Celebrating the Winter Solstice goes back thousands of years. It pre-dates Christianity and Judaism. The current Christian overlays were grafted on by the Roman church to make Christianity palatable to the various northern European tribes which existed at the time, and the holiday itself was raised into its current prominence not by Christians but by Capitalists–19th century industry and the rise of corporate culture. This was *never* a Christian holiday. It’s old news. There is nothing in the NT or any of the Christian apocrypha which puts Jesus’ birth at the end of December. If Jesus existed at all, he would probably despise the celebratory aspects of it, depending on how much of an Essene he was. In any case, the gospel attributed to Mark makes no mention of Jesus’ birth because it was unimportant. It really was.

It would be okay if Christians realized how much of their belief was co-opted or outright stolen from Mithraism, how the birth of the god-man matching the Winter Solstice is about Sun worship (not Son–though the English word has a delightful connotation), and was clearly an agrarian celebration. But you all do not.

The only reason most of you believe this tall tale of someone called Jesus is because it was what you were born into. That sort of blind acceptance is toxic. The same sort of blind acceptance that hates atheists automatically, and without reason or cause. Or feels pity toward us. Though that is rather humorous to us. Almost as humorous as you thinking that this is a Christian holiday.

In love with the love I cannot have, I simply sit and watch by the wayside. Perhaps it’s best this way. But it surely don’t feel so.

I love you. I wish you’d find me. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.

Attempting to codify this chili is like trying to describe jazz to a deaf person.

2 lbs of ground beef
3 cans of beans, one of each kind (black, red, kidney)
1-2 cups of chili powder (add throughout the process)
1/2 cup cayenne pepper (add throughout the process)
16 oz bottle Jack Daniels (you’re not going to need the whole thing)
3 bottles brown ale (you probably won’t need all of it)
3 jalapeno peppers, fresh (not canned)
1 onion
1 bottle minced garlic (add most throughout process. Don’t need it all)
1 cup honey (add throughout)
A liberal amount of Tabasco sauce
4 cans tomato sauce, no salt.
2 cans tomato paste, no salt.
Some grape tomatoes
1 small can cranberry sauce, jellied.

If there is anything resembling a “secret” to this chili, it’s in how and when you do things. Here is the basic order of events:

– Cook down the meat
– Prep the peppers and other vegetables
– Add the beans, tomato sauce and veggies.
– Cook it for a bit…
– Serve.

I’ll try to break it down further.

Cook down the meat

This is really best done in the pot you’re cooking the chili in, for obvious reasons (why dirty more than you have to? Also, it allows you to evolve the recipe, adding things as you go).

Put the ground beef into the pot, turning up the heat to, say, 8 (of 10). Add some ale, some Jack Daniels, some chili powder, some cayenne. Let it cook, stir constantly. At this point, add the grape tomatoes. I crush them into the mix, handful at a time, stirring them as I go.

Prep the peppers

Cut up the peppers, onion, and whatever else you want in there. You can simmer them in a mix of honey and Jack Daniels (70-30 blend of JD and honey), or marinate them in same if you’ve got all day. Once you’ve got your veggies ready, put them into the mix at whatever point you feel is appropriate. I try putting them in throughout the process, so that the taste builds in the mix.

Add the beans…

This one is probably the most optional of the recipe. Reason being, not everyone likes beans. I don’t mind them myself, and they extend the chili nicely. The tomato sauce and paste also extend and thicken the sauce up. Of course, you have to compensate for the enormous amount of tomato and bean in the mix. This is also why I use canned beans. First, prepping the beans from a dry state is a pain in the ass. Also, the bean taste makes it too “planty”. Anyway, that’s my thing. You do what you wish.

Cook it for a bit

That one ought to be obvious… In any case, let it simmer for at least a half-hour under medium heat. Longer under lower heat is better…

Serve

I serve it as an open-face chili dog, well, because I want to. Chicken or turkey franks, of course. Not like it matters, given what they put in hot dogs, but whatever. I read about this cheese mix in a GQ article, a mix of feta and monterey jack. It’s good, and works with the sweet taste this chili has. But cheddar works too, of course…

The boy knew. A thousand years ago in another life, he knew.

Grow up. Make a name for yourself. Become a man. Make your mark in the world. Let ‘em know you were there kiddo!

