Hail

A large low limb had been cut from a tree at the edge of a park in Salt Lake City, Utah. The pattern of rings in the cut caught the eye of someone. That person told someone else, and soon, a small shrine had sprung up at the base of the tree. A set of wooden stairs with a platform was built to allow easier viewing of the pattern.
Walking up that short staircase, you would pass dozens of prayer candles and bouquets of flowers, all renewed weekly, if not daily. At the top of stairs, you would have a clear and close-up view of the pattern. I don't know what you would see there.
What I saw, was a shape formed by the rings in the wood that could be interpreted as feminine. It could have been a feminine figure with a shaded hint of a cowl over her head. It could have been the Virgin Mary, as all of the candle lighters and bouquet refreshers said it was.

I have heard that the most important word in your language is your own name. When I am in a public place and amidst other people, I often hear my name, and things pertaining to my life, spoken of by people that turn out to be strangers. I hear what I want to hear sometimes.

In an underpass on the north side of Chicago, a stain formed from dripping water, on what looks to be a patched portion of the concrete wall. The stain contained a pattern that somebody recognized, and word of it spread. Now there are prayer candles and fresh bouquets of flowers. A ceramic statue of Jesus rests beneath the stain; the head is broken off, but a drawing of Jesus rests in the hole.
Again, the pattern is reminiscently feminine; the shape of a cowl could be suggested, and one eye seems to have white flecks around the iris.
It could be the Virgin Mary.
It could be a stain on a wall.
I don't really know what it is, but I do know that I'll never be able to see it the same way anyone else does.

Gambling

My gambling strategy for video black jack.
Insert $20 into the machine.
Bet 5¢ on the first hand.
Lose.
Bet 10¢ on the next hand.
Lose.
Bet 20¢.
Lose.
Bet 40¢.
Lose.
Bet 80¢.
Lose.
Bet $1.75. (There was no way to bet $1.60 on that machine.)
Lose.
Bet $3.50.
Lose.
Bet $7.00.
Lose.
Feed another $20 bill into the machine and bet $14.00.
Lose.
Feed another $20 bill into the machine and bet $28.00.
Lose.

Take a deep breath. If you smoke, light a cigarette and take a couple drags.

Feed $60 into the machine in whatever denominations you have and bet $56.00.
Lose.
Laugh and cry loudly and take your Gin & Tonic from the cocktail waitress.
Take your remaining $8.20 and play very conservatively until you have had at least $111.80 worth of free drinks from the waitresses.
Then walk carefully to your room, and go to sleep.

Hare Krishna

Walking on the street, I heard singing from up ahead. I looked and saw a procession of people in robes and heard a familiar sound:

"Hare Krishna hare rama hare krishna hare rama..." Hare Krishna.
The man leading wore a purple robe and carried a drum slung over his shoulder. He was bald and smiling and singing while beating his drum. About 10 people followed behind, walking at a merry(?) pace. Most of them wore the robes common to Hare Krishnas all over the world, including a woman walking slightly behind the drummer, carrying a small amplifier and microphone and singing into it. They all appeared quite friendly and happy. At the end of the procession, a woman dressed in a business suit that looked more appropriate for walking in the Loop than trotting after a group of Hare Krishnas handed me a photocopied pamphlet and a baggy of popcorn. I thanked her and continued on my way.

A while ago, I attended a bible group meeting in their assembly building. It was a small group and they were all very friendly. They mostly seemed happy to be there and wanted others there to share in that happiness. There were grapes and there was pizza and one girl had baked cookies and brought them; all this food was shared among anyone who wished to partake. The cookies were very good.

When I was in elementary school, I stayed the night with a friend and his mother and sister at their apartment in my neighborhood. They were very poor, as poor as my mother and I were. When I awoke in the morning, my friend told me that we were all going to the local Mormon ward for breakfast because they offered donuts to anyone who came. I walked with them, but instead of going to the ward, I walked home.

-

The pamphlet I received from the Hare Krishnas lays on the table next to my door. I ate the popcorn a few days later. It satisfied my hunger while I prepared a larger meal.

reaper collecting, widow weeping, banker counting

Shots were heard.
A window smashed.
I'll never sleep as well as I used to.
The night she died, I'd drunk four cups of coffee and a six pack of beer.
I peed the bed and woke myself.
I laid there for a long time, contemplating my predicament as she lay asleep beside me. Then I noticed the broken glass on the floor, and the blood on the windowpane.
And the blood on the floor. The blood on the blanket.
Only after that, did I notice that she was not sleeping.
She lay on her back, above the blankets, and she was cold when I put my hand on her naked belly; her mouth open and slack, a small worm wriggled in one eye socket.
The blood on the floor was very old.
I noticed the smell, and sat up fast, waking as I did so.
Waking up in my bed,
and my apartment,
and alone.
The worm wriggled in the back of my mind as I got up to pee.

Water

"Want to go jump in the river? " Ethan asked.
"Yes," Jason replied, though a little shiver of hesitancy trembled through him.
"Is it shallow enough for me to touch bottom? Because you know I can't swim. Well, I can sort of swim, but only for a few feet, and only underwater."
"Oh yeah, you'll be fine. You jump in and you can touch bottom right afterward."

Ethan drove them for awhile through the small town, and, coming to a park, parked the car. They got out and walked along train tracks alongside the river until they came to the spot. There was a short embankment to climb down, and then a short wade through the river to get to a big rock. From this big rock, Jason understood that he was to jump into the river and then swim a very short distance back towards the shore and the shallows.
Wearing swimming trunks, they both waded out to the rock and climbed up on top. Ethan explained to Jason where he should jump into the water. The river ran downstream at a medium speed, but as it hit the large rock, swirling vortexes of water formed, creating a barrier between the shallow area that the rock protected and the rest of the river. Ethan explained that he should jump just to the left of the swirling water, but into a spot that was still deep. From there, it was a short swim into the shallows.
Jason felt that he could do it, and stood for awhile on the edge of the rock, staring down into the swirls and currents. The wind was cold, and the water was colder, but the sun shone hotly down on them.
"You can go first, and then I can jump after you if I need to,” Ethan told him.
"Are you a fast swimmer?” Ethan asked, imagining himself floating down the river and full of water.
"Yeah,” Ethan said.
"Good. If you see me go under, then come in after me."
Jason stood there and took several deep breaths, stood a moment longer, looking from the water to the shore, and jumped.
He hit the water and went under with a splash. As soon as he was in it, he stretched out his body towards where he thought the shore was. He put his hands in front of him and tried a breaststroke, but he flopped around a lot; his body was not moving well in the rhythm of the river. He felt the breath he took up on the rock straining in his lungs. He let his feet down, hoping for solid ground, but felt only water. His mouth opened a little bit, and he felt some water enter; he swallowed, rather than breath it in. He had a sore throat that day, and the cool water was a slight relief.
He suddenly found his head above water, but hadn't fully exhaled his first breath completely. He took in what air he could, and saw that the shore was no closer.
Then he went under again. A little more water entered his mouth, and he swallowed it again. He tried swimming forward more, straining his arms against the water. His head came up again and he yelled, "help!"
He went under again, and strained more, but it was no good.
When he came up again, Ethan was there. Jason got his arm over his shoulders and said, "Help me."
Ethan started paddling for the shallows, his face scrunched up, supporting both their weights.
They made it to the shallows and separated.
"Did you swallow any water,” Ethan asked him.
"Yeah,” Jason said, breathing fast and hard. "But I didn't breathe any in. Only a little bit. "
He coughed and looked back at the water squinting.
He didn't feel cold.
He didn't feel warm.
He just felt not dead.

Wendover, Nevada

I went into the starbucks and ordered a grande caramel machiatto. The girl took my order and turned to the new guy at the coffee machines and started giving him instructions. It took a little while for my drink to be made. As I had placed the order, I had taken out my wallet and my credit card and was still standing with them out in my hand while they made the drink. I had spent the previous evening and night and morning drinking and gambling, and my stomach was a little rotten, my mind slow.
They finished the drink and announced it at the little serving spot at the end of the counter. I walked over and took the drink and said, "thank you." The girl told me to have a nice day. My wallet was still in my hand, but now I'd retracted it a little bit under the coat that I had hanging off of one shoulder.
They both turned away from me to do something else. It was not busy. I walked out to my friends and we left, as I put my wallet away.

Working at Whole foods as a cashier

I began talking to a customer on Sunday as I rang up his order. He looked to be about 36 years old, and seemed happy, though a little tense.He came around the side and started bagging for himself.
"I worked hard for a long time to be able to afford this for myself," he said to me.
The customers that come into my store are commonly upper class and primarily wealthy. I see a lot of young people that have obviously not had to worry about money in their lives so far.
"What do you do?" I asked him, expecting to hear that he was a lawyer or a financial adviser. I often hear people talking on their little ear phones to invisible partners about buying and selling homes and stock while I work. This has become quite standard to me, right along with the women with their Prada and Louis Vuitton and Chanel bags and wallets and belts and glasses.
"I'm a waiter, " he said to me.
I honestly thought he was joking.
I looked up at him, prepared to accept and join in on whatever humor he wanted to share with me.
He was serious.
It was close. I was one slight muscle movement away from joining in on his joke, and making an ass of myself. My robotic self was humbled.
I said nothing for a moment, but continued to ring his order as he bagged.
"Where do you work?" I asked.
He mentioned a restaurant that I've never noticed, but is on my way home in a very affluent stretch of restaurants and boutiques. I told him I probably knew of it, and we didn't say much else. He paid and left, and I continued to work.

Sakura no hana.

