[from the journals: 7-18-08; 2115]

Pagan Angels slither underneath the cemetery leaves. Long sleeves and pants in the summertime. This is my stylistic legacy. Caked mud on my Gore-tex boots. This is not goodness. It is not goodness I seek right now. Tangled in my wires and mired in the conversation of others. My fingers do not want rings. Decorations are best kept under the skin. These still suffer damage and are seldom stolen.

Buoyant we.

Today while I slept and dreamt I had conversations I would have had on my cell phone, were my service active.

Vivid voices and likely words woke me with its conviction. To sleep, then, to continue our conversations.

Music drowns out the conversations around, avid discussions of which film to see or if there's time to eat before.

With my aural blinders on I imagine they speak of having dessert as the first course for the rest of their lives, in case they do not survive to the end of dinner.

That couple there speaks in hushed tones, planning a conspiracy of theatre, friends and family stumbling into passages of Borges.

Another calls a friend over to where he has been waiting and asks his help to shatter every mirror in his house.

A woman in a red dress licks ice cream off her finger. The evening is warm and the shop was out of napkins. My people today carry vast technologies in their pockets and no handkerchiefs. She listens to another woman monologue about her master plan to rule the world by controlling all vectors of disease and unleashing viral horrors on all who oppose her. The woman in the red dress has finished her ice cream and stares into her paper bowl, nodding.

Two boys swagger along with skateboards under their arms. A girl in a pink tank top clutches her purse, intent on a similar rolling along.

A brick fireplace fed by gas chatters angrily, a funeral pyre jailed by fountains on this side and sofas on that.

A man, stocky with small spectacles, points to the ground as he and his companion walk over it, noting the spot where on the exact opposite side of the world, his mother met the man who was his father, but is not his father now.

A girl in a striped shirt, jeans, and several strands of fat beads, glistening black plastic like spilt oil on a seal's coat. She paws at the air over her shoulder to beckon her friend along. She assures her that spontaneous combustion happens once every twelve seconds, but only once, so it may be years before one of them bursts into flame, if ever. Besides, she adds, milkshakes will lower our core temperature.

A woman in the movie theater points to a seat set apart from the others. "They usually don't last long after they've been separated from the herd>"

I hope this is not true of all things.