sure, the names change.  but the story is always the same.  doesn't that bother you?  one is just as good as the other.  today's mountains will be tomorrow's molehills.  whatever the fuck that means.

om.  it's like that river they talk about.  the water molecules that make up the river pass through and are gone in seconds, but the river stays the same and runs the same course.  the river doesn't even blink a fucking eye, can you believe it?

i once knew a kid, his name was brett.  we went to elementary school together, and everyday, i'd see him get on the school bus and go directly to the back right seat.  that was his seat, and everybody knew it.  he was a quiet kid, he had a power rangers backpack.  i never heard him utter a single word; he would just get on the bus, sit in his seat, and stare out the window until we arrived at school, and then he'd get off.  one day, a new kid got on the bus and unknowingly decided to sit in the back right seat.  when brett got on the bus, he walked directly to the seat that was his by right(?).  he just stared at the new kid, not mean-like or anything, he just stared at the new kid, and the new kid got scared.  he got up and with blanched face ran to the front of the bus, and brett just sat his ass down where he always did.  then one day, brett never got on the bus.  he stopped coming.  sure i noticed and i'm sure most other people noticed, too.  but nobody made anything of it.  i never saw brett again.  hell, i don't even know how i know that his name was brett.  and the seat that was his...it was filled without ceremony.  some girl named waverly, i think, sat on it when he was a no-show.  fuck, man.  all that time i thought he owned that seat.  that seat was his, don't you fucking understand?  i would never in all my life sit there.  in this world of ours, nothing is sacred any longer.  a man can't even have a seat of his own without worrying about somebody taking his spot.  taking his fucking spot, goddamn it.

this russian guy i once knew indirectly, he told me that a man's life is spent proving that he is not an organ-stop.

when i was traveling, i tried to remember every single detail about the place i was visiting.  the strange lighting in the restaurant, the unique texture of the veal, the smell of the streets, the little kid who couldn't have been more than seven years old who was kicking the soccer ball against the wall.  my head always felt like it was about to burst with the amount of detail that i was keeping stored in the noodle.  and then it became too much.  names began to blur, and detail just kind of flooded out.  it was something of a relief, but i couldn't help but feel at a loss, as if everything that i had done had suddenly become meaningless.  la sagrada familia became confused with the ponte vecchio.  the nijo castle with the heian shrine.  (fine.  i remember all these, but that's because they are what they are.  landmarks.)  not even marco polo could get his stories straight, must have been the poppy seed.

stay away from the clap.

I've been flipping through some old photographs.  Each photograph corresponds to a memory, each memory stirs up some buried emotion and generates a very unique taste in the mouth.  Emotions are forever, as true today as yesterday.  And when you take the time, really take the time, to bask in nearly forgotten memories or emotions, it's like drinking a good wine.  A good wine stimulates all of your taste buds, working its way to surprising depths.  And the aftertaste...oh! the aftertaste teases you with satiation but leaves you wanting more.

The remembrance of things past...ha...it's a little bit like reading good literature.  When I read a good novel, I enter into a relationship with the writing, the words, the characters, the plotline.  I invest a significant portion of myself into the novel.  And when it's done, it's often difficult to part, to acknowledge that the relationship is over.  (When I'm in the middle of one novel, and am teased with prospect of beginning another, I often feel as though I'm on the verge of cheating on the first.  But no, I am generally a man of honor, a loyal man, monogamous at the least.)  I behold the contents in my mind but can do no more with it.  Sure, I can contemplate its significance, its implications, its role in my life.  But the relationship I once enjoyed with it is over.  Over.  What is to become of us, you and I?  Of what once was?

Over.  Over.

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