The first time I can remember noticing a cherry blossom was a year ago this April, in 2005. Near my 25th birthday. I saw a tree a few blocks from my house covered in the most awesome blossoms (apologies for the fatuous alliteration (I just wanted an excuse to use "fatuous")) that I'd ever noticed in quantity. Orchids impress me more, but they do not give the sheer visual onslaught that a large cherry tree does.
The flowers are fat and beautiful like a voluptuous belly dancer. They are in your face and showering all around.
I had to ask my girlfriend at the time (a floral worker) if they were what I suspected they were, and had my first mental recognition of cherry blossoms confirmed.
So strange that I could live 25 years without noticing such an awesome event.
It's not because I'd never seen them before. I clearly remember picking cherries from a tree in my friend's backyard when I was 10 years old, and seeing all the rotting cherries laying in the grass. It's the blossoms that did not enter my memory.
Strange to wonder to about all the things that I cannot remember, that I've no idea I've forgotten, or never noticed; all of the dark spots that surround my memory like the night sky surrounds the earth.
So many things to forget each day!
I just microwaved a tiny pizza.
I could forget that too,

but I won't. In fact, I'm going to surround it with the emptiness of my stomach.
Forget that!

Flowers blooming like cackling hyenas

From the side walk I heard a sound from the street; that of a small dog barking viciously. Curious, I turned my head to the right and looked around. I saw a man on the sidewalk with his bike, stuffing something into his yellow backpack. The sound ceased. I saw cars stopped in a line, waiting for traffic to start moving again.
The barking started once more as the cars began to crawl forward, and it was coming from a white SUV with it's windows open. I looked inside for the dog, but all I saw was a woman in the passenger seat, her mouth open very wide, her head shaking in violent little jerks with each bark of the dog. She was the dog. I watched her for a moment, just long enough for it to register in her or her friends thoughts that someone was staring. I'm sure I'm not the first. Maybe it kept her laughing.

walking home

The weather was nice and warm on my walk home from work tonight. Many people were out, and I chose to take a more populated route along a busy street; perhaps because I was planning to spend my evening alone in my room, writing. The juxtaposition appealed to me.
I found myself walking behind a couple holding hands. I settled into the rhythm of their footsteps, about 20 feet behind them, rather than keeping my pace and passing them. They held the sidewalk between them, walking widely and then closely, varying their distance. The man had the collar of his polo shirt turned up, a current sign of a cavalier attitude among those that own many polo shirts. They were both young, twenty at the oldest, and they seemed carefree and worriless to me. They appeared perfectly comfortable in the affluent neighborhood, as though it matched them perfectly.
As we walked, I noticed that I passed a home on my right that seemed to house the elderly. A large complex, I often saw old folks watering a garden or lounging on portable chair-frames with wheels on the far side of it, when walking through the adjacent park.
It was dark out, but the long walk leading up to the front entrance of the building was lit from below by lights lining the walkway. At the far end from me, I noticed a figure in shadow, sitting. I saw wheels underneath the sitting figure, but it did not seem to be a wheelchair; likely one of the chair-frames that double as walkers that I've seen before. The figure sat there alone, far from the street, but with a clear view of it. I noticed no movement.
I passed, and the figure passed, and I hastened my gait and passed the couple in front of me, surprising them briefly as I walked around from the street side.
It was strange to me to think that I felt more in common with the lone figure sitting on that walk than I felt with the two young lovers I saw on the street.

Getting Older

"Sunrise Assisted Living of Lincoln Park
with a community for the memory impaired"

These are the words on a sign that I frequently walk beneath when leaving my apartment. I look into the building attached to the sign as I walk past, and see soft yellow lighting and lots of browns and yellows and pastels. Flowers sit in vases, always fresh (or fake) and big thick drapes are held back in the day time to let light into the communal areas that I can see into on the ground floor.
If I walk past at dinnertime, I see many of the elderly gathered around tables in the dining area, silver ware and silver drink containers and silver wheelchairs and the people all moving so slowly, their faces like old weathered stone, mostly immobile. It's a rich neighborhood, and this must be an expensive home to live in. A place where the upper middle class come to die, when they can't remember what to do anymore.
When I walk past at night, there is often an ambulance parked outside. People that I see attending the ambulance and it's activities rarely look very worried. They do not move very quickly. They are not in a place of urgency, but a place to forget things.
A place to finally forget to live, after such a long time of remembering.

Sam

Sam was tired. Sam was bored.
He got home from work and set his suitcase on the floor. It was an old case, and he knew that the other sales reps looked down upon him for having such a beat up old case. He'd patched a hole in it with black electrical tape. He sat down in front of his computer and stared at it for a little while. A picture of a sunset, somewhere tropical, was frozen on the screen. He lit a cigarette.
He'd spent most of that day learning to compile spreadsheets with Excel to conform to the companies database records, typing numbers and staring at grids for hours; it was numbing, and his fingers felt like dull pencils.
"Fuck," he mumbled. He looked down at his suitcase, next to the computer, fallen over onto it's side where he'd set it. The tape over the hole was peeling up at the edges, little gummy bits of stickiness holding onto bits of dirt. It looked grimy.
He turned off the computer monitor and got up, leaving his small apartment to walk to the corner store. Bought a bottle of vodka from the mustachioed man behind the counter.
Went back to his apartment and poured a shot. Drank it and felt it burn down to his stomach. Spreadsheets, sales figures, client names, profit margins.
He poured another shot right after the first and drank that one too.
Neckties, starched shirts, ironed pants, patched up holes.
He drank two more shots and laid down on his old couch. He closed his eyes and watched the redness behind his eyelids fade and dull to a darker color as the sun slowly set beyond his window, beyond his darkened computer screen. The alcohol settled into his stomach and along his spine and into his brain, cuddling up with an unsettled crunch of tension coming closer to view. Things left undone.
He opened his eyes, turned his head and looked out the window. Darkness outside. Street lights on, shining and bouncing light in. He sat up, got up, took off his tie and dropped it on the floor.
He left his apartment again. He walked back to the corner and turned and followed that street up to the next one, a wider one.
Cars raced past, making the green light. He walked down that street, stopping on the sidewalk, halfway between the stoplights at either end of the block.
He watched the headlights coming from both directions for a time, the closer ones zooming by from left to right, and the cars flying past on the far side from right to left, the vodka warming his limbs, his fingers; thinking of dull pencils.
He picked a lone pair of lights coming fast from the far right, bracing himself and tensing his legs. He waited for it to get to the green light and come through the intersection. Breathing deep and fast, he waited for it to come towards where he stood, nearer, nearer, and when he wasn't quite sure about it anymore, he lunged forward, running across the street.
The car came at him as a bright leviathan of swiftness. He ran as hard and as fast as he could strain himself to do, directly into it's path. The car's brakes screeched as it tried to stop and the lights swerved erratically. He felt the heat of it as it came on him and jumped forward; felt it's mass moving under and behind him, just missing.
He landed on the sidewalk and kept running, his blood flushing his face, and his lungs bellowing. The screech of brakes ended in a metal crunching crash and thump. He ran into an alley and kept going to the next block over. He slowed down, and noticed a bar. Went inside, sat at the bar and ordered a shot of vodka. The bartender looked at him strangely, but didn't say anything. Sam's hands were shaking and he was red and sweating. He paid for the shot with cash, drank it, and left the bar. Outside he hailed a cab. Sirens wailed in the distance, coming closer, as he got into the car.
Sam told the cabbie to take him downtown. He'd find a bar down there, further away. He thought that he'd probably call into work the next day.

parking lot

My connection to the internet has been experiencing datum interruptus, which leaves me with a larger hole than I'd really like in my chronicling. So it goes.

-------------------------------------------
A large busy parking lot.
A sunny day in winter, chilly but just a little warmer any place the sun hit, easing zippers and buttons on coats just a bit.
Five security guards monitor the parking lot all day. They drink coffee, chat with people and each other, and watch to make sure noone parks their car and leaves the lot to go somewhere else. It's a free lot, but high volume, so it has to be monitored to protect against abuse. Most of the guards will try to warn someone if they are seen leaving the lot, but sometimes there's no option other than to tow the car away; that is the threat and the occasional reality.

A small of group of people dressed affluently walked out of the lot. A wife and husband, a kid, and a friend, prepared for an afternoon of shopping at the neighboring stores. Their car was parked in the lot that the security guards monitor.
One of the guards stood in the shade of the building at the edge of the lot, watching all the cars. A young woman was jogging away from where he stood, moving towards the family that was then on the sidewalk.
"Hey, " she yelled to the them. "I gave him $10 bucks, so we should be fine!"
The parking guy moved a little further back against the building as the family walked to the corner.

My teeth

During most of my adolescence and early 20's, I hated my teeth. I liked the bottom row, but my top two front teeth, and most notably, the space between, bothered me.
It's taken a long time, but I am comfortable with my teeth now. I like them. They are distinctive and large. When I smile, people notice. My teeth draw attention.

There are some practical aspects to the gap though, that I've had to learn to deal with.

It causes me to have a slight problem with "th" sounds and an occasional whistle with "s"'s. Flecks of spit are more likely to escape through the gap when I speak. Most of the time I can control it well, but I have to be careful when I've been drinking or when I get excited.

One aspect of my toothy separation that I didn't notice till more recently, is the effect it has upon my bite. When I pick up a sandwich and bite into it, a small portion of the sandwich does not get severed, and the sandwich retains a small bridge to the bite that is in my mouth. To fully separate a bite from a sandwich, I need to take several quick bites from side to side, or I need to take one bite and tear away to the left or right with my head.
Bacon is the worst. I seem to never be able to bite all the way through a piece of it. Pepperonis on pizza are almost always eaten whole by me. Strands of fresh onion are also a problem, as they tend to fit nicely into the gap. I'll pull away from the sandwich with my mouthful, and find an onion ring dangling from my lips.

