(h)ex

Something just wasn't right. But not in the 'walked on the clean floor with muddy boots, forgot to feed the dog, reused a theatre ticket, misplaced my truck keys' kind of way. No. Worse than any of that. This was more of a 'surfed porn on my boss's computer, hit a parked car and left the scene, stole from the tip jar, slept with my best friend's wife' kind of wrongness. A strange overwhelming desire to apologise. To someone. Anyone. Just as soon as I could figure out who it was I had wronged – and what it was that I had done exactly.

To say my head hurt would have been a gross understatement of the facts. Due to the tens of thousands of years that mankind has been treating his taste buds to all manner of fermented bevvies, all of the good comparisons have been used and reused. Head in a vice. Hammer to the head. Hit by a car. A bus. A Tractor trailer. Throbbing, pulsating, pain. If I were a cartoon character, the artist would depict me with saggy, baggy, bloodshot eyes, tousled hair, and little bubbles floating around my head. 

Shit.

Looking in the mirror in my en-suite, I'd be damned if the cartoonists didn't have it right.

I took some acetaminophen with a gulp of cold water, hoping I'd have to the strength of stomach to keep the pills down. Next, I rattled some ibuprofen out of the plastic container and down my raw throat just in case the first pills didn't work. Tried to drink as much of the water as I could. Emptied my bladder, my bowels, and tried to do the same with my mind before heading back to bed with plans of staying there until the late afternoon.

Goddammit.

Something wasn't right. Something. Sweating beneath the covers, head pounding, stomach churning, I could not shake the feeling that I had somehow screwed something up. I fumbled around in the dark, searching for my mobile on the night stand, and scrolled through my address book, squinting at the too-bright screen.

“Seth, dude, how're things?” I croaked.

“You sound like shit, man.”

“I feel worse. How're you feeling?”

“My mouth tastes like I've been chewing on decaying dog rectums.”

“That's bad,” I said, swallowing back some bile. “Hey, so, some night last night, hey?”

“Meh,” Seth sighed. “It was all right. You were pretty loaded, though, eh?”

My stomach was knotting up so bad. Chest tightening. What did he know?

“Oh yeah? I didn't feel too bad,” I lied. “Felt pretty sober most of the night, actually.”

Pause.

“Yeah, me too. Taking it kind of easy, I guess.”

I was breathing a little easier. Surely if I had done something horribly stupid, he'd have brought it up straight away. But, I had to go for it.

“Hey, Seth, was I being an asshole last night or anything? Did I do anything stupid that you know of?”

Pause.

“Uh, nope, I don't think so.”

I sighed. Sweet relief.

“Man,” he said, “even after Cara showed up, you were fine. Shit, you two were even getting along for once.”

Cara. Oh my god.

“Not sure what happened to her, though,” Seth continued. “Kind of disappeared a little before we took off.”

Oh. My. God. Cara.

Down the hall, in the main bathroom, someone turned the shower on, as memories trickled back to my alcohol riddled brain. Wandering hands and sly smiles. Compliments and reminiscences. Cara. My ex. Oh man. I could smell her, then. In my room. In my bed. I leant over, almost cautiously, and pressed my nose into the pillow beside me. Sandalwood. Patchouli. Cara. I smelt a big, big mistake.

And I owed myself one major apology.

deceit à gogo

“So, then, what is it that tips the scales between you sticking around and you leaving?” The waitress leans over the table, the buttons on her too-tight, striped shirt straining. It's all I can do to keep my eyes on hers. All I can do to keep my eyes from drifting down, down, down....

And I'm caught.

“Yoo-hoo, I'm up here,” she says, pointing at her eyes. She doesn't smile. Not even a bit. “What is it that keeps you, Ethan, God's gift to women, hanging around the next day? What is it that keeps you from creeping out before dawn. Just what can a poor girl do to make you stay, anyway?”

