Star Black is a poet, photographer, and collage artist living and working in New York City. She’s released five books of poems, has taught at The New School and Stony Brook University, and lectured at the Bennington Writing Seminars. An exhibit featuring her collages in hand-made books will be shown from January 20 through April 3 at the Center for Book Arts.

The Morning News: What can visitors to the exhibition expect?

Star Black: The Center for Book Arts always has a sense of decorative overload to its openings because the art of the book is displayed amidst the shop tools of book-making. Nipping presses, paper cutters, letterpress machines, large flat work tables, and dog-eared wooden files of all kinds are never far away. The books shown—in my case three 19-inch-high visual accordion books containing original collages and poems—seem to have evolved out of the setting: a large floor-through book-making studio on the third floor of an industrial building on West 27th Street.

TMN: What are you working on next?

SB: A book of poems. I’m in the thicket of several thickets.

TMN: What’s been your favorite part of working as a photographer in New York?

SB: By far and away, the people who hire me and the people I photograph, and, when I’m out walking, the people on the street. Photography relaxes me because it simplifies my mental life. I have none when I’m photographing. I’m free, I’m focused. In some ways, it is not unlike meditation. The world appears beautifully and quietly.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

SB: Entertaining. I’d like to have my friends over more often.

TMN: When you teach, what’s the most common mistake you see poetry students make?

SB: They do not believe in themselves enough. They don’t realize they are as good at writing as I am, but haven’t yet spent the time reading poetry and writing poetry until they do realize that they have enough of a command of the material already written to allow them to stand among others as writers. They want to be “made” better by a teacher when the teacher knows they are already “made” and the challenge is to inspire them to teach themselves, to improve their work by recognizing that there are no short-cuts—that Catullus is as good as e. e. cummings, that Byron’s Don Juan needs to be read until one can see how great it is, that Shakespeare’s sonnets are still untouchable unless you love one or two by Sir Thomas Wyatt just as much. The great thing about Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Volume One is to see how hungry he was to learn, to read, to absorb what’s out there.

TMN: Who is your favorite contemporary poet and why?

SB: I read and reread John Ashbery, not because I understand everything in his poems, but because his poems slow me down and keep my attention directed to the “poemscape,” if there is such a thing. And there’s just enough mastery continuously evident—a strange word, an off-beat image, an astonishing sentence, a twist on a familiar phrase, an obscure allusion, a loving thought, a humorous aside—to keep me going in befuddled wonderment or to keep me intrigued, either way.

I can take one of his books off the shelf at random, And The Stars Were Shining, published in 1994, flip to a poem, “Mutt and Jeff,” and find that I have underlined these lines:

We get exported
and must scramble around for a while
in some dusty square, until
a poster fragment reveals the intended clue.

and:

The point is there’s no bitterness,
not here, nor behind the scenes.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your workspace?

SB: When I’m writing I keep a small Buddhist votive tablet from Thailand and a small trinket from India that has an embossed image of Ganesha next to the desk lamp. While preparing this show, I’ve kept a collage I made in 2004 on the mantel.

TMN: Where do you go to hear poetry in New York?

SB: Recently, I went to the KGB Bar on East 4th Street to hear Mark Bibbons read with Anne Carson and Mary Jo Bang. Last week I went to The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church to hear Stephen Motika, John Yau, Elaine Equi, Marjorie Welish, Alan Gilbert, Bill Mohr, Douglas A. Martin, and Pierre Joris read from Tiresias: The Collected Poems of Leland Hickman. Hickman edited the poetry journal Temblor, which ran for 10 issues in the 1980s; he died in l99l. The Poetry Project played a tape of Hickman reading one of his own poems at the end of the tribute, which was wonderful.

TMN: Is that your pen name, or are you just that cool?

SB: When she was in high school, my mother had a close friend known as Starr Hoover. He went on to graduate from the Virginia Military Institute and died fighting in World War II. She decided to name her first child in his memory—Starr if she had a boy and Star if she had a girl. —Erik Bryan, Jan. 21, 2010

Kevin Moffett is the author of the short-story collection Permanent Visitors, and his stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, and twice in The Best American Short Stories. Until recently, he edited and wrote for Funworld, the official magazine of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (see his essay in The Believer). George Saunders has called him a writer “with the very rare gift of true kind-heartedness.” He teaches in the graduate writing program at Cal State University, San Bernardino.

