My feet are bare. Cragged rock the deep brown of rich dirt presses into them and runs its surface out in each direction before dropping off. Dark spots the size of dimes begin appearing on the rock. Water sprinkles down on my shoulders. The ocean rises and falls in waves at the rock's edge, at my sight's edge. The rain comes thicker, until it poures in sheets, running down me in streams. As if on cue an ocean wave crashes heavy, napkin-colored foam leapt up above the rock's surface. Wind sends the rain down at an angle, at me. At the world. I sat up, eyes now open. The air was dark with night, unfettered, unrealizing that only moments ago it had been angry with rain. In my head, my dream.

----------

Bright lit up my phone screen, bringing it to life. Electricity = life. I think of Doctor Frankenstein sending a storm's electricity from the sky to his creation, giving life. Consciousness. A lit Verizon screen. The text message is from Amber, a friend from high school. It said: Nick is in the hospital and he is bleeding internally. Please pray for him.

I don't know him. I respond. I have not spoken to Amber in a long time. I am awed that she would send out a message asking people to pray for her friend. I am glad Nick has her for a friend. Alone, I ask the room for hope. The empty air. For him. For his mom who hasn't left his hospital room in days.

---------

I used to believe that dreams meant something. That they were your psyche's way of helping you with life. Like a tutor who's on the inside. Connected. Knowing what's happening to you, even when you don't, because there are things that you can't understand, things that you can't know, cause you can't handle them. Things pulled back and hidden, repressed in the dark for your protection. And your dreams were your window. Your minds way of fabricating a safe way for you to view them. Diluted hints played for you on the other side of the window glass while you sit back with a helmet on. Safety. Only the truths become encoded for safety's sake. For your sake. And sometimes... oftentimes, they fail to catch translation and float past and on beyond reach, to be recycled at a later date if still needed. But then there are times, the meaning connects, the problem gets confronted and the complex way your brain has of helping you with your trials pays off. Bright sparks, success, and the dark is gone. Replaced with day, it clicks and you can go off to right the problems.

Then I stopped believing that. My dreams were just big rooms, colored in stripes and staircases. Passageways and canyons. I didn't want meaning to get involved if it was going to come to me in Farsi when I only spoke English.

I find myself struggling. I look at all the people around me. My circle of friends. Intelligent people going through their college programs. I recognize that with each of these people, there was a point when I was close to them, but each is now doing their own thing and getting ready to go their own way, and I am happy for them. But I am selfishly sad. I can see where people I care about are getting ready to leave and I know that we will go our separate ways. I've spent much moonlight on the highways unable to escape these thoughts, so thinking there had to be another way, I tried something else. I tried to get lost physically. Locationally. Street lights blurred past. Speakers turned up until my ears hurt. Miles added up behind me as I got on and off unfamiliar freeways, taking exits that have 'Canyon' in their title. Hoping for long, curving, paths. New ones that wouldn't hold any attachments or associations.

I felt like Gulliver. Moving far away and always back at the same. Needing someone I could communicate with, someone who has felt this, who'll understand. But most people I know are either drifting from me or pushing. So I drove with the knot in my throat that I couldn't seem to loosen no matter how much I talked or shouted or whispered because there was no one there to hear, just the silence. The un-converse-able silence. My Lilliputian, my Yahoo.

---------

I send Amber a text:
me: How is Nick?
Amber: Bad. He's bleeding from the upper part of his body but they can't find where.

I feel ridiculous, my problems disintegrating in the unasked-for comparing line-up in my mind. I feel several ladder rungs below ridiculous.

I light a candle for Nick. Turning off my ceiling fan, it became the only light in my room. A forgotten glow filled my room. Warm and more personal than any ceiling fan light bulb I've had has ever been. In bed I laid on my back, my thoughts wavering with the shadows on my wall.

--------

I am looking at an opening of dark. I look to my side. My aunt is there. She smiles at me kindly. Ahead of me the dark expands and stretches, pulling back. It forms an opening and walls that border an inside before disappearing into nothing. Into a cave. My aunt raises her hand to wave as if she's fifty feet away. She's saying goodbye and I'm moving. Walking into the cave, my steps the only sound as my sight is overwhelmed and drowned in the black.

---------

At work Josh is talking about a dog attack. He was recently attacked by a pit bull that bit him on his side, he lifts up his work polo. Deep purple bruises meet wide eyes. He narrates along to our wonder. He had been outside when a pit bull had rounded the corner. He lifted his three-year old daughter, putting himself between her and the dog as it charged them.

I felt like my brain was trying to form thoughts but I was being paused VCR-fashion, the fuzzy snowbars moving across the screen as I jerked forward and backward in place. I resigned my mental disarray for the moment. When everyone had drifted away I asked Josh how old he was. Nineteen. He had become a father at sixteen.

---------

text-messagesome-me: Hey, how's Nick doing?
Amber: Much much better. They found the bleed and fixed it.

--------

Another eve, I steered onto another highway. Jeremy Enigk sang, "Hello, to the world. You decided what you are." I looked at my phone. I needed to do something about this. About me. I sent a text message to an old friend who... is not usually there for me. I wasn't ready to open up to them, but I figured I could listen to them talk. They'd be awake. Fill my head with other thoughts. Their thoughts. It would give me a break.

I phoned.
me: Hey, wanna go for a drive or grab some Denny's?
them: Nah. I don't really want to go out, to-night.
me: Oh, okay. Maybe another time then.
them: Yeah. What's goin' on?
me: Just... 'Been feeling a little down lately.
them: Oh well I have a little while before I leave, talk to me.
me: Before you leave?
them: Yeah, I'm going out to a club with a friend.
me: Oh. Cool. Well have fun, yeah?
them: I will. I can listen while I get ready though. What's up?
me: Actually. I'm just gonna do the alone thing to-night. I'm just in one of those alone moods, ya know?
them: Yep.
me: Alright, well, have a good time.
them: Later.

I pressed the end button, defeated. I needed to talk. Needed someone, but I had turned a someone away. A name I hadn't thought of in a little while came to me. Someone who has always been there in case I might need an ear, but that I rarely take them up on. I sent a text.

Twenty-five minutes later they were in my car, even though they had work the next day. I drove everywhere that was nowhere specific. And they listened. And they listened.

And I've never felt so grateful.

--------

It's been a while. I don't know what triggered it, or if it started on its own. I don't seem to remember when I began believing in signs and dreams again. Even with the very logical explanation I give people that renders them a write-off through realism.

I woke under my blankets. My phone clock said 2:thirty-seven. I had dreamt. I was sitting in my room with an old friend, talking and reading. It was different though. My room. The furniture was in different places. When I woke, I knew what I was suppose to do.

Going to the back patio, I let Max-Dog in. Excited eyes. A wagging tail. He jumped up, and set his paws on me in the dark. I scratched underneath his collar and hugged him. My company and, sometimes, sanity. In my room he settled down on the futon. Watchful eyes followed me as I moved furniture and vacuumed the newly-exposed tan.