Today, whilst eating a delicious sandwich I made for myself, I discovered a new tactic for sandwich eating which may be a valuable tool in my arsenal of survival techniques.
I pick up the sandwich and squish it pretty flat. Not forcefully, but just enough to compact it a bit.
Then, to bite, I open my jaws, insert the sandwich and bite down, fast! Then pull away just as quickly.
I surprise the sandwich.
It worked!

American money gets uglier

I am jealous of the currency in other countries; not because of the value of it, but because of the color in it.

I started seeing the new $10 bill at my work a week or two ago. The first one I saw, a neurotic woman was about to use to pay for her purchase.
"Is this real?" she asked me.
"That's odd," I said, looking at the bill.
I marked it with the counterfeit-detector pen, and it looked good, then I held it up to the light, and it had a watermark in it.
"It seems real, but I've never seen it before, " I told her. "Maybe it's fake."
"Well then I want to pay with it," she said, appearing anxious about the possibility that her money might be counterfeit.
"I'll take it," I told her. "It's probably a limited edition. Look, it says 2004 on it. It's two years old, but it looks new."
She quickly changed her mind and took the bill back from me. "Good," I thought, "it was probably a fake."

The next day, I saw a few more, and now they're everywhere. I don't like the redesign. I do not appreciate it's aesthetic feel.
The bill looks like a dehydrated person pissed all over it, and then left it in the sun for a week. Then a conservatively prudish and retarded art school graduate was given a red highlighter that was almost out of ink, and told to: "go wild!"; which the graduate did with it's typical lack of gusto.

A Google Image Search for "currency" yields a whole page of links to money that is prettier and more colorful than ours. I'm not including coins in my jealousy; our coins are satisfactory to me. It is our bills that I would like to see really improved.
I believe that Australia has the best example of why our money seems deficient to me.
Their money has depictions of famous Australian artists and prominent members of the culture. Here, you have to be the president to get on a bill. The bills are vibrantly multicolored and shiny and made of plastic. If I were to make space money from the future, I would make it look a little like this.
Our bills are drab and mostly of the same color palette; the few attempts to add color that have been made so far appear to be the work of a printer dying of leukemia; it's soul leaking out with the marrow of it's fading ink.
We are security obsessed, and are ignoring the face we show to the world. The lack of aesthetic appeal of our money is just one more example of the sad state that America is grasping at in it's current decline.

what i did today

I shampooed my hair today.
I picked up the small shampoo bottle that I keep in the shower caddy, and found that it was empty. I reached around the outer shower curtain liner to grab the large bottle of shampoo that I keep on the window sill for refilling of the small bottle. (I prefer to use the small bottle because it opens from the bottom.)
When the small one was full, I squeezed a large amount into my palm and lathered my hair with it. I rinsed. I repeated with a smaller amount of shampoo.
I grabbed my bottle of conditioner and squeezed a large amount of that into my palm. I lathered and lathered and lathered and then rinsed that out.
My hair clean, I reached for the bottle of face wash (also a bottom opener) that I keep in the shower caddy next to the shampoo. I squeezed a small amount of the goop into my left palm, closed the lid, replaced the bottle back into the caddy with my right hand, and brought my left hand up and smeared the goo into my hair, in the same spot I'd put the conditioner.

I realized that I had just smeared daily wash facial cleanser in my hair at the same moment my hand smushed it in. I removed my hand and squinted at it stupidly. I felt the cleansing goo sting a little on my scalp; I washed it out and tried again, remembering to put the goo on my face that time.

girth

I choked and laughed reading this story.
Fat people, oh my god, fat people.
Fucking america.
My favorite quote from this story: "Syringes with the longest available needles -- 4 1/2 inches -- couldn't penetrate the fat."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

humidity

I got in the shower today with a plan to wash my hair, but when I stepped into the tub, I again noticed the mold that has been growing on the inside of my shower curtain liner. I've been here 5 and a half months, and enough of it has appeared to annoy me. I've been planning on cleaning it for awhile, but it's been an easy thing to put off. I only see it once a day, and I am naked and myopic and trying to get myself clean, and usually in a hurry as well; the mold gets ignored.

Until today. I didn't have to be anywhere. Time was not an issue.

I got a bottle of cleaner from under the sink, and the sponge that I keep next to it. I didn't even have to step back out of the shower. The water ran warmly from the showerhead.
I sprayed the curtain all over with the cleaner and proceeded to scrub at it with the sponge. Scrubbing either end of the liner was easiest because I could spread the curtain against the tile wall and have a hard surface to scrub upon. The end where I enter and exit had the most mold, so it was good that it was easiest to clean; the reason for the extra mold is that the end of the liner tends to fold back on itself when wet, and then sticks together, trapping the moisture and aiding the growth.
Cleaning the middle section was harder.
I had to put my left arm behind the liner and sandwich it between my hand and the sponge on the other side, allowing me to scrub one hand-sized section at a time. My progress slowed, and I turned off the water faucet; all pretenses of a quick cleaning job at the beginning of my shower having washed down the drain with citric cleanser and invisible granules of scrubbed mold.
The mold in the middle section of the liner was centered on vertical folds still remembered by the material from it's days on a shelf at the store I bought it from.
When I finished the middle section, I sprayed the whole curtain again, and then went over it with my eyes and the sponge, catching spots that I'd missed.
When I was done, I turned the water back on, and turned the nozzle to wash the remaining cleaner from the curtain.
I resumed my shower, and washed my hair.

My curtain is clean.

Miracle

I've been wearing my glasses a lot recently.
Last night, I'd been drinking.
I took my glasses off, set them down, and then put my contacts in.
After I put my contacts in, without thinking about it, I put my glasses back on, as they were in a spot I only place them in temporarily; such as when I am changing shirts, or showering.
I put my glasses on, and suddenly my vision turned blurry.
I squinted my eyes, and reached up to rub one of them, then I noticed that my peripheral vision around the glasses was excellent.
I pulled my glasses off my face, and I could see!
I ran to the window, leaned out, threw my glasses out into the street, and screamed:

"Hallelujah, I can see!!!"

-------------------

This morning I woke up with a hangover.

I couldn't find my glasses anywhere.

Then I remembered why.

And wrote this.

Waaaaaaah!!

There was a child somewhere nearby, crying and having a tantrum.
A man walked up to me in a nice hat, laughing.
I looked at him, and I started laughing too; we both knew what we were laughing about.
"I sometimes enjoy the cries of children, " I said.
"I think I'd like to do what he's doing, somedays," the man said.
"Yes, " I agreed. "Me too."
And we laughed some more.

Croissant (sp?)

I was working as a bagger at a grocery store.
A woman was purchasing 3 croissants in an open plastic bag from the bakery.
The cashier picked up the bag to count them and then set it down.
"Did your finger touch that?" asked the woman of him, quickly.
"No," he said. "My finger just touched the wrapper."
"I don't want them." She said tersely. "Take them off."
"Ok," he said, and set them aside.
I looked on in shock. Because a man who is unfamiliar to her may have briefly touched one of her croissants with one or two fingers, she was unwilling to buy them. What did she think may have been transferred? Should I be worried? No, I don't feel worried. How does she think those croissants were made? Does she think that no hands have ever touched them before?

I don't know, and it made me sad. It made me think of the paranoia that seems to be so harshly gripping so many Americans. What are we so fucking afraid of, that we can just throw away food like that for the most asinine and remote dangers. Why are we so worried all the time? We have very little to worry about, compared to most of the world. It bugs me.
I took them back to the bakery and told the clerk there that:
"A customer didn't want these anymore because a cashiers finger may have touched them."
I said it kind of loudly, I suppose. I heard a woman behind me say, "well, I wouldn't either."

Goddammit, that was enough.
"Here, I'll take them, nevermind." I was pissed. I knew they were just going to throw them away, for what seemed like no good reason to me.
I took them over to the customer service desk and bought them. Screw the paranoia.

I just ate one of them.
It was delicious.

Successful day

On my walk home from work tonight, I sang. I sang the whole way, on my two mile walk. I sang noises and it was circusy, but sort of drunk walking with my feet flipping out widely on each step.

Me me me.

I exercised my Japan fetish heartily today.
I went to Mitsuwa Marketplace with my Japanese friend and a fellow Nihongo enthusiast. We wandered and spoke and shopped and ate and I spoke more Japanese in a day than I ever have. It was wonderful. I feel so small in my knowledge of the language and constant exposure to just how much there is to learn, but I'm gaining a confidence in my ability to learn it and speak and understand it. Today I really broke through the stress boundary that has encircled by shaky grasp of the language. I spoke it thoughtlessly a few times, and forgot to be nervous.
That's great!!
Best I've felt about the language so far.

Roast

I was participated in roasting my friend Shabaz on his birthday this Wednesday at a cafe. Here is the speech that I wrote for it (Shabaz was sitting on the stage with me while I spoke):

"Last night I drank until dawn, and I've had a lot to drink tonight. Before I got up here, I was worried that I might pass out first. Now that I'm here, I'm worried I might pass out on the stage. If I do, just drag me to my seat and tell the cops that Shabaz slipped Rufies in my drink. He's that desperate.