Yes, young Ozymandias. Go and do that. Trouble and toil, bubble and bubble. Fret your sweat-soaked soul upon the stage for your hour.

Then what? The hook, of course. Grim Reaper as stage manager. Nice try kid, NEXT!

Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck all that. Go and build a mighty empire in the desert, spend your years getting it just right, and then what, die under its meticulously planned shade?

The boy knew. A thousand years ago in another life, he knew. It’s all pointless! Nothing you do. Not a single one of your accomplishments, brags, passions or scorns matters a whit. Not a fucking bit. A patch of industrial ruin, a nifty bit of faded Americana by the roadside. Someone’s life and love and trouble now a hubble of rubble. A hunk of junk. A bit of shit.

The boy-as-man went ahead and walked the path anyway. For a while. Just to see. To see him be the lover that spurns capricious and is himself spurned in the end. The answer-man who fixes everything but can’t fix himself. The Buddhist with the slippery ego. The drugged-out carcass, the stupe simmering in the jail cell. Walk the path son. But not too hard. Why make this more than what it really is? The boy saw the end for what it was. Why dwell on infinite insubstantials day in day out till your pump seizes up? Who’s gonna care that you did when you’re gone? You exist as object-in-space in another’s context anyway, as they do to you. You know you’re real, everyone else might be too. This might be all someone’s fevered dream for all we know. It might be yours.

The boy knew. A thousand years ago in another life, he knew. And dreamed it anyway one fevered day, dying sick and alone in the desert heat. Making all this up as he lay there, piecing random things into a chain, a path of what-ifs into oblivion.

So back to Tuesday. I stayed at my girlfriend’s place the night before. We talked about furniture shopping that day (hence the couch) and fooled around a bit. We worked in the same office so I asked her to tell our boss I would be late when she left that morning.

All I thought of that morning was how the movers and I were going to get that fucking couch through the narrow maze-like twists of the apartment building, which like many buildings in Fall River was a converted mill.

I was committed. I was fixated. I’d never bought an actual couch before.

Maybe if the feet were removable we could slide the couch down the carpeted main corridor, stand it on end and wiggle it past the worst of the twists. Then squeeze through the apartment door, sli-i-i-de it down the equally weird and narrow main hallway in the apartment, then we were home free.

While this was happening, while I obsessed over how that damned couch was getting into my apartment, American Airlines Flight 11 flew out of an impossibly clear morning sky and slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. The defining moment of the new century was exploding horrifically into being, and I had a couch coming.

Lacking a working TV and phone, I had no idea what was happening. I turned on Howard Stern while making the 40 minute commute into work and heard him talk about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. No one mentioned it was a jet–let alone a 767 fresh out of Logan with a belly-full of jet fuel. So I thought it was a small plane that punched into the tower and left a hole.

That sky was so clear! Ten years later, I can still picture driving up 495 and noting the clear clear blue. I had a new-ish car, a new apartment, and another day of work ahead. The roads were empty, but that wasn’t remarkable. I was within the window of time when traffic hit a lull all the way up route 44 to 495 to 95 to route 1.

I got to work and everyone was piled in the conference room around the TV. Nothing but smoke all over the Manhattan skyline. By the time I’d gotten there it was all over. Well thank goodness for instant replay huh?

A Boeing 767 is a rather large plane. Each of the twin towers dwarfed the planes which destroyed them. The damage was sufficient to eventually bring both towers down. Now I know over the years there’s been a lot made of possible conspiracies regarding the events of September 11, 2001. The Twin Towers were a unique design, and a perfect storm of circumstances owing to the amount of fuel on-board, the height at which they hit and that unique design caused them to drop as they did when they did. The Pentagon is all reinforced concrete. Like Pearl Harbor, like JFK, there are enough holes both real and perceived to hang a conspiracy tale however tenuous.