When I was done, it was just as it had been in my dream. I played with Max-Dog in the new open ring of carpet, and everything felt... good. Right.

I've started and stopped writing more than once.

Some of the writings I will put in here later.

I've been sad lately, cause life's hard sometimes. In different ways. And there's so much going on with so many of the people around us all the time and that makes it hard to see everything.

I've been worrying about some of the people around me. Some of the things I see them going through, I hate. I feel like I hate these things for them, but hate is horrible. And people shouldn't hate, but people also shouldn't feel pain and in a catch-22 sort of way, that's what started the hate.

I want the people I care about to be happy and feel only good but that's not realistic.

My friend Ryan wants to live in Perfect, where only good exists. I understand why we need the things that are harder to deal with in life, I understand the necessary balance, but I still wish people didn't have to feel pain or sadness.


One night in Utah, a long while after everyone had turned out the lights and gone to bed and blanket, I pulled the fuzzy blanket around me and stepped into my snow shoes. Outside, I stood in the square wood-railed patio beneath the second floor balcony. The snow rolled over the white surface, like a kind of mist. The wind brought to life the branches of nearby trees, waving, snow clinging to them. The lights of Park City glowed a man-made yellow on the other side of the snow-covered field. The wind was heavy, audibly, but it was a kind of quiet composed of an absence of any sound made by people. I closed my eyes and thought I wasn't in a cabin in Utah. I wasn't a person, a man. I wasn't Tyler Costello the student, enwrapped and unable to control his feelings. I wasn't anything. I didn't belong anywhere or to anything or anyone. I was just a part of the environment. A part of the world that exists, more tangible than pain. And there, there peace existed.

I wanted to be selfish. I wanted to be a part of that peace. To stay a part of that peace and keep it somehow. Reach out and take it with me when I would leave and return to life. To use it when the air got too thick from all the sadness, and all the unhappy people so involved in life that that they don't realize that the people around them are sad too and that they could help eachother and get better. Cause people think they need sadness, but they don't, and I think they might be able to see that if they just had some peace.


Outside, I looked up from the sidewalk in front of my house. I laid very still. My head felt empty, and heavy. Above me the streetlight shone bright, yellow. Doing what it was made to do, and doing it well. I wondered what I was made to do and if I'd do it well someday. Someday. I traced the path of the streetlight pole with my eyes before letting the bright back into the center of my view, yellow streaking out in different directions as I opened and closed my eyes, my head on the concrete. Then, the light went out. And the stars flooded into the night sky. And it was beautiful. I reached up and rotated my hand, my fingers went over a star, one finger at a time. And I felt that if I could move that star in and out of my fingers, I could be good. Somehow. Oneday. And I felt peace again. I closed my hand into a fist before the star and opened my hand to release nothing. To release the star. To release the quiet, and I brought my hand back down, onto the grass at my side. The star was there, with them all. And then the light flickered back on, steadying itself into a blinding, a steady constant. A car drove past on a street nearby. Life would always be there, and it would be cold and noisy and harshly realistic, but then it was okay. Cause so would always exist the stars and the quiet. The peace just past the cold and noise and harsh reality and that made it bearable. More than, that made it worth it in a way that I was more thankful for than for anything I'd ever known.

Midnight:30. I stood up on the pavement and asked a leaving Blockbuster employee if there was a Denny's nearby. She hesitated, eyeing me, then pointed, "there's one about a mile and a half up Lankershim here." My gaze followed her finger north. She made quick her steps carward. Her car door slammed in sync with my verbalized thanks. Red brake lights, reverse, and she was pulling through gutterwater and onto the street. The dark water rippled below my over-curb-held toes. I brought my hood up over my head and began my walk up Lankershim.

------------------

- "Come."
- "I have only the work clothes bearing the lovely Langham label on my back... and.. all over me." (more to myself) "'Only the clothes on my back'... that's an odd phrase."
Francesca: (pressing) No one will care.
I nodded my okay, "sounds like fun."

After work, I followed Francesca to her house. Pulling off my polo, I extracted a black hoody from my trunk. Within twenty minutes we were plus one and heading toward North Hollywood. In the back, Tom Petty's timbre rythmically vibrated my seat. His voice and the voices of the instruments mixed with the air. The voices of the only other two in the car ebbed away as an invisible guitar joined the unseeable drums.

-------------------

I passed the apartment and then the alley I had only an hour or so ago occupied. I pulled my hands out of the hoodie frontpocket and flipped through text messages. "I'm in Urgent Care." I selected the sender's number and pressed the send button. A weathered traffic light flashed a yellow and then russet red. I crossed. The ringing ended with a hello. A tired voice spoke. I stopped, leaning against a chainlink fence. It was a stomach virus. My fingers closed around the wirelinking, "How are you feeling?" My head pressed against the gate. The night was warm. A man across the street slept on the sidewalk in front of a bus bench. I wondered if he would remember his dream when he woke.

-----------------

"There," I connected my pointer finger to the backwindow. Their heads turned in the driver and passenger seats: a lonely line of curb. Out of the parked car we walked. I spoke lightly to Francesca. "Yeah, of course," she answered before turning to me abruptly. Her eyes narrowed, "You have yours. ..Right?" I shook my head.

In line in front of Skinny's Lounge, the guy at the door let them in but stopped me. His hand held out like in a movie. I wasn't used to needing to bring my license with me when I went out. I knew the hoodie didn't help me. Francesca looked back as she was about to step over the bar's threshold. I motioned for her to go in. She didn't move. "Go, it's your friend's birthday." She looked back as the door closed behind her.

I leaned against a tree. The guy at the door watched me. I resolved to cross the street and head south. Movement would be good. Foreward momentum. I was relieved that they went in, but a part of me felt bad. I knew they felt bad that I couldn't get in. I didn't want to cause that. My eyes left from their reel of sidewalk to take in paintings. They lined a brick wall in an alley. A light illuminated the area. Canvasses of red and black. Curves formed silhouettes. People larger than trees. Jagged lines made up cliffs. I suppressed the urge to reach out and trace the cliffline from the bottom up with my fingertips.

"Hey!" I turned around to an outreached arm. I shook his hand. He introduced himself and paused for my name. "Tyler." "Davis?" I paused before nodding. Why not? I'd been called stranger names. I briefly contemplated the idea that I might have a frequency in my voice that scrambled my name. He gestured toward an open apartment door, "we've got a lot of other paintings, you should come in and check it out." A slanted square of white light reached over the ground from the apartment door. I followed into the apartment.

---------------------

I had arrived. The bright Denny's yellow glowed at the night. I laid on the outside bench, the phone still to my ear. We were living in the realm of conversational wonderings. We talked on to eachother as well as to ourselves. Personal experiences about not having things in common with people we saw in a light you should only see people in when you do have things in common with them. A boy laid asleep on the plastic-upholstered waiting-to-be-seated bench on the other side of the glass window. His hat rested in the crook of his arms.

