This is how it was for several weeks. I stayed in my room. I ate nothing but apples and pizza. I got lost in the beige clouds of water damage that tinted the ceiling above my bed. Part of me was being lowered beneath my life. Do you ever feel like someone else is there? Not in a bad way, and not unless you really notice? It was like another character in all this was doing it to me. I watched myself being lowered as he let out the...
On this particular weekend at the end of March, Cui Peng put on a suit, tied his tie, and started out towards the mansions in the suburbs. He didn't take the main road, but instead took the smaller path at the foot of the Western Hills. The mountainside, still drab at this time of year and covered in lifeless trees, rose up over the freshly green wild grasses giving off their distinctive scent. Cui...
The morning's first call to prayer from the mosque on the corner came in through the screen where I’d left the window cracked and mixed with my phone alarm. I languished in the few moments where I wasn’t yet anybody. Then came the parts of myself, the articulable variables that made up my life. I was halfway through Moby Dick. I worked. I had a job I had to get ready for, and then...