I do not believe any of it. Nevertheless, the real impact of September 11th is that America is not the safe hermetically sealed place we thought it was the day before. My dad hit the nail on the head that day when he said that this was payback for all the bullshit we’ve been involved with since the end of World War II. Including our support of Israel. I have never been a supporter of Israel myself, mainly because of the terrorist tactics of Menachem Begin and Moshe Dayan and the others who fought to create that state. I still feel that way, but I understand why they did what they did. Our support of that state, right or wrong, was one of the stated reasons for Al Qaeda’s war against us. And it was proven true by the last ten years of unremitting and unfocused aggression by our military and the CIA. That asshole man-child George W. Bush went from clown-in-chief to cowboy-in-chief and wrapped us all in god and glory at the expense of so many American kids and Iraqi innocents.

Which of course leads me, finally, to the real thing we saw that day. A bunch of religious zealots supported by a regime we prop up with our oil addiction killed themselves and three thousand innocent people for their fucking religion. That’s what motivated those fruitcakes that morning. It served as a wakeup call about what religion does, and our reaction to it also shows what religion does. Poison. All of it.

I miss that blue sky. I miss that innocent morning and that lovely little apartment I could not afford and the world I lived in the day before. This is a colder, darker place. Our innocence is gone, America is not the good country we were all taught it was, the religions we cling to are killing us as quickly as our rampant use of oil is killing our environment. We can never go back, and we may not survive. Nor may we want to survive in the world those Saudi assholes and that Texas buffoon gave us that day.

Not so many as you’d think, apparently. The girl I was seeing for a few months at the end of last year stopped taking my calls in February. Nice way to send the hint along, I guess. So ever since, it’s been non-fucking-existent in that department. Nothing makes you less desirable than rejection, ain’t it the troof. Others show little interest in little ol’ me. FUCK.

So that’s brooded through my head. And, I am an outsider at my work. Generationally, et al. Oh, and a certain crush I had there (foolish really, but I wrote poetry about her. It’s in the third book) is seeing one of my bosses. FUCKETY FUCK.

Stupid stupid shit. This is what goes mulling through my head–unless I fill it with Farscape and whatever diversions the innernets have on tap. Occasionally, you see, it backs up into a green green pile of sewage at my feet.

“Get help bwah,” you might say. “Get a prescription for some happy happy joy joys.”

On the first count, I did the therapy route. After all those years, I still think a hooker would be more useful. And cost-effective. As for the latter, I tried the happy pills too. Years back. They attenuated life. Which was fine for a time, but the sleep was awful, requiring more drugs. Those gave me bloody awful dreams. Literally bloody. No thanks.

One fringe benefit of that therapy–something laid on me in passing almost 13 years ago–was “Cognitive Therapy.” Basically, slowing down and observing how your mind works. How it snaps into certain mental frames. Tiring but useful. Although it didn’t become such until the Zen years. Ah. Thich Nhat Hanh and mindfulness. The two dovetail nicely.

So in that walking interlude, when mind rumbles through its incessant half-thought and monologue–though sometimes it’s dialogue too, only the voices are both mine and it passes the seconds okay enough (fuck you, you do it too)–I felt this tremendous sadness! UN-fucking-LOVED. Less than nothing.

(Come back to the present moment, the breath, the wind. There is nothing but that. Nothing (that) matters.)

I would detail the contents of what snapped me back into sanity, but I’ve poured it out here before, and in other places too. If you know Zen, if you know science, if you know, You’ll not only understand, but you’ll wonder why I let the stupid shit hang over me.

Well, it was a Wednesday.

Love to you all. Endlessly.

In October 2010, Apple did a refresh of the fabulous Macbook Air into two models: A 13-inch like the original and, most excitingly for me, an 11-inch model–the portability I always needed. Also, SSD was not merely an option but was standard on these foxes. Plus, the prices were much more realistic. Small and light too. Two annoyances typical of Apple: the RAM was soldered directly onto the motherboard (no upgrade path possible) and the SSD was a non-standard design, though it was removable. Plus they used these funny Pentalobe screws to fix the bottom plate to the machine. Clearly upgradability (and thus longevity) was not in Apple’s design philosophy anymore.

No matter. I obsessed over getting one of these, especially the little 11-inch. No question I was going to get that. I went for the $999 base model (1.4 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD) knowing that the 64 GB storage was going to be a problem, but only a small one as long as I kept a 2 TB drive handy and looked seriously at online storage, which by now was improving in availability and options. I’d already spent eight months experimenting with the iPad as a computer replacement (no dice), and really wanted a real frickin keyboard again. And not to have to deal with iOS on a day-to-day basis for all my computing needs.