A chagrined text from Francesca expressed worry over my whereabouts. I was glad to see that with a little reassurance she was able to re-submerge back into her environment with ease. I watched the tree branches overhead lift lightly in the night air.

---------------------

Inside the apartment the only furniture was a chair across from the door. A minigallery lay before me. The walls were wallpapered from ceilingtop to carpet with paintings and photographs. Some were drained of color. One, a figure-shape punched atop grass. Sun streaked passed a swingset. A statue made of wire looked up from the floor. It's height equal to that of my in-dickies-hidden ankle. I wanted to use my phone to take pictures of the pictures. Electronic still frames of the developed still frames. In my pocket I let go of my phone. It would be disrespectful. I knelt down to look at the pieces that seemed to be standing at carpet-level, each different. I wondered how each photographer and painter's personality was reflected in their work. Something in their brush strokes or camera angles that lived in them unconsciously and affected their movements. Single, unique decisions for this color or that shape because it, to them, felt right.

Shaking the guy's hand, I thanked him and wished him luck. I stood in the alley with his business card. One foot in front of the other, I continued south, crossed the street, and sat on a curb outside a blockbuster video.

-------------------

Off the phone, I sat down in a booth in the brightly lit Denny's. They were out of cocoa but not bagels. The menu laid diagonally in front of me, "NEW Cherry Cherry Limeade!" I folded the straw wrapper over itself again and again and again, setting an accordioned papersnake on the tabletop. I responded to my friend's texts until the sleep that had eluded them since urgent care seemed to take effect, leaving my phone dark and quite. I flipped over the placemat and penned the beginning lines of a poem across it's unobstructed white. Words I knew would never meet the eyes of anyone I knew, flowed easily.

"Ty!" Francesca's friend sat down on the plastic cushion next to me, Francesca across. All smiles. I paid, thanked the waiter with a tip and asked if they had walked. "No way. You know how far this place is? We drove." I didn't look at the time until they told me the bar closed at 2. The in-car clock glowed green: 2:27 AM.

Tom Petty sang to us as if we'd never left. On the freeway, someone threw a cigarette out the window of a passing car. Falling sparks flared white and then orange at the sudden rush of oxygen, disappearing just as quickly as they'd appeared. A guitar played euphorically through the speakers, "you belong in a boat out at sea." Laughter filled the front of the car. They had had a good time. They were having a good time. I smiled to myself. I was glad. "You belong somewhere you feel free."

me: hi. I'm here to see my friend.
the nurse on the other side of the counter blinked at me.
nurse: what's his name?
me: George.
nurse: His last name?

The thing was though, George and I weren't really friends. He seemed like a nice guy all of the perhaps three times that I actually talked to him, but we didn't work the same hours, so the times I saw him were few, if not rarer than few.

me: I don't know.
The nurse eyed me doubtfully.

-------------

I was at work when they were making the posters. "George's Farewell Party!!" He was going away to Iraq and a bunch of the gang from work were getting together at a local Pasadena bar at 10.


At 10:02 I sat in a small hamburger diner. A basket of fries and root-beer atop my table. Yohannes trailed in and disappeared down some stairs. Taking one last fry, I followed, descending into a room that stretched far on either side. My eyes broke the railing. Pool tables arrived in view first. I turned a corner into another room. A bar stretched the back wall. People. It was the first time I'd seen many of these guys out of uniform. In my mind they flared into existence a spark at a time; a natural part of the outside world. Smiles and laughter. Music played to the accompaniment of nodding heads and swaying bodies. The walls held tvs featuring the Olympics.

The moments blurred together, grouping for pictures, half dancing half cheering to karaoke-ing. Glasses raised, clinking in audible merriment before dropping to mouths. People were lining up to buy George guest-of-honor drinks. Cameras flashed.

I sat down next to George. He was past clear.
George: You're a cool guy, Ty...
His over-friendliness made me laugh.
George: I should get your email. Or... here's what's mine.
I saved it to my phone.

Brian walked over, "I bought this for you."
He handed George a jagar bomb, "think you can handle this bad boy?"
George, held the glass with his left hand, the shot glass with his right.
Brian: Ready?...

Brian pushed his glass's bottom into the air. George dropped the shot glass in the cup and downed it, finishing well before Bri. He turned to the table, and slammed it down. The glass broke in his hand. His hand was in front of his face before it began bleeding. Confusion rested in his features.

Brian: Uhm, maybe you should go to the bathroom, dude.
George had frozen, transfixed on his hand. I put my arm around him, pulling him up and to the bathroom. Tod jumped in, "I'll take him." Back at the table I watched feet on the dancefloor step and accidentally slide, their coordination gone with their sobriety. A few more people rushed to the bathroom before I shadowed. Tod was cheering on a grinning George who was using his hand to push water over the sink's lip to splash on the floor. The water fell around the blood. There was a good amount on the floor.

We emerged with him, his hand wrapped in a sock 'em bop 'em of paper towels. At the barside someone brought out a first aid. Shortly after George left with a friend. We sojourned to Barney's; another bar a few blocks down.

Francesca's ID was expired. The manager appeared at the door to verify their powerlessness to the no-valid-ID-no-admittance rule. I offered to stay outside with her when all our friend shuffled out, an unintentional line. We walked into the alley next to the bar. Drew collapsed next to Barbi. I sat down on his other side. It wasn't until people had noticed Drew was missing and had began looking for him that a bar employee had found him passed out on the men's bathroom floor in his own vomit.

He sat unresponsive, his face pressed into Barbie. Some of Drew's high school friend's showed up. Pulling him up to our swelling nay's. They got him about halfway down the ally before he collapsed and threw up. I followed a flustered Barbi.

I took her to the hospital to see George. I watched from the doorway within the Emergency portion of the hospital. He had severed an artery in his finger. Barbie held him as they stitched up his pinky. They wheeled him out to the hallway where we sat talking before a nurse approached telling us only one of us could be here if anyone ah'tall.

We said goodnight to George, and I drove a tired Barbie home. There's something about goodbyes that I just don't like. They're almost too official and final and in that sense, sad. I handed him a careful "later" instead. When I got to the freeway after dropping her at her yardfront, I kept driving. With a book in hand I reapproached the hospital emergency doors.

----------------------

The nurse eyed me doubtfully.
me: He came in for stitches for his hand.
silence
me: He had a digital arterial laceration.
nurse: Oh...
(her eyes registered a familiarity as her fingers clacked away at the keyboard)

Her hand stretched out. I placed the guest sticker on my shirt and was buzzed through.

