I woke up in a room piled high with clothes on one side, random unused items carpeting the floor, a cracked wall and peeling ceiling, a Sony Trinitron and VCR un-used for perhaps a decade.  The clothes I’d put in a black contractor bag after the fire in the apartment downstairs were still there, in front of the blankets piled haphazardly on the trunk of drawing books.  My beloved Oinsketta had been alive during the fire, I rushed her and her tiny lungs out into the street.  It was probably a year before September 11th became a day of infamy.

“That bag of toxic, smoky clothes has been there for more than ten years,” a voice said indignantly.  And it’s true.

I woke up realizing it’s probably me, not the other maniacs I know, who is closest to being a kind of crazy.  Everyone I know carries their collected wounds, scars and disabilities, but not everyone does it so stylishly.