Couldn't sleep last night. Partly because I got all het up on Saturday and split a bunch of wood giving me a sore back, partly because I am — in the words of Phife Dog — <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHvmY5n1QcQ">stressed out more than anyone could ever be, and partly because the air mattress in Zacker's front room has a slow leak and deflates overnight, waking me back up at 3:30am for round two of the toss'n'turn.

But beyond the work-stress, familiar ghost that it is, there was something else flickering through my mind and keeping me awake, something born of contemplating the move away from Westhaven and reading The Savage Detectives and wondering anew about love. I started thinking back to the hot heady Summer of 2001, which is nine years ago. What it felt like to be a free man in Brooklyn, artistic pretensions and honest poverty and beautiful people every which way you looked. Potential unlimited. We did theater in backyards and hit up illegal dance parties in warehouse basements. It wasn't even all that early, but it was before things are like they are now. And I was young. Innocent even.