I’m reading tons of old emails and thinking, Do we ever really change? I keep finding evidence that my character hasn’t changed, it has just unfolded. I’m remembering when I was thirteen and I got mad at Mark for not figuring out how he was going to get home from a Boy Scout event so that my […]

The other night we went up to the Haight to catch a movie at a worker-owned theater. Having arrived early, we pulled out the footbag.
A few different folks joined us and we had a good-sized circle when a passing hipster wanted in. He stayed for two or three serves, thanked us for the game, and […]

This post marks the end of the first unofficial jackvalentine.net hiatus and the beginning of my time in San Francisco. Here’s a rough breakdown of the past six weeks:

57% idle time in Chicago with excitement for the move at a stalemate with the tedium of last days; no energy to write
28% traveling through the midwest […]

Minneapolis. Dinkytown. Espresso Royale Cafe.
On the road–finally.
Starting to think all people are just manifestations of various archetypes; I swear I’ve met this one at least twice, and a couple first-time repeaters just walked by.
Meetings with old friends are as familiar and ephemeral as recurring dreams.
Am I as tough as I think I am? What’s […]

Seventeen days and counting until I begin the trip that will, a few weeks later, land me in Oakland. And I certainly am counting.
I’m in a lull I haven’t felt since last year before I moved to Chicago. I’m totally disconnected from this city, from these people, even from myself. All I do is wait. […]

Here’s a true story.
Nacho is an illegal immigrant–a squat forty year-old with a buzzed head, neat mustache and gold fillings. He works six days a week in a restaurant–a dishwasher during the week, and a line cook on the weekend. He is paid in cash. The last time he went home to see his wife […]

It’s like–the word is at our fingertips, but we’ll never grasp it. We can forgive ourselves in the middle of a midwest winter, when it’s enough to just survive. But summer is the time of times. Summer is when we live and love. Summer is when anything is possible.
Summer is half over. Time is flying. […]

Strange is the nostalgia I feel tonight. I’ve just arrived at the apartment after hours on the highway and crammed in public transportation.
The air is wet. I don’t hear any sirens, any inebriated yelling, any car horns; the city is resting tonight, but resting like a coiled spring. It feels just like it did four […]

I’m a chameleon. I’ll charm your parents, then make a quip about listless baby-boomers. I hate cops, but serve them lunch with a smile on my face. I engage people with third-wave feminist theory, then stay silent when folks cat-call. I slip easily into a hip-hop dialect, and drop it when I’m in someone’s office. […]

It’s happening a lot more these days, this blurring of the lines between dystopian fantasies and the world I see around me. I used to absorb those works of fiction which let me bathe in the tragic absurdity of what the world could become. It might even have seemed remotely realistic, but it was still […]