Not too long later, Other World Computing came up with a solution: The Mercury Aura Pro. They’d come up with a line of SSDs exactly like the ones in the new Macbook Airs, only much higher capacity. The low-end was 180 GB–slightly more, mind you, than my black Macbook Marlena‘s hard drive, but much faster in terms of access. Just lovely! Expensive as hell, but worth the bother if you really need/want the space. Almost six months into my sojourn with this Macbook Air, I routinely maxed out the storage thanks to iTunes. I kept an eye on the Aura Pros though. The 180 GB model was my target, if only because that would bring this computer more into line with what I had with Marlena. Plus I could swing the $400-plus price tag if I was really careful, but no more than that.

So I placed the order yesterday (Friday) and put in for Saturday delivery since the price on the 180 model had dropped by about $60 from what it was back in January. It showed up this morning. Took me longer to get it home than it did to install it. OWC was kind enough to include in the box the two screwdrivers needed to perform the install: A Torx for the screw that holds the SSD in place in the computer and a Pentalobe to get at the ten screws holding the bottom plate in place. Those little bastards were a pain, but once you got them off, the plate just popped right out. If you’ve ever looked at tear-downs of this model of computer, it’s mostly battery inside. I took a couple of pictures I’ll try to include here. Like I said, it took longer to get the thing home than it did to get the drive in, even with the tiny little screws and the funny screwdriver.

Performance tests of this drive are just a Google search away if you’re curious. I am not writing this as a review of this SSD anyway as such is not necessary. I am writing this as an appreciation. In terms of speed, the SSD is an obvious win over any hard drive. The 2010 Macbook Air has the fastest boot time I have ever seen in a computer–even counting the DOS days. The OWC upgrade doesn’t improve upon that, but it’s also no slouch. This is still as peppy as it was, only now it has some lebensraum! The $400-plus price tag might give an indication of why Apple did not add substantial storage to these computers. The size and the apparently underpowered CPU have been criticized by various haters out there, but this was a pretty brisk seller for Apple when it came out so the compromise was worthwhile.

What it means to me though is that I can hold on to this computer for a long time–which you might say I’d have to in order to justify dropping a hunk of change into this little honey. I bought this originally with the idea that I could upgrade to a 13 inch Macbook Pro next year while at the same time retiring my black Macbook Marlena (if Mom ends up finally buying a new computer at that point), maybe selling both to underwrite the upgrade. I don’t hold on to old tech anymore out of sentiment. If it’s not useful, out it goes.

As I’ve been using this computer though, and keeping a weather eye on the developments with Chrome OS, I realize that this computer is damn near perfect for what I need right now and for the forseeable–even more so than Marlena was. It’s lighter, smaller, and in some ways faster than that computer–though not really up to resource-heavy tasks given the slower CPU. My computer use right now is practically at thin-client level. I use this to watch TV shows and movies with Hulu and Netflix (and iTunes). I also use it to sync my phone and drop in the occasional audiobook. I also use it to write, and am trying to increase that usage wherever possible. With Zoho Writer out there (at the moment more feature-rich than Google Docs), I don’t really need a heavy-duty computer for writing, trolling websites–I mean research–or for ”multimedia,” to use an outdated word. I don’t game and if I do it’s on my iPhone, so I don’t need the latest and the fastest. Besides, I’m tired of heating up a room with my computer.

The Chromebooks look interesting, and if one can make a few habit changes would be viable for most computer use. I still believe that the Chrome OS will make a far superior tablet OS to all the alternatives out there right now, including Android, once web designers make the distinction between mobile and touch (and stop using fucking Flash!). Inertia and habit are the main reasons why anyone would want a physical keyboard at this point, including me. The keyboard/pointer paradigm of human-computer interface is clunky but no one has come up with a truly compelling alternative. The iPhone OS and what we’re seeing so far from ”Windows 8″ are really innovative ideas, but the iPhone OS is a powerful smartphone operating system–not meant for heavy lifting–and ”Windows 8″ is an intriguing idea grafted on top of the biggest pile of baggage outside an ex-girlfriend’s head, the MS Windows OS.

