Jail is a great place to read a book.    In six days and nights, between tiny fits of semi-sleep in a room where the lights never dimmed -- feeling healthier than he’d felt in months and finally safe from his true prison -- clothed in neon orange from torso to tootsies and wrapped in a gray, cotton blanket -- Burl Wonder read, The Broker, by John Grisham, five times from start to finish, and finally felt free.    DJNG-KUHHH!    The distant and ...

(SATURDAY MORNING, 11 AM - THE NEXT DAY)    “Hello?”    “Hey, baby. It’s me. Listen, I’m sorry about last night.” She paused. “I really am.”    “Yeah, me too. My stereo is broken.” I replied. I caught my reflection in the mirror across the room. Staring at my own distant and somewhat mangled image, I spoke through a complex system of wires and telephone circuitry that I would likely never understand &mda...

Chapter 4 ooo THE VINEGAR TASTING ooo We see three men standing around a vat of vinegar. Each has dipped his finger into the vinegar and has tasted it… The first has a sour look on his face, the second wears a bitter expression, but the third man is smiling. -excerpt from The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff ooo It had never occurred to me that I might have made some bad decisions. In fact, it seemed to me that I made relatively no decisions at all. I rolled through life, mostly, bouncing off ev...

ooo White flakes, like wet confetti grated from the pulp of some albino fruit, tumbled delicately from the overcast, 2am sky. The firmament itself was a peculiar tint of gray and pastel blue, uniquely bright considering the time, and where it met with the horizon some miles ahead was anyone’s guess. Slight, subdued hills bubbled randomly up from the earth, but mostly the landscape was flat. The sloping banks on either side gave a vague indication of where the buried and trackless road might b...

I'm getting used to this now. Finally. I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see the inside of my eyelids, for any sustained amount of time, ever again. I feel like I'm being forced to learn how to breathe. Or how to be hungry. Or how to think. Then again, I suppose this is more like learning how to _not think_. I can hear Roy's loud snoring. It's a happy sound. I'm so happy for him. _Thank you, God_. It looks like the extra pillows beneath his mattress might have helped. That and the sleepi...

Chapter 2 ooo THROWING COMPUTERS ooo The drive to work was always one of the highlights of my day, especially once my license had been reinstated. It was a nice forty-five minute trip that allowed me to sort through important and trivial issues, collectively and respectively. I rounded the last sharp turn between myself and the hotel, and shifted into fourth. It was late October, and the leaves on the trees had done about as much changing as they were going to do. The autumn air was cool enou...