I was waiting down at the ancient gate

It's when they've announced they're leaving that you see them most. People are motivated by finality, Jack decided without ten seconds' further consideration. The threat of real action, irrevocable consequences, will jolt them, move them, if nothing else will.

On this particular night he was thinking of, they had been sharing ice cream, which he had done at other times with Brandon and assorted third parties.

At this time the phone rang insistently, but he chose to ignore it.

What was the flavor? It was something like cereal milk, flavored with banana, or something else he couldn't remember. They passed the cardboard cup and shared a spoon, being family or close to it. Or maybe there were three spoons, he could not remember. It was a happy evening, with laughter, and the memory was still vivid.

The girls in the downstairs apartment were an infrequent presence in his life. He didn't know much about them except they had cats and parties and liked to gossip at late hours on the front step. Their voices would ring out clearly in judgement on cold nights when he had already been asleep two hours or more. Those nights were shining and crisp.

Soft & Chewy Candy

The beat goes on. The great job search of 2011 goes on. The chaos in Libya goes on. Other people keep having conversations, and I can't focus on what I'm doing because of how highly attuned I am to their topics. Maybe I should start interrupting. That might not go over so well.

The lady serving me clam chowder today in Ipswich asked if I was okay. Do I look like I'm not okay? I might ask you the same question. Better, I might ask it of your chowder, which often has bits of sand in it. Maybe that's how you know they're real clams.

Can an outside chance of something happening ever be turned into an inside chance?

If this whole enterprise doesn't make sense to you, understand that you're not alone. I am alone with these thoughts. Your choices are to pity me or envy me, which will it be?

I wrote up to three jokes on the train today, while closely monitoring the conversation happening in the seat next to me. Are they worthy?

The battery level monitor on my computer is lying. It also defiantly notes that it is (plugged in, not charging). Why should I even offer you the pleasure of direct connection to current? It is wasted on you, voltaic pile of garbage.

Scrabble in Hausa.

INVERT SUGAR

This is a poem I'm working on eventually:

This was the fear they scooped out of Admiral Ackbar's head

It had concessions made to it

It was real, like xenotransplantation or peach trees

Don't steal it.

A Fat Free Food!

"True love is priceless. For true love we pay a price. There's nothing can keep me from loving you, not fire, not ice." -B. Harper

Just wait and see, cause the rest is yet to reveal itself to me

This was the year of independence.
Depend only on love and the ones who love me
This was the year of confidence.
The self is strong, believe it and see it
This was the year of Allan.

My task: conquer 2011

That you weren't wrong

So if life is so hard, what makes it worth the while? It's the people, it must be. These people everywhere, I love them, they're imperfect and so worthy all the same, or because of it.

And how I missed her but then she would say these magic things that floated in and out and in my head. They were little things but that nothing was precious, it's trivial, but together these things accrete into everything that you have together, really a huge collection of tiny things. That's how I came to think of it, anyways.

I found it so funny that I could hang with them even on subjects that I didn't care about, or TV shows I hadn't watched in years. Could I help but interpret this as evidence of some kind of social intelligence now in my possession? It didn't used to be like this, high school was a long time that I don't remember three quarters of.

I was reading a Bret Easton Ellis novel, which I didn't understand at all. It was about people whose lives have become completely empty, and the flashes of human emotion that seep through into their days at the cracks. The emotions, when they're present, don't seem natural at all because the default state is a void. His next book was better by far, even considering the dark themes and the parts about people living empty lives, it felt warm and supple by comparison with the icy, nihilistic rigor of the first novel. Poor Bret, I'd have to say. It must be awful to even be able to write emptiness so realistically. I'd much rather not be able to write well about empty people. It might rub off if you're not careful.