This part concerns the unshakeable feeling one gets, one thinks, after the unthinkable and unexplainable happens—the feeling that, if this person can die, and that person can die, and this can happen and that can happen…well, then, what exactly is preventing everything from happening to this person, he around whom everything else has happened? If people are dying, why won’t he? If people are shooting people from cars, if people are tossing rocks down from overpasses, surely he will be the next victim. If people are contracting AIDS, odds are he will, too. Same with fires in homes, car accidents, plane crashes, random knifings, stray gunfire, aneurysms, spider bites, snipers, piranhas, zoo animals. It’s the confluence of the self-centeredness discussed in G), and a black sort of outlook one is handed when all rules of impossibility and propriety are thrown out. Thus, one starts to feeling that death is literally around each and every corner—and more specifically, in every elevator; even more literally, that, each and every time an elevator door opens, there will be standing, in a trench coat, a man, with a gun, who will fire one bullet, straight into him, killing him instantly and deservedly, both in keeping with his role as the object of so much wrath in general, and for his innumerable sins, both Catholic and karmic. Just as some police—particularly those they dramatize on television—might be familiar with death, and might expect it at any instant—not necessarily their own, but death generally—so does the author, possessing a naturally paranoid disposition, compounded by environmental factors that make it seem not only possible but probable that whatever there might be out there that snuffs out life is probably sniffing around for him, that his number is perennially, eternally, up, that his draft number is low, that his bingo card is hot, that he has a bull’s-eye on his chest and target on his back. It’s fun. You’ll see.

EVAPOETRY IN BEIJING The pensioner thinks before he lifts the long brush from Kunming Lake, waits for a meter, paints recollected characters of a Li Po verse with water upon the pavement of the palace grounds. Under summer’s sun, the old man’s muscles stretch and roll with the calligraphs as once he moved the minds of students and quickly for the last image must be seen before the first transcends its elements. To write poetry on the walk of the summer palace is an exercise of body and soul.

In summer's heat, and mid-time of the day, To rest my limbs, upon a bed I lay, One window shut, the other open stood, Which gave such light, as twinkles in a wood, Like twilight glimpse at setting of the sun,

Gerbeaud Budapest, Hungary The final eastbound stop in the sweet-tooth triathlon (after Angelina’s in Paris and Demel’s in Vienna), Budapest’s famous Gerbeaud coffeehouse is a neo-Baroque throwback to imperial times, and an oasis of relaxation in a city reinventing itself at breakneck speed. But then, that’s nothing new. In the late 19th century, Budapest was one of the fastest growing cities in the world and the city’s coffeehouses became second homes for writers, artists, politicians, journalists, and even a bit of royalty in the person of Empress “Sissi” Hapsburg. Opened in 1858, Gerbeaud survied the bleak period of Communism and is now back on the tourist circuit—ensuring its survival, but making it impossible to find a late afternoon table in the vast, mansionlike interior, with its heavy velvet curtains, silk wallpaper, crystal chandeliers, and marble-topped tables. Throughout its history, Gerbeaud has been a nirvana for chocoholics. Astounded by the dozens of ultra-rich confections made daily on the premises, wide-eyed, sweet-toothed, first-time patrons are hard pressed to choose between delicacies such as Gerbaud’s signature seven-layer chocolate cake (the original Hungarian rhapsody?) and its famous cherry or apple strudel.

Be Kind by Evan Jewett Maida it's always a careless new skirt and I'm always second best to your visits with sand a dime for each burden and i'd buy you the answers fall asleep with your bad habit breathe it in and hold it you will never be cold again i've kept my eyes down and I've kept my heart shut but I never forgot to forget eject and escape rewind and erase eject and escape rewind and erase I am choking on your dust

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