place deep in the woods. Drawn to it without any understanding or reason why. We started on foot, hiking wide city streets from the valley up into twisting mountain roads. The farther we went, the fewer cars whizzed by. Pavement was pale gray with age beneath us, and grasses forced their way into cracks, […]

Black Watch

You can see it in my eyes, mostly. And in the red rims around my eyes. In the coffee blackened orbits and the sun-starved lids. Pulled another Black Watch. Fuck. Been a long week so far, and not a wink to be had. Head nods, and when I jerk myself awake my trigger finger flexes. […]

Vivid Dreams IV

A seat at the bar, with me on it. Not so unusual. But when I look up from an empty pint glass, the place feels different. Little to see, aside from some back slapping and hand clapping. More of a change in atmosphere. A change of tone. Bawdy voices rise in exclamations, no longer trying […]

Vivid Dreams III

April 28, 2014 I find myself on a city street, pushing through a crush of pedestrians. Adult men, mostly. The few women are bundled, hiding their shape beneath bulky wraps. Our clothes vary in shade from smoke to jet, but we all look the same. Sullen faces, annoyed at the proximity, minds walled. The city […]