George was asleep in the bed in the hallway, unmoved. An IV tube ran down from it's hanger to his arm. I carried a chair over to the bit of blank wall at the head of his bed. I pulled my feet up and turned sideways latching them under the chairs arm. For a few minutes I fell out of consciousness.

I pulled my head away from the wall as a nurse walked by. I watched them change out George's IV. They weren't going to let him leave the hospital until he was completely sober. The nurse tapped the IV until it was dripping again. He woke seeming less groggsome than I'm sure he felt. We talked. He had just found out that night that he had been given furtherance, "There goes my promotion."
me: Would there have been a big difference?
George: Oh yeah. I would have had people working under me. I would have been in charge of them.
me: Alright, whose to say they'll know how your hand was hurt?
he looked at me, laughter swallowing him for a moment.
George: Oh, they'll know.
he shook his head, smiling
George: What a night. I didn't even want to drink.
his smile still holding
George: It was fun though. Crazy, but fun.


When they released George, he signed papers, was given specific check-back instructions, and was left to his feet. We walked into the brightening outside. His phone was near-dead. I dropped him off at his house just past 9am, wishing him an amazing day. He wasn't sure what he was going to tell his parents. I told him not to hesitate to phone if he needed anything. The cardoor closed. I waited for him to wave from his front yard front before setting off.

On the freeway I pulled in the sight of all the morning cars. I thought about how this gave me a chance to see Pasadena's morning freeway drive. The sun climbed higher.

At home I ate some oatmeal before promising a curious mom I'd explain the hospital guest sticker I'd forgotten to peel off, just as soon as I'd gotten some sleep.

-------------------------

When I woke, I laid still under the familiar ceiling. It slowly came back. George. Hand. Hospital. Chair. Hallway. Sleep.

The house was empty. Dad had taken Dylan back to the hospital. He was having chest pains. In the evening I drove to the hospital. He was back in a hospital bed for the night. They were waiting for a specialist to come in to give him a test. I didn't want him to be there. Not again. I wanted to wheel his bed out the hospital doors and home. As comical as a site a guy pushing another in a hospital bed down the street might have been.

Sleep came in broken fragments that night. I sat on the carpet atop the stair landing. I could hear my parents breath coming and going. Dylan's door was open, his room empty again. It would be good to have him home.

I pulled open the front door for my friend, "Hey!" I threw my keys into surprised hands as I quickly walked to the kitchen, "Dylan's got a blood clot. He's in the hospital." Still at the door, "which hospital? Let's go." I walked back up, a backpack on me.

We sat with my cousin and aunt in the Emergency room. I sat on a table between the seats containing my friend and my cousin. They waited while I went in the back to gave my mom the backpack. Dylan was awake and okay. He had just been given a shot.

---

I was lost. They transferred him to another hospital and I was lost in my drive to get there. After several calls, I found a spot on a residential street across the way. His room was small but when I arrived, I opened the door to a room of at least 9 people. Family. I put a box on his tray, "something I bought for you in San Simeon." The puzzle was made of wood and rings. A 'get the attached ring onto the other side' kind of puzzle. He pulled it out, eager in his curiosity, fidgeting with it for awhile before it got passed around, different hands trying it out, tugging the roped-through ring this way and that. It became a challenge each wanted to try. A hit. I was happy.

---

Equipped with 3 printed pages of google maps, I drove to the hospital to spend time with my family before I left. We talked. Dad was there, tired from his night of work. We hung out. I tagged along with mom as she went down to the cafeteria for breakfast. We talked as she ate. Dark rings under her eyes, her hospital-sleep-over souvenir. Walking back up, I distributed "Laters!" and hugs to everyone, hitting up Dylan last before I left his room, "Feel better." His release was close. He would be on blood thinners for the next six months, but he would be home.

I left for Tony's. In Westminster, Tony, Juliana, Priscilla, Tiffany, and I loaded food and clothes into my trunk before we drove out of the grocery store parking lot. San Diego lay ahead. Pictures and pretzels. In the car we played a guessing game. Priscilla asked us questions and then psychoanalyzed us based on our answers. Our favourite food, animal, tree, our reactions to waking up alone in a white room. Laughter.

Once there Priscilla and Tiffany checked into the hotel. With Thursday tickets, Tony, Juliana, and I went to the ComiCon. Lanyards with badges at their end hung from around our necks. Bags of papers, ads, and programs were handed out. People flooded in. All shapes and sizes of costumes and lack of. The three of us grinned at eachother. Excitement filled the hall, as people ran past and yelled to eachother, waving. It was contagious.

Having driven down the same day, we didn't get to spend much time in before they closed it for the day. It was enough though. Enough to soak up some of the natural high that was rushing around us in the forms of impassioned people excitedly chatting and taking pictures. It was wonderful.

That night we went to a concert put on by the San Diego Symphony called Video Games Live. I wasn't sure what to expect. A golf cart ride swept us from the car to the concert where we sat at reserved white tables. On a screen they played snippets of video game clips as an on-stage orchestra played the music from them. The sky grew dark around and inbetween us. People began to shiver, uninterested in moving and missing the show.

Coats appeared around shoulders. It amazed me so many people had them that I didn't initially notice. A guy was brought out onstage. "You might remember him from that youtube video as the guy who could play the nintendo song on the piano blindfolded. To prove,"--the announcer's voice paused in all the right places to keep us all leaning forward in anticipation--"the video wasn't a fake, or sped up, (pause) we've brought him here, to play (pause) for you."

He sat at the bench, his hands held momentarily above the keys. He was projected onto two large screens on either side of the stage and one in the center above the orchestra. All eyes were on him as his hands plunged down, jumping from one side of the piano to the other and then running their way back across. At the song's end, he pulled off the blindfold and leapt into a mario-got-a-star, fast-paced version, his hands flowing fervently over the keys to the audible delight of the audience.


This is his performance from Indiana, but tis the same. If you do watch, the awe-someness level goes up as you get more into the vid, especially toward it's end. Also I love that when everyone cheers, you can hear a child laughing gleefully around 3:17.

---

A man who had won a Guitar Hero contest was shown onto the stage. They announced if he could earn 200,000 points playing Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" on Hard, he would walk away with a brand new laptop. The man's voice interrupted, crackling over the flow of the announcer's speech in the loudspeaker, "expert." "Expert?" "Yeah, I'll play it on expert." "You hear that??! He'll play it on Expert!"

Cheers raised. No one louder than the man's friend who sat a few tables away from us. The song began, the game shown on the two large stage-side screens. The plastic guitar, hung in front of the man as his fingers went to work. The crowd nodded and sung along as we went down the track of colored rings on the screen with him. He didn't miss a single note until he had the 200,000 points. His friend yelled, ablaze with excitement for him. I couldn't help but watch, hoping his friend could hear him, hoping that if that'd been me onstage and my friend were yelling and shouting for me like he could not contain how proud he was of me, I'd hear him.

