100118 OK. I’ve stalled. I’ve pooped—I had a *really* good poop, for me, I mean by my standards anyway. I’ve seen some lightning insinuating through closed curtains. I’ve heard the continual patter of rain. I’ve watched someone pull out of the driveway in a minivan, just to make sure it wasn’t the people who drove through the yard because if it was and if they did it again I was going to get their license plate number. That’s how irrational I can get. I’ve listened and talked to Megan about her problem with her boy/friend. I’ve found the picture—that one from the inside of the train car at La Estacion a few years ago—the one that looks like a watercolor in a glowing mahogany frame—and determined that it was, in fact, taken with the original EM-10 and the good old 17 mm lens. If I had to get rid of all lenses except one, I would absolutely keep that one. And it’s not the “best” according to the numbers nor even according to the buzz on all the stupid forums. So just remember that. I wanted to find that out because I’m curious about such things, because it’s been a while since I’ve spent much intense time with the camera, but also because I wanted to find some way to send a tentacle back through the worm hole and touch that day again for a second. It was a good day. All my girls were basically getting along, and everybody was having a pretty good time, and I’m sure there were some little quirks and ups and downs that memory has filtered out, smoothed over, sampled down or whatever, but I just remember loving them so much and being so grateful to be sitting there with them in that goofy train car, and a cute mexican boy bringing us chips and salsa as if we were fucking royalty. It was just nice, and I wanted to remember it, and I do. I feel like I’m losing my vocabulary. I am. I mean I am. I’m losing my muscle tone and I’m losing my vocabulary. Oh well. Does the water at the bottom of Niagra Falls lament that it has fallen? Zoom out: it’s still Niagara Falls. If it were only made of the fresh young droplets at the top, just barely begun to tip over the point of no return, it wouldn’t be a falls at all. It would just be a quiet little rill. A pretty blip. A little standing wave that otters and children would play and catch minnows in. Which actually sounds pretty nice. But I’m just saying. You can’t have a world-wonder waterfall without some gravity and entropy; loss and destruction; a cycle. And someday when I’m down below the falls, when the droplet that is me is flowing downstream lazily, just a part of a river now; the tintinnabular concussion of glory all behind me, just a misty memory, as I’m wading my lazy way down the gentle watercolored stream, I’ll think, ah, that was fun. And I’ll be grandfather to a trout. And at some point, it will be time to get sucked up into the air, turn to vapor, invisible, weightless, made of sunlight and nothing, just a little dab of hydrogen and oxygen barely holding onto my own structure, and well you get the idea cycle, water, evaporation, a diagram made by a child. That’s life. An oversimplified, poorly drawn, hastily labeled diagram on a piece of copy paper. “ThE wAtEr CycLe” by fuckin jommy or whomever. Whatever/ ok i’m done with that one. that train of thought’s derailed. I ain’t got much else tonight. The elevator door opens. There is an empty ding, ringing out into the musty hallway. Across from the open door, a stack of plain cardboard boxes. One of them is stained, where it has leaked. You let the doors close again. You are already on the bottom floor, but the elevator lurches downward. Where are we going? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I do know, but I’m not going to tell you. This isn’t exactly painful; just mostly disappointing. Remember when I used to be so afraid of disappointment? When it was the worst nightmare I could rattle my skeleton with? I was like, I’m not afraid of failing; I’m just afraid of *nothing.* I’d rather someone hate me than just not even care one way or another. Disappointment: an ongoing theme in my adult life. Sex, sexuality, marriage, sex, sexuality: a stream of disappointments punctuated by a few bright flashes near the middle of the beginning, a few bloody explosions near the end of the middle, and a big, neon, hovering, leering, gloating question mark sitting at the table with me right now. That’s a wrap! That’s a burrito! That’s a falafel! I’m just waiting for that bell to ring! I just want to go to bed! Gotta get up early tomorrow and get to work! Lots of grading to do in my privileged, awesome, slightly pointless but also slightly important job that I still sometimes can’t believe I actually have. It’s kind of normal: there’s a lesson in there somewhere. Remember that, if you ever have the unfortunate happenstance to have gone back in time into your 20s or 30s and you’re sitting there thinking, “If only I could get ____ job, then everything would be so great and so easy and everything would make sense and I would feel like a real person!” Well, mark me: that’s about 5% true. The rest? You still have to figure out on your own and keep working on, one pointless, disappointing, boring, rambling, mysterious, pernicious, capricious, mundane piece of fifteen minutes at a time. Love, me!