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Yesterday, I volunteered some of my time to organize items at the children’s Consignment Sale taking place where I work. The first order of business was to organize the table housing all of the games and puzzles.

As I stacked the games, I was struck by one in particular that I thought my kids would think was hilarious. The name of the game? Poopyhead. The tag line? The game where No 2 always…

November 18th, a FRIDAY.

If I worked now, curled limb and mind over the office computer, I could earn myself some significant hours tomorrow to work instead on personal stuff. Like looming application deadlines.

Left the house in bruised spirits. Dropped the yellow plastic bag bulging with rotted persimmon & ossified rice into the food bucket, dusted my hands to relieve them of imaginary rot particles, faced the street and discovered a small stall-on-wheels I'd never before sighted in my neighborhood.

It was a vendor with fresh fish-shaped pastries, of course. Why this should feel so dreamlike and ridiculous, I don't know. Out of place, clear of time. Felt like I was the only person in the world, wading through gray space. I neared it in my brisk late-to-work walk and thrust out a thousand-note. The ajumma offered to vary up my ensemble of three fish by swapping one red-bean filling for a custard one ("raw cream," so that I might examine the taste of "this & that").