As the symphony began wrapping up their last song, a bang in the sky to our left pulled our gazes up. Another explosion. Green sparks expanded in a circle in the nightsky. One after another after another the fireworks went off over the harbor, only accompanied by our "ooo"-ing, "aaahh"-ing, and cheering. Silhouettes of boats sailed under, the music rising to consume all noise, swelling to a peek before truncating. Applause joined by shouts of praise flooded the area thickly. The five of us stood turning to eachother, satisfied. Satisfied with the show and satisfied with the verification of eachother's satisfaction with the show, our unshakeable grins, our proof.


Settled into the hotel room, Tony gave me a sleeping bag which I unfurled on the floor in a quick motion, throwing my blanket and pillow atop. Priscilla, Tiff, and I made a quick night-trip to a Wendy's a block down. In the elevator back in the hotel we joked about elevator-break-downs and about how our journey to Wendy's had been made safe by Priscilla's intimidating, knee-high, black, don't-mess-with-me-cause-i-will-take-you-down boots. Back in the room, we ate. For the first time in years, I ate a Wendy's frosty. It was a gooood night. We read our programs and discussed the next day's events. We watched wild umbrellas attack beach-walking pedestrians on Tiffany's PSP(?). We finally knocked out after listening to one more play of "Yeah, Toast!" and laughing at the possibility of sleep-talking.

"Give me your keys."

I unclipped my car keys and placed them in the outstretched hand before me.

"Are you gonna be okay like that?"

I nodded, "uh-huh."


----------------------------------

"We want to kidnap you tomorrow."


me: "I've student duty tomorrow. Gotta do the school thing."

-----------------------------------

I went to class.
Uploaded my PSA onto myTube.
Signed for check stubs at work.
Got a text: "You should come."

I texted back at a red light: "I'm gonna need directions."
"Really??"
"(grins) Really."


We slid down the bank. They in their bathing suits.

The water was warm. I walked into the wake in my jeans.

They called back, "Are you gonna be okay like that?"

I nodded, "uh-huh."
"We'll buy you some new ones."
"Nah, don't worry about it, yo. Tis rad."

My jeans moved with the water. I watched the waves. There was so much sky.
So much blue.


I followed them to Outback Steakhouse. Sand coated my pants up to the knees.
Water dripped onto the floor. We laughed.

Food, dessert, talk. Electricity made the light level inside immovable. It felt strange to think of how it felt no time had passed but that it would catch up as soon as we opened their doors to the dark.


I drove home from the beach exhausted and wet.
And happy.

He's back.



At work my manager looked at me, concern in his voice: Do you want to leave early?

My uncle called. SEND. "Hey Tyler!" "Hey." "I just wanted to call and make sure you're okay."

I left work when my shift ended. At home I tossed some shirts and my toothbrush into a bag. Back behind the wheel, headlights showing me the road.

On the 210 I headed East. Just east. I drove until I left behind recognition and familiar sites.

I found a Toyota coasting behind a semi. I followed. It changed lanes. I kept behind it. Another lane change. Another. My blinker blurred bright the air. It disappeared behind a bend. I floored my gas pedal. I'd never done that. I wouldn't lose that car. Determination weighed down my mind. My foot.

Off the 40 freeway, the car exited and pulled into a gas station, alongside a pump. I pulled off to the side and parked. The driver opened the door and got out. A silhouette faced my car and walked my way.



My uncle: "So you heard?"



Back on the freeway I crossed into Arizona. 3:00am. There was no more stopping. Not until I got there.
Lake Havasu. I pulled into the Emergency Room at the hospital's back.



After work, around the corner from home my phone rang: "Mum."
me- hey.
mum- We're leaving.
me- I'm coming.



The bag of socks and shirts rode shotgun along with a plastic family-size bag of Frosted Shredded Wheats.

My mom drove. Her Toyota shifted in and out of cars like that of a worried mother whose only intent was getting to her broken son.

On the second floor, Dylan slept in a hospital gown, a weight tethered to his leg to keep the broken bones in his leg from rubbing.



Dylan had been getting ready to wake board. The boat revved into motion, the board under Dylan went under the water, then whipped to his right breaking the femur bone in his right leg.


I stayed in Lake Havasu and missed a day of school. He went into surgery. His bed wheeled past the waiting room.


I started and finished the book, "About A Boy." Something to fill my head with. I drank in the characters as much as I could. By the book's end, I didn't want to say goodbye to them. Connection.

My cousins and aunt and uncle waited in the waiting room with us.
Aunt Cheryl- Everyone has something to do. I can't think of anything but the surgery.
Uncle George- Here, you want to use the laptop? Check out these YouTube videos?
J.P. (their son)- No, she'll probably just look up porn.
Aunt Cheryl- Yeah, I'll probably just look up porn.

We laughed.


When my parents came back from seeing him into the surgery room my mom's voice cracked as she talked. Oncoming tears.
me- We were just talking about Aunt Cheryl's porn addiction.

The near-crying disappeared for that moment. She laughed. A smile.



His surgery was a success. Happiness in a hospital waiting room.



After sleeping out there for two nights, I readied my trek home. They moved him to a different hospital room. My cousins and I had pizza and talk with him. The delivery man brought the pizzas right to his room, but only after they inquired whether he was allowed to eat pizza.


My cousins left the hospital for their Havasu house. I said sweet night and at 11:30pm left Lake Havasu. Four and a half hours to home, to my own room and my own bed.

And to sleep.

I am no longer connected via airwave. I knew it was fading, so I took my phone charger into work with me yesterday in failed hopes of reviving what turned into the unreviveable. Perhaps ih'tis not such a bad thing.

I'm leaving for a road trip in a week. Just myself. Tis something I've been wanting to do for awhile. They say that in this era in life we don't know ourselves, not really, because we don't spend real time with just ourselves anymore, and the time we do spend alone is spent in the company of distractions. The tv, the computer, the xbox, the cloud collage on your ceiling.... (shifts eyes).... They say so many people are unhappy but don't know why. Maybe this is it.

I feel like I have been a part of my cellphone for so long, attached at the mind, the hand. As of yesternoon, the trouble I'd been having with my phone peeked at blank screen as it committed phone-icide.

For the first time in a long time, I shall not be text-reachable-tyler.


-Ty C.

"Do you want to see it?"
"I'm not sure. Once I do, I can never unlook?"
Sarah- "I think I know what you mean."
me- "It's like the ocean-in-seashells. You know how when you hold a seashell up to your ear, you hear the ocean?"
Sarah- "Yeah. What is that?"
me- "You don't know?" Her head shakes, her hand still holding the napkin she'd drawn on for me.

I didn't tell her. She could just as easily look it up, but I didn't want to be the one to ruin that childhood-magic for her. The thought of a kid holding a seashell to her ear and mouthing a wow. If I didn't already know, I would almost rather live that unknown and believe the shell contained all the beauty and heart of an ocean. Water and foam, blue and white, vastly larger than that little seashell could ever be but still somehow hermetically held inside.

