I was jigg-el-ing the lock with my key,

And I imagined in my head that you were somewhere on the other side of the door.

even though i knew you weren't.

so i thought that i would send you this message.

for no reason other.

than to let you know.

i always remember somthing visceral and extra real about the way my father drank his liquids at the fastfood establishments. he never used a straw or a plastic lid for his soda. i remember him drinking his sips the-whole-way from the wax-coated cup with his mouth and getting the dark-sugary-liquid into his mustache; the sound of the ice jostling for position in the sugary carbonated soup.

i hung my hat on the punk-post. i quit my job on good terms with my employer, and spent a couple of hours at the southwest museum in highland park. very shortly i noticed my own face staring back at me from the top of the modern-post.

instantaneous.

amplification.

time and space.

that is the.

interesting.

part.

Bicycles, Hope, and the Year 2012

Two and one half years ago, I awoke in the middle of your world. I could not speak your language, but as time passed I made my way around a bit and learned some of your words. I hid my accent well. So much so that most people I spoke with didn't even realize that I was a foreigner in their land. My physiognomy and manner of dress was not such that they would attract attention. One might say I had adapted rather well to these new surroundings.

As you might expect, being an outsider granted me a unique perspective. There are many things that you take for granted here. Many things in front of you that you cannot see without great effort, and even if you do finally see them they appear distorted or unclear. I see these things clearly. With the ease of a child, you might say. It is both my curse and my blessing, and I consider it a victory to have realized this polarizing truth. Madness is easier to bear if you can understand its source.

So many things happen in a man's life. Too many for words, that's for sure. For some reason, though it is trite, cliche, overdone, and all those terrible things; Guns and Sex seem to sum it all up. Maybe its the cheap porn I've been watching, in combination with the expensive blood just out of view in the daily news. There is hope in it all somewhere, and the further away it seems the closer it really is.

Nothing quite so surreal as opera on the radio

Every day I ride the trains. Today, some joystick-wheelchair-guy that spits on himself when he talks: he talked shit to me as I left the train. It was more crowded than usual on there, and he didn't like the fact that I had a bicycle with me. It wasn't a very popular stop, so I had a lot of space to ponder this particular asshole as I made my way above ground. The psychedelic tiles of the Hollywood and Western station turned my particular piece of reality into something worth noting. Eric says I should write more. Mom says I should get a girlfriend. Richards said I should do pre-med. When people ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I always dead-pan with "rockstar". Somehow I know that even if that kind of life really existed at all, its not the one I was meant to lead. But somewhere along the line, the joke started turning into reality. Two mutually exclusive worlds merging together or splitting apart or something. Sometimes I think I brought them into being. Me, my life, and everything I've ever known: all just a hologram brought into existence by an extra-physical comingling. When they finally break apart or unify or accomplish whatever it is they're moving towards, where does the hologram go? Sometimes I'll be staring out the window, the giant towers of downtown revealing themselves to me as the train makes its way around them from Chinatown to Union Station. "What if it happens now? What if my holographic world dissolves this next instant, just as easily as it came into being?" Right now I'm listening to opera on the radio.