Murder.

Last night I was awakened by a burst of gunfire outside my bedroom window at midnight; it was quickly followed by a second and then the sound of a car driving off. My wife rolled over and touched my arm -- "Was that gunfire?"

It's like the sound of a car crash. Once you've really heard it you can't mistake it for much else. I've heard gunfire in my life, once had the chance to spend an afternoon at a gun range. And this would make the third time I've heard someone shot to death.

Karen calls nine-one-one; the line is busy. She tries again. "Is this about the shooting on Derby?" She wasn't the first to phone it in. People in our neighborhood have gotten a lot more interested in calling the cops about this kind of thing since the last murder on our block.

We had emergency vehicles there within minutes. I stayed in bed; if I had nothing to contribute I didn't want to get in the way. Karen went to find out what was going on; she lives here and she needs to know. We've got different ideas as to what constitutes our business -- in this case I think both positions were legitimate.

The details she returned with? There's a body on the street in front of the house next door. There's a bullet hole in the front window of that house; the glass was double-glazed and the shot failed to penetrate the second pane. That surprised me. But what didn't surprise me was the real meat of the matter.

The victim was a young black man. Just like the last time.

I overheard one of the neighbors when he saw the body and became extremely upset, cursing and thrusting himself into the middle of things; when the cops put him in a patrol car he screamed, "You'd put a white boy in the front!"

Did this guy really need to be arrested? Would it have happened if he had been white? Did he really believe the cops would let a white offender ride shotgun -- or did he just need to bring race to the front of the moment? It was ugly all the way around and there was something about it that seemed almost like an allegory or a cartoon -- the hidden meanings were right there on the surface.

Dude is arrested seemingly for being black and complains that if he were white the arrest would have been a nicer experience. What can you do with that?

The alienation between law enforcement and the local black community is not going to make this situation any easier to address. The last murder on our block was never solved. The rumor was that it was drug-related; the victim had friends and relatives protest in the neighborhood explicitly stating that it was not drug related.

And that one went down the same as this. Someone in a car shoots someone on the street and drives off.

What can you do with that?

Sick and Blathering.

I really hate those drop shadows. They make the difference between art -- or at least an honest attempt -- and design crap. I'm dumping them before I print this.

So I'm roasting with fever, my face tight and swollen and ready to spit fat at the touch of a fork. Karen's dad had it and then she had it and now I have it and I'm sick and my brain presses painfully against the bone spurs that line the interior of my too-small cranium. Readers (I hope it's okay if I call you readers; an imaginary audience will do me good in an imaginary way, like zinc or vitamin C.), I understand that you don't really need details about the snot.

Readers glance at the monitor and then at the bagel/muffin/roti sitting too close to the keyboard, crowding up against the morning's beverage, angling for a nice spill into the Medusa-locks of the power strips. We certainly do not.

Well, if you're interested I've got lots of details, rich and vivid, impressions in all the major senses including the vestibular, every note and particle snot related. But I shall refrain.

Now isn't that better? But it looks somehow partial, nude, as though it's a background for something rather than being a completed piece...

Damnit.