Sarah- "Do you want to see him?" She held up the napkin. She had pulled it out of my glovebox while we had grazed over the topic of the man in the moon. I had never seen him. "Really?" she reacted. "Really really." She drew it out for me, pen tip to white crinkled napkin.

me- "Do you ever not see him though?" She shook her head no. "Once you see it you always see it?" She nodded yes.

Sometimes when you look at something a different way, there is no going back, no matter how much you try to imagine or unimagine it. Craters and dark spots turned into eyes and a mouth. At my request, she placed it in my glovebox so if I decided I did want to see it, I could look.

When my car was totaled last month, the napkin didn't make it among the things retrieved for my keeping. I sat in the driveway that night, in the spot my car used to get parked, staring up at the moon. The concrete was cold under palmflats. The night's dark made the moon's bright brighter. It glowed, faceless and neutral. And it was good. I was glad then that I hadn't looked. The only thing in life that remains the constant, is change, and that's comfortsome. But somehow, at the same, the ever-the-same moon as an unchanging constant of it's own, is as well, a comfort.

It's so odd when you see a change in someone. I noticed this recently and it set my mind at a spin. Made me wonder how often people change and I just don't notice. Or if what I'm seeing is not necessarily just a change in someone else, but a change in myself that I happened to now notice this change in another. A kind of conscious reflection.

Last night I went back to work. Picking up the phone, hanging keys, organizing tickets. I was worried there'd be a still-awkward. Something I have found though is people tend to go off other people. I love going into work because at the sight of my friends there I get really excited and a great big "Heeey" or "Duuuude!" followed by fist bumps ensue. And that excitement is returned. It feels good, ya know? For someone to get excited at the sight of you. So I want to give that to people.

Things flowed as if I'd never been gone, and I loved it. Work was my work. And their work. And at eleven thirty last night while I was into overtime, I didn't want to leave. I drove off realizing I'm really looking forward to next weekend when I get to return and do it all over again.

On the drive home, I played Death Cab's "Plans" at a raised volume. I thought about how much people look at the past versus how much people look at the future. How people think, "what was I trying to prove?" to certain reaction of their own in the past, but how they grow from it. I thought about how people talk about themselves and how they talk about others. I noticed a change in myself but realized I didn't want to tell anyone. Not because I'm ashamed of it, but because if people are going to notice, I'd rather they notice on their own than I making myself any kind of forced narrator on their points of view. I want to notice more about people. Because it feels good when people notice things about you. And people should feel good.

There are no bad days, just challenging ones. The past week has felt to have some exceptionally challenging days. I won't lose myself in writing a paper's-worth on the heavy, but I will say I miss my moon roof.

Sometimes something happens and you realize how lucky you are to have the people around you that you do. They're just there for you in a way you've forgotten and it's been shuffled in the 'taken for granted' because it becomes so prosaic. But really, the fact that they're there for you all the time is what's so fantastic. I think that is why things happen. Whether by a great fate or not is beyond me, but to ignite a re-evaluation of one's values, I am sure of.

Something I've just learned: while looking at Toyotas to-day, I came to find out there is a difference between sunroofs and moon-roofs. Sunroofs have metal atop them, so you can only look out them when it is open completely. Moon-roofs have glass so you can look through when ih'tis closed.

I realized something. Something that might sound incredibly obvious, but I had not lent much thought to the idea previously. People are never the same. Times change and so do we. So really when a person says "time has passed me by," do they mean they wish they could go back to a previous time when they were someone else because they do not care for the person they have become? Or is it simply that they wish they were the person they are now but in a time in the past when things were different?

Thoughts seem to run without pattern. Ideas like how shadows didn't exist at night centuries ago. Or how all life used to be single-celled organisms and microscopic, but now we have species like blue whales that can grow to be over a hundred feet long and yet all one has to do in this now-giant (comparatively-speaking) world is look up and they can be returned to feeble.

I recently heard a man say that at his age of forty-something he was old and that he would think no new thoughts in his life. I found that so indelibly disheartening. I am happy to think he will surprise himself.

Once this quarter has come to its close, I am going to start some Charles Dickens. In addition to hitting up Mediaeval Times, of course. And oh, it shall be eat-with-your-hands-see-knights-and-a-joust-tastic.

To-morrow I'll be schoolful. There's comfort in that.

T'has been awhile since I've written. I've so much to write about, a bullet list simply wouldn't suffice but rather present as boresome, so I'm going to attempt brief. Here we go'eth.

Over spring break I slept in. Read. Watched movies. Went skydiving. You know, all the basic, everyday, prosaic things. (smiles widely)

I really wanted to do it and it truly would not sit as a one-day thing, so I did it. My friend Sarah and I. We made the appointment and set the day.

When we got there they had us watch a video with Mandy Moore going through the procedure. Suit up, fly up, jump, land. Twas actually pretty rad. They gave us a list of songs to pick from for our videos. Yes, we both got videos. My dad was insistent that I opt for the vid. Even said he'd pay for it. I picked the Gorillaz for my song. What was truly wonderfully humourous, I thought, was that the song, "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" was one of the options.

You don't need a parachute to go skydiving. You need a parachute to go skydiving twice, right?

When we were called in post-signing form after form, (initial here here here. Here and here), we suited up. Met our instructors and tandum diving buddies. Cameraman, or rather woman. Goggle and body-suit clad we boarded a plane with a shark-teethfull mouth painted on it's front. A sign on the gate separating the waiting area and the boarding area had a sign on it.

WARNING: Propellers rip off heads.

Laughter and pointing. We climbed the sky with propeller blades. It took twenty minutes to get up there. Strapped to our wrists were gages that told us how high we were. Round like a clock, the six on the bottom meant 6,000 feet, the topside 12, 12,000 feet. At our aimed height the needle had wrapped around, passing the twelve to remain by the one for 13,000 feet. They slid the door open. Air rushed in. Cold and real.

A few last minute instructions before standing on the edge and kicking off.

Sarah- The scariest thing, Tyler, was seeing you jump. One second you were there, the next you weren't.

The air pulled past me. I imagined that I wasn't falling down to the earth but that the earth was flying up to me.

I waved and gave thumbs up to the camera. "Check this out you guys, it looks like I'm trying to parachute with my cheeks," I told my family later, on Easter, when they watched the dvd of the jump.

In the video it looks like I'm jerked up hard when the parachute deployed, but I don't remember it feeling like that. What I do remember is the feeling just following. Hanging there in the sky with opened parachute above felt so freeing. I let my body hang limp and took it in. Everything looked so model-esq. The mountains looks random and new in that aerial view, rising but still so far down.

"We're about a thousand feet," my instructor told me. He had me reach up and hold onto some rings that via strings were connected to the 'chute. "Pull them down to the right." I shifted my arms. We began spiraling down to the right. I couldn't stop smiling. "To the left." We spiraled downward in that direction. He took over.

