ok but you first

Back from horribly geeky weekend in Chicago. A few things:

1. Celebrity is one of the strangest phenomena people can possibly be affected by. It’s like…disco, or telephone booth stuffing, or Crocs. Bewildering, inexplicable.

2. The best thing about driving in scarcely populated areas is the view of the stars—it’s vast and fantastic and a little bit mind-boggling to think about. Such a shame that one can never properly see them wherever people in large quantities gather.

3. Pretty sure you could sell me a flippin’ polished turd, if armed with a smooth accent and an ingratiating manner. Oh dear.

Do you ever sometimes look at a stranger as you pass by, wondering if, under unimaginable other circumstances, your lives might’ve collided—how you might’ve known each other’s names, perhaps, or shared a lovely chat, or maybe even meant something to each other.

Um, yeah, me neither. That’d just be creepy.

As sad as it is to say, I’m slowly learning that the only recourse to trouncing my reticent nature is to ply it with indiscriminate amounts of alcohol, regardless of the situation.

And can one help it if one is a little keen tonight, amidst the unreality of the aftermath of the festivities—evidence of human presence littering the floor, the kitchen counter; souvenirs of cigarettes smoked and that charming lad one would never have had the guts to speak to otherwise—can one help it if this tiny leaf of a hope is trying so hard to take root: “This is going to be alright; you are not a fuck-up. Everything is going to be fine.”

In the dark room, we talked for a long while in the safety of the night before the morning after. It’s all a fucking cliche, but one is inclined to be a little defiant, a little desperate in sustaining it.

The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.

—Walt Whitman

(lest I forget)