I hate the haircut I got on Sunday. I tried someone new and expensive and she didn't get it right. I hate it more and more every day.

Today, in the finals presentation for a huge potential client, the Important Guy asked me a question. "This bond maturity calculation, does it take into account for reset dates of muni variable rate discount notes and other embedded optionality, or is it final, stated maturity?" his mouth said. But his eyes, they said, "Your hair, what the fuck is up with that?"

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I don't normally drink coffee; I prefer tea. But on days like today, when the city lies cold beneath a thousand shades of gray, and when consciousness escapes me for listless nights, I pour myself the strongest cup o' joe the kitchen has to offer and down the bitter concoction as fast as I can. The world soon enough will return to colour.

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Today marks the 10th year of my father's death.

Ten years ago I was a junior in college, smack in the middle of my undergrad experience in a foreign country, busy doing the things that college students do, suffering the anxieties that college students suffer. October 23, 1992 was a Friday, just like any other. I remember being in a particularly foul mood that morning having woken up late and running off to practice. I was tired and cold, and my hunger had gotten the better of me, and I was in no mood to be running around and sweating.

I returned to the dorms mid-morning, exhausted and irritable. My two roommates weren't in, and I dumped my bags onto the floor, thankful for the rare spell of peace and quiet. It was when I walked into my bedroom that I first felt an uneasiness that something wasn't quite right. At first, I tried to ignore it, but it persisted: the blinking red light of the answering machine and the red single digit on the display. One message. I was a bit taken aback: it was rare that I got messages so early in the morning. I pressed the play button.

"Hello, Patrick?" It was Maggie. Dear, dear Maggie, how long I haven't heard from her. Her voice wavered. "Patrick, please, please call home when you get this message."

Click.

I froze. Something was wrong; I felt it in her voice. But I couldn't tell what it was. I played the message again and paced back and forth, suddenly terrified and feeling very alone. I walked to the darkened kitchen and looked around. No one was there. I walked back to my bedroom and closed the door. Granny, something must have happened to Granny. Oh no. I looked out the window to the overcast skies and tried to quell the rising panic. I took a deep breath and slowly picked up the receiver. I steeled myself and dialed.

"Hello?" It was Maggie.

"Maggie?"

"Patrick? Oh Patrick." Maggie's voice softened, trembling to a weak whisper.

"Maggie, is everything okay?" I knew what the answer would be, but I didn't know what else to say.

"No, Patrick, no. Something's happened."

I swallowed hard, and hesitated a moment. "It's Granny, isn't it?" I said. "Something's happened to Granny, hasn't it?" I gritted my teeth, waiting for the answer.

"No, no, no, Patrick." Maggie paused. "It's your dad." She paused again. "It's Daddy."

***

I flew back to Trinidad the following morning, suit and tie packed for the funeral. The previous day was a blur, and I had found myself unable to cry. "It's okay," I told everyone. "Thanks for your sympathy, but I'm okay." My mind played tricks with me on my way back home, and I kept imagining my father in passers-by as they walked past, stealing furtive glances at the boy with eyes red from a night of fitful sleep.

***

"So how did it happen?" I asked Maggie on the way home from the airport.

Maggie squeezed my hand, and I felt her tremble ever so lightly. "He was shot," she said.

"What?"

"He was shot." She looked at me. "There was a break-in at the shop and they shot him."

I stared back at her, unbelieving, trying to digest this piece of news. "He was shot?"

"Yes," she said, "they shot him." Maggie turned away and began to sob.

***

Up until that point, I thought that my father had died because of a heart attack or something. A stroke, a car accident, a heart attack. Of course, what else could it be? Never did I imagine it was because he was shot. I felt a surprising sense of relief as the news sank in, uncomfortably aware of the guilt that was garishly juxtaposed upon it. Months later, as I sat trying to understand my strange reaction to the news, I came up with the only reason I had allowed myself: I was proud of him. I was proud that my father had not succumbed to a normal death, that he had died not because his body failed him but because of something beyond his control. That made him superhuman to me. I felt proud that he had died defending his home.

