My friend Wendy is an amazing illustrator. She likes to sketch people while she is riding on the Bart (the Bay Area's equivalent of the Metro). A week after I first saw her drawings, I went to a zine festival. And then I came up with the idea of riding Bart with Wendy, writing the stories of the people we saw while she sketched them, and turning our work into a zine. This Monday we did just that. I am excited and extremely nervous at the thought of people (other than the 10 people who read this blog) reading my writing. But it is good to feel excited and nervous.

So this is the beginning of my first Bart story:

I sit down next to a man so small, so dainty, so calm and contained that at first I think he's a woman. He is old despite the fact that his face is void of wrinkles except at his chin and at the corners of his eyes. He has good skin—it is slightly yellow and as I look at it longer, I begin to think there might be a faint tint of green to it. You can tell by his rounded shoulders, the single whisker growing long from under his lower lip, and the way he takes up almost no space on the bench-seat that he is old.