The landing was soft, easy. Simple but I mixed up my feet, being new as I was to the feeling. I fixed my goggles without thinking before I was told I could take them off and a last few questions followed by thee most wonderful cheesy thumbs up freeze frame.

"Would you ever go again?"
"Now? Let's go!"

It was amazing. I was told that there is nothing like the feeling you get when you skydive. You have to jump twenty times before you can get your skydiving license. THAT would be awe-some!

Sarah- "If you could work here, jumping out of planes all day and money wasn't an issue, would you?"
me- without hesitation, "Oh yeah."

I want to go again. I really want to go again. Anyhow, I've finally finally uploaded some stills from the adventure.

Stillsframes
01 plane ahoy!.
02 my tandum jumper and I.
03 check out the camera on this guy.
04 the view on the way up.
05 people staring down the open door "what, I could take you on".
06 people taking it on.
07 on aeroplane edge.
09 check out the jaws on that plane.
10 check out the jaws on that plane from just slightly more down.
11 freefallin'.
12 when there's nothin' but you in that great blue.
13 background cloudline.
14 wooo!.
15 closer up wooo!.

Friday morn I was holding a granola bar with my teeth, and pulling on my running shirt when I heard it. "Where’s Ty?" I stuck my head out my door. "Hey!" Ih’twas Cortney, "wanna go to the beach?" "Rerr." I looked down, laughing as I removed the bar from my mouth and finished pulling my shirt down, "sure. When do we leave?" "Now."

In the suburban there was one more of us than there were seats. The back was filled with firewood for a firepit. An ipod blasted David Bowie through the car speakers at the kind of volume that’s ordinarily too loud for comfort, but is just right for when there’s a crowd. We all nodded along, mouthing the words and laughing as we poked and joked with each-other. Cortney turned to face us over the seathead, "we’re picking up three more, so make room." A few stops and several more people squeezed onto the floor of the suburban and we were beach bound.

Driving into the parking lot, we paid and drove through with a ticket. The lot was full and the beach fuller. We left to check another parking lot with the intent of using the same ticked when Cece from the front read the back of the ticket, "not valid for re-entry." "WHAT?! Let me see that!" Dylan grabbed the ticket and read it in his own voice. "Let’s just go back to that first lot, maybe the guy will remember us." Driving up he told the guy we had just been there, "hi! We were just here but we accidentally left." He looked at us and nodded, removing the cone blocking the entry. As soon as we were past. "We ’accidentally left’??" Laughter. Cort fictionalized between laughs, "Yeah, I don’t know how it happened the car just started driving itself and left."

Parking, we unloaded the firewood, towels and snacks (goldfish crackers included cause they just rock). The fire started low but grew causing all of us huddlers to back up and shift around the concrete pit as the smoke found it’s homepath into the sky. We talked and ate. Waxpaper cups were passed around with wine. Goldfish crackers were tossed into people’s mouths from across the firepit. With the invasion of dark came the departure of the beachside view of the sea. The sound of waves rolling up the beach was present to remind us all though. The fire glowed an unreal white at its core, lighting the faces of those fire-round. I periodically lifted my feet onto the pit and lowered them down onto my sandals. The sand was too cold but the firepit top was too hot. Some ventured to the water. The very edge of the earth as far as they were concerned in that moment. Where the earth was swallowed up by the ocean water and ended.

I drove on the wayward back. Tired leaned in, pressing more on some of us than others. Briefly looking back, legs were sprawled over others. Bodies filled seats and carpet. "Wonderwall" played through the speakers at the now-comfortable loud we had all grown accustomed to. We sang loud but none knew as Liam Gallagher’s voice drowned us all in volume. The freeway center divider speeding past at our side.

After freeway driving out to North Ridge, Dylan and I stopped at a whole foods store where we picked up and toasted some bagels while waiting for our dad to meet us.

I grabbed a corner and lifted. My dad at the front, Dylan at my side. A guy in a white truck who’d been driving down the street stopped and asked if we wanted some help. He scrunched his face as he pushed. Together we got it into the bed of Dad’s truck. Brushing off our hands we backed up and looked at it. It was a somewhat long ride to it and it weighed 800-900 pounds, but we got it. I rode back with Dylan. Dad in front of us. On the freeway homeward, seeing it in the bed of his truck, I saw only humor and flooded the truck with laughter. Dyl looked at my like I had left my sanity in North Ridge, then grinned, himself.

"Hey Tyler," he slid into my room on pure momentum, "I found a free piano on Craig’s List.... We should get it."

We got it.

--------------------

Yesterday the sky was an uninterrupted blue. I watched for any smudges of clouds. None. To-day, I had lunch with my grandma. On my way home, I looked out the driverside window and there they were. As soon as I was at home, I opened the camera on my phone. Phone lines. I shifted to the right. A light pole. I moved to my left. Housetops.

I grabbed the next branch above me and pulled myself up. Having climbed as far up as I could, I used my phone to still frame the clouds. I finally got them. Branches framed the edges in parts. I could not keep the tree out. I did not want to. Looking down, I saw that where I had climbed the tree, my shadow had climbed the street. Shadow-branches holding up shadow-me.

(in a text message) Hey man, alright if I run by your place tomorrow 'round 11 to pick up my flashdrive. I believe my english paper's on it.
Pon- Yeah, sure.

The next day I turned the doorknob to open up the sidestanding rectangle of outside. I ran down the sidewalk, quickening my pace. It was nine twenty. I wasn't sure how long it would take and wanted to give myself plenty of time. Passing the lightpole, Max-Dog pulled the leash tight in a downward angle, smiling excitedly in that way golden retrievers do. We passed a schoolyard, cars, and houses. Brick walls with branches canopying shade out onto their neighboring sidewalks. Another dog ran across the blacktopped street to sniff a hello. I thought about how funny it was that we tend to think about animals as thinking like people do.

Flocks of birds swam the sky's blue. At red lights I jogged in place as people in the street lanes passed in blurs the colors of their cars. Max-Dog meandered circles around me, only his panting outspeeding his eyes which darted everyway as he tried to drink in as much as he could of that piece of outside that was new to him and brilliantly exciting for being so.

I rang Pon's doorbell at ten:20. I was early. It had taken us an hour to run what in-car takes about 14, 15 minutes and a few freeway exits' distance to accomplish. I asked for a bowl. He laughed, "breakfast?" I shook my head no as I faucet-filled the bowl with water and walking out his door told him to come say hi. "Max-Dog?" I nodded. Thirteen minutes, a lacked-up bowl and drunk-down glass of water, and a washed bowl later we were running the sidewalk on the opposing side homeward, the flashdrive snugged securely in my pocket.