***

The days leading up to the funeral were extraordinarily demanding. They were demanding not so much because of the emotional shock of the death, but rather because of the lack of space I was given to grieve. Countless people flowed into and out of the house, bringing food and drink, calling on the phone and offering their condolences. And these countless people had to be entertained. True, we weren't expected to be on best behaviour, nor were we required to offer food or drink, but we had to avail ourselves to be consoled, to be hugged and be told a thousand times that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to scream and tell these countless people to get out. That we had a lot to do. That we were in the business of arranging a funeral here, goddammit, not of making polite conversation and talking in hushed tones. Get the fuck out now.

We had still to arrange for the burial, order the flowers, write the program, see about the gravesite, and find pallbearers and a priest--all on a weekend. And to make matters worse, no one could get a hold of my brother, Peter, who was inaccessible in the South Pacific doing research for the summer. Luckily he called after I arrived home, and he managed to get a flight out the next day.

It was interesting to watch all of this going on, and I felt the surreal detachment that you read about in books but never quite experience. I watched the people go in and out of the house, morbidly fascinated by the attention death had brought us and allowing myself only an academic study of the goings-on. No, I could not become emotionally constrained. I had a lot of things to do before the funeral and I was on a tight schedule. I had never buried a father.

And then I had to be strong. I had to be strong for my mother, whom I had never before seen cry. My mother never allowed herself to be weak in front of her children, and it was a tremendous shock for me to see the tears streaming down her face, her eyes red and swollen with grief. My mother was utterly dependent on my father; what was she going to do now? How would she survive the next few years much less the next few days? No dammit, I could not afford to cry.

***

The night before the funeral I stayed up unable to sleep. Over in the dining room, five moths stood on the window screen. The large moth was in the middle, surrounded in a circle made by the others. They all stood still in the circle, all except the smallest moth, which fluttered nervously back and forth in its spot. They were drawn to the soft light of the candles.

***

The funeral day itself was easier than I thought it was going to be. The church was packed beyond standing-room capacity with friends, relatives, and villagers, and people overflowed into the surrounding courtyard. Scores and scores of people showed up at the gravesite to say goodbye to my father, and I felt emotionally torn. Torn between the grief I could not express and the anger at all the people invading into my private goodbye. Torn between the relief that everything went on schedule and the pride that even in his death my father could draw such a crowd.

We said our goodbyes and left the cemetery, the villagers singing "Amazing Grace" into the Caribbean evening sky.

***

It's hard to believe that ten years have gone by since his death. Time heals all wounds, they say, but even as I write this I feel the lump in my throat forming, and I find myself suffocating the tear threatening to emerge. Grieving is a long and difficult process, and this experience of burying my father has prepared me a lot for accepting death as part of life.

Thank you, Daddy, for being such a beautiful part of my life. I love you. I miss you terribly.

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I have a funny knack of noticing strange times on digital clocks. Not just any times, mind you, but certain, uh, important times. Like ascending numbers. Or mathematical constants. Or numbers tied to significant events. Bear with me as I try to explain.

There are certain times of the day that make me sit up and take notice. Times like, say, 1:23 pm. Or 12:34 am. Or, better yet, 12:34:56 (am or pm--your choice). These times are orderly times. Each successive digit follows in the natural progression that one would expect while counting, and it makes the strange brain in my head take notice. Lookie here, another neurosis to add to my collection, my brain says.

Greg and I would be driving along when suddenly I'd point to the clock. "Hey, it's one-two-three-four," I'd say. Two hours and forty minutes later I'd point to the clock again. "Hey, it's now pi." Greg would look at the clock and shake his head.

What kinds of times do I mean, you say? Ascending numbers, ordered pairs, pi, multiply-repeated digits, simple patterns, boiling points, Manhattan area codes, Avogadro's Number (well, off by a few orders of magnitude). They're all game. If the clock says it, I'll sit up and take notice.

The thing that worries me now is that this little mind game is spreading. Every once in a while, I'd be in line to buy something and the cash register would call out to me. Hey you, that costs $12.34. Or I'd get back $10.23 in change for lunch. Or I'd fork over a twenty and get back pi. It's beginning to drive me nuts. Who do I see about this problem, a therapist or a mathematician?

Well, it's getting late now and I must be getting to bed soon. It's almost 11:11:11 and a clock's calling out to me somewhere.

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High atop the crest of the ridge we watch the sun wave its daily goodbye over the distant mountaintops. In rich hues of reds, golds and browns, autumn has arrived in Vermont. The valley is bathed in soft, muted tones, and the lone pine in the foreground seems to sigh with the wind as the sun slips quietly below the horizon.