TMN: In your story “Ursa, On Zoo Property and Off,” there’s a sequence where the main character describes taking a tour of a zoo. It’s probably one of the funniest passages I’ve read all year. There are a lot of other brushes with animals in your book. Did these stories come out of your experiences with Funworld?

Kevin Moffett: I’ve always been fascinated with human interactions with animals, especially accidental ones. One of my first memories is sitting on the hood of my parents’ car in the Adirondacks watching these amazing brown bears (I think they were brown bears) fighting each other over trash at the dump. That’s one of those moments when you first start to realize the world isn’t as uncomplicated as you think it is. Everywhere I’ve lived, it seems like there’ve been these delegate animals around. In Florida I lived near a man-made lake inhabited by a pair of alligators. In Iowa we had barred owls in our back yard that, on certain nights, would call back and forth for hours. Here in Claremont, I sometimes see coyotes walking up and down the street in the morning, looking for cats to eat, I think.

TMN: What makes you irrationally angry?

KM: Today it’s unnecessary packaging. People who begin food orders with “I’m gonna do the—”. ESPN anchormen. People who ascribe adult intentions to babies, like, Look, he’s flirting with you. Able-bodied people who press the handicapped button for automatic doors.

TMN: Who’s the most under-appreciated author in the world?

KM: Not sure where or how she’s rated, but I’m always surprised when people haven’t read Joy Williams. In fact, I think a couple of her story collections are out of print, which is insanity. Here’s one more: Victor Pelevin. His collection, A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia, is one of the most jarringly original books I’ve ever read.

TMN: One thing that first impressed me away about your stories is how well you’re able to thread the expository information into the action. Is that something you’re conscious of—giving your stories that kind of seamless, propelled effect?

KM: You know, the first bunch of stories I wrote had zero exposition. Like a lot of my own students now, when I was an undergraduate I was blown away by books like Jesus’ Son, which has little in the way of traditional exposition. And I found it was really easy to write average imitations of good stories. So that’s what I did. It took me a long time to see the buried circuitry in a story like “Emergency.”

After college, I got the job writing for and editing Funworld. I started off turning thousand-word press releases into 200-word mini-articles, which was totally soul-sapping, but it actually taught me a lot about writing expository sentences.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

KM: It’s a framed slip of paper that says, “Make up some good shit.” I was sitting in Padgett Powell’s office as an undergraduate, probably staring dimly at him while he tried to explain what was wrong with one of my stories. He turned the story over and wrote this on the back of it. That’s it, he said. That’s all you have to do.

TMN: What have you been reading lately?

KM: I just finished Chris Adrian’s collection, and now I’m reading it again. What a strange and glorious book. What else? I’ve been reading a lot of books set around Los Angeles for a course I’m teaching next year. Day of the Locust, Less Than Zero (ugh), and Kem Nunn’s Tapping the Source, which inspired the movie Point Break and is approximately 500 times better.

TMN: Have you ever thought about writing a novel?

KM: God yes. I think about it a lot. I’ve probably spent as much time writing novels as writing short stories, to little effect so far. I find it tweaks the way I write sentences, the way I conceive of characters. Right now, I feel like I have an intuitive sense of a short story by the time I’ve written two paragraphs—where it’ll go, how it’ll get there. With novels it’s like I’m treading water in the middle of the ocean, and maybe there’s a boat out there somewhere, but I don’t know which direction I should start paddling.

I’m about done with my second collection of stories, though, and then I’m going to give it another shot. I have an idea that I think has some promise.

TMN: What is your favorite sport?

KM: My favorite sport is watching professionals play sports. I’ve also been skateboarding lately, which I was consumed with for about a decade, from junior high school until just after college. I live within five miles of about a half-dozen free concrete skate parks, so I fling myself around those when I’m feeling lucky. —Matt Robison, Nov. 12, 2009

Jonathan Ames is a Brooklyn-based writer, an occasional boxer, and the creator of the new HBO series Bored to Death about a Brooklyn-based writer named Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman, who becomes a private detective.

TMN: Why set the show so distinctively in Carroll Gardens and other actual New York locales?

Jonathan Ames: It’s where I live. I live in downtown Brooklyn. I love this area and I know it’s never quite been presented on television, so it was a real opportunity for me to kind of show New York’s new Left Bank.

TMN: How is the character Jonathan Ames like the real Jonathan Ames?

