children have a passion for gambling too.

I have a job scanning clippings for high profile companies and celebrities. For better or worse, their status is monitored with a two-week delay, carefully bundled and disposable.

In the meantime, I read handfuls of the thousands of magazines that have colonized this house. I silently practice my superior position in the future, mocking the May 1999 issue of Time by noting, "It doesn't matter anyway, because, in 6 years, he'll be dead."

In the meantime, I still think back to the palm reader near Jackson Square, who noted my past life as a Native American warrior who carried much sorrow...and the cumbersome matter of still carrying that sorrow.

In the meantime, I crumble into homesick sobs and various other self-inflicted floods as I try to make sense of things. Yet, I don't feel depressed, and take these sessions as vital signs. I listen to radio pieces about techniques of oral storytellers, where memory is constructed as a palace, with infinite rooms to showcase each piece. Lately, I can't seem to find the exit.

In the meantime, I meditate on what it means to be grateful. Humble. Modest. When are we truly entitled to something, whether it be reaching for help or a willingness to sacrifice self? When is it acceptable to explosively externalize emotions? And why is that so terrifying? In some cultures, an epileptic is seen as a social nuisance ; in others, they are seen as blessed shamans.

In the meantime, I listen to CDs purchased between 1998-2000, revelling in the promise of digitized global communities and cyborg immortality. I read essays on eugenics ; the confusion of the impossible ideal for the constructed normal.

Each morning, I break my heart in pieces. Each afternoon, I poke and examine the evidence. Each night, I carefully stitch it back together with found objects of experience. In time, it grows stronger.