Send in diamonds and traps. That's what they really need.

Nerve and spleen and woven wicker legs.

Ticking clocks can simulate a heartbeat, digital clocks simulate an emptiness.

Anvil. Bear. Cardigan. Dredge. Ephemera. Flower, red plastic fabric hair clip that smelled like you for months. Glowing streetlights. Hair across your face. Intimacy in stolen spaces. Jargon. Kelp. Late nights. Moon rocks. No idea how that movie ended. Over. Past present future tense. Quiet snoring. River rocks. Sparring partner. Tango. Ulterior cake. Vesper. Wilco. Exact. Years and years. Zzz...

Sometimes things are going well...suspiciously well. It's probably nothing to not worry about.

I can close my eyes and feel like I'm at some center point, an equal distance from everything.

It's soothing AND unsettling.

Send out a thought like casting a line for a fish. See what it snags.

My commute to work is similar to my old job at the animal rescue. The street I work on, Utopia, is also well known to me. Every morning my drive is paved with memories. Racing against my own ghosts. Sometimes I wonder whose ghost I am, what future self is looking back on me. Memory is strange like that. It seems like we shouldn't remember the future.

What then, perspective? Is all this perspective colluding to cloud my present vision? I sit in my center looking out, while circled by possible selves looking in? None of us doing anything but looking, knowing that if we were going to do something we would have already done it? That whatever is going to happen may as well have already happened, because we're stuck here, trapped between mirrors?

It's probably for the best that we're all ghosts to each other. We'd probably irritate ourselves so much we'd engage in frequent fisticuffs and get nothing done.

Walking on the treadmill while playing games doesn't allow my mind to wander much. I wonder if that's a problem. The once-myriad possibilities are solidifying, like egg yolk on a china plate.

Might not be so bad; might be a little less crowded, at least.

I have no idea what's going on. Extensive rearranging and redecorating is happening around the house. Partly inspired by Halloween and the party Kelly is throwing. We're throwing. I'm throwing it too, of course, but I'm so unreliable around the holidays it's possible I'll just take 3 shots immediately, then get tired and go lie down like last year.

No costume has inspired me. I went as Eileen, Hunter of Hunters from Bloodborne last year. I spent a couple hundred bucks and 2 weeks building it. Not so this year. Nothing has struck me in the fancy.

My poor, unstruck fancy.

Shout-Out to Erma. I got the expansion for Betrayal at House On the Hill: Widow's Walk. We must play.

Breakfast today is Kroger brand CHEESE ON CHEESE crackers. Methinks they doth say cheese too much.

I miss my Blogger friends. Kermit, methinks, where be ye? Actually, methinks I'm friends with on Facebook, the site that slew the blogosphere. My imagined blogosphere. What probably slew it most slewenly was the issues I was having with my blog template and the loss of links. I feel like I have my old template somewhere in my email. Dig up the links, brush off their bones, and display them in a cabinet of oddities, reliquaries of the sainted mind-collective.

It's a lot harder to speak alone. To yourself. It makes a very lonely letter. And yet the livestream status updates twitter thoughts and emoticon torrents seem a natural response to the lumbering gait of the blogs. The writing I loved was born of a time where mornings and evenings at home were the natural time to go online. Going online easily usurped the television watching of the evening in particular. The bustle of the day done, stray thoughts would band together during dinner and then boom! A nascent pondering would grow.

We're all Ben Franklins now, with quips and quotes. Computers in our pockets, reading while we do other things. Nuance is the real victim here. Creating a mood, engaging entirely with the imagined mind of the imagined reader. It was confidential disclosures in bed with friends. Now it's more like high-fives as we ride past each other on opposite escalators.

Which means, perhaps, that I'm free again. No one is reading. No one is talking back. I can say anything to anyone. The full circle of the electric thought. Funes, His Memory. As much forever as I care to remember, exactly how I want to remember it. In time, the memory will replace the truth, but that's already how it works anyway.

Jessica was in the states to sell a house or something and Kelly and I met up with her at Four Peaks. My friend Aaron asked me if I was still writing. I blinked in surprise. "A little," I said. "I've been trying to get back into it, but I'm really out of practice."

"Where do you go writing?" he asked.

"Where do I...Oh! Riding. No, I don't ride anymore. I wrecked my bike a long time ago."

Also I ate a hamburger. It was delicious.

* * * * *

The game room is still under development. My little corner is set up great with my treadmill, speaker, PS4, X-Box, and PS3 access. Mostly I've been playing the PS4. The various calls of dutys. There are more practical games to play while walking, I'm sure. There will be time for those.

* * * * *

I spent some time this weekend arranging the furniture. Still several boxes of crap that I keep peeking into, still can't decide what to do with, and continuing to ignore. All the stories recently of flooding, people losing all their possessions, and even their entire homes, makes me want to elevate everything. At least the electronics. My figurines would survive a dousing.

Maybe I should stack a few shipping containers. That would be awesome. I need to stop spending money on toys and start saving up for those.

Ender was getting headaches and Barbara took him to get his blood drawn. He panicked and they were unable to get any of his blood, only lots of tears and excuses. We all went together the following Saturday morning. At one point I said, "Me squeezing your shoulder hurts more than the needle will." I am sure I've mentioned it, but for those looking for parenting advice and/or operant conditioning for dummies, I never hit the twins as punishment. The pressure point on their shoulder was my go-to. It's like spanking, I know, but it minimizes the ritualization.

Thus, as Ender is sitting on my lap, he begins to panic again. He twists, shouts, and insists that he suddenly has to use the bathroom. I'm holding him and then he says "Squeeze my shoulder!" I'm like whaaaaat but he says it again, "Memo, squeeze my shoulder!" So I do. Not as hard as I usually do, but hard enough. He stops moving enough for the techs to draw two vials of blood, and then we're done.

I mused on it later. During their conditioning, I've told them several times what I'm doing: "I'm training you. I'm not saying you're bad or good, it's just action and consequence. When you get older, you can choose to reject your training. But even then, you'll still have it available to you."

Were they actually paying attention to the idealized parenting philosophy I'd been spouting as I attempted to care for them? I don't know. At least it worked out this time.

His blood was fine, by the way. A little high in excuses, but who isn't?

The thing about making love to music is that eventually you're going to hear it again. Sitting at work, in a clothing store, or driving, you'll be hit with a wave of physical memories. We're used to remembering events, but this is a deeper memory, the ghosts of sharp breaths and sweat and skin on skin. The scent and the taste. Muscles remember the rhythms of pulling pushing pulsing.

The ghost of you and her.

It will fade, however, as it becomes a memory of a memory. Mirrors reflecting each other into infinity, and darkness.



It wasn't always music. Sometimes it was a movie.