JA: He shares some of my DNA, but really he’s his own individual that Jason Schwartzman is creating. Some of the work that I write turns up, so there are similarities. He dresses somewhat like me. We based his wardrobe off of my wardrobe. He lives in Brooklyn. He has my name. Some of his emotions are similar to mine, but he’s, you know, he’s Jason’s invention.

TMN: How involved are you in the production of the show on a day-to-day basis?

JA: I’m very involved. I’m there at the first shot and the last shot. I sat next to the director for every take. I have the final edit on every episode. I picked every costume for every actor. I’ve been called a “show mother,” so I’m real involved in everything.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your workspace?

JA: My favorite object would be my landlord’s cat. The cat’s name is Minimus. He belongs to my landlord but always visits me. This is his secret hideout where he likes to get away, like a teenager, and smoke pot.

TMN: Will you be getting back in the boxing ring anytime soon?

JA: I hope so. I want to start training again, and hopefully some—you know, all my matches have been kind of insane bouts, in a way, against other artists. I’ll see if another strange match presents itself. I’m drawn to these things where maybe it’s a fantasy, you know, another fantasy of being the hero.

TMN: What are you working on next?

JA: Well, I just finished really working on the show maybe a month and a half ago, and it was really time-consuming. So I’m thinking about, if we got another season, I’m kind of preparing and taking notes for that [HBO has renewed Bored to Death since this interview was conducted—ed.]. I have to revise my screenplay that I wrote for my novel Wake Up Sir!, and I have an idea for another screenplay. I had a book come out in July, The Double Life Is Twice As Good, and my graphic novel, The Alcoholic, just came out in paperback.

TMN: Who is your archnemesis?

JA: Myself. He’s the only one that gives me a hard time.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at, but wish you were?

JA: I wish I were better at fixing things, and I wish I were more mechanically inclined. And also I wish I were a better lover. Yeah, better mechanical inclination and a better lover. —Erik Bryan, Oct. 13, 2009

Frank Portman was once better known as Dr. Frank, frontman of the seminal Bay Area punk band The Mr. T Experience. Now he’s building a reputation as an author. His latest novel, Andromeda Klein, is due out on August 25.

Interview contributed by Jay Hathaway.

TMN: What do you put down for “occupation” when you’re filling out forms these days?

FP: You know, I had to deal with this recently, because I just had a visit to the U.K., and on their landing cards they make you specify an occupation. A lot of previous times going over to England, I had to disguise everything about what I did, because if you say “musician,” they assume you’re taking jobs away from other musicians over there, so you make up something else. I did put “writer” in it this time. I’ve never felt that comfortable saying that when I only had one book, because it seems like if I never manage to finish another one, then it seemed a little bit presumptuous to go ahead and say “writer,” but now I feel two is pretty good. Two, you can say you’re a writer. At least, that’s my personal code.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office?

FP: This large fiberglass hand is quite famous amongst a small number of people because it was used as a prop for the photo on the cover of the Revenge Is Sweet and So Are You album. I think its message is: stop.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

FP: To sing beautifully, to be good with money, and to be able to charm monkeys.

TMN: Was it harder to write a teenage girl [in Andromeda Klein] than it was to write a teenage guy [in King Dork]?

FP: There’s a little bit of a political angle to a guy writing a book from a female point of view. You wonder what people will make of it. As far as the actual words on the page and the actual characterization, I didn’t find that hard at all. Some people could say, “It’s not a successful girl,” maybe, but I actually think it is. Human psychology and experience is a massively enormous complex thing, and the crude division of sex doesn’t even touch the surface of it. It’s a lot harder to engineer the thoughts of an introvert, per se, than the difference between a female introvert and a male introvert.

TMN: How much did you know about the occult and tarot cards when you started Andromeda Klein?

FP: It’s like a lot of things, where you think you know a lot about it before you really have to put yourself on the line and present it. It mostly involved a lot of reading of a lot of very crazy books. The contents of my library are radically different, and very, very, very much weirder than they were two years ago. In King Dork, I thought, “I know something about the experience of being a socially unsuccessful high school dork type,” but that’s a common theme in movies and books, and certainly teen novels. I wanted to take this stock thing and present it in a way that’s a little more resonant and a little more interesting, not just Napoleon Dynamite Plus. A similar thing to the high school nerd is a teen witch. So I just thought, “What would a more interesting version of that be?” I wanted to make sure all of the stuff she was involved with was real stuff. I think that’s the main failing of a lot of novels and movies about the occult. It’s someone’s idea of what that material maybe ought to look like. I took it pretty seriously, figuring out what a person like her would be doing.

