tomorrow -

(12:06am, sun26feb)

i lit a cigarette

off the last glowing embers

of a mostly dead world

you and i had arrived together

while the flames still soared

as high as ourselves

broken glass and carbon crunching

echoed loud, the heavy footsteps

of the only two people left

we left before the wind picked up

you wanted to explore, but i knew

you'd hate the ash in your eyes

home, brushing off dust,

"where were you?" inevitably asked

a shared look - "tomorrow."

(12:14am)

punctuation

an isolated bark in the night

is a fine period for a day

slinging a thousand words about nothing

while quietly chanting "living the dream"

until i believe it

blue twilight

this blue twilight din

comes in waves

when acting as a

compliment to the

streetlights

it caresses

moving in step

across all downtowns

it is not the wind;

for the wind is fickle

this blue twilight din

contrasts rush hour lullabyes

coaxing us to

nod our heads

to rhythms or

the tune of sleep

it makes pillows of damp street corners

and palaces out of underpasses

from within its thrall

all houses seem wanting

this is the romance

in empty stomachs

this is the siren's song

of railroads, boxcars and harmonicas

this is where we all go

when the grace of god has been lifted

and gravity takes hold at the crossroads

dragging us inexorably south

for the winter

this blue twilight din

is ringing in my bones

calling me outside

to wander

f, s, and other curses

so i made some crab cakes tonight, and brought some of the mix home. when i tried it, it was terrible.

now, instead of sleeping in and going into work at a leisurely 4:30 as scheduled, i'm waking up at 7 so i can get in and fix this before the store opens.

fuuuuuuck.

dinner

so tomorrow i work from 9-7, then hop a bus down to hyde park, which i'll be seeing for the first time since 2007. maybe early 2008. i'll be meeting a girl, we'll go for a walk, then back to her house to write about the experience. after that is when we'll exchange our first words, and then i'll make her dinner. i set up a menu, she bought the ingredients, and i'll be making soy sauce and brown sugar infused salmon fillets, lime & cilantro cauliflower salad, and baked-egg-avocados for the appetizer.

here's the catch - we've never met. we haven't even exchanged pictures. i found her on craigslist via a missed connection that wasn't about me, but it was so well-worded i sent her a message saying i hoped she was a writer, and that if the winter got too lonely i'd be happy to come cook her dinner. she accepted. the bit about the silent walk followed by a quiet moment of writing was her idea.

so, this has the potential to be either insanely romantic or amazingly disastrous. hyde park can be sketchy, but we're meeting near the lake, and i plan on pulling the kill switch if she starts leading me towards questionable areas. the intersection we're meeting at is a fairly open, public sort of one. she knows what i'll be wearing.

rachel. here's to adventure.

buildup

what happens when you slowly but surely deprive a man of all the ways he unwinds and relaxes after the horrors of a day?

stay tuned.

psychedelia for modern drugs

herp.

last weekend i briefly connected with two ladies via craigslist. one of them, a girl i found i had a lot in common with who lives about ten minutes from me, wanted to hang out on monday. monday rolled around, i found myself battling anxiety attacks all day, and eventually had to call it off. i'm not sure what the source of the anxiety was; maybe just the fact that it was someone new, or maybe it was because i told her so much about myself via e-mail already. i called it off, told her we'd try again in a week or so. i dunno if i will.

the other was via a missed connection. i wasn't the missed connection, but the post was elegantly worded (she'd held hands with a stranger as they walked across town together, spoke little, left him at the bus stop and regretted it) so i fired off a short reply, hoping she was a writer, quietly offering to come cook dinner for her if the winter got too lonely. she accepted the offer and went one further - "let's meet up on a corner near my house," she said, "and go on a quiet walk around the neighborhood. let's not say a word until we get to my place, then stay quiet a while longer while we write about our experience walking around together. let me know what you'd like to cook afterwards, and i'll pick up all the ingredients."