A few days ago, I was wondering what I could say about Shabaz tonight, other than to curse him for being a worthless isolated hermit of a layabout that didn't bother to read my mind so he could find out that I'm a huge Arlo Guthrie fan before he didn't invite me to go to the concert with him. I almost learned the guitar just so I could cover Alice's Restaurant, you bastard.
[singing]'Oh, you can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant' - except redemption Shabaz. I'll hunt you like the middle-eastern sand lizard that you are, and I'll be reading this again at your funeral.

[At this point I flipped him off, and then walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek. The crowd made a sappy sound.]
"What you don't know is that I have cyanide on my lips."

"Yeah, so I thought of saying all that, and then decided to say this.
Shabaz is my friend, but I haven't known him for very long, so that could still change.

I talk a lot, but Shabaz talks too long. He doesn't know when to close his mouth. One time when I was listening to him talk, his mouth stayed open for so long that an entire family of spiders crawled inside, lived their natural lifespans, died, their little spider corpses shriveled and turned to dust, all in his mouth while I watched, and before the end of his story, which he never actually reached because he fell asleep in his chair while he was talking to me.

Finally, God bless, Holy Shalam, and allah, and whatever else might be relevant to the mystery seasoning packet you call your genetic history. May your mother rest in peace, knowing that she left her son with such caring friends as all of us here tonight. Happy birthday Shabaz."

Unread, and un-spellchecked

This night.
Seemed a good place to start laying words down.
The trouble is where to go next from there.
The keyboard is unresponsive to my fingertips. One word leaps to the next with the agility of a retarded long jumper. I could be a disfigured cheetah closing in obviously on a kill that will never be.
However, I could be anything, though I sometimes feel that that is reserved for other people. People with will and perseverence. I have endurance, but have not had much else. Never had much gut, or strength, or individuality. I was the one that took punishment and ran away quickly. I didn't want more than what I found without trying. I wanted to be left alone, generally. I could have played video games forever by myself in a closed room for a long time and been happy. Forever, if I'd had the best selection selected for me on a monthly basis, but that involves other people. No way to be alone and be happy for me. I had to find a way to interact.
I've been gradually looking for ways to do so for years. I've gotten better at it, I suppose, though I'm not proud of it. I'm still the same sad kid I was when I was 15, but now I've learned more about the art of distracting myself.
Shiny baubles and all kinds of things; shiny shiny shiny!
I must be kept busy, or life starts to stain through.
Here is where I lay.
The first day of spring will come soon. We will have some equanimity around that, which will be nice.
If I don't contradict myself, I'm happy.
Come on then world, fuck me with your best stillettos on, I'll be waiting with the meanest reviewers to nail you to wall with your brethren, and cry about it afterward.
A good drink always needs a home.
Enough of this.

Noon: Part 2

She stopped looking at the city and looked down at her feet, then at the ground and gravel and bits of broken plastic and glass that littered the shoulder of the road. She didn't like when her father was upset. She didn't know what to do. She kept her eyes on the ground, trying to identify different things there near her. There was a lid and straw from a soda cup, crushed flat and browned with dirt. There were bottle caps and a crushed can. Next to the can was something small and white and round. It looked like it could be soft or brittle. She crouched down and moved her head closer to it. It had a yellowish color stained into it, and was small, about the length of half of her index finger. She reached down and picked it up very carefully. It was fragile and very light, like a piece of hard dust. One end of it ended smoothly and roundly, like her finger tip, but the other end had a hole in it and was burst open, as if something had ripped free and escaped from it. She looked inside it and saw a little brown husk of something within. A discarded skin. It was a moth's cocoon, picked up and blown by the wind, but she didn't know that at the time.

She dropped it back on the ground and stood up. She looked again at the city, burning. She felt a wind blow over them, hot and rich with the smell of something strong and unpleasant. It left a taste in her mouth, hot and plastic. Ashes scattered in the sky and blew like leaves. She was scared. She reached for her dad's hand and found it, fidgeting with his pant leg. She grabbed it and he held her hand.

They stood there for a long while, watching the city burn with the others on the side of the highway, the radio in the car broadcasting worried voices into the air around them as moths would bounce around a bright light.

Noon: Part 1

She was five years old at the time, sitting in the passenger seat of her dads old car, riding from Jersey towards Manhattan to go see her mom. Her dad and her mom didn't get along anymore, and she was made constantly aware of that, especially when the two were within speaking distance. She was unconcerned with the drive, she'd been on it many times before. The radio played the news in the background, men and women speaking in serious tones about things far away and close to home. Her father listened intently as he drove, seeming concerned about something. She mostly ignored him, concentrating on a book she had in her lap, something about squirrels and trees. She had trouble remembering the book later in her life, but could say that it was one she carried with her many places. It's odd to forget things that were once so closely well known to oneself.

Her dad slowed the car down, looking off to the left, towards the city they were driving towards, Manhattan. Something was happening. He reached to the radio and changed to a couple other stations quickly, then came back to the first one. It was silence for a moment, and then a voice came on. It was a male voice, and he sounded surprised and unhappy. She realized they were talking about the city her mom lived in. Her dad slowed the car further and pulled over onto the left shoulder of the highway. She looked at him. His long face was tense, his mouth set very firmly below his angular nose, lips held tightly together.

“What's wrong dad,” she asked him.

“I don't know honey,” he answered.

He stopped the car, and turned off the engine, but left the radio on.

“I'm getting out of the car for a minute, ok?”

“Ok,” she said. Her father got out of the car, and she could see that there were many other cars stopped on the highway. Very few cars were still on the road, but the ones that were sped past very quickly. She didn't want to look at her book anymore. She wanted to know what her dad was doing. The newsman on the radio was very upset and anxious. He didn't sound like they usually do, quiet and reserved. He was talking about fire and planes and Manhattan. She crawled over the seat to the drivers side where her dad had left the car door open and stepped outside, joining him.

Outside, she looked around. There were many people standing; a few were sitting. Some were yelling; a few were crying. Everybody seemed upset and they were all looking off to the east. She looked up at her father. She was short for her age, and her father always seemed so large to her, even though he was not a very tall man. His face was still firm, but his eyes were watering. There was a tear on his cheek. She looked away from him, and out to see what everyone was looking at.

Later in her life, when she was 8 years old and in school, a teacher discovered that she wasn't able to see what was being written on the board, even when she was made to sit in the front of the class. That teacher talked to her dad and he had her go to see an optometrist. She was found to be near-sighted and was fitted with a pair of pink glasses with little strawberries on the sides. As she got older she tried to think back on her childhood, and the things she saw. It seemed that her childhood must have been a mostly blurry place to her, but she couldn't remember it that way. Her most distinct visual memories were all of near things though. She remembered standing on the road that day, and what she saw when she looked to the east, towards Manhattan island.

The sky was blue above her, but there was dark smoke above the city. She could see the tall peaks of buildings, but they were not distinct to her. Below the buildings and climbing up towards the tops, there was bright orange light that jumped and flickered. It seemed to be all over the city and it looked hot and angry.

“Oh god, your mother...” her father said softly, and looked down at her, his face collapsing into a grimace. It was noon.

no habla espanol

I awoke fairly early today. At 10 am. I plan to do the same tomorrow. This marks a new consistency for me in a weekly schedule that usually involves waking up near noon each day.

I had time before I had to report to my job to do some shopping this afternoon and wandered up Clark street to do so. My desire: earrings!!

I ventured into Sally Beauty and found that they do sell earrings. I looked through their selection and found some that I wanted. The woman at the counter helped me retrieve them from the case; a pair of studs and a pair of hoops.

As she rang up the order, she said to me, "You're not Latino, are you?"
I looked at her. She looked to be about 40 years old. She was Latino, but I did not recognize her as such until she asked me.
It's a question I've had to answer many times. I have yet to work out a natural response that concisely sums up my situation.
I often say, "Yes, I'm half Mexican.", but when I say that, I know that that infers a cultural connection on my part to Mexico, when the reality is anything but.
My father is a full blooded Mexican, and my mother is very Caucasian (whatever that means now), but I don't know my father. I know his name, and have an address he might still reside at, if he still lives. My only memory of him is of a vaguely shaped shadow in a doorway from when I was about 7 years old and very sick with the flu, laying in bed. I've no connection with him, Mexico, Espanol, or any Latino community, so I feel near to a lie whenever I tell anyone that, yes, I'm half Latino. It is in my blood and my appearance, but that is about all.
So, after a moment of silence, I told her, "I've never known my dad. I don't even remember what he looks like."
"Oh," she said. She was quiet for another moment. Then she said, "I have a cousin who is half Latino."
It was not uncomfortable. Our conversation remained pleasant and short.
I felt pretty good about it, and happily left with my jewelry.

Metal

I've been thinking that I'd like to wear earrings again. I have two holes in each ear that used to be at a 14 or 16 gauge, but I've worn nothing in them for over two years now. I lost and gave away all of my earrings in the meantime.
The holes are still visible, and I've wondered about them, so I tossed four safety pins in a pot of water and started boiling the water. I boiled them for a few minutes, and then decided that I didn't really think it was going to matter and poured the water out and gingerly retrieved one of them.
I went into my bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, and began to push it into the lower hole in my right ear. I didn't get it in very far, and I was worried that I would deviate from the old hole while part way through and punch out of a new spot on the other side.
My ear turned red and began to hurt, so I stopped.
That was last night.
Tonight, I thought, "Fuck it," skipped the boiling, took one of the pins and went for the other ear. I jammed it straight through in one try.
It felt pretty good, actually. A self managed pain.
I cleaned it, and now happily have a safety pin through my ear.
One down, three to go.
Time to go jewelry shopping.

