The scent of coffee reminds me of when I was a child and my grandmother, a coffee fiend, would brew a pot for herself as the dawn broke. The smell wafted through the house and was also an invitation to my stomach to appear in the kitchen at once where she usually had a lavish breakfast prepared. It reminds me also of late nights in college when me and my study friends stayed up all night in the House dining hall drinking the local concoction, usually brackish brown. It reminds me too of every coffeehouse I have been in. All these places and images stored away in one scent.

There is an inverse relationship between writing and doing. The more I have to express, the less time I have to express it. Experiences well up like some electric charge.

I see things that happen to me and to others around me and I try to construct a consistent story of what I know and have learned. To explore the world is to undergo a continuous process of revision.

I am always surprised at how much larger the world is than I will let myself believe. Last night, watching a friend perform at a comedy club in the Tenderloin, I was as amazed by the audience as by the performers. Some of the women were dressed like streetwalkers. One comic was soothing his nerves by downing beer after beer in quick succession. His jokes were all about drugs and family dysfunction. One girl near me was obviously high. I felt oddly at home even as I felt like a tourist in a new country.