So what I’m getting at is that there aren’t many options on the horizon for your forward-thinking tappity-tapper here. As I said, I’m intrigued by the Chromebooks–even if Google didn’t send a CR-48 to yours truly when I really REALLY could have used one. Damn you all. However, if the Chromebooks were about the size and heft of this very Macbook Air–and maybe had a little more generous SSD inside (16 gigs? Really? Not everything is in the cloud yet Google…), I would scoop up one lickety-frickin-split. And love it. Each time I think about it though, I realize I’ve got it pretty good with this little Macbook Air. And the Mercury Aura Pro has made it even better.

Good Looking out OWC. Good looking out.

As always, his answer was Yes. It’s not that his memory was particularly bad, it just saved time. Time was a fluid quicksilver thing in his afterwork life. Tickety-tack on his Cloudbook keyboard, clickeratick of the trackpad on one hyperlink or another. Suddenly six o’clock was twelve-thirty, and he was bushed. enervated. Tonight it was surprise nudes of the latest RealiTeeVee sensation, an article about the myth of free will, all the news that was fit to tweet, down the hypertext rabbithole from one blogpost to another.

Just another night. New episodes of his old favorites, his attention span spanning ten open tabs at once in his WorldView browser. He rarely made it through a half-hour TV show non-stop anymore as he wandered with his wayward mind to the movie database tab to see who the tight twenty-two year-old with the thirty-four cees was in this scene, or to peek under the dress of Hollywood to see the hairy legs and other behind-the-scenes secrets posted to keep the mythmaking moving.

Just another night. and another sleepless fight to enjoin the dark and invoke the restful he craved, as he led the animal into the abyss with him waving the carrot of some thread of thought to distract the idiot sparking ideas in his head like so many shiny beads.

The dream was the same. At least, the deja vu hit him like that, even though even that might have been a conceit of the dream, dreaming that the dream is one you had before because the dream itself said as much and implied such. He was in a lovely room lit with natural light from windows above and beside him. An easel held a half-finished painting, a self-portrait. He was prettier there than he actually was–thinner, more defined, optimized even. And as each brush-stroke brought the creation to life, he himself felt diminished, diffuse, defused. He awoke weary bleary, too young he swore to feel this tired, too old to work this early for so little money.

His Cloudphone has its own WorldView browser, mail app and news reader, just like its bigger self. He sat on the shitter tapping the news and the mail of the world, both of which were just junk and spin of course. Same shit, he might as well peer into the bowl and read his fortune from the floaters. Ah well, people dying in Africa, people dying all around, as much an abstraction as anything else. He had fifteen minutes to shitshowershave and hit the road.

“Would you like Newsie to save this RSS feed?” He tapped Yes. Reactionary paranoia dotcom. All these sites have a spin, but he loved the spin this blog put him in. He loved ranting to his workfriends about how shockingly stupid the site was, it was like fiber for getting time moving between eight and five. All the better to be elsewhere.

Tonight the dream was same but different. Same lovely room, same easel, same picture-him gaining definition, coming clearer from the canvas. His hand moved the brush unbidden, under its own control until finally it finished. He gazed closer closer, taken by the expressioned eyes more real than reality. And found he was looking back at himself, picture pixel-perfect.

Closer closer. The picture devolved into individual bits, each stroke a rendering revealed. A choice made and confirmed with a Yes/No. ”Would you like WorldView to save this to your favorites?”

It’s been twenty years exactly since my last cross-country drive. Phoenix to Peterborough in just under three days. Me in a little white Corolla getting knocked around by passing semis, seeing the snow-capped mountains up north, Meteor Crater (up close it’s no different from any other great hole in the ground), the rounded contours of New Mexico’s sandstone cliffs, Texas Texas Texas.

Oklahoma smelled like cowshit from the Texas border to Missouri. This was all in the days before GPS and Google Maps. I had a AAA triptych, as it was called, and less than $300 to my name–and that was borrowed from Mom to make the trip home.

Home. I spent half my life to that point in New Hampshire, and it never felt like home. I had idealized Phoenix as my long-lost belonging place. Then I moved back there. Like most places made of “developments,” carved out of the earth and pre-washed with strip-mall bonhomie to pretend it was there all along and not simply set up to exchange cash for the fiction we call existence (fuck you, I’m on a roll here), Phoenix is a soulless city. