At a busy intesection I notice two young men flattened against the asphalt. Their eyes are moving but they seem to be stuck there. One is in the sidewalk and the other is splayed across the road; their arms and legs seem to have shriveled into what looks like the stubs of a fetus. I wonder whether this is their defense against the weight of the tires.

Gathering little shards of glass from the kitchen floor, I notice the sting of one or two in my finger. Then I look down and find that the tip of my right finger is on the floor. There is no pain or blood. And I stay intact because the five second rule still holds.

In my shorts and boxer briefs at the high school lunch line. Since I moved away ten years ago many people are noticing me and I don't mind becuase I'm looking good. All that I get is a solid chunk of warm fish, so I go to the vegetarian line in the small amphitheater next door. After waiting for close to an hour, I give up to take a walk with my friends. When I return lunch service is over, but I pick up some fruit with the permission of the Mexicans who are closing up. Later, we drive over to the house of my old friend Nate, who I haven't seen in ten years. He is wiry, legally blind, and somewhat shy in public, perhaps because he still lives with his parents, all of which make it more surprising to learn that he has in fact become a kind of silent god on the plane of hip-hop. Without speaking he graces me with some of his knowledge, and immediately I understand why rappers like Raekwon and Naz would become anxious if he did not appear to watch over their recording studios.

My Mom drives me down from the hills and through the lush deciduous countryside of Virginia. This is where she grew up, she explains, until she was my age. We arrive at a large farmhouse at the side of the highway. Inside there are about twenty young and ambitious people from Brazil, Palestine, Africa, Mexico, Brooklyn, China. We are seated at tables of four, and as we talk and the odor of comfort food drifts from the kitchen, we discover that we must be at some posh retreat for human rights activists. I walk over to a computer kiosk and invite all the Portuguese-speaking people to get together after dinner. After dark, I take a walk in the woods out back. Near the barn there is a thong with the stars and stripes on it. I hurl it out into the woods, but an eagle catches it in mid-air. I take this to mean that I no longer envy the prodigy.

The bathroom is locked, so I pee in a bottle.

Preparing for a trip across the ocean, I am told that Steven Wright is leading an alignment workshop at the yoga studio. I want to stop in, but am held up by packing. I am invited to take a test drive at the Vespa dealership. With the tacit approval of the salesman I saddle up and head out across the drizzling street and toward the ocean. A last minute stop at the breakfast cereal depot leads to a bout of indecision. Passing over Frosted Wheaties and a variety of flakes, I settle on quinoa. After quick stop at the office to drop off the quinoa, during which I discover a half-shelled walnut, I'm headed across the ocean on my motorbike. On the other shore, I come upon a zebra in the tall grass. And I am given the flashback: an elephant seal swims under the breakfast cereal factory and swallows a brass toy mean for a child; it escapes the underwater gears to swim out into the open sea, only to be eaten by a large dragonfish; the dragonfish swims towards land but is ultimately defeated by the zebra, which, with the brass toy intact in its third stomach, is spotted by a hunter in the tall grass. The zebra is shot. From above I can hear a slow insistent moaning as the breath goes out.

At the spy compound, I'm trying to find a place to sleep. In despair I creep into a shower stall. Woken again, I sneak off to visit my family, who happen to be spending the weekend at a beachfront hotel nearby. One of the security guards there looks suspiciously familiar: he must be a double agent. On the way back from dinner, we crane our necks at two vintage Chryslers by the side of the road. The first one is a glossy white, and contains about twenty young black males waiting while a policeman inspects the entirely open chassis where the glass used to be before it shattered. The second car, with black enamel, contains no fewer than thirty black males, mostly teenagers, with a single shard of windshield dangling perilously from where the rear window used to be. No one seems hurt.

There are two armies working in Iraq: the National Guard, and the Film Crew. I am in the National Guard. Each morning we wake up before dawn and board passenger planes to commute to Baghdad. On arrival we guard a variety of posts wearing camouflage and holding semiautomatic weapons. We are mostly ignored and feel helpless. After our shifts, when we are weary and stir-crazy, we must board the same passenger airplanes and take the red-eye flight home, only to return on the next flight at dawn. The Film Crew is much smaller and is staying at the Baghdad City Westin Ambassador hotel. They do not have to wake up early to make the commute and they do not have to fly home afterwards. Their jobs carry prestige, they are smug, and we envy them. I stray from my post to gawk at a hallway where Abe and Will, friends who have been recruited to the Film Crew, are working as production assistants. The scene is a suicide. They brush me away.

I have plenty of time and some friends in town, so I decide not to worry about the variety show at which I am to appear with Jessica. When I see it's 7:30pm I get on the subway with the intention of drawing up a short setlist and running through a song or two in my head. But an immigrant father and son on the train need directions, and I spend most of the ride explaining the map to them, missing my transfer. I arrive at the Harlem amphitheater at 11:30pm but am relieved to find that the variety show is running late. Jessica, however, is not pleased at my lateness, and refuses my attempts to introduce an element of improvisation into our 10-minute performance. She is also resentful that I have forgotten the ukulele, mandolin, and fiddle at home. Ultimately it doesn't matter because there are so many acts before us that we don't get a spot. At the after party, I have been asked to get people interested in skateboarding around an enormous and steep track sometimes used for Vertical Roller Derby. With fear in my heart, I plunge off the rim.

Giddens has joined a cult, and she thinks I'm going to join too. The cult is built around a belief in time travel. Her master is an unremarkable man in his forties who, on occasion, causes her to hallucinate feverishly. She is adamant that I will soon have the experience of letting fifty years flow in reverse before me, as at a movie theater. I leave the office and ask a colleague to cover for me.

In the dry foothills, a poolside crowded with kids from my boarding school. We drive to the museum where we are given a semiprivate tour. From the text on the walls of the gilded room holding fossils and animal specimens, we can tell that the collection has been put together by Lutherans. When we confront the docent, asking her to admit to her belief in God's design and the reckoning to come, she summons the curator. I wander off to the next room, which is full of television kiosks and iced water coolers, until some friends just back from soccer practice ask me what I'm doing in the sports lounge. So I walk out to the courtyard and into a morals class in session. We pair off and I'm explaning to the janitor that the book we have been assigned, a weak Lutheran imitation of Gulliver's Travels, is "not just silly, it's stupid." The class hushes; clearly everyone has heard. The headmaster uses the pause to ask whether anyone knows what the word "carapace" means. I resist, but most kids shoot up their hands. "No," the headmaster explains with a condescending attempt at patience, "it means SAD." Later, we are given more semiprivate tours of the museum.

From a roadside motel I see a helicopter, with two large wheels set up like a motorcycle, trying to land. It would be easier without the wheels, I understand, but this is part of the charm of the beast. Later, along a cliff, my horse slips down to a little dusty shelf. And from that shelf, to another lower shelf. This is where I have to leave the horse, which, as it turns out, is more of a mule.

An aerial view of my bus route from New York City to Amherst: a coastal wetland thick with puddles, ditches, and marshes, and a thin wagon trail along it.

A long hike up a hillside built from scrap wood. I follow the village girl knowing that she wants me and that my parents wouldn't mind. But it is only when she arrives at home, a warm enclosed tank of water on the ridge, that I am willing to kiss her. Later I ask my brother, his friend, and Natchez over for band practice. Sarah Darling is practicing Bach cello suites on the viola upstairs. We take turns teaching the band a song. When my brother tries an early Who hit, I attempt to form a horn section by attaching the bari sax mouthpiece to the body of a bassoon while Natchez plays alto. With morale fading, I fall back on an acoustic rendition of "Help Me Make It Through the Night."

In the lobby of a new hotel, I submit to a series of acting exercises that involve approaching strangers and saying embarrassing things. The idea is to inure myself to public shame in order to lose the fear of humiliation that motivates most actors. It occurs to me that I am in a rehearsal dream for an actor's nightmare.

Clinging to a little sheet of scrap metal, myself and three friends soar along the canal towards a monastery on the hill. Before we cross into the next county, two of us are asleep. Losing my strength, I guide us to touch down at a filling station where another group of friends is filling themselves up with air. Later I am waiting to be picked up by my parents with my drug-addled music editor. He watches over my shoulder as I compose, then rearrange, a piece that ends as follows: "...you must be twitterpated."

Watching a small improvistational troupe as they introduce a feature film. They invite the audience to fill in the melody of a song called "12 Days" that could be sung by a young Alexander Herzen: "Twelve days, baby; I'm just twelve days behind..."

At a private function, I bring two wineglasses to the bar on a tray: one intact, and the other broken at the stem.

On a family vacation, I have to lie down and be very still while I am fitted with a large set of padded black headphones that will cure me.

Preparing my consort for her first nighclub shoot, I paint her eyelids a purple that will appear red on film.