TMN: Does being a doctor matter as much in the literary world as it does in rock and roll?

FP: I don’t have an advanced degree. I have a regular old bachelor’s degree. People just think that because of my curmudgeonly and pedantic manner. I graduated from college and had a hard time finding a job, so I decided to be a pretend rock star, and that was the way my life went. But no, I think that there are annoying, pretentious writers out there for sure, like there are in any endeavor. Music has its share of people with that sort of self-regard. Most writers I know are pretty down to earth. There’s a shared terror of the world and how it is going to pounce on and crucify your writing every time you put it out. There are some exceptions, and some writers who think they’re God, but there’s nothing like writing a novel to teach you humility.

TMN: Who is your archnemesis?

FP: I have thought long and hard on this one, in hopes of arriving at an answer that would not be career suicide. And that answer is my cat, Matilda, who appears to spend all of her waking hours—admittedly a very short span of time—plotting my destruction. —Jay Hathaway, Aug. 18, 2009

In his new book, poet and self-described “vegetarian sin eater” CAConrad develops a theosophy based on the music and celebrity of Elvis Presley. Using prose poems, found art, and snippets of conversational dialog, Advanced Elvis Course details CAConrad’s excursions to Memphis where he interacts with acolytes of the King.

TMN: What prompted your journey to Graceland?

CAC: It was actually many trips, and they weren’t prompted—not at first they weren’t. Although there were several trips friends wanted to take with me, I said no, because Graceland is a meditation into the best parts of the soul of America, and you feel it and meet other pilgrims much easier when alone.

The book isn’t a travel book, or a guide to Graceland. It’s actually about the investigations into what’s happening with this spiritual leader Elvis Presley in the bigger picture of our world. The book sets out to investigate “out loud,” so to speak, or investigate with everyone “out loud.”

The queer content of the book has prompted an angry stir from some of the more conservative minds surrounding Elvis and his legacy. I’ve taken to sending a reply to all hate mail with this link where I break down for them the lyrics to “Jailhouse Rock,” which really pisses them off. It’s no surprise though, sadly, since reports show that gay bashing is up by 29 percent. But I’ve been tested by fire; bring it on, I say!

TMN: It seemed as though you were openly welcomed into the community of Elvis fans in Memphis. Was this as it actually happened or were anti-gay aspects of your experience omitted?

CAC: Oh, I would never leave such things out, if they happened. If I met any homophobes there I didn’t know it. Everyone’s so high on Elvis at Graceland; no time for the haters. It’s funny you say this, though, because the book was reviewed by a gay newspaper and the reviewer was annoyed that some people in the book acted like I was a unicorn or something. But I just figured that the reviewer doesn’t get outside his immediate circles much. When I’m outside big cities people often act like I’m cool because I’m gay. That’s funny because a lot of gay people are not cool at all—gay Republicans for instance. And trust me when I say that straight Republicans are even cooler than gay Republicans!

TMN: Why is it so easy for so many people to see Elvis as a divine figure?

CAC: In her memoir, Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley recalls Elvis asking, why, out of all the people in the universe, had he been chosen to influence so many millions of souls? Elvis was a Capricorn, born January 8th, and eight rules the center of Saturn, the ruling planet of Capricorn, which is all about getting things done, no bones about it! Never forget Elvis’s signature, “TCB: Taking Care of Business!” He was also born a twin, and Elvis knew he absorbed his dead brother’s life-force at birth, setting his course and setting the high-octane engine for that course.

TMN: What’s your favorite object in your office?

CAC: The photograph my friend Heather Raquel Phillips took for the book, and not because it’s a picture of me, but because I really feel that picture, reaching for the giant blue E of Elvis in the sky! I told her about the dream I had and she said, “Let’s do it!” She’s a terrific photographer; she can do anything!

TMN: Do you think a person has to choose a side in the Beatles/Elvis debate?

CAC: I just quote John Lennon, who said, “Before Elvis there was nothing!” John answered it for us.

TMN: Why format the book as you did, as a series of prose, poems, and snippets of conversation?

