10.10.2025 - Weekly Digest
For Those For Whom It May Be a Concern And Probably Is Not: my schedule has shifted and I'm keeping up with a number of responsibilities all at once. All this means for Without a Gun is that the paid Features will still be published weekly but not on certain days until I have the contours of this whole spacetime deal figured out. Maybe Fridays. Maybe on a new day of the week that doesn't have a name yet. Some things need to sort their own selves out.
-JA
10.06.2025
An attempt to attend an event up by Berkeley went in some other directions. Thinking it was a leisurely meet and greet I stumbled into the venue (a community events startup space with no listed address) about a half hour late. It was quiet in there and a speaker with a Voice whom I later pieced together was a local NPR host was speaking in low tones to the focused crowd. They fidgeted when I walked in. I felt regarded. There was nowhere to sit and a reel played in my head of me standing there behind the speaker like I was waiting for my turn, in everyone's line of sight with nothing to offer. I looked around like a trapped animal for a pamphlet to grab, something to sign or buy. It was like I'd farted in a library. No one else to blame for it. I mimed an apology to a couple of strangers and found my way down the street to an arcade bar with a sandwich board that promised karaoke. In the bathroom was some graffiti referencing Jeopardy! champion Amy Snyder. If I believed in fate I'd believe that's where I was supposed to go instead.
10.07.2025
Knowing I'm about to be busier than I've been I made a point to be not very busy for a couple of days. Went for some long walks, up and down hills, trying different routes. Found my way to the pedestrian bridge I now know exists. Caught up on Resident Alien and re-read for the fortieth time some of The Alexandria Quartet. Cheered for the Tigers. Swore at the Duolingo owl in several tongues. Watered the potted bamboo trees and did my best to get to know them better. How often does a kid from the Great Lakes get to water bamboo? I don't feel much closer to them but I think we have a mutual respect now. Also learned that what I thought was an avocado tree is no such thing, and even though I'd been told there was an avocado tree on this property I can find no evidence of such. All the little green fruits around here, when you open them up, they're citrusy inside, orange or yellow, acidic. I refuse to let that be a metaphor. For the most part people and things are nice around here and it feels peaceful and I intend to let it feel that way, strong urge to burrow into the shifting earth or come what will.
10.08.2025
In this one I have a job in a city I recognize and know nothing about. There's a package to deliver and the box is open so I can see it's packages of cookie dough. A waitress in a diner tells me we are the same, we should spend time together. There's this movie I've been meaning to see, at the multiplex with the escalators, I tell her, why don't you join me after your shift. Meanwhile I'll wait for you in this museum, in the exhibit with the displays blurred out. It's really strange we never met before now and it's too bad I'm leaving in a couple days, I tell her. We'll work it out, she says. But I have to deliver this package so I'm threading my way on foot through a backed up intersection and someone is playing "First Breath After Coma" on their car stereo, loud enough to drown out the noise from the horns. I know my way around these parts I realize. Chicago or an alternate version of it. Young slender trees in cages like the ones at Millennium Park. Oh there's the address. That building is supposed to be in D.C.
10.09.2025
So you can saunter right in the front door of the White House these days, apparently. I'm a guy with a package to deliver, I tell the marines, and they don't say anything or move or blink or appear to be breathing so I'm on my way. Instinct tells me I don't want to go in that direction, that's where the assholes work, so I turn the other way and there's Chuck Schumer for some reason and we don't have anything to say to each other. I'm in the food court, hanging with the other plebs. Folks complaining about their supervisors, their pay, how annoying their in-laws are and how sick their kids got last year. I'm having a great time but then there's this package, the one with the cookie dough. That's the whole reason I'm here. Anyone know where Andy's Wine Shop is? A lady in a fluorescent vest waves in a general direction. A stall in the corner, not much of a storefront, bulletproof glass with a space at the bottom for exchanging goods and cash. You Andy? I ask the woman and she looks at me like I'm a fool. I have this package, you've probably been waiting for it. Don't think it will fit under the glass. Just leave it on the floor, she says. What do I do now? Whatever you want, she says, you're in the White House.