I am on the side of a hill and I am Japanese. I am wearing traditional clothing. A navy blue with small, square, white stars and large sleeves. In fact it must be a very long time ago. There is a man in front of me, and we are on the ground, fighting. I have let him hit me, but I'm fine. I now hit him three times. On the thigh, in the upper arm, in the gut. And he cries and I know I have to hit him one more time to kill him. But I stop. My sensei appears, and tells me, "You have to hit him." So I do and when my fist struck his face, there was a flash of white light.

I think it's really funny, if not totally abnormal and stupid, that the way I understand things is by their shape. Kind of fundamental, actually very fundamental, that words and pictures and numbers become an assortment of rectangles and lines. And that my judgement of a well-written paragraph, well-drawn picture, well-conceived math thingy depends on the alignment, symmetry and pattern of the shapes they produce. Say hello to Jose, your autistic friend.

There was a time when I was walking and it was freezing, and I had struggled that whole day to save my last two cigarettes. And I had bought a coffee, which I kept close to my chest. I walked passed the crowd, passed the traffic, and found a street whose shops had already closed. And on this street was a store with pink neon lights. And I sat on the concrete under these lights, that made everything liquid and warm. And I have never seen my skin in that shade before. Kind of orange, kind of hot, kind of like Northern African pottery. I smoked my cigarettes and drank my coffee. A few people passed.