It's all here. The automatic nervous system doing its thing. Heart palpitations. Palms sweating. Laboured breathing. All sympathetic responses designed to push me into fight or flight – and my balls have crawled so far up into my abdomen, I think they might never find their way home again.

“listen I—” 

But I've got nothing.

***

We met at a club down on Fairfax. No. Scratch that. Was it the little place behind that Asian café in the Warehouse District? Yeah, that's it. Though, maybe it wasn't behind a café as such, but kind of a bubble teahouse. Right, yeah. Now, what was the name of that place? The club, not the teahouse. Was it Wrecks? Yeah? That place with the velvet couches, and all those damned brown pillows. That's the one.

All dim lighting, tiny friggin' lamps all over the place. We rolled in a good twenty deep that night, as I recall. More? Yeah? What was it, Busy's birthday or something? Guy's crazy, man. Anyway, we get in there, and find the place packed. Bass thumping. Drinks spilled or swilled. A sea of hotties beneath the lights, swirling, sweating on the dance floor. Ha! Like tasty burritos under the heat lamps at Taco Bell, am I right?

But, we were in, and edging our way through the place, and it wasn't long before we found out there wasn't a free table in the joint, let alone room for twenty plus. Some guys got all ornery, and started bitching. Other guys start dissing the place, and acting like they never wanted to walk in the door in the first place. Me? I'd been watching this one girl across the way, and I noticed that she'd been parked at a table by herself since we walked in. Designated purse watcher, I figured. Slithering through the crowd, it wasn't long before I was parked beside her. 

Damned if I can remember her name now, though.

***

Right in front of me. I'm watching her lips move, and feeling the heat of her breath, her words, her hostility on my face. All spearmint gum, Cherry Chap Stick, and vitriol. This, and I only wanted a friggin' beef dip.

“K, k, k, k, k,” I interrupt. Anymore, I can't take it. “Listen to me now. I don't know who you think I am, but you've got the wrong guy. Probably just a case of mistaken identity. You know how it—”

“Ethan Duane Miller? Thirty years old. Apartment #111—”

“All right, all right.” I wave a hand at her to stop the humiliation. “That's me. You met me. We met, whatever. How do you know all that anyway? You some crazy stalker or something?”

She smirks. “You paid with your Visa last time you were in here. I looked at your driver's licence, asshole. Security measures, you know... for your protection.”

Bitch.

“So, you gonna tell me what it takes to make a guy like you want to stick around? Or should I send another waitress over here to take over while I go have a little cry in the ladies' room?” She's more delicate now. Her fine jaw a little less hard. Smooth, olive skin softening on her pretty face. Brown eyes melting just a little.

“It's really nothing personal,” I hear myself saying. “In fact, it's entirely my problem. I've got a system, is all.”

She sits down across from me now, and I know I'm in this for the long-haul.

“Out with it, then.”

“OK,” I start, a little hesitantly. I lean in. “I look for three things, and she's got to pass two of them.”

“And if she doesn't?”

“Then I'm out the door before you can say, 'one night stand'.”

“And number one is?”

“She's got to still be hot in the morning.”

***

So, I managed to convince her to tap out, and appoint another friend as the table guardian extraordinaire, and next thing I know, we're making out in the back seat of a taxicab. She paid, I think, or maybe I did. I don't know. But, I do know that I woke up a random number of hours later, tangled up in her sheets with a serious hangover.

Untwisting myself from the linens and carefully sitting up on the side of the bed, I called on years of experience to creep silently around the moonlit room, picking up my clothes, before making my way out the door. I was a veritable ghost, floating down the darkened hall, and into the bathroom. It's like I had been there before. And I had, of course, been in that exact situation dozens of times.

