Journal Entry
1996

The wide expanse of Girard all but deserted when I step out of the bar's sonic embrace glistens under curling wisps of fog a light rain cools my face waking me from the sorcerer's fire. The fire that only burns believers. No el this time of morning. How will I get home? I stand there for some time in the early AM mist before I remember: the shuttle bus--its purgatorial run under the tracks up Frankford and Kensington's corridor of desolation. How many times have I made this journey? How many times notebook on my lap have I described the scene? Drunk and exhausted the illusion of singularity burned away: a journey suitable to my condition.

Across from me on the shuttle a man with stars tattooed on his cheekbones deep scars on his chin talking to a younger man in sleeveless shirt weight-lifter arms. They appear to be escorting a girl. Can't be more than thirteen or fourteen skin tight shorts halter top a ragged sweater over her shoulders huddles between them shivering bare feet pulled under her to keep warm a pair of high heels on the floor under her seat. A man with pocked face. Thin gangly indeterminate age hair long down the back of his neck. Transport of the possessed... and dispossessed. By what natural laws had all this been arranged? Follow the signs, he said, or lose your way.

Waiting at Margaret-Orthodox for the #59 air fumed with burning pitch and lumber. Street lights haloed in smoke. Man outside the bar on the corner of Arrott and Griscomb urinates against the building the rivulet running between his legs on the sidewalk to the curb to the street. On the back of his jacket an Eagle wings spread wide. Sirens begin to wail in the distance. Omens of my life... my new lives. Whose name will the oracle whisper into being tonight?