CAC: My main voice is as a poet, and any poet worth his or her salt knows the true value of breaking the rules. By allowing the book to come out of me just as it wanted to, instead of forcing it into the restraints of formally acceptable forms, much more was able to be expressed. I believe strongly in the hybrid-genre building of a book. It’s a joy to write this way, and so far the feedback has been that it’s a good read as well.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

CAC: Bringing the dead back to life. I despise death, hate that we are so temporary. There’s so much to do! It seems impossible to do it all. And there are so many people I’ve loved who are dead. I really hate death. I’m opposed to death, more than anything else in life!

TMN: What are you working on next?

CAC: Another long-term project, The Book of Frank, recently came out. But I’m hard at work on my (Soma)tic Poetry, a poetry which investigates life between Soma, or the divine, with Somatic, or the flesh of things. (This is something updated monthly.) And I’m in the middle of finishing a very exciting collaborative (Soma)tic experiment with my friend Thom Donovan, and this involves the music of Arthur Russell.

I’m also working on a book of Astral Projection poems, poems written as a result of out-of-body experiences. Also there is a collaborative book I’m working on with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems, and this is coming out in January 2010 from Factory School Books. I’m very excited to be working with so many brilliant poets, and I wouldn’t trade this time for any other!

TMN: Would you be willing to relocate if necessary?

CAC: But I relocate every day, keeping my mind open to the undiscovered beauties. And I don’t care if that sounds corny, I mean it! —Erik Bryan, Aug. 4, 2009

Author Tom Piazza’s latest novel, City of Refuge, was runner-up in this year’s Tournament of Books. As a music writer, he won a Grammy for his album notes to Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey.

TMN: During the Tournament of Books, David Rees said City of Refuge “feels like it’s breathing and stretching and moving like a big organism.” What scope did you set when you began writing?

TP: Hurricane Katrina wasn’t just a local or regional disaster. The story didn’t just have to do with people’s houses getting smashed or flooded. People were taken out of their usual narratives and thrown all around the country into other people’s narratives. Probably half the novel takes place outside of New Orleans—Houston, Chicago, Missouri, upstate New York. Anyway, I knew the book would need to reflect that kind of upheaval and those kinds of contrasts.

Anytime you write a story that attends to people’s social or political lives as well as their interior, emotional lives, there is going to be a lot of tension among elements. City of Refuge contains several different types of discourse and narrative. I think that rattled some people, but it was the only way I thought I could, in fact, make the book be the kind of “organism” it needed to be.

TMN: What are your five least favorite things about New Orleans?

TP: Most of the same things I would dislike anywhere: Indifference to poverty and its causes. Violence. Racism. Greed and opportunism. Lack of curiosity.

TMN: How does your creative process begin?

TP: Usually with an image, a voice, or a gesture. I need to have something in mind that I know is true, and then I can build on that. I need to see that red wheelbarrow. If I can see it, or hear it, and I’m not just trying to tell myself I saw it or heard it, then I have something to go with. I like Picasso’s remark: “I don’t seek; I find.” I try to keep that in mind.

TMN: What are your three favorite books to recommend to people?

TP: Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann looks and reads like a big 19th-century family novel but is in fact a Trojan horse full of all these Modernist techniques that slip in and do their work without the reader noticing. Norman Rush’s short-story collection Whites is a neglected masterpiece. Bloods, an oral history of black Vietnam veterans by Wallace Terry, is one of the most astonishing books I’ve ever read. The speakers come from across the class and rank spectrum, and Terry manages to bring their extraordinarily varied voices to the page so that they appear in front of you like holograms.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

TP: Juggling.

TMN: Who is your archnemesis?

TP: Everyone’s archnemesis is some version of himself or herself.

TMN: What is your favorite object in your office/workplace?

TP: I like antique folding rulers; I always have at least one or two within reach. The one in the picture is made, like most of them, of boxwood and brass. I love how precisely it is put together. I like the paint on it and the marks and patina that come from having been used by someone who knew what he or she was doing. This ruler is somewhere around 90 years old. My father was an engineer, and there’s something about the irreducible utility of this thing that probably makes me feel connected to the best part of my dad, too.

TMN: What are you working on next?