Dressed, and still smelling of the night before, I made my way into the living room, scanning the walls and flat surfaces for photographs. A high school photo of a fresh-faced cheerleader, all smiles and innocence jumping out at me. Cute teenager. Next, a university graduation photo, radiating pride and relief. All grown up, and ready to take on the world. Couldn't have been that long ago, I thought. Two years, tops. Finally, I found a stack of unorganised pictures on the coffee table – photos from a recent trip to some sunny, sandy place – and it was confirmed: still hot. I smiled, and exhaled.

***

“Shallow much?” she asks, leaning back, putting up her guard.

“Naw, naw, it's not like that. There's more. Looks are just one thing, right? And they're important, you know?”

She looks a little dubious, but says, “All right, so, number two?”

I smile.

“Number two: she must be interesting.”

***

A collection of music as outdated and uninspired as my great-uncle Luke's wardrobe. Eagles. Van Morrison. Warrant. Warrant? Really? I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing, and had to hold the CD up to a sliver of moonlight to be sure. I shuddered a little before moving onto the bookcase.

The contents of the bookcase were actually a little hard to look at. Romans de gare as they're known to the French. Railway station novels. Airport novels, as known to us Americans. Peter Benchley. Dan Brown. Dean Koontz. My eyes, my poor stinging eyes. I could only hope that the DVDs would offer up something of more substance.

The first movie I picked up was Crossroads starring Britney Spears, and my soul actually began to weep a little. I could go no further. I would not allow myself to.

***

“All right,” she says. I'll give you that. If a person can't carry a conversation, then what good would it be to spend time with them.”

“Exactly.”

“And? Lastly?”

“Ah,” I smile. “Number three. This one is, perhaps, the most important of all: she must be able to cook a mean breakfast.”

***

Looking through the cupboards, I would be a liar if I said I wasn't a little disgusted. No, it wasn't due to the fact that they were nearly bare. It wasn't the jar of expired peanut butter, or even the myriad rolled-up half-bags of potato chips. No, hands down, the thing which turned my stomach, and sent a gag reflex up my throat was the package of pre-cooked, individually wrapped bacon slices. I had never seen such a thing before, and, in that moment, I couldn't help but feel a little saddened by the state of humankind.

The fridge was no better, with its half jug of orange juice, and countless bottles of Evian. A flip-top box of baking soda stood like a watchman over a bag of shrivelled oranges, and a lonely, sugar encrusted bottle of maple syrup wished that it was back home in Canada. I closed the door, and pretended that I had not seen the atrocities that I had just seen. In the freezer, a solitary box of pre-formed hamburger patties sat in a block of frost and ice waiting to be found by archaeologists in the year 4327.

Heart heavy, mouth agape, I collected my shoes and crept out the back door. I walked down the street until I could figure out where the hell I was, and called a friend to come and collect me.

***

“A food man, hey? Well, that's not so bad. Things could be worse. I was half expecting you to be one of those creeps who rates a girl based on how good she was in bed.” With this, she throws me a wink, and makes to slide out of the booth. “Got to get back to work before the boss catches me fraternizing with the customers.”

“Hey,” I say, “people gotta eat, right?”

“Yeah,” she smiles. “But, before I go, which of those three tests did I fail to make you leave? Did I pass any, even? I mean, you actually seem all right; might have been nice to spend more time together.”

I don't even take a second to think of my answer.

“If you recall, I said a girl's got to pass two of them, and I'd stick around.”

“Yeah?” She cocks an eyebrow, hands on her hips.

“Well, if a girl passes zero or only one, I'm out the door.”

“Oh yeah? Just like that, huh?”

“Yeah. Just like that. But wait, here's the rub – if a girl passes all three, I'm out the door even quicker. I'm not so simple that I don't know how quickly perfection can bring a man to his knees.”

insecure: formless and void

Lily had a laugh like the sound the moon makes when it's too full, bloated, and pouring its syrupy excess over the tops of the trees and on down the mountainside. Something which came easy and often, flowing, golden, from her red-stained lips to my contrastingly pallid ears. 