Happiness in Clicking

Recently I was roaming through links on Fark.com and came to one in regards to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I'd been curious about what that was so I clicked on it and read all about the Monster and it's status as a deity and it's co-validity with Intelligent Design in a scientific setting.
I then found a link on that site to a podcast that contained an audio clip of an interview with Richard Dawkins where he spoke in regards to a recent documentary that he had filmed: "The Root of All Evil?".
I felt compelled to see the documentary from there, and it was inspiring. His verbosity and reverence for the human spirit is enheartening to witness as he throws his energy against the dogma that is harnessing the fear of the world and spitting in the face of the very things it proclaims to protect.
I heartily recommend it.

"Tap tap tap tap tap."

After stepping off the train in a small crowd, I walked with them and chose to take the stairs down to the street level. I was moving quickly, and watching for a good route to take among the others already on the stairs.
A woman directly in front of me wore a long black coat, with the hem of a fancy dress sticking out from below, bunching up on each step behind her. I knew this would slow her down so I looked peripherally to my left and found I was moving slightly faster than the person that was there. I sped up a little bit and slipped in front of that person to come abreast with, and then pass on the left, the woman in the long dress.
In front of her, still on the stairs, I noticed a light bright blue glove on a hand. It was knit and had a little bit of other color on it, or maybe a white pattern. I liked it, and the way the arm it was attached to was poised out from the body of the girl moving quickly down the stairs.
We both reached the bottom at about the same time.
I heard her say, "I love-"
and she turned and looked right at me, hesitated for maybe a quarter second and finished with "-going down the stairs!"
Looking at her, I said, "Me too." Then I looked down at my feet and mimed running down stairs really fast with them and said, "Tap tap tap tap tap. Going down stairs is fun!"
Our pause to speak was barely a pause at all, and it seemed as though we never stopped moving. She turned to the right and I turned to the left.
We were headed in opposite directions.

Shiny shoes

My friend was visiting from out of town, and I was showing him around downtown a little bit at night. Walking, and trying to remember the very limited trivia I've absorbed about the city thus far, we found the Billy Goat's Tavern and went in for some dinner and drinks.
I remembered reading about the place as a famous hangout for reporters from the Chicago Tribune building across the street, and lo and behold, there were quite a few reporterly looking fellows having drinks at the bar.
We ate and absorbed the journalist brain juice oozing from the dirty walls and left to wander the city some more. We came near the State street bridge over the Chicago River and I was telling Chris about Marina City when we heard a voice.
"Hey man. Hey! Thems some nice shoes. Say-uh lemme shine em for ya."
We turned and saw a black guy in a thin jacket and wearing shiny Nikes coming up. Shine shoes? He spoke really really fast and I noticed that many of his teeth were broken, but some were capped with metal.
When my friend and I didn't immediately walk away, he quickly knelt down and pulled out a cloth and a bottle of shoe shine. He took my friends foot up on his knee, squirted some brown liquid on his shoe and proceeded to shine it with the cloth.
He talked to us the whole time.
He told my friend, "Okay, I got a riddle for you. You answer it, double or nothin, double or nothin."
"Don't do it," I told him. "Don't do it. You'll lose."
The shoe shine guy looked up at me and said, "You talk real fast, where ya from?"
"I've lived in Chicago for a couple years, " I told him.
He finished the shine on both shoes, and my friend and I agreed that they did look much shinier.
The man put his hand out and said something that neither of us understood, but we realized it was money time, of course.
My friend pulled out his wallet, and took the singles he had in it, $3, and was about to give it to the guy when he said: "Seven bucks, it's seven bucks."
"Damn," I said.
My friend laughed and pulled out a $10 bill and gave it to him.

The guy said, "Alright, Imma ask you the riddle. Okay. Now tell me, how many sons did your father have?"

I knew that my friends father was somewhat estranged from him. I asked him if he knew.
He said, "Oh yeah, I know."
I thought about what I knew about him and guessed: "3".
My friend said, "No, 4. I've got three brothers from my dad."
The shoe shine guy said, "Wrong! Shit, you know your dad didn't have no babies! That's what mothers do!"
With that he walked away from us, and we turned to cross over the river and see what else could happen to us in Chicago.

Terminator 4

I went towards my kitchenette this morning because I was hungry. I know what's in there. Not much, but I did have 4 boxes of Boca Spicy Chick'n Patties which are mostly gone now. They were on sale at my work, and I've had one for breakfast and one for dinner every day for a week.
I opened the freezer door, reached in, and removed a cellophane-wrapped chick'n patty from the box. Closing the door, I then turned and removed the wrapper and placed the frozen patty on a plate. I then opened the door to the refrigerator and placed the plate inside and closed it. I then (very quickly) opened the fridge, removed the plate, moved two feet to my left, opened another door (this time to the microwave) and put the food in.
Open the door, close the door, press the buttons, yay! - but only if I'm standing in front of the microwave. My fridge doesn't have any buttons.

Machines: 1 Nate: 0

echo

It's daunting sometimes, trying to think of what to say, what I could possibly have to say to entertain a passerby, or a friend, or myself in this space?
That is the duty here. To entertain, to engage, to communicate. This is not activism. It's just another moment that I struggle to infuse with some sort of life, or at least a hopefully natural extension of my personality.
I could talk about something from two days ago:

I went to the Chicago Cultural Center with the purpose of seeing some art, and also to place myself in a large ornate building and see how that felt.
I was wandering up a huge grand staircase, admiring the metallic inlay above me and in the walls when I heard a very large sound. It was of a grand piano, bouncing around the rooms and off the stairs and me. I felt urgent! Suddenly, there was import being sifted tangibly from the air and settling everywhere; the room felt thick. The sound was everywhere, and whomever was playing was doing so very vigorously.
I began to move very slowly, almost certain that something shocking or life altering was about to happen. A clone of myself that my unknown father had been growing and raising for the last 23 years was waiting for me at the top of the next staircase, and the crescendo of the music was coming closer as I ascended to meet my destiny in the eyes of myself...

I reached the top of the stairs and found the source in a grand room, that I realized I'd been in before. I worked a cleanup for a special events company after a wedding in that room. It's really magnificent. There's a high dome of colored lit glass in the center, and the ceiling gradually slopes down, covered in mosaic tiles until it meets the walls.
An Asian man with long hair in a pony tail sat in front of the piano, and he played like a small monster, his face moving and contorting with the motion of his hands on the keys and in synch with the music being issued.

There was seating for at least a hundred people in the room, but only a handful of people were there, all sitting near the back.
I quietly entered and took a seat to the side of them, and watched him play.
I spent an hour or two in that seat, and learned that his name was Alpin Hong and that he was only practicing for a recital the next day in the same room.
He was surprisingly good, and I felt just fine about sacrificing the rest of my gallery viewing time to listen to and watch him play.

Searching for god

No this post isn't about searching for god.
It's just about some girl I used to know.
I met her while I was dating another girl, and she was the friend of a friend. When I met her I thought, "Dammit. Why am I dating this girl. This other girl is amazing!"
Soon after that, the relationship fell apart, though I hadn't intended it to.
Awhile later, I saw the other girl again. Started talking to her, and seeing her more often.
I was always so confused, I could never figure out what she was thinking, even though sometimes I felt like I knew. We became close, with more time, but not very close, then exploded one day, and only one day, and that was all it ever was.

It was the anticipation that really made it worthwhile.
Waiting and waiting and waiting and thinking, "oh my god (whoops, there's god) what the hell do I even still call this person for" and doing that for so long.
Waiting and waiting and waiting. It's easy to do. I've spent a lot of my life waiting for things. Most people have.
A good deal of my waiting time has been spent thinking about love, and why I do things.
Something I read recently elicited this: love in another is the search for god in heaven. When one turns from religion, releases from that all-permeating envelope of acceptance and peace in the fold, one must turn that which made one seek that, and place it somewhere. The need does not dissolve. Falling in love with someone, setting them effectively up as a god, is only natural.
If I were very religious, I might not need to think about women so much, and I might not write posts where I talk about girls long gone, and how this one time I threw an empty beer can at her head, but missed.
It's okay though, I intended to miss.

Two

A surprisingly accurate occurrence.
The last time I got really stoned I found myself reading about the mapping of the human genome (they finished! I didn't know that) and about space and time as dimensions. I learned what a tesseract was and viewed a stereoscopic image of one. At the bottom of one article on hypercubes, I found myself staring at a fractal image, and then I wanted to watch a visualization program. I hunted G-Force out of the Winamp plugin archives, and spent an hour watching that.
All from smoking weed.
Seems like very typical behaviour for a pot smoker, but still I found it odd that I ended up accidentally exhibiting that typical behaviour, as one that rarely smokes .

And today, something rare.
Working as a cashier, I saw two asian women enter my line with two bottles of beer. I listened carefully to them, as I do everytime I see someone ambiguously (to me) asian, to discern if they are Japanese speakers. They were, as I could tell from their speech. I rarely know if someone is japanese before they sign their credit card slip. I said "Konnichiwa" to them, and then told them I spoke a little japanese (in japanese) while I rang them up. I asked them if they wanted paper or plastic (kami ka purastiko(i think i fucked that part up)).
At this point, I noticed that I was trembling very badly. I was shaking. I don't think anyone noticed, but I could tell that it was more difficult to control my arms and hands when I was opening up a bag.
In wondering why I was shaking, I remembered other times that I'd shaken in the same way.
Leading up to and during and after my first kiss. It was a prolonged one, and took place in the front cab of a two seater toyota truck, my first car. I was very nervous and remembered trembling enough for the girl to notice. The severity matched that of what I had today.
The next closest was the first time I drove a car. I was very nervous, but not trembling nearly as much, though the sensation was the same one.
The link seems to be because I was doing something very new and that I'm not experienced in, rather than because the people I was speaking to were female. Also, whether I see the activity as being of import or signifigance or a great desire affects the strength of it.
I tremble! How odd.

