Ask Sensei Bonnie Baker about the Plexiglas® rod stowed up her sleeve and she’ll reply, “It’s for an art project,” but her karate students know what it’s really for.

The memory of when I first learned how to read glows like in my mind like embers still hot from their initial spark. I was in kindergarten. There were 26 big workbooks. One for every letter of the alphabet. The characters were Jack, Jill, their dog, a lion, and a silly troll that hid under a bridge. They lived in a world of bright colors and simple shapes.

It is a well known fact that many people have unpleasant jobs where they must deal with other people’s shit on a daily basis: shrinks, garbage collectors, nannies on temporary visas, U.S. soldiers on active duty in Iraq, and nuclear decontamination technicians. But few have to deal with actual human excrement.

One of my friends worked as a bathroom attendant this summer. His job was to hand out paper towels and keep the restroom clean between 8pm and 4am (sounds simple enough). The place of employment is a bar (this might get complicated) – a gay bar (good luck).

During the fall harvest in Fujian, China, sweet potatoes slices, basking in the noonday sun, blanket entire hillsides. The desiccated roots can then be kept throughout the winter, when the mother of a peasant family, searching through the pantry, might find only a few cups of rice remaining at the bottom of the sack. She reaches for the strips of dried sweet potatoes, carefully rations them for a long winter, and drops them tenderly into a pot of boiling water.

Some experiences are seemingly unremarkable when we live them and prove to be significant only afterwards, glittering like gems hidden under layers of cortical detritus and beckoning us to unearth them through reflection. Other experiences are not latent and are immediately meaningful.

Lying on my back, I stared into the golden rays streaming from the dental light fixture above me. The parabolic curvature of the reflective surface behind the bulb realigned all the light rays so that they marched forth in neat, parallel lines only to be swallowed up by my gaping mouth.

“The one time I said I was innocent, I was,” she said.