It sucks being old and white and into hip hop, and all you wanna do is dance and move and feel the beat, but you gotta take a whole lotta shit from every direction when you do...

Sometimes, when I’m lying with Izzy in her bed, we look out the window at the funny tree in front of our house. Ever since the big storm that tore one of its large limbs off causing a hollow gash in the perfect round outline of the branches, the tree has looked confused, sort of bi-polar.

I know the green of trees. They were a comfort in my long, dry childhood. Leaf after leaf against a strong blue sky, crisp and unapologetic. I know the green of dark summer grass through which the pale praying mantis barely moves. How could something so frightening appear so kind to my little eyes? His insect skin, pale and vivid.

On a cold, overcast day, a girl leans her back against a cypress tree and feels the strips of rough bark through her coat, a coat that matches the sky. Her friends – aren’t they her friends? - rush to the other side of the playground, a fluttering flock of birds flying away from her. She closes her eyes and tries not to cry.

Everything is yellow. The day is yellow, my sleeveless over sized shirt is yellow, dad’s jeep is yellow, happiness is yellow. Summer is yellow too and it shows up as pale streaks in my long long brown hair. The day wears a July’s burn - though - it’s not really a burn but a cozy warmth in which we wear almost nothing.

I’m walking down the hallway to meet my friend Dhara for lunch. I smell wind and leaves. I pass classrooms, people spilling out into the hall, I see tan lockers, I hear the sound of lockers opening and closing. I feel footsteps, I hear people moving echo down the hall. I walk fast, I feel my muscles, strong from track team practices, the angular slant of my hips. Fluorescent lights follow me down the hall into the geometry room. Berkeley grey cool morning slants diagonally through the window into the class, which smells of chalk and desks and math smell. I smell the cold. And I hardly walk into the room and he’s there, luminescent brown eyes. He’s standing with Dhara, looking at math books, and I don’t even see him cross the room and he’s asking me about a geometry final. I hear him say, “Are you in first period?"

Almost four years ago now, Mike and Lyle spent a long summer weekend together, father and son, making a bamboo bike frame in Red Hook. Long hot days, cutting and measuring and gluing. Epoxy sealant and carbon fiber tape.

I was on my way back home from Samuel's birthday party and decided I was gonna take the train back...

I want nothing more than to sleep. My alarm app wakes me up, says I got 9 hours of sleep, says it’s 94% quality sleep but still I’m exhausted. My head is foggy with exhaustion. It seemed so reasonable last night -- wake up early, get things done, walk to work instead of wasting $2.50 on a three subway stop ride.

The decision to move to the back woods of northern Main seemed plausible, romantic, and original.  We stocked the green and beige VW van with the Whole Earth Catalog, Five Acres and Independence, Peterson’s Birds of North America and Mushrooms of North America, some rubber boots, and a few blankets.