A suicide note

I am sometimes questioned about the nature of my sense of humor.

I have been told at different times that it is very dark, really sick, and that I have a crazy laugh. I have been called morbid, sardonic, and twisted, all for things that I find funny. After failing recently to describe my sense of humor, I now think that the best way is this:
there are moments when one has to laugh, or cry; I generally choose to laugh.

Or do I?

It may be true that all the universe and all within it is a determinable sequence of events; a steady causal chain that could be traced forward and back, given the right variables and tools to process them. Which means that everything I do, I do because I couldn't have done anything else; I am literally programmed to do what I do. The programming is the result of everything that has occurred before, i.e. the particular events of my life and birth and genetics and environment, all directing my actions.
This is determinism as I understand it.
So where is there room for any real decision, actual free will?

Perhaps free will is contained within the mind, and nowhere else. The ability to conceptualize a multitude of possible actions at any given moment is free will, regardless of any actual compulsion that will push me towards one of the options.

In this sense, free will would exist alongside my ability to perceive of myself as a self, and nowhere else. It would be an illusion, but one equal in importance to the illusions that I use to allow me to mingle amongst others and survive and communicate.

To drop the illusions completely, (if that is even possible without becoming permanently insane) would then also abolish any possibility of free will, though perhaps the sheer magnitude of everything being constantly experienced would make the question of free will moot. A life lived without illusion would be all consuming.

Who knows what I would then find to laugh about?

practical

Today was a tiring day, but I feel well, except for the bruise that is my chin and the scabby goop that is stuck to the bottom of it. Five-six hours of my life, and all I have to show for it are two bloody shirts, a blood stained tie, a bunch of wounds and a mystery.
Not bad, but I can't afford a repeat anytime soon.
I'd probably lose an eye or get hit by a car.

Late

Very late. Late night. Saturday. Or Sunday.
I greeted this mornings sun stained in blood like the sun rising on my face.
A hospital behind me, I walked, looking for home and the familiar.
I dripped blood on the bus and ate sesame sticks slowly from a small bag that had survived the night with me. I wondered how I'd ended up where I was at. It was not the first time.
I got home and saw myself, looked at my reflection in the mirror.
It was fearsome. I was a hairy beast of a creature, coated in my own blood, puffy and oozing in my livelihood; I could taste myself.
I slept for a couple hours and took my beaten frame to work. I was late, and did what I could to buttress my mind against the onslaught of humanity and need that I knew my work would throw at me.
My work ended and I went out again, with my puffy lip and soreness. I saw a show and went to a party. I kept going.

It's over now.
I'm home. I can go to sleep, finally. My wounds will heal. I can pick the little black thing embedded in my palm out in the morning.

What did I do last night?

The last thing I remember was being at Reversible Eye (1103 N. California) gallery at around midnight. My next memory was me standing in front of Rush Medical Center at 7am. I had all my stuff, but I was wearing my back pack upside down and my wrists were covered in dry blood. And my lip hurt. I just got home and found dried blood all over my shirt. And a bash on my leg. Did I piss someone off last night? I have a 7 hour memory gap. This is the weirdest one yet.

Whole Foods

I had a miserable night at work.

My day started out wonderfully. I engaged in a discussion before work that got my brain juices oozy and slippery, and went to work feeling quite human.
Everything was going well until...

A large old black lady. Lots of jewelry. Whatever. Normal. I didn't look twice. She had a younger man with her. He said he was pulling the car up, and left right as the woman came up next in line.
I scanned a couple items, and asked her what kind of bags she wanted, looking at her. I look at people, to see if they're looking at me.
She wasn't. And she didn't answer.
"What kind of bags would you like?", I repeated. Now she looked at me.
"What?" she said.
A little louder now: "Would you like paper or plastic?"
She looked at the bagger and said, "What did he say?". That made no sense to me, I was standing closer to her than the bagger, if she can't understand me, less than two feet from her, how will she understand him? I was beginning to be annoyed.
I pointed at the paper bags, and I pointed at the plastic. She just looked at me. I have no idea what she could have been thinking.
The bagger stood there with some of her groceries and looked at her.
"Double shopping bags, " she says. (which means double paper.)
I rang up her order. Whatever. So she's hard of hearing, maybe has bad sight too. She's old. Forget it.
A younger woman came up to join her, maybe her daughter.
I finish ringing and tell the woman her total.
"What?" she said.
I said it again, and pointed at the large screen with her total on it.
"What?" she said again.
I could feel my temperature rising. I told her the total again, and she repeated the first part, and asked me what the second part was. I told her, as she went through her purse.
Her daughter was not helping.
The woman tossed some twenties on the counter in front of her purse without saying anything. I counted them, then she tossed a card on the counter and said something that sounded like:
"seewhatsonthat".
"what?" I said.
"She wants to see what's on her card," the daughter said.
"ok." I picked up the card and looked at it. No signature. The "This card is not valid until activated" sticker was still on it, and it looked old and weathered, as though it had been through some rough times with this woman. I felt a lot for that sticker.
I handed it to the daughter, and she slid it through the little machine.
"I want to use that before I use the cash. See if it works." This was the most the woman had said to me.
The card did not go through. My computer displayed "insufficient funds". I told them exactly what the computer said.
The daughter laughed, and the old woman said, "what?".
So I said it again, and she just kept looking at me. Did she want me to yell it? I could have yelled it at her. It might have felt good.
"It worked before, " she said.
I didn't know what else to say, and I didn't really want to say anything. I just wanted her to go away.
I picked up the cash she'd already put on the counter. It was the right amount. I counted it again. She watched me do it. Her daughter was still laughing. I wanted to laugh too. I really wanted something to laugh about. Someday she'll die. I gave the woman her change. She continued to stand there, not really looking at me. I moved slowly, but she didn't move or say anything.
Fine. I looked at the next guy, and began to ring up his order. The old woman went away slowly, with her daughter. My face was red, and I could feel my blood, pulse pulse pulse through my temple; my hands shook. I could have ripped the monitor off it's bolts and smashed it through the window screaming.

Then I heard a man's voice about ten feet behind me. It was the first guy, her son maybe. He was talking to my supervisor. "oh fucking oh no what the hell is going on" was all I could think. I turned around and looked at them. He looked at me. I treated her as well as I could figure. How the hell can I deal with someone that can't or won't communicate with me? Her son and daughter were no help. I felt like I was fucking set up, that I'd fallen into a trap.
I heard my supervisor call the store manager. "jesus fuck," I thought, and I'm stuck here in this register with a line of people expecting me to help them. I couldn't defend myself and I had nowhere to hide; I was naked.

The bagger had left, but another one came over. I told him a little bit of what was happening. I swore. I felt impotent. I was fucking pissed and said so. I was ringing up a mans order, he was little and white and probably 32. I was swearing and visibly angry and showing it. This is very rare for me, so I squeezed out a fast apology.
"Excuse me, " I said.
"Fucking niggers, " he said.

haguhopqgkl'agkl;'asgdklagdioqrewmpqvjalgd.

What? What? The bagger looked at me, and he said something loudly, "whoah," probably. He walked away.
"Oh no, " I said to the man, as I softly exhaled. "No. Anybody can be like that."
I looked at him. I know why he said it. I was in an obviously vulnerable state. I was sharing the kind of raw emotion that doesn't get seen. The kind that is released with your close friends, and sometimes not even then. He felt that as a bond.
And decided to share something secret of his own.
I know why he said it.
I don't know why he thought it.

I finished with him as quickly as I could.

I did not turn around again. I found the last two things that had occurred hard to believe. I did not want to know anything more. The store manager came over to me and asked me what had happened. I was still livid and trying to help another customer. I recounted, as well as I could, how difficult the woman had been, and told him exactly how I told her the card had been declined. I had been very careful, and told him that. He told me that I should run the card twice next time. I could have fucking pried all of his teeth out with vice grips and eaten his gums with a potato peeler.

The large old woman and her two friends or children were gone.
I spent the last 45 minutes of my shift (and my walk home) trying to calm down. I bought a bottle of bourbon. Bought dinner to go from McDonald's.
This is how I'll redeem myself.

The Hypnotube

I have never owned a TV, but I have lived with TV's, though not since last October. I used to be thoroughly addicted to the networks, I mean I knew the schedules pretty solidly for about 5 channels from 5:30am up to about midnight. I could recite the lineups from memory.
That was in 1998. That same year, I started working two jobs and suddenly didn't have time for TV anymore. First I missed one week of my favorite shows, then two weeks in a row. What was happening on Millennium and X-Files? Did the smoking man reappear? Where's Moulder's sister? Who's really engineering the apocalypse?
After a month, I didn't really care anymore, and I haven't gone back to the TV since. Sometimes I'll watch a show if I'm near a TV and other people are watching it, but that's rare.

Yesterday, I was given a little 5.5 inch black and white TV to call my own, my first TV.
I just spent half an hour with it, going through all the channels to see what it receives, and landed on Fox. American Idol was on.
I watched it for a little while, and I found myself to be incredulous. The air of drama that is created by the show seemed no thicker than the wall of a soap bubble. Personally, I was unable to relate to a single person that I saw presented. I've seen more character in a CG animation. I don't know whether to be impressed or disgusted. And this show is incredibly popular - what does that mean?

