ingio

There is nothing new here or anywhere. So goddamn tired of logging the everyday, you tell yourself you have a headache if only to provide a good excuse for popping open the bottle. Take a healthy dose of acetaminophen just because. Go numb. Leaf through 'Cool Memories' for the umpteenth time. Get bored. Dip your mind into a glassy pool of simulacra. Use a fancy word in place of a commonplace one. Practice pretension. Sleep because you have nothing more interesting to do.

We were sitting across from each other beneath the vaulted, smoke-stained ceilings of a smirched little hole of a pub downtown. Papers all over the sticky table. Plans were being drawn up with pens rapidly running out of ink. Pint glasses were emptied and emptied again. By this point, we hadn't even started up the paper, and articles were already being submitted. Good articles, really well-written articles, and we hadn't even found a printer yet. We were in over our heads and didn't even know it. No matter, we wouldn't have cared anyway. We couldn't have cared. I was young, and you, younger still.

"I must admit, I'm a little jealous," you told me out of the beery blue.

I must have scrunched my forehead a little. I'm sure I asked why.

"Because you're starting to get that dignified look about you," you added. "I'm positively filled with envy."

I would have laughed, I'm sure, and brushed off the comment. I wasn't becoming more dignified - I was getting older. By this point, I would have already been made well aware of that, but I would have kept my mouth shut. I would have kept silent to protect you from the knowledge that we are not here forever, knowledge that you were still yet a couple years away from gathering. That first time you get out of bed and groan, stretching your stiffened back. That first twinge in your knee. The first time your memory fails.

There is nothing new here or anywhere. So goddamn tired of writing the same paper over and over again, you tell yourself you have insomnia if only to provide a good excuse for popping open the bottle. Pour yourself three fingers of scotch just because. Go numb. Leaf through 'On the Genealogy of Morals' for the umpteenth time. Get bored. Dip your mind into a murky pool of ressentiment. Use a French word in place of an English one. Practice pomposity. Sleep because you have nothing more interesting to do.