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The office is quiet and empty this morning. Hopefully, this is a sign that the end of the hectic week will pass uneventfully. But somehow I think not.

After I arrived at work today, I went to the kitchen to prepare my usual morning tea: one teabag, two sugars, and a dash of skim milk. I took a left from the kitchen and sat for a few minutes on the sofa facing the large glass-paned walls to the east, watching the sun begin to cast its warm glow over the morning midtown air. It was so peacefully surreal.

Soon enough, I headed back to my desk, tea in hand. A colleague passed me. "Patrick, would you like some Israeli coffee?" he said. Of course I agreed. I am always willing to try something new. So now I am sitting with a cup of Israeli coffee on my desk, the steaming concoction a perfect complement to a beautiful morning in the city.

Happy Friday everyone.

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The days are getting shorter. Fall is proceeding with sufficient speed, and the weather is doing its best to catch up with the seasonal requirements of cool days and cooler evenings. The rains of the past few days have ended, and with its clear skies and brilliant sunshine, today was a day little short of spectacular.

I left work at seven today, succumbing to the urge to walk under the twinkling lights of Midtown's skyscrapers. I walked past St. Patrick's Cathedral, gazing at its spires silhouetted against the deep blue evening sky. It looked a bit tired this evening, and I felt a twinge of sadness as I passed.

I walked to Rockefeller Center and spent a few minutes watching early skaters go round and round the outdoor rink, making endless circles as they danced to the music drifting overhead. A young couple held hands as they glided by, giggling softly as they went. I felt my happiness return, and I smiled in concert with them.

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My iPod loves Funky Monks. Or so it seems to me. He loves to play the song, my iPod, even though I have him set to randomly pick any of the 1062 songs in his memory bank. He's sometimes moody, but he's settled comfortably into the leather outfit I bought him several months ago--the little black leather number with the plastic window so he can peer out safely at the world without scratching his delicate Lucite skin.

Yes, Funky Monks is on his list of current favourites. Whenever I reset the randomize function, he picks it and plays it as one of the first dozen or so songs. He doesn't want to admit that he likes it as much as I say he does and he tries to mix the order in which he plays it--sometimes it's the first song, sometimes it's the seventh song--but I'll be walking down the street or waiting for my bus, and invariably I'll hear the beginnings of that unmistakable guitar riff, and I have to smile.

I wonder if the Red Hot Chili Peppers ever knew their song would be so dearly loved by my little iPod.

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Few things are as satisfying to me as a good haircut from a trusted hairdresser. Every two or three weeks, I rush off to my usual place where Steven magically transforms the rat's nest on my head into some semblance of a normal head of hair. I emerge from the salon full of energy and with a renewed sense of self-confidence, my new coiffure aerodynamic and polished.

Steven has been cutting my hair for several years now. He's grown to know how I like my hair cut, how to get around the funny shape of my head, and has long learned to wash and cut my hair in fifteen minutes flat. Bam. Fifteen minutes and I'm out of there. Imagine my dismay when I learned today that he no longer works at my usual.

"Hello, is Steven in today?" I knew that Wednesdays were his days off, and I knew he was just on vacation. The answer would be an obvious yes.

"I'm sorry, no, but Steven no longer cuts hair."

"Okay, I'd like to make an appointment with him for six thir... He's what?"

"He's no longer cutting hair. I'm sorry, but he's working in a photo lab in Brooklyn now. Can I recommend someone else, Patrick?"

"Huh?" He's gone? And how did this woman know my name?

So if your photos from Brooklyn come back with just the right curls and colour tints, tell Steven that I miss him, will you?

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Greg and I spent the weekend in Las Vegas. Crazy town, Las Vegas. All the gambling you can shake a stick at. And then some.

It's a funny little town, so shiny and shimmery under the desert night skies. We started on one end of the Strip, screaming our heads off on the roller coaster at the top of the Stratosphere, and ended up at the Luxor at the other end, where we saw the amazing Blue Man Group performance. In between, of course, were casinos, casinos, casinos. All the gambling you can shake a stick at. And then some.

In other news, my submission to Martijn's One Photo: A Story project is up. Now go submit something, otherwise the project will come to an untimely ending next week, and no amount of Prozac will bring back happiness to Martijn.

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