All that winter, when I was deep into my self-deprivation, self-imposed-poverty phase, I walked the filthy, noisy streets of downtown LA, my used laptop on my back, toting a Ralph’s grocery bag containing my lunch: a quart yogurt container of brown rice and cabbage, a half-rotten apple, and a few crumbled matzohs (two boxes for ninety-nine cents at the ninety-nine-cent store). I wore black jeans (orange earplugs in one pocket), a heavy cotton pullover, a polar-fleece jacket, and a purple scarf. I walked from Lucas and Sixth (because I could park there for free) half a mile west to the county law library (because it opened at 8:30, compared to 10:00 for the public library), then to the park adjacent to the superior courthouse at lunch (because it had a public bathroom and a fountain), and afterward to the public library at Olive and Fifth. Laden with a backpack full of books, feeling broken and lost and rag-and-bone — gray sky, honking horns, sunless streets hemmed in by grimy buildings — I thought over and over: Christ nailed to a cross. Christ nailed to a cross.