Beside her, Lily's blazingly tangible self, I was black and white. Beside her, lying as we were in this clearing, side by side, I was little more than some ghastly, barely real, achromatic figure plucked from a neighbouring dimension and rudely transposed into that otherwise dazzling picture. We call this burn-through. And I was it. An unwanted, unwarranted image soiling that serene scene. She just has that effect on people, you know?

Lily talked, and as she did, her voice hit that taut tarpaulin of stars, bounced off, and rained back down on us. And I was soaked, right through my clothes, right through my skin. Drenched in all that talk of where she'd been and where she'd be going. What she'd done, and what she was going to do. Who she'd met, and who she planned on meeting. Shit, she hardly knew I was there, and even I was beginning to doubt that I was. So, in an ill-fated attempt to prove to myself that I actually did exist, I guardedly cast forth an utterance – a mutterance, really – while she was in mid laugh.

“You ever think about the Big Guy up there?”

She was still on, giggling and talking, about to outdo herself by dropping yet another big name, when she realised that I had gone and dropped the biggest name possible, and abruptly dropped off in mid sentence. Lily turned to look at me, sending a wave of jet hair cascading down over a beryl eye.

“Huh? You mean, like, God?”

“Yeah, God. Our Father, you know....”

“I'm no bible thumper if that's what you're asking.”

It was my turn to laugh then, and I did so with not nearly the magical effect of my companion. In fact, there was no nifty echo, but almost a weird absorption, rather. The trees barely noticed, and the moon nearly turned away. Not to be dissuaded, I plugged on.

“That's not what I'm talking about. I was just wondering if you ever think about that kind of stuff. You know, where we came from, why we're here, and all of that.”

It wasn't one second before that last batch of bullshit was out of my mouth than I was regretting it. See, I hadn't delved into the theosophical as a matter of purity, but, rather, as a matter of impurity. Lily glanced off into the tree line, and as they did, my own eyes made a beeline to her full baby tee, her tiny waist, and on down to those skinny jeans stretched tight over perfect legs.

When my eyes returned, hers had too, and she smiled, pulling a shock of hair out of her face, tucking it behind a bitty ear. 

“Can't say that I have,” Lily said, and leant in a little. She seemed to be studying my face. Her lips parted. I shivered. Then, she delivered the blow. “Hey, I never noticed how cute you could be.”

That hurt. Try as I might, I'm sure I wasn't able to hide my anguish.

“Th-thanks,” I stammered. Then, neurons fired at a connexion, and, against my better judgement, I was off again.

“That, uh, that makes me think, it reminds me of Genesis and the creation,” I said. “Have you ever wondered what God looks like?”

“No,” she sighed, slumping back into her original distracted position. “I guess he's, like, a powerful ghostly dude who's everywhere all at once?”

I cackled. I actually cackled, and still the moon paid me no mind. I launched into the topic to show Lily that I was smarter than all of those other guys. Those doctors, those lawyers, those politicians. My goal, to show her that I was more interesting, more learned, more... exceptional than those actors, those musicians, those artists. Again, against my better judgement, I continued.

“Isn't it interesting,” I asked, “that in Genesis, it's written that God created Adam in his image? Taken literally, as a perfectly written book should be, should we not, then, expect the reverse to be true, and that God should be assumed to look as we do? Should we not, then, expect God to be made of flesh and bone as we are?”

Lily shrugged. She simply shrugged and offered a disappointingly non-committal, “Sure.”

I was losing grip. Scrambling on a rocky slope, too steep to easily scale. Hands grappling for solid handholds, feet slipping loose from fragile outcroppings. A steady slide of rocky debris beneath me.

“It's just really interesting, isn't it, when you start to really look at it?” I was desperate. Clearly. “I mean, isn't it weird that God needed to create Adam from dust? Eve from Adam's rib? I mean, he's God – why does he need ingredients?”

There was a smile again, but this time something was different. Pity, I think; Lily's eyes, two pools the colour of charity. Her lips, little more than a scarlet suspension bridge between treacherously deep dimples.

“Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Now I know who you kind ofremind me of! There was this assistant Professor I briefly dated back in my second year of uni. All the girls were just, like, totally in love with this guy, but he—”

And that's how it was the rest of the night. Me, steadily crowded out by an ever-growing assemblage of ghosts. Lily, the centre of this spectral attention. So, I just settled back and listened. Not to her, but to the sound of jagged indifference. To the cascade of pale yellow light streaming through the pines. To the sound of God's dry lips cracking into a jeering grin somewhere in the Great Beyond.

synth

The least I can do:
a short glass of sparkling green,
a perforated spoon,
and a cube of sugar
the shape of a dream.

simple ceremony

There's a dead fly next to the sink, and I can't think of anything other than the events which might have come to pass resulting in this death. Starvation, thirst, or exposure to the elements. Depression, anxiety, or a heart heavy with loneliness. An accident, a suicide, or blunt force trauma. This list gets longer, and includes more words than I have minutes to write at the moment.

Its thorax rigid, with six little black legs stuck straight up in the air, and its diaphanous wings spread out, this is a symbol of what I – we all – would one day come to be: a corpse. Red, beady, compound eyes unblinking, unliving, there is an emptiness here which suggests that a certain energy has moved on. Just as our eyes, too, will one day be still as glass orbs, and just as soulless, signalling to all that it is time to say goodbye. 

But, no, there would be no funeral for this fly. No grieving loved ones that I know of. No archaic rituals to smooth the passage of its soul from this realm to the next. No destruction of this empty husk by earth or by fire. No–

But now I'm struck by an idea. 

Water. 

And I snatch a few squares of bathroom tissue off of the roll, gather up the fly's body in the wad, toss it in the toilet, and flush. The black speck spirals down into the void with the rushing water, and I make a mental note to someday soon clean the porcelain bowl. This rite ends with me – the pastor, priest, or master of ceremonies – washing the imaginary germs off of my hands, and walking out the lavatory door, closing the light behind me.

I've things to do, and can't be bothered with these trivialities any longer. I've words to write, sentences to form, and writer's block to shrug off. Moreover, I've this nasty, lingering, lurking sense of mortality to forget about. This story ending, this final act, this d'enouement, that we all must put out of mind lest we become trapped down in it.

the purpose of grass

the purpose

It took forever to find the true purpose of grass. Not to fill the vast space of one's garden, to cover up the yards and yards of dismal dirt. No, not simply to please the eye, or to generate envy in one's neighbours with one's pristine living carpet of green. This is to grossly oversimplify. This is to sell short that leafy blanket of flora. This, my friends, is to be mistaken. The true purpose of grass is to provide a soft runway for steamrolling down a hill on a hot summer's day. To catch warm drops of summer rain. To tickle the tender toes of children.

Don't ever forget this.

the near miss

As a young man in Paris, Samuel Beckett was stabbed in the chest by a pimp and nearly killed. The long, silver blade, narrowly missing Beckett's heart, punctured a lung, and left Beckett lying on the cool, green, nighttime grass, coughing and bleeding out from a hole in his chest.

One romanticised story has a piano student named Suzanne coming to the aid of the young author as he lay dying under the cold eye of the moon. Another, more probable, if not slightly less dramatic story, is that this Suzanne visited Beckett in the hospital after reading about it in the papers. Either way, she helped him through a rough time.

His assailant's name was Prudent. His saviour became his wife.

casual acquaintance

My fingertips met hers, worming their way through the cool slender blades of grass, our minds abuzz with the beginnings of a psilocybin trip. Our tongues still thick with the mouldy flavour of rotten mushrooms. Our eyes afuzz, veiled by the gauzy light of the moon.

“Why do we do this?” she asked. “Why do we poison our bodies and minds. Why do we poison our thoughts with these...” And she trailed off, lost in thought.