TP: I’m working on a new novel set mostly in New York City, but also in other parts of the country. I don’t really like to talk about work-in-progress, at least until it’s more than halfway done, but this book is as different from City of Refuge as could be. I told my editor that it is essentially a comic novel but with tragedy riding underneath, set against a more or less epic landscape. I don’t know if he believed me. I’m also putting together a collection of my nonfiction pieces, and I’m writing for David Simon’s new HBO series Treme, which is set in post-Katrina New Orleans. —Mike Deri Smith, Jun. 10, 2009

Cadillac Man, as he was known on the streets, spent the better part of the past 15 years homeless in New York City. After losing a managerial position at a Pepsi plant, and then at a Hell’s Kitchen meat market, his second marriage dissolved. With nowhere else to go, he began living on the streets, making a living by collecting cans and bottles for recycling. He started a diary around this time, and his collected works, covering the highs and lows of his life in the mid-1990s, was published on March 17. Land of the Lost Souls (excerpt here) focuses on the relationships he developed while on the street in an effort to memorialize the lives of those often overlooked by general society.

TMN: Your first reading of the stories from this memoir took place in a homeless shelter. What was that like?

CM: Ah, it felt so good being amongst my brethen talking “street.” Reading my stories, looking into their eyes, connecting our souls into one being. My voice is theirs, to be spread to all those who will listen and not judge for we are people too. Only our circumstances are different; we bleed and cry just like you. Empathy!

TMN: Most of the stories in your book take place in the mid-1990s. Why do you tend to focus more on that time in your life?

CM: Yes, like a newborn child, this was my new beginning, a new identity. The old me was gone, the past meaningless, and the future ahead so filled with uncertainites, I wondered: Will I survive this ordeal? Become just another faceless unknown? Those early years taught me that even though life tossed a curve ball I was still able to connect with and not strikeout, meaning death. Also, it gave me purpose. The more I helped others, the more reason to live.

TMN: Throughout the book, the phrase “word is bond” keeps showing up. Did you adopt it before or after you became homeless, or is it just a ’90s thing?

CM: “Word?” “Word is bond!” Through traveling to many encampments, listening in on conversations, when someone finished what they had to say or was interrupted by another with “WORD?” meant, “Is that what you say is the truth, straight up?” “Word is bond!” meaning yes, no bullshit, the absolute truth said the replier. Some street people, depending where you are may use “word up?” but the reply is still the same. “Word is bond.” I used it at the Mens’ Shelter reading and they all knew I was speaking from the heart, no bullshit. Like everybody else, we don’t like being lied to.

TMN: What are you working on next?

CM: Still working on the latter years, 2000 to the present. So many stories yet to be told. A novel someday, and a “how to survive on the streets” guide book. Though I don’t wish it to occur on anybody, the book will contain useful hints, the dos and don’ts on the streets.

TMN: What’s something you’re not good at but wish you were?

CM: Wish I was better able to put my thoughts faster on paper and the computer. Adjusting to living inside again, fortunately I have a loving woman by my side who has the patience and understands where I came from. As I mentioned before, this is a new beginning and I want it to last.

TMN: How do you think being a police officer before becoming homeless made your experience different from others’?

CM: Several things they teach you in law enforcemet are observation and how to handle situations that most people don’t come across in their everyday lives. Because of this training, I was able to defuse and save my butt as well as others’. Some call it heroics. I say to that, it’s the right thing to do.

• use of a hand weapon (nightstick, gun)
• observation (intent, body language)
• the ability to take action with little or no hesitation rather than the normal shock/uninvolvement that occurs in society

TMN: Early in your book, you describe setting up a “peanut perimeter” alarm system. Did you come up with this trick or were you shown it by someone else?

CM: I saw someone—this one guy sleeping behind his wagon—use it. When I stepped there it was amazing how that sound carried through the night. I thought, “what a great idea.” I used it most of the time after that.

TMN: What’s one thing the average person could do to help the situation of homeless people?

CM: By donations to soup kitchens, clothing donations, anywhere where the finances go more directly to the clients. Too much goes toward administrative costs and other hidden agendas. Also, the public could be better educated about who we are and why we are here. They often believe they live far removed from our way of life, but in fact they do not. Losing everything could happen to anyone at any time.

TMN: What is your favorite object? (a particular book, a fire hydrant on your street, a keepsake from an old friend, etc.)

CM: The main answer would be my wagon. It lives under the 33rd street viaduct in Astoria. Photos are on Google. Other answers considered are:

• my teeth
• my hat
• my writer’s chair, an office chair kept next to my wagon.

TMN: What keeps you sane?

CM: My writing, the loving company of my companion, the upcoming baseball season, coffee and smokes, and the wonderful people of Astoria. Bless them. —Erik Bryan, May. 25, 2009