Stephen Mejias

It's interesting: A small change can make such a big difference. I wake up, force myself out of bed, walk into my living room, and stop to admire the so-slightly-revised layout. So slight, the revision is, but I love it. It just seems right. It seems

meant
to
be.

In the office, I'll let you know, the guys sometimes make fun of the way I choose to break my lines. I don't blame them. But, I do have a reason. It's about rhythm and soul. It's hi-fiku. Also, of course, it's not unprecedented. Others may know it from elsewhere, but I take it from JP Donleavy’s bawdy and beautiful novel, The Ginger Man. Donleavy writes as if he created language. The book was a favorite of mine. Not so anymore, but it was good for the time. I stole it, like so many other things, while I was in college. College, a collage of blurry photographs in yellow and green.

These days, I steal from other sources. I steal from Wes Phillips and Art Dudley and Jonathan Scull, among others. In an e-mail subjected, "Yoo hoo, speaker placement...", J-10 reminds me of four very fine tunes dedicated to the hand claps and toe-ins and all other sorts of "vagaries and vicissitudes of system setup and maintenance."

Oh, I knew they existed, J-10. I was just making sure you were paying attention.