“Our own reasons,” I replied. “We each have our own reasons for this exploration. Me, I'm a biology student. The interaction between this hallucinogenic crystalline solid and my own body's chemical make-up intrigues. Psilocybe mexicana. I wait for it, counting out the formula in my head: C12, H17, N2, O4, P. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous. Is this not a good enough reason?”

“I guess,” she sighed. “Me, I suppose I do it to find the answers to important questions. Questions like: which number is greater? The amount of grass blades in this park, or the number of sand grains beneath that swing set over there. I suppose I do it to find meaning in the lyrics of a particular Billie Holiday song.”

Ooh, ooh, ooh/What a little moonlight can do.

monster

Abuse: a noun used to describe bad or improper treatment. For example, the systematic maltreatment of a wife or husband, either physically or mentally. One child's bullying torment of another on the playground. Self-abuse, that primitive cutting or burning; trichotillomania – the pulling out of one's own hair; the childish tantrums, punching or scratching one's self. Abuse: the treatment of anyone or anything that is seen as harmful.

Bored, little Jake crawled through the grass tearing out handful after handful of the lush, green vegetation, giggling maniacally as he threw each handful over his shoulder before moving onto the next. Shorn blades of grass, scattered in the wind, left to dry and yellow under the hot sun. Countless silent cries. Thousands of tiny souls flying heavenward.

To the grass, this was a holocaust.

re-purpose

A blade of grass never asks for what purpose was it created. It knows. It exists as part of a lawn to be the most versatile piece of furniture. To scratch the back of a rolling dog. To catch a smile. It exists to persuade the soil to stay where it is, and to sway in the wind when it's allowed to grow long.

Yes, the purpose of grass is to make us wonder at its purpose, and to be the plaything of near misses, casual acquaintances, and monsters – and to turn from green to blue under the wan light of the pale moon.

suture

First the cut. Like a deep, crimson wound, just shallow enough to be non-life threatening, and just deep enough to be painless. With shock, there is no pain. Blood, yes. Pain, no. An irregular wound, a laceration, caused by blunt force trauma to soft tissue lying over hard. A tearing of skin over bone. Scalp over skull as one example. Psyche over soul as another. This is your immortal grief.

A wound might be fixed in the ER by some adept resident doctor. Practising her bedside manner. Exercising her efficiency. Stitch, stitch, stitching your mangled flesh, curved needle flashing in and out of skin. Black thread cinching tight. The other wound is repaired by an aged psychiatrist. Applying his expertise, working out his wit. Talk, talk, talking in your ear. Sensible words diving past the drum, swimming through the subconscious. This is your supposed fix.

Gone, those days of carefree walks through untroubled scenery, those untouched minds, those happily idle hands. Eyes taking in the words of others for want rather than need. Fingers caressing new textures with minds exploring new chemicals. Toes pressing into new sand. Lips kissing new lips.

“Gone,” the doctor says. “Those days are gone.” And he absently runs his gnarled fingers through his great, white beard. “Why man's endless fascination with the past? Because it's the one thing he can never have back. And why his obsession with the future? Because he knows it's where he will spend the rest of his life.”

But you've heard this somewhere before, and paying to hear it from some old man in a tweed coat doesn't make it any easier to accept. Exactly fifty-five minutes and one hundred-seventy dollars later, your feet are carrying you swiftly down the carpeted hall, shoes shushing along a well-worn path. Mind ransacked, you feel as violated as if someone had kicked down the door of your flat and tossed your shit all over.

Your finger hits the cracked elevator button, and the dented stainless steel doors promptly grind open with an accompanying ding. Main floor. You'll get off at the main floor. After a swift ride down with your stomach in your throat, with your eyes studying your shoes, you'll walk. Through the lobby, and outside, squinting. Across the parking lot, and on.