cool, i said, and set it up for thursday. fast forward to this morning, as i'm getting showered and mentally prepped. work calls. someone got sick, they need me to come cover the shift. "but i've got a date," i said, hoping that since i had to cover for another coworker's date last week that i could get away with it. nope. mike's dreams get put on hold for other people's shit. as usual.

tuesday afternoon our house gets a buzz from a friend who needs someone to come test a batch of mushrooms he got in. he gave us a bag with a bit over an eighth in it, of which i got about a gram. it was a pleasant afternoon, aside from listening to my roommates bitch and complain about how there's no goddamn way i can feel anything off a gram of mushrooms, and how i was just taking away from their trips by asking for any at all. oh, sorry for the massive fucking inconvenience, asking for a solitary gram of drugs you were freely fucking given. regardless, i had a smile on my face all day, woke up feeling just as pleasant on wednesday. it's mostly worn off now. sad, though now i'd be interested in taking 1g doses once a month or so as a sort of antidepressant. it certainly seemed to help.

last night my computer permanently muted itself and is starting to show other strange symptoms. fuck. it keeps de-selecting the browser window every minute and a half or so, which doesn't sound irritating until you're trying to type a long entry and have to click on the box again every third sentence.

fuck. fuck.

when i was at work tonight my boss could see i wasn't in a good mood. "what's wrong," she pressed after a while. "c'mon, mike, i know you had plans tonight, but you're here now, just roll with it." bitch i do not want to talk about this with you. "i mean, you don't HAVE to talk to me... though i am your manager, so you kinda do," she said, and laughed. i didn't.

you want to know? okay. so i told her. i told her i'm tired of feeling like god's plan for me is to spend my best years single, celibate, and alone. i'm tired of every plan i get really attached to getting fucked all to hell thanks to 'circumstances'. i'm tired of this past decade of putting my goddamn plans on hold so that other people can try to realize their dreams. i'm fucking tired of being an expendable part of everyone else's plans when nobody else will get on my side when i've got shit i want to get done.

"y'know, i know it's hard when you don't have anyone, but look at me. i'm 36, i've been dating guys for years, and i've never felt really attached to any of them. i just broke up with a 22 year old; he was a sweet guy, but he wasn't ready to settle down and get serious with me." i couldn't help but snicker. "yeah yeah, i know what you're thinking, 'at least you're getting laid,' right?"

bitch, that was not what i was thinking. i was thinking that it must be nice to feel wanted, to feel desirable. it must be nice to look forward to a little solo time and not be terrified at the notion of waking up cold and alone for the two-thousandth morning in a row. and yeah, maybe i do wonder what it'd be like to have sex in a world where saddam hussein is dead and bush isn't president. (yeah, it's been that fucking long.)

i mean, maybe if i was hideous, or a raging asshole, or homeless or something, i could understand. but i'm pretty sure i'm not any of those things. she kinda sighed, irritated that i wasn't falling into the trap of talking about her problems when i'm trying to focus on me for once. "well, maybe you just need a change in your life. maybe you need to get out more."

uhhhhhhhhhhhhh no thank you. fuck bars, fuck clubs even harder. those are not my kind of people. unfortunately, my kind of people don't really get out and mingle in large numbers. and as for changing my own life, i wish this was the first time i'd heard that this year. if i knew how to just go out and be different, i'd fucking do it. what, you think i'm miserable like this on purpose? yeah, sure, maybe some tiny percentage of me is still pining away for elyse (six years later), but that voice is so quiet and distant now that i manage to ignore it on all but the worst of nights. i don't let it make decisions for me anymore, not since the long winter when i almost starved myself to death out of pure despair.

sigh. fuck.

finally, here's a piece from a week ago. all apologies: even though she's gone i can't help but occasionally use some of her words.

(12:28am, mon23jan)

led about

til the end

sets its sights,

draws me in -

play me out

i am my fire at nostalgia

(12:32am)