Stars at Elbow and Foot

We bring order to chaos, but one man's chaos is another man's order. I pay for everything with paper and bits of metal that have been given meaning and worth and whose meaning and worth I accept. If I didn't accept money as a concept of worth, I wouldn't try to make more of it and save it and spend it and use money on credit. I have trapped myself by accepting the construct of money as having any worth. And you say, "But Adrian, you have to use money to survive in this world!" And I say I have to use someone else's idea of my worth in this world to survive. And I also say that I agree with you. But it isn't money that puts food on the table, but the work that you do in the world that puts food in the table. And oddly enough, if you work enough you can put away enough money that will actually start to work for you. A concept, a construct, paper imbued with worth, an actual inanimate object is producing something from itself. This is a miracle. I have a

The platform is barren in the early morning, except for the four of us, travelers waiting on the railroad. The sun barely shines through this fog, a dull reminder of things to come. There is the kid, can't be more than twenty-two, the baseball cap backwards, the T-shirt a maze of creases and folds with his black jeans and slump of apathetic confusion. You see this everywhere and I even catch myself at work, under the tick-tock man keeping the pay clock, slouching toward infinity. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Then there's the woman in mom jeans smoking a cigarette, high waisted almost white jeans, striped t-shirt tucked in. Her husband is holding their little girl in his tanned, wiry arms, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Maybe they should give the little girl a kiddie smoke too, like I used to have in my childhood; the candy cigarettes made of that powdery hard barely sweet nearly flavorless gum. Smoke they all told us, even Joe Camel™ told us to with his sly smile and penis sh

I wake. Breathe, breathing...Something in my throat. The alarm has not gone off, stupid alarm. 5:52 AM. I was supposed to be up at 5:40 AM - I hate that alarm clock. The baby cries, his only language streaming wireless from a tinny speaker. My heart breaks a little each time he cries. This is the "where are you?" cry. I know his different cries and this is the one of a lost child. The floor is cold. My joints are tight, tightness in my neck and shoulders. I stretch and crack and smell that I need a shower. Nice hot shower. Heaven is a nice long hot shower from which you never prune. I'd like to sleep levitated on air. I feel the fan buffeting small blows of air against my naked skin. I am naked. I need pants. Where? At the end of the bed. His cry rises in volume and in sorrow. Daddy is coming. Daddy always wants to be there for you and knows that you will fall and hurt and bleed and cry and it will be the end of the world for you, for what do you know of the world, my lit