I have drifted far from my TV watching days.

recycled and unsettled

I posted this as a comment on a friends livejournal tonight:

Tonight, I met with my Japanese tutor for a lesson. A man sitting next to us heard us speaking in Japanese. He turned out to be a doctor from India that spoke fluent English and Japanese and (I assume) Hindi.
Later, I told my Japanese tutor that I only work 4 days a week and have 3 days to myself.
She asked, "nani o shite iru ka?".
Hmmm...What do I do?
Well, I write. And I study Japanese, and I meet with friends and talk to them. I don't go to school. I am definitely not a doctor that speaks 3 languages.
I felt very small.
I came home after my lesson and, feeling somewhat empty, decided to attempt to justify my existence with a beer and the internet. Wish me luck.
Nate

This is an accurate portrayal of the mood I was set into. Caffeine helped. The wonder of knowledge and innocence of learning can be deeply unseated by the realistic prospect of just how much I will never ever know.

gwawk

I made guacamole tonight, and oh oh oh is it good. I'm currently eating it for dinner.
This is the recipe I assembled and used:

4 Haas avocados
1 small can of chopped olives
5 cloves of garlic
2 serrano peppers, minced (wear gloves! My fingers are still burning.)
1 Tsp of salt, fresh ground black pepper, cumin
1 lime, juice of
1/2 a small sweet onion, chopped

This has been my best meal all week. Oh it's so good.
Totemo oishii desu yo!

Denial of Omelets

I've started reading the Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, and the permeation of that web of thought has already begun seeping into my membranes and leaking into my crevices. I will be full of his mind juice soon.
My study of Japanese is going well. Watashiwa nihongosei desu.
Hooray.
This entry is sparse spartan barren.
Like a laid egg with no yolk, this omelet is white like I would be if I weren't half Mexican.

Pride and No Sleep

Tonight I laid down to sleep for 45 minutes and found that I couldn't. My brain is on, and does not appear to want to turn off.
Which is not bad, I'm enjoying it.

I was recently told that my worldview seemed prideful, and that that wasn't good. I didn't have a rebuttal because I had been unsure of how I felt about pride. I think I've developed an answer.

A person with no pride, in anything at all that they do, will likely not do anything interesting. A person with too much pride can be dangerous to the world. Moderation is generally best, but how should that be done? How do I know when I've got too much pride?

My answer:
As long as my close friends can still communicate openly with me, then I am doing fine. Also, as long as I can still meet groups of new people, and get along with at least a couple of them, I can use that to measure as well.
I can ascertain that my friends are good measures, by being very careful about choosing them.
I can strengthen the relative objectivity of my decisions by gaining information continually and increasing my intelligence by as much as I can.
Reading books and doing hard things makes me smarter.
Smarter is always good, cause I often feel kind of dumb.

Hierarchal relations II

Expansion of idea from last night.

Hierarchal relations of attraction.

Picture a triangle in two dimensions.
Now think of people that you like. You probably like people in different ways, but those ways can usually be classified into two or three larger groups: Potential lovers, friends (family - often included within friends, but sometimes not).
Each group gets a separate pyramid.
People that you meet get placed onto one of your pyramids right when you meet them, but they can then move to a different one or move back and forth between them as you get to know them better (One person can never occupy two or more pyramids at the same time, though he/she might move back and forth between them very very frequently.). These people are placed at different heights on the pyramid by you, according to how much they attract you (sexual or emotional or mental).
A persons position on your pyramid can fluctuate constantly, but some continue to rise towards the top. Those that stay near the top get the most attention.
People for whom your attraction fades drift towards the bottom at a rate equal to the speed of the loss of attraction.

Most people keep their pyramids a fairly close secret. It's very personally revealing to share that information with someone else, and also gives them power over you.

hierarchal relations

I've had a thought tonight of attraction as a shifting hierarchy of desire, with some subjects placed in horribly close tandem, vying for the same spot in the imaginer and victim of the attraction, and with one subject usually above all the others.
The ranking in the hierarchy is determined by persistence of attraction over time. Some come and go, some come back, and some linger all along.

This is how I think my mind works when dealing with my attractions to others, most specifically women.

As I go lumbering through my field of attraction, the ones that stick around and show some interest are the ones that remain in the hierarchy. I don't really feel that I have much influence over it.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that I shouldn't think about it at all.

Enough said then.

Doom & DNA

All life linked by DNA back to our furthest ancestors. I like that thought.
Life persists.
I've heard some say that we are doomed. We are doomed to destroy ourselves through violence and fear, likely in a holocaust. What is meant by that? Do they mean the human race, or do they mean life itself? I think that's an important distinction.

I could agree with saying that the human race is doomed, but I won't agree with thinking that life is doomed. I wonder if anyone really feels that both are doomed?
I might have felt that way at various times in my past, that it has all been worthless, but not recently. Even in my worst moments, I've still been able to laugh - well maybe that's not quite true. There have been some moments that rendered me pretty motionless.
Still-
I feel that whatever we do, we'll find a way for life to survive. It may not be in an immediately recognizable form, but life will continue.
That helps me sleep sometimes.

years later

Thoughts revisit sometimes.
They are born, and flame up, sometimes taking physical form before the fire is spent, and the spark retires.
The physical remnants can come back though, and the thoughts can return with the same poignancy.
A scent is all it takes to recall a whole scene of life. A street, a car interior, the company, the expressions.
A perfume, a song, a story, a photograph, a movie: any of these things can send me quivering through a rocket launch of memory and emotion.
Sleep is a balm that heals the reopened slashes of times like these.

Procrastination?

Today was a day I reserved for studying Japanese and doing some housework that gets neglected during my odd work week: dishes, laundry, sweep the floor.
I've been avoiding the novel I wrote last November, but only in part. I've been thinking about it a lot. I finally started my first read-through of it a few days ago. I read the first chapter, and made notes on paper and in the computer version of the text. I like the technique, and already came up with a lot of things I'd like to change.
Now I need to work a continually recurring version of this process into my weekly routine, and I'll get the editing done, and turn my book into something I really like, rather than something I sorta of like and am a little embarrassed of.

My insurance kicked in anew as of the first of January, and I've been feeling a need to schedule a dental appointment and find an eye doctor and a general practitioner of medicine in my neighborhood. Something else I've been putting off.

I believe I like to put things off.

I've become so much better about actually doing the things I put on my lists than when I was younger, but this just encourages me to put more things on the list.
I really like to cross things off that I've added to the list, but I also feel that I may enjoy even more the self effacing misery of knowing that I'm doing other things than what my list tells me I ought to be doing.
That anguish may be what keeps any artistically able functioning alive in my electron tweezed brain.
I hope so because my tendencies don't appear to be changing, only getting more complex.

Banana

Bananas are amazing.
They are the perfect fruit.
They've got everything you need,
and they make you toot.

Sun Stones Moon

At work yesterday, (I am a cashier at a large grocery store) I suddenly found that there were more than three full carts of groceries lined up in front of my register, waiting to be rung up, and all part of the same order. That's very unusual.

A large grocery order at my job is usually around $250. Sometimes $300 or $400, rarely ever $500.

This order came to $2,900, and the guy paid with 29 $100 bills.
Turned out that he was the chef for the Rolling Stones, whom are apparently in town.
--------------------------------------
I recently realized something.
Most of the modern world currently uses a calendar system of 12 months that follows the cycles of the sun; a solar calendar (which keeps winter from eventually occurring in June in the northern hemisphere). The sun is generally perceived as being masculine, in contrast to the moons femininity; likely because of a woman's period matching the 28 day cycle of the moon (a woman with normal and regular periods, anyway).

Here is the realization:
The corporate world is primarily a male dominated place and has been so for a long time, but it has to operate through the use of a fiscal year, which as I understand it, is broken down in the same way as a lunar calendar: into 4 week periods.
Just as the moon cycles, and just as a woman's body cycles, so cycles the corporate world of finances and exchange.

Date

I came home tonight, at a very very late hour. I was tired and feeling a bit hungry and came in through the back entrance of my building. I thought about going up the back stairs, but decided to coddle my body and walk to the front to take the elevator.
While there, I thought I may as well check my mail.
Sitting in front of the mail boxes, on top of a box, was a tray, laden with dried fruit.
At 3am on a Thursday night (oxymoron? no!!). No one was around.

I was so happy to see dried fruit!

I took a prune and a date and a FIG and a pineapple ring with a cherry in the center.

I live in a fairly large, somewhat impersonal building with 30-40 other tenants that I rarely see.

Thank you for the fruit.

Past in present

A few weeks ago, I checked out two books from the library.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter.
I finished Mrs. Dalloway today, and picked up the second book.
I was surprised to find that there was a quote from Virginia Woolf in the beginning of the book, that explained the premise of The Light of Other Days.

How oddly synchronous is that?

This is the quote:

"Is it not possible-I often wonder-that things we have felt with great intensity have an experience independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence? And if so, will it not be possible, in time, that some device will be invented by which we can tap them?...Instead of remembering here a scene and there a sound, I shall fit a plug into the wall; and listen in to the past..."

Today was

a good day. I woke up at noon. Decided not to have tea, and have an uncaffeinated day.
Worked out, enjoyed breakfast, studied a little, and then I decided that I wanted to move around, and went for a walk.
Chose to walk to the lake, and freeze a view of it in January in my mind.
On the way there I found a spectacularly large, roman, and round building that I'd never noticed before. Walking around it I found enormous sculptures of elk guarding the front gates.
The building was The Elks Veterans Memorial Building, and was open to the public, so I ventured in out of curiosity.
As I walked up the steps, I examined the door, looking for a handle. The front entry was huge and bronze and flat and very imposing. It did not appear possible to enter, looking at it. I came closer and saw a plaque attached to one side of the door with a button and a sign: "Press button for entry."
I pressed the button.
A very old man opened the door slowly, inward.
I walked inside and was immediately impressed with the enormity of the room I was walking into; an enormously round room that arced up to a high dome.
The horrendously old man (with an odd growth upon his chin that drew my eyes) gave me some light history of the building and invited me to walk around on my own.
I stood in the center of the dome and gazed straight up to the point, a hundred feet from my own feet.
I explored the building and it was spectacular, with a shockingly ornate room beyond the dome patterned after the Great Hall at Versaille.

After my exploration of the dome, I went to the rocks at the shore of the lake, and watched day turn to night, the lights of far off downtown slowly appearing, as the outlines of the tall buildings grew hazier.

I walked home and studied more, then went to a poetry performance and open mic.

I performed a piece of mine that I've memorized, and won exhilaration from the effort of exhibition. I enjoyed the performed and returned home in long bouncing strides, jubilant.

I rewarded myself with a beer from the mini-mart and retired to make room for the next day.

Sauce

Tonight I made pasta for myself, and for my lunches at work for a few days.

I used a can of whole tomatoes and a can of sauce that had a few seasonings in it (garlic and basil, I think I read on the can). One can of tomato paste as well, all of which was hanging out in my cupboards.
I put the whole tomatoes in the pan first, and mushed them up well with a spoon, and then added the other tomato bits.
Next I added a small can of sliced olives and a 8oz of sliced mushrooms-fresh. A bunch of cumin, some cayenne, some sliced sun-dried tomatoes and six (I accidentally typed sex, the first time) whole cloves of garlic, crushed (garlic is sexy).
Meatiness was a pack of ground Quorn (which is not meat, but mostly mushroom+egg white).

Served over Penne Rigate.

It was delicious, and will continue to be delicious over the next week when thawed, and consumed at work.

I really don't

I've been thinking about Christianity and love and atheism and any religion, any faith, that I've learned of. I've been thinking about safety, and the dangerous activity that living is.
I've been thinking about the great mystery that existing is, that feeling anything is, and how faith is an effort to lay that to rest, to be a great snuggly blanket that anyone who wants to can snuggle up under. I distrust the rigidity of calmness and peace that I see in some that hold their religions so dearly. It is so often a painfully obvious bandaid, and I itch to peel it's sticky fabric back, and see what lies beneath the blanket.

Tonight, in reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, I came to a part just after a meeting between her and her young daughter, and an older woman teacher in Mrs. Dalloway's opulent home. The older woman is dirt poor and a recently converted Christian.
The older woman has taken the daughter into her confidence, and Mrs. Dalloway is distraught by this, as she holds a mutual disgust with the woman.
She is thinking of her life and her recent closeness to death, and the roses her husband brought her that day (he never brings her roses!). What is being Christian, in comparison to anything?

Afterward she sees a woman from her home's window in a neighboring house, a very old woman. Every day, for so long, she has been able to watch this old woman climb a set of stairs and sit in a chair to look out the window, never apparently catching Mrs. Dalloway watching her.
She watches the woman sit, and watches when the woman moves around her room, even as she loses sight, and she wonders, trying to see, but being unable and there is the great mystery so many religious folk claim to have solved:
"here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that..."

I don't understand a thing.

Final Chester update

As of 9:48am PST Chester the 7' boa constrictor has been safely freed from the dash. His freedom required the entire removal of the dashboard of the car, but was successful and the car is still drivable with the dashboard re-installed. Hooray for Chester.
Also, I got a new keyboard today from a hospital resale shop that I wondered into. Buried in the far depths of the stores warehouse, next oddly useless home freezie/slurpee makers, and above a dsl modem in it's mailing box, I found my new keyboard: an hp gray and navy blue thing that looks brand new and functions wonderfully. I'm please.

Chester the Snake follow up II

As of 10:40am PST a mechanic has been found that is willing to help them get the snake out of the dash, as he has not yet come out to eat the brains. The snake should be removed sometime soon.

Chester the Snake follow up

I posted yesterday about a snake in a dashboard. Here is the story so far, as I understand it (it has been filtered through a third party and an internet comments thread):

Sometime on Friday, Jan 6th, a mother was driving from Northern California to Los Angeles to deliver her daughter's pet to her. The pet is Chester, a 7' long Boa Constrictor, and prior to the drive he had been sealed up in a large cardboard box with duct tape and placed in a '91 Subaru Loyale, the mothers car.
Toward the end of the trip, the mother got out of the car to get a bite to eat. When she returned to the vehicle she found that the snake had escaped the box and was climbing up into the glove box and behind the dash.
In a panic (and terrified that the snake might bite her) she drove the remaining distance to her daughters home. When she returned to the car with her daughter, they found Chester entwined around the brake and clutch pedals (making the car undrivable), and the rest of it hidden in the dashboard. It had recently eaten as well.
The mother, and possibly the daughter, did not sleep that night, as the car was parked out in the open, and she was afraid that the snake would come out at night and wander off into LA.
Sometime on Friday or Saturday, the help of two herpetologists from the local zoo was enlisted, but they were unable to extract the snake, and it became agitated and puffed up.
They tried to remove part of the dashboard, but were unable to do so because part of the snakes body was covering a few of the screws that they needed access to.
Around 8pm on saturday night, it was decided that placing a dead rat in the car might lure the snake out.
The next morning, likely after some sleep for those who had not had it, there was still no change in the snakes situation. The plan changed to putting a dead rat in a box in the back seat of the car, to lure it out and also to prevent it from being able to eat the rat and then happily return to the dash.
By sunday afternoon they were hoping to find a mechanic willing to help them get the dash out of the car to manually remove the snake from it.
Sunday evening they received some advice from a snake handler (via the internet): to extract a rat brain and place it in a Chester-sized box with some dirt and wait. The boyfriend of the snake's owner volunteered to extract the brain.
That is the story so far.
If the rat brain doesn't work, a subaru mechanic in Montana has offered to talk the mother through the dissassembly of the dashboard over the phone.

The story is still developing here.
Source: Thanks to quickdraw from Fark.com for sharing this story.

7' Boa stuck in dashboard

Wow.
This link from fark.com is the discussion thread with the details of the situation. I just spent the last hour or two reading through all of the comments. No resolution to the situation yet, so I'll have to wait till the morning to find out what happened.
I laughed so so bwa ha ha hard while I was reading these.
At first I thought it was a joke, that a snake could not really be very difficult to remove from the interior of a dashboard, but after reading through that, it does seem to be something that is very hard to do.
Worth reading through.

good night

Tonight I closed two bars, an extreme rarity for me. Actually, I don't think I've ever done that before. So fuck a rarity, it's a first.
It was great.
I drank, I laughed, at the first place.
On the way to the second one I listened to loud music that I didn't know very well and screamed and tried to climb out the sunroof.
At the second one I danced crazily all around the dance floor and then found a partner to weave in and out of the crowd with me.
It was a damn good night.

snow

Tonight I watched a beautiful movie.
When hope and the nice things peel away and float to the ground, like a bit of down,
down down to the carpet to be ground in;
I find a book.
Or a movie.
Some place that has been recorded by another, and I sink in to it.
Solace is there.
I love that it can be found.

think speak

I am constantly mystified that everyone else in the world is not like me, and does not think the way that I do.
I am aware that we are all very different, but the ways in which those differences reveal themselves are generally surprising when they come hurtling towards by egocentrism.

Trying to figure out why someone wouldn't want to learn a second language, or how someone can see the bible as being the best reflection of truth in the world sends my mind twisting through a laundry ringer.

I can recall a time in my past when I didn't care that English was my only language, and had no desire to learn another one. I was too distracted at the time by my immediate surroundings, and needs. Physically, I was a party animal and a work horse, constantly dancing and consuming drugs like a vacuum and going straight to work when the sun came up. Mentally, I suppose I was quite stimulated. There was a lot of good conversation, and not all of it was utopian wonderprose or disconnected jabbering.

I guess there are just so many things to think of and do, that everyone is going to have their own peculiar jumble of interests jabbing at their attention. I'm not special in mine, but still, how do other people think? I can only know through my own ability to think.

Bible

I read the book of John today from the New Testament.
After spending many years avoiding all things biblical and christian, I felt almost heretical to be sitting down in a public place and reading from the bible.
I felt as if I was burning a flag, or masturbating on the sidewalk.
This makes me feel I should read more of the bible, and probably other religious texts. At least scan through them. I do not want to have such a feeling of avoidance in me for these books, a feeling that I didn't even realize was there.

Fall

He returned from his break and retrieved his drawer of money from the lock box it had been stored in. He waited for the supervisor to tell him which register to go to, and who to send on break next. The supervisor seemed nervous, and did not respond very promptly.

He received his destination and walked around the desk towards the registers. As he came to the first one he saw that no one was standing in it and then noticed what was below. A woman lay on the ground, her eyes closed and unmoving, looking as though she lay where she fell. He recognized her. She worked with him, but had started only recently, and was engaging to speak with. She looked dead.

Then he noticed that another cashier was sitting calmly with the girl, holding her head off the floor. "She must be alive," he thought. "You don't hold someone who has just died like that. Not that calmly." Perhaps she fainted.

A short while later, the lights of an ambulance shone flashing through the store's front window. He turned around from his work momentarily to see that she was sitting up with the medics, her eyes open, a confused and withdrawn expression held to her face with thick air.

They took her away.