Truth and Fiction

my dad urged me to get a job because being idle was "not healthy". i am in qualified agreement because, while having a steady has helped my mental health, i feel that the workaday lifestyle has done little to improve my physical well-being. exhaustion can be fun; a strange euphoria sets in, you float around on wings and forget things in coffee shops without really caring, enjoying a natural high. the disconnected feeling insulates you from the things people do that you would otherwise find annoying. but like any high, you crash. then you're just tired. you get tired, you get sick. you get sick, you miss work. you miss work, your kids don't eat. you don't eat. your kids probably still eat. i'm not a barbarian. i also don't have kids, so, in all likelihood, since they don't exist, they don't eat. fact.

if the bird flu ends up washing ashore here. and by if i would like to mean if, not when, which is what we all fear. if the bird flu washes ashore here, two things will happen. one, innocent birds will die, and two, there will be a decline in public demand for chicken dinners. an added bonus is that many innocent people, may die. whether Chinese restaurants would suffer is a question for debate. flu season would have a whole new meaning. plague season. pestilence season. viruses holding people up at knifepoint in back alleys around the city. cold little turnabout streets in Chinatown, Beyard, Pell, would be referred to as ground zero. flu season, i guess it's on the way, right? pretty much here? i never thought much about it and i still don't.

i ate at Joe's the other night with my friend Pan, who enjoys teaching me about the finer points of Asian dining (the tea acts as immolient, cleansing the mouth. he also got me into chopsticks, which i use religiously and with relish at such times). Pan enjoys a bit of banter with the waiter so he can show off a little Taiwan Mandarin. i think i saw the waiter ask him to repeat himself at one point, but you have to forgive Pan if his accent is rusty for he hasn't been back to his island since he was a boy. he'll get to go back soon enough: one of the privaleges of a greencard is that the government lets you travel to foreign lands. Pan is marrying an American girl in January.

Cherelyn's family hails originally from mainland China. they met in a class they had together back in school. i was in that class too, as were Rory and Duke. we were all roommates. Even completed the Circle Of Trust.

Even's girlfriend, Leelee, is also Chinese. well, she's really an Amercian girl like Cherelyn, but her family is. she and her man, who calls himself Even, are currently in an unnamed South American country whose capital may or may not be either Lima or Montevideo.

Another close friend of mine, Leffe (LEFF-fuh), is currently in a country whose capital may or may not be Dar es Salaam. okay, i'll just say it, Tanzania. he is assisting in the prosecution of Rwandan war criminals. he's a long way from home so i'll just give him a shoutout. i encourage you to track his adventures here http://mzungudiaries.blogspot.com. the truth: stranger, somehow, than fiction.

my girlfriend gave me a beautiful pocketwatch for my birthday, which was ten days ago. it's silver, and it has my initials on it. i listen to it tick, an act that is satisfying, i've discovered, especially on rainy days. soon, if i press the button to trigger the clasp and open the cover, stare at the face, which has roman numeral hours and, strikingly, individually numbered seconds for the delicate second hand to single out as it sweeps around, if i do choose to examine those hands, measure out the long and the short of it, and read the writing on the wall, it will tell me that i need to be somewhere in thirty minutes. if i don't choose to open it, if i forget, i may not get there.