Serenity and Solitude

The rain repours the cement, erasing the sidewalk chalk’s construction instructions.  Boots, sandals, sneakers, and clogs clatter like a hard hail pell-mell from a bottomless sky’s pail.  A wordless tune worms its way from my Adam’s Apple, and for a second, the building faces smiled to nothing, the Granny Smith world lost its bruised mush and rotten spots, and she kindly nodds her ancient green head.  All thin-veined leaves and tangy sweetness.

Between classes the halls and byways fill, a thousand vacant stares fixed straight ahead or pointing down, like a pirate’s prisoner studying the sharks beneath the plank.  Are we so afraid of eye contact?  What kind of assumptions are made when a pair of harmless eyes connects with another?

"I don’t get it.  I don’t really want to fuck him, and he looks like a fucking retarded homeless man in that hat, but for some reason I just want to know him"

A common reaction.  Listen, sweetheart, I wear the hat to keep my hair safely away from my eyes and the voices securely locked inside the madhouse of my head.  Oh, how those thoughts strain at their restraints!  When they would speak, I speak for them, and even then they gnash their sharpened, bloodthirsty teeth at my inability to articulate.  The salt my body sows across my lips forbids any natural words to grow, and the almonds of my eyes’ won’t germinate into something honest.  I rub my eyes with helpless sight and spell serenity and solitude inside my right wrist, farthest from my heart but nearest to my pen.  I dress my best by donning those bright eyes in a smiling trim.

I’ve traded in depression for a confident notion of inconfidence; all of creation shivers in a gentle sadness that is not by nature cruel or crushing, but instead imbues it with a completely unaware beauty.  Symphonies with no conductors and endless instrumentation, shapes with no edges impossibly co-substantial, a no-man show to an infinite audience and vice-versa.  A black girl spoke ebonics and I heard Latin.  A car horn blared like a Medieval war trumpet.  A diminuitive woman smiled and I looked past the Mona Lisa.  Oh, the world is changing from nothing into nothing through the everything corridors of conundrums and paradoxes.

Q.  What kind of bee produces milk?  (Answer below).

I don’t really know why I’m writing tonight.  I don’t particularly want to, honestly, and the hour wears well past threadworn.  A funny encounter: I delivered a pizza last Friday to the dorms, and a couple of cute blondes all bessied up in purple body paint in preparation for that night’s football game met me in the lobby.  They solemnly informed me of the Dorito cheese ringing my mouth; desperate for an escape, I took the path of least resistence: self-deprecation.  "If you think I look stupid now, you should see me naked!"  We shared a good laugh, and we all meant it.

I find it mind-boggling that some people tip nothing.  Literally nothing.  The bill is 12.51.  They hand you 12.51–A ten-dollar bill, two ones, two quarters, and a fucking penny.  My fists ball unconsciously–some people literally make me pay gas to bring them their food.  Some people actually tip exact dollar totals.  The bill is 10.06.  They will hand you twelve dollars, and, on top of that, a nickel and a penny.  Really?  Is 1.94 really that far removed from 2.00?  Is that a guarantee your next pizza won’t be altered is a way that will end with a moderate to severe case of diptheria?  I remember working for Pizza di Roma, and some heinous bitch laughed in my face as she gave me 40 dollars on a 39.98 bill at 4:15 in the morning.  I told her to wait a minute as I reached into my pocket, my hand grasping for change.  I took out two pennies and dropped them at her feet, telling her, "Fuck you."  Go pick up your fucking food if you’re not going to tip, and, outside of that, have the (un?)common decency to sincerely apologize.

I got shit done today.

A. Boo bees!  Ahhhhh hahahahaha.