Other people’s business

When we’ve put the evening machines to rest and blown out the lights, stilled the voices, and let the gummy windows the carry us from one dream to the next … scratch that. I woke in a widow’s veil … scratch that. Before I even opened those salty orbs, I felt the absence, the lack, the loss and separation, the place where my wings were not, like where the bullet enters the head or chest, there are those places where something leaves the head or chest … scratch it, scratch it all.

I still think it sound, not story. I no longer feel quite so compelled to record it. He didn’t know where to put his hands. She did, know, know where to his hands and when whatever was going to happen happened, he could walk into a room and she could smile in a corner and one day they might write Christmas cards to one another. See? See what I mean? It’s like that, it’s just like that only not quite so much. September is so far gone it might already be autumn or at least close enough for government work or jazz if there still are such things. What’s Orange and sleeps three? A Department of Transportation truck. See? It’s just like that.

Back in the good old days or bad old days, old days in either case, not these days, I’d dedicate myself to these fucking things, online journals, for no better reason than the discipline, ok, maybe a bit of vanity, and, um, something to do with my hands and, Christ this is a shitty thing to admit, kind of a therapy. No, fuck no, I don’t mean the content was therapeutic, oh hell, no, it was, is, vitriol or silliness, wishful pornography or colorful retelling of old tales or just … shit I’ve forgotten the concept, like spinning yourself around with a blindfold on and going in the direction you’re pointed in until you’re in a free fall so profound you can’t recover and laugh at how hilariously pointless it all is. Free association? Maybe. How the hell is that therapeutic? It beats the alternative, like, for instance, examining what the hell is wrong with you (as in you) or you (as in me). I’m convinced that is what happened to the dinosaurs, that and some kind of extinction event like an asteroid or frat party.

Here are why just straight up real-life events are so boring. After almost a year of thinking about it I got my front passenger tire patched. It was a sunny day, so I sat on the grass under a tree for 45 minutes as Belles tires patched the tire. They said it would take them forty-five minutes as there was someone in front of me. It did, forty-five minutes. They asked for 20 dollars. I gave it to them. Oh, oh, oh I forgot the most exciting part! My cars computer said the leak was on the rear passenger tire because when I had the tires rotated the computer wasn’t reset! Belles reset the computer for free! After that I got a haircut! The lady had a new grandbaby! The baby was ugly but I told her it was cute and she didn’t fuck up my hair!

That’s pretty much September. Well, no, it’s the real-life stuff that I would share. I don’t really share another people’s business unless I’m pissed at them or I ask if it’s cool. I have never asked anyone if it’s cool to talk shit about them, and, well, I got a tire patched and my hair cut! Oh, wait, no, it’s not cools to talk about some people, privacy is a premium. Though, you know, patriot act; the fuck. One of the cool things about 2019, cool being relative, is you don’t really need to talk politics, just chose a color (red or blue) or an animal (donkey or elephant) and all the ugly talking will fill itself in. Or, you know, UK or EU, or Afghanistan and any idiots who haven’t been paying attention to the last several hundred years of failed attempts. It’s a bit like saying one of the cool things about the Spanish inquisition.

I’m not sure that anyone I know has changed their political opinion much in the last thirty years, they are just redder in the face about it and sure that their opponents mean to end their country as they know it. Good thing the internet helps us communicate more effectively and reach a wider audience, to live locally and act globally, to broaden the conversation and make civil discourse much more participatory. And sponsored!

I’ve drifted afield and not in a good way. I seem to write placeholders more than anything else. There is the occasional flash in the pan; it’s not gold, it’s where a fish used to be.