( part two )



[Edit]
I recently uploaded a few cds for some people.
You are, of course, all more than welcome to them.
01 Shakespeare in Love (score)
02 Match Point soundtrack: This has some great classical music on it.
03 Crash (score)

"Turn off your mind relax and float down stream." -Beatles

I followed the orange DETOUR arrow up a dirt hill. I looked at the speedometer: 6 miles. The dam's end was nearing. A tree waited on the other side, its branches jutting out, bright light green against the blue. Proof of its existence. It waited not for me, but for every moment it has here. Standing, reaching. Being. I pretended it wasn't so. That it was waiting for me as I watched its branches push against air. And then I passed it and the moment, that moment, in which it waited for my onesome, was gone. And the sky spanned, grabbing the tops of other trees in its run, diving behind branches to fill the gaps in with blue. Right then, I thought of gravity and wondered what it would be like not to know its confines. To follow that widely-spread blue.

I rode a huge hill I remembered once tackling with my dad at my side. I'd stood up to use my weight as my ally, pressing down hard on the pedals to keep the wheels in forward motion. Dad grew far behind. When he met me at the top he told me to try the next one without standing up because though it's harder and might take longer, it would build up my endurance and expand my lung capacity. This time, I pushed up the hill at a snail's pace, but never stood or stopped once. I was lamely proud.

A chipmunk lingered near the road, frozen, watching my approach, breaking its statue status to skitter across the dirt to a tree trunk, its head returning in direction to follow my form as I passed. At one parts completing my circle around the lake, my wheels spun in place in mud. I drove hard through a stream, the tires sling shotting mud out ahead of me. It wasn't until I arrived home, 13 miles on the speedometer, and was hosing off my bike that I realized my shirt, pants, hands and arms were spotted. I rubbed some mud off my cheek after catching its reflection in the bathroom mirror.

In the end I realized one very important thing: cycling rocks. That and I want to do more of it. Get my active on.

I've signed up for my spring classes. Seventeen units. It should keep me nice and in sane. (grins) So to speaketh. The running and cycling should make for wonderful breaks.

Getting off work last weekend, I pulled my car through the broken white lines, into a new freeway lane. Free, away from work. I was tired and felt cut down. A woman had yelled at me for asking her to hold for five minutes while I verified her car was on it's way. I apologized into the receiver, nodding to no one, as I sent one of our guys out to bring her car up.

Switching lanes I used my thumb to pull Matthew Ryan up on my ipod. So tired. My thoughts ran to Erica. Her birthday party. "If you can, you should come after work." I'd sent her a "thank you for inviting me" text the night before. I felt bad in retrospect for not thanking her when she had issued the verbal invite. Sometimes I feel like my head is in a different place than the rest of me. Or maybe just my mind. My thank-you reflex had been off. Something to work on.

It was to-night. With open carwindow, I fought back the urge to go home to cereal and bed. Additionaly, I couldn't stop thinking about a friend I was worried about. I thought of the next day's early-morning-essay writing session I had planned. I phoned. "Still okay if I come?"

Pulling curbside, I put the shifter next to the P and killed the engine. Those remaining from the party stood in the driveway across the street and watched me. I pulled my hand out of my pocket, a small white strip of paper was "S"-ed between my fingers. My fortune from a Pick-Up-Stix fortune cookie. I smiled and looking up saw Erica coming out to the car.

Outside the car I began unlocking my trunk, "wanna see my parachute?" Her eyes pried at the black between the raising trunk lid and the bumpertop, "You have a parachute??" I nodded, biting my lip in excitement to her excitement. My hand's abandoned the trunk as I rapidly untucked my oversized work shirt, letting it fall as far as it would reach, it's end circling my knees. She laughed, "It's practically a dress!" I pulled it off so only my thermal shirt remained and closed the trunk behind it, walking back to join the party in laughing and hi-wishing.

I got a few "aren't you cold??"'s, even a joke-reproachful look followed by a "you need to eat more," right before a hug from her mom. I ended up at Denny's sipping a mug of cocoa and laugh and talking. There's something incredibly home-feeling about breakfast-for-dinner despite the truth that my family never has breakfast for dinner. Post-Den., it was back to their place for some seriously awe-some and loud-laugh-causing Skip-Bo.

The talking was wonderful, the joking was weight-lifting, and I left feeling much better. The company did a remedy's work. "Promise you'll text me when you get home?" Once my car was parked, wheels on familiar driveway before my house, I turned the key in the ignition just so, so the radio would keep playing. With the intent to finish the song, I pulled my knees up under my chin. And fell asleep.

Walking Sarah out, I waved as she drove away. I should have gone right back inside, but the cold air cleared the congestion. I could breathe. God, what a difference. I knew I shouldn't, but I sat down on the rock next to the porch step. The cold would be bad for my throat. My nose had cleared though. Completely. Almost instantly. How is it that something that is bad for you can feel to be good? Sort of like ice cream on a soar throat, I suppose.

me- I'm kind of doing this lame thing where my body sucks and decided to get sick.
Sarah- Sounds like a blast.
me- And a half even.
Sarah- So I'll be there in about half an hour.
me- You don't mind?
Sarah- Nope.

It was kind of a nice change from everyone at work who kept their distance, even in portion due to contributed suggestion on my part. Throwing fist bumps to me from afar, I felt like I was straight out of a high school flick coddling society's new hip teenage trends.

Leaving the doctor's, I sent my friend a text.

me- Just left the dr.'s. Verdict on the street is, I 'ave a sinus infection.
Debbie- Aww...hon. That sucks. I'm sorry. Anything I can do for you?
me- Not to worry. I'm fit as ever, yo. Just slight;y more mucus-y. Thanks though!
Debbie- Okay, let me know if you need. Other than that... how are you?
me- Only brilliant, ha! I got the new Kanye West album even. Woo-hoo!

Turns out there are things going around, being passed around, but I wasn't a part of the circle. Sinus infection means non-contagious. I am an island. Just like "no man" (grins).

"I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same." -Brett Dennen

Arrived home to pizza boxes. One empty, one full. Dylan's feet made the table their home as he hand-fed a slice to himself, eyes on the tv.

Why do they call it being "under the weather?" Someone asked me if I was this. The only way I imagine not being, is if by airflight. And frankly I want to always be under the weather. Not in spirit of stressed health, but literally, in the physical state.

I took another still frame of the sky on Sunday, brought into pause by my camera phone. There's so much sky. I've kept about me the idea of procuring a camera. A real, non-mickey-mouse camera. Not that there's anything wrong with those. Red plastic and bright, thing's awfully brilliant. It's brilliance producing the gray blurs of a black and white taken from a car window.


Something I've been thinking about. There's a phrase: "the wisest mind has something yet to learn." What could be more appealing than these two things? Wisdom and learning. They go hand-with-hand but can never be completed. There is no, "that was our last class, you are now all omniscient. Please pick up your degree stating so, and your lollipop on the way out. Have a good life." ..... I am so glad.