You don't know where you're going, but it certainly isn't back there. You'll fix your god damned self.

strike out (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)

The comedown is hard. Nearly two weeks of late nights and early mornings, cocaine highs mashed with boozy lows, had finally brought me to my knees. Brilliant white beaches and manic sunsets plague me. Blue black night skies and a fiery morning panorama past the smudged hotel window blind me. I hug the toilet bowl and expunge last night's evil from my insides. Blow some blood-flecked mucous into a tissue. I rinse my face.

“We're out,” announces Jed on my entry into the sleeping area.

“Out?”

“Last of the posh,” he says, flicking a crumpled powdery square of magazine paper in my direction. “And not a great chance of finding any here.”

I collapse on the bed, covering my aching eyes in the crook of my arm, groaning just a little. A giant fucking mess. Sore legs from indiscriminate dancing. Sore head from hapless high living. Sore heart from her.

Her name is Kenya.

A whirlwind of a bartender, I first met Kenya at the other end of a long line of double gin and tonics. Skin nearly black, and eyes even blacker, the whites of her eyes leapt in my direction as I entered the room, and they held me, they wouldn't let me go. Mesmerized, I walked right up. Unable to speak, I allowed her.

Over the course of many biting drinks I learnt that she was not from Kenya as her name would suggest, but from Ethiopia. I learnt that she went to school not to become a bartender, but to become a lawyer. I learnt that lawyering never worked out, and tending bar was not her primary profession – I learnt she made most of her money as a hooker.

“But I will not work while you are here,” she said. “Instead, I will be your girlfriend.”

And who was I to refuse such an offer.

“You think the strike is still on?” Jed asks, breaking me out of my reverie.

“Hm?”

“Back home. The strike. You think it's still going?”

I think for a time, nearly falling asleep. I scratch a little at the scruff on my face.

“Well? Would be nice to get back to work, wouldn't it?” Jed asks again.

“I don't really care,” I say. “No. Let me rearrange that line. I really don't care.”

Jed is silent for a moment.

“Isn't it weird that writers can go on strike in the first place?” he asks. “I mean, we write all the time, not just for work. Have you worked on anything since November?”

“No.”

“Not even notes? Not even in your journal?”

“Not really, no. I've nothing to write. Not right now.”

And that's how we leave it. I stare for awhile through the window at the late morning horizon. Searching the soft white clouds for something indefinite. Settling my gaze on the lightest blues of infinity for a time. Scouring the tiny outlines of the distant cityscape for my inspiration. She's out there somewhere. Her name is Kenya.

She went back to work two days before. Prostituting. Searching the alleyways for something indeterminable. Settling on her knees in dark corners or beneath the fluorescent lights of offices throughout the city core. Scouring her soul for something more.

I have nothing to write about. Not right now. Nothing is right now. In fact, I don't care if the strike ever ends. No. Not anymore. I can stay right where I am. Drifting around Africa. From Tanzania to Zaire. Zaire to Uganda. Uganda to Kenya. Maybe back to Kenya. Maybe back.

I fall into a troubled sleep. A strung out, hungover, painful sleep. I dream of nothing.

sanguine song in A minor

I really feel like I'm gonna give the slip to time,
and everyone I meet is a damn good friend of mine.
But will I ever stop to think just how wrong I was?

We start to feel like there's nothing left for us know,
there's nothing left for us to see, there's nowhere else for us to go.
But will we ever stop to think just how wrong we were?

And I, I don't mind
these thoughts about you
and me leaving
this all, this all behind.
Don't you believe it
like I believe it?
I know say it all the time.

He never really seemed to take the time to understand
the kind of work he'd need to do to make himself a better man.
And now he'll fall behind as we all fall behind.

They never seemed to wrap their minds around important things.
To stuck on televisions, fast cars, and diamond rings.
And all those little things they'll be leaving behind.

But I, I don't mind
these thoughts about you
and me leaving
this all, this all behind.
Man, don't you believe it
like I believe it?
We'll leave it all behind.