8.28

11:11pm

I received a message from a friend telling me about a Visa gift card I could get if only I clicked a shady link. Of course, some program had coopted his account, and he had not sent the message of his own volition. But was it any less his message from my point of view? At what point will the hackers be able to coopt my mouth in the same way? Soon we will have to perceive the friends we know to be true beneath a layer of unfortunate clever social engineering used by a malicious computer program to gain access to our central cortex so a breakfast cereal company can make more money.

Of course, this is ignoring the fact that we already say things against our volition and we interpret as reality a skewed sense of our friends' words without any intervening cinnamon toast crunch.

8.26

Somewhere in the vast someplace, you can stand still and look hard enough that you see the whole of it, and it's just then, with your eyes strained just so, that you see that you haven't been seeing, not really, all along.

8.21

The darkness has crept up and wrapped itself in the corners of the room. Its fingers are stretching out as the sunlight fades in the west. I see it as a quiet friend, here to watch over me as I cram four more cookies in my mouth. Go away, mom. Nothing to see here.

8.19

How many times have I heard this one clock tick and I never thought to count it before? A lifetime spent in this house with this clock, a lifetime of watching my father turn the small key, a lifetime of reliable rolling out hours, and I never thought it was important.
How many ticks went unheard because the walls of the house intervened? How many did I hear and not parse? How many have I listened to while trying to fall asleep on the couch? How many more are allotted to me?
I wonder what tick is waiting for your first and my last, and just how dispassionately the clock counts out our mortality. It will rumble onward after we are gone.

Its grinding indicates a tone is coming. It rings out one. Another day encroaches. All I can hear is the incessant tick tock of time.

8.13

you've pulled your knees up under your chin
it is innocent, quiet, and clean
eyes elsewhere
you're invisible, it seems, and nobody needs to look at you

so i look away, fear
eating through my confidence
that's one thing i will not do
stare
but if i could, i hope you know i would not

why is the grass so bright today
who dictated the color of the sky
and when did this breeze pick up
to move the trees in a quiet dance
was it You, or did i only notice when i looked up from you

8.12

I have that peculiar taste in my mouth, the iron-red tang of waking up after a bad dream, almost bloodied by the fear and paranoia of social anxiety induced so strongly in the dream that I carry it into the waking world, and I suck my teeth of it. I wonder what she dreams about. I can quickly realize that I do not know a particular she to wonder over, but rather every she for whom I have wondered and wonder invades my thoughts in sequence, a flood, a rising tide, a slapslapslap of crashing waves bowling me over and driving ideas up my nose until I can taste the salty grit of teary oceanwater thoughts mixed with the red-iron.

She dreams about finding the right connecting flight to paradise and being ushered through security. She dreams about opening the door to find a new cat. She dreams about piecing together the map fragments to an ancient mystery in the basement. She dreams about a friend she hasn't seen in years. She doesn't dream about me; she dreams about whatever she wants, and always invariably something pure and enviable because she doesn't exist except as a construct of my own dreams, but waking, no nightmare of mine but daydream.
And she is so good at dreaming that she will never dream back. Why would she? The red-iron has soured in my mouth with the salt to make an acrid and alkaline bite, cutting away at my tooth enamel, darkening my day. She doesn't need that. She doesn't need me.

[this went a sad place, but you always knew it would]

8.11

Which taste is sweetest, the first, or the last? The first is layered with anticipation, its subtle zippered tang hanging in the air long before you make your way from plate to mouth with treacherous fork, but the last--ah, the last taste. You and your friends have talked so long that the food has gone cold, and the last bite sits off-center to the plate. Your fork makes its pleasant scraping sound as it bulldozes all remnants into a final pile and you lift it, confident now, to your mouth. You would regret a drink of water or a toothbrush because they would do away with the lingering feeling of satisfaction in your mouth. There is too much said of anticipation and so little of contentment. Perhaps it is because contentment does not scream, does not lift its voice, does not advertise. Contentment merely lasts, ignominiously, for as long as it takes.

8.8

Three conversations about the numos, the Love of the universe, the God of all. Urijah and I sat facing the fading light, basking in the otherworldliness of the topic and delicate purple sunset. Three conversations, and not one of them situated in anything like the faith tradition of the others, and not one of them significantly contradictory. River leaned over the handlebars of his monstrous mountain bike, his helmet protecting his brain from bumps but not thoughts. Three conversations, zero conclusions. I stared deep in the distance at the trees on the other side of the lake as they faded away into fog and I faded away into irrelevance to my own self.

8.4

My sundial dance is prompt at two pm. I spin in the shallowing sun; the shadow marks time for me. My cadence is cyclical, my sun dance solar. I'm swift. I cease. Two pm passes apace.

8.3

If your sail flaps

fast

There's no wind in it, but there is wind.

If your sail flaps, it means you're bad at sailing.

8.2

Today, I bought an odd cap made of the wrong fabric with a brim that can be flipped up or down but doesn't do much, really, to obscure anything but direct sun and rain in either orientation. It is my most recent concession to cycling. First, darts in my pant legs, then waking up at small hours of the morning, then quietly admitting that every day is leg day and I may never do another pull-up as long as I live. Soon, though, you'll see me in an odd little cap, if I like it, and you'll say "There goes a fool who doesn't know that you're only supposed to wear those when you're on the bike." Alas, your cultural rules mean nothing to me. I just think I'll prefer a cycling cap over a ball cap on warmish days, and I want a hat. What's wrong with that?