What is the correlation between sleeplessness and faithlessness? He considers this without rigor, expecting no response. To be faithless- is it to have lost faith or to have abandoned it? He remembers a moment of stark panic long ago when, half asleep, he committed the unthinkable by leaving his rifle on a listening post in the desert. How vast and impossibe the desert  seemed, realizing his negligence, how deep and thick was his shame. Before long though he found his rifle, almost wept,…

The young man with the wide smile, narrow eyes, and the not immediatedly recognizable features poured the beer and asked if I'd ever visited there, the Taj Mahal.

No, I told him, are you Indian?

Nepali, he responded, here in the States on his own, working to make his living since he was 14.

 He told me of his family, spread out all over the world, while I drank one beer and then another, watching tears well in his eyes only to be driven back by…

Now that our souls are crushed to bits of bitter spent coffee grounds, I would like to put forth a challenge. I want to know how souls are built, what feeds yours,  what makes it grow and thrive (if it is growing and thriving)? I think I could write a thousand pages in a weekend about all the enemies of the soul and revel in it, but what about the protectors of the soul, it's friends? For me, that means having to dig deeper.

 This speaks to a dilemna I experience when I sit down to…

Perpetual generic and name brand bombardment, laugh tracks and shit radio, day time television, shock jocks and cock blocks, Hollywood insiders and the thing that makes us forsake our own lives for a glimpse of that. Plastic surgery (I mean, what drives it), Just For Men, very young girls with provocative writing across their butts and the malls that define them. Standing in line, of any kind, not so much because time is wasting and you're missing out on doing something important, but…