I’m on the Chinatown Bus to Philadelphia. We’re idling at 88 E Broadway. Behind a bodega window under the Manhattan Bridge, I see that JonBenet Ramsey’s face still glosses the cover of The National Enquirer. There must be new developments in her murder investigation. It’s been over a decade and they still haven’t closed her case. In the seat next to mine, I have February’s Rolling Stone. Britney Spears is on the cover. Under her name is the subtitle “Inside an American Tragedy.” The reporter comes within a hair’s breadth of accusing Britney’s Mom of sowing the seeds of her daughter’s destruction by grooming her to be a baby-doll sex kitten like JonBenet. The tragic destinies of Tween and pre-Tween beauty queens have spawned the publication of tracts like Celia Rivenbank’s Stop Dressing Your Six Year Old like a Skank (2006), which argue that Little Miss Sunshine-type competitions hurt little girls.

For the upcoming edition of Sentient City, I did an interview with Hollywood actress Sarah Lassez about her book Psychic Junkie, where she describes how she bottomed out on her addiction to psychics. The topic seems timely. These days, everyone is casting predictions about Barack and Hillary. Lots of people are ringing their hands about whether they’ll lose their homes in today’s sub-prime mortgage crisis. Others lose sleep over whether they’ll be laid off or able to get a job in the encroaching recession. By now, fortune tellers are probably racking up more business with psychic junkies than bars are with drunks.

For a long time, Mom blamed herself for my inaptitude in school. She was already exhausted enough, raising a houseful of six kids when I happened along, quite by surprise. So, when I was supposed to be learning Reading, ’Riting, ’Rithmetic with The Count, Big Bird, and a chaser of The Electric Company, she didn’t protest too much when my siblings would come along and change the channel to General Hospital, What’s Happening!!, Soap, or those reprehensible ABC After-School Specials. But, the way I see it, this was no tragedy. In time, I became a devoted reader and writer (I still suck at math). Plus, overexposure to junk culture gave me a whole different jumping-off point from my more assimilated peers.

This is going to be tough. How do you write about true love? It’s ineffable. Some of the greatest poets have died trying. For me, hearing The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street for the first time at 16 was an epiphany worthy of Blake and Joyce. Yet, for the past 16 years, whenever I’ve tried to put that experience into words, I’ve only ended up swooning. That’s fine for nonverbal communication, but what about for writing? So, now, I’m just going to go balls-out and, if I end up swooning like I usually do when I broach the subject of the greatest album ever made, I’ll just pick myself up off the floor and keep typing until I’m down to my last swoon. Warning: I foresee many detours on my way to Main Street. After all, the heart has many landscapes and it’d be a shame to leave them bloodless and lifeless when they can lend so much color.

This morning, after I meditated, I took the subway and reflected on how the experience of meditation is often similar to the one you hear on the “Revolution #9” track of The White Album. Riots, parades, protests, peccadilloes, fires, bombings, orchestras, orgasms, sci-fi scenes – all rising and falling, ebbing and flowing with each inhalation and exhalation, each coming and going of breath - rising and falling - like the emcee’s mantra: “Number 9…Number 9…Number 9.” Incidentally, Charles Manson envisioned the apocalypse happening to the same tune. I shudder to think that my mind is joined with his, but, if we’re all interconnected, interpenetrated, and interdependent, then I guess mine would have to be. But, by the same logic, my mind would also have to be linked with those of the Beatles, both dead (like John and George) and alive (like Paul and Ringo).

I’ll call him Craig. I don’t know his real name. To read it off his employee badge, I’d have to crane my neck over to his breast pocket. I’ll just call him Craig.

We work in the same building on Jackson Street in Chicago, right next to the Board of Trade. Once in a while, we’re on the elevator together. That’s the extent of our relationship.