100318 ok. I said I would fucking do it, so im going to fucking do it. I do not want to but, *sometimes you just have to.* That’s exhibit A. A thing it took me forty-eight years to learn. I am a very slow man. But there is water that is slow, too. There are glaciers. There is packed snow that takes forever to melt, and when it does, it leaves behind glistening mystery. There is water in the sky all around you, even now, even today, that is too fast to be seen, as well. It touches your cheek, makes you feel concerned. I am not that water. I am the other kind. There is It is weirdly hot today. It went from skeleton-bone-dance chilly to hot as a mug full of fuck today. The sun done come out, and a weird backwards wind just lifted open the front screen door and dropped it again. It sounded like someone tentatively coming inside. Maybe it was. Maybe someone invisible is in here even now, looking over things, deciding what to kill and what to spare. I have a lot of death on my mind lately, because of how sick everyone’s been. First Cel has strep, and it took her an extra week past when I thought she would be rid of it. Then Megan got sick and she still sounds sickly. Millie’s lungs hurt. She got kind of sick then kind of better and then her lungs started hurting again. Libby is home from school for the second day today, and her throat hurts too. Is it the flu? Is it the beginning of the end? Is it god getting back at me for thinking parenting was manageable? Is it because we’re poor? Are they the sickly family whose dad lets them eat crackers and ice cream bars for breakfast? I don’t let them. But Megan does it anyway. She’s such a fucking brat. “Uh! It’s just this one time!” she says, *every single time she does something that I chide her for.* I am so fucking sick of her attitude. I could-- actually stop buying the stuff (then everyone pays) (but then everyone would benefit too; they just wouldn’t see it that way) get really confrontational and authoritative with her about it (yeah right) stop giving a fuck (can’t quite do that) I guess it’ll be some kind of a compromise, until I get a better idea: stop buying it *mostly,* but then when I do, hide some of it and dole it out instead of just having it be proximate, free, and available. Hey, maybe I should get a fucking vending machine!! Maybe that would help her get off her ass and get a job. She’s a good kid, but she’s so fucking lazy. She plays the same piano songs for a year and a half and wonders why her band teacher told her to stop playing during lunch. I mean, come on. Shit or get off the pot. Whatever. I don’t know. I’m kind of bitter about piano because of how I failed it and how I failed my amazing teacher back in the day. What was I, sixteen? I just kind of gave up. I didn’t have the drive or motivation—do you see how that phrase just pops up like a stock phrase? Words are magic. All words are magic words but only if you know how to wave them around right. If you just pick them up wholesale off the shit-covered pavement and stick them in someone’s face, there’s not much magic in them. You have to break them down, decarboxylate them, recombine them, chew them up and spit them into a big burnished urn with the other sagging-breasted ladies around the campfire, and cook them for four days straight while the youngest one sings an incantation, goes out looking for the fawn spirit, leaves him a message, fucks a goat, and comes back with a red streak in her eye. Then you ladle it up and the men eat it, and then the men eat you. I don’t know. My phone is breaking up I mean my life is I mean my Some goddamned device is making fucking noise from the other room. I am so fucking sick of all these goddamned devices making noises all the goddamned time. First they came for the darkness. They infiltrated our sacred darkness with their tiny blinking lights. “It’s just this one little light!” they proclaimed, each time they stabbed another pinprick of cold steely-eyed death into our living rooms and our bedrooms and our hearts and our beds. Then there was another and another, until there was no darkness left. Now they’ve come for our silence. Your pocket makes a tiny noise. It’s almost cute. The other room now makes a noise. The desk makes a noise. The gas pumps make a noise while someone is stealing your debit card numbers. The book you were reading makes a noise. The dashboard of your car makes a noise. Pretty soon, we start to make noises too; we’re nothing if not memetic. Didn’t we realize, our attention is bounded by darkness and silence? We have erased our own boundaries. We are noise lost in a sea of signals now. Wow, I’m weirdly sad now after this. I went for a walk and it was sweaty and I ate three donuts and thought about how much I hate Andy Drefahl. That’s healthy.