I rode my bike to a store earlier for cigarettes. A couple blocks from there, I passed an old man with long grey hair on a bicycle. He turned and said something about his slow speed; I flashed him a smile and sped by. When I emerged from the store, he was there with a red rose he'd picked for me, saying "You have a pretty smile. You seem like a nice person." He headed inside, I biked away. It pleases old men often to flirt this way with young women; I find such encounters usually harmless and sweet, intended simply to brighten the days of both parties. I biked home and hung the rose on my mailbox. When it's withered, I'll throw it away.

When I was half the years I am now, I kept mementos of everything. From concert ticket stubs to birthday cards, to flowers dried and pressed between pages of books, whether from small encounters or grand escapades. I liked having them there to remind me, and it gave me a twinge to ever throw such mementos away, as if I was somehow betraying the reality of the events, somehow erasing their value. (Keeping a journal is different: I write to figure things out, not to remember.)

This kind of sentimentality is something else that's gradually fallen away over the years. On the last night that I was in New Orleans, a friend strung Mardi Gras beads around my neck. When I left the following morning, I deliberately left them on the bathroom sink. I don't need or wish for keepsakes; that it happened is enough. I do homage to the moment by being present within it.

When I am dead, scatter my ashes to the wind.

Naftali was his given first name, but he went by Simon. The name suited him. He was short and gnomish, with wiry tufts of grey hair, spectacles, shiny black orthopedic shoes. You expected him to have a secret workshop where he cut, sewed, and hammered together leather shoes by hand. I favored black combat boots, and my hair was cut spiky-short and dyed pink. He was 87 years old when we met, and I was 20. ( We hit it off famously, of course. )