Election

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A momentary glance out of the soot smeared window towards the lake over the various kinds of roofs of this architecturally diverse steel town.  Most of the trees are already bare and only a few hold onto the last vestiges of summer vaguely obvious in their summer sunshine yellows.  Smoke clouded the skyline by the bridge, as it always does, but against this autumn sky, in such a peculiar way, that for another moment I have actually stopped shuffling papers and got all philosophical.

It’s a grey October like November day and everything in this world is about delicious dichotomy. I am as bored as I am entertained; I am as under sexed as I am over sexed, as brave as I am gutless, as strong as I am weak.  It goes on and on.  The streets are full of men of affairs, women with iPhones talking while driving, busily clattering up their mundane lives.  Banks of predictions, policies made, prophecies broken, violence deranged and all just a few blocks away in any direction you’re bound. If there was love, would that be enough? If I paid off his student loan for those 2 semesters of first year philosophy would that be enough, enough to kill the boredom?

It’s an election month so there are pollsters and planners, incredibly sad, indelibly inked, intrinsically curbed wanderers meandering through the one way streets; imagination nil, abject sloth ten.   Buildings are full of workers for a long time and substitute teachers scattering smiles for awhile; all of whom are swallowing pride and too much diet Pepsi.  Everyone is trying to find their own way of dealing with the mitigating boredom permeating every crack and crevice of this architecturally diverse steel town.  If there was love, would that be enough? If they lived debt free and work free and Pepsi free would that be enough? Who knows?  Back to the phone number, back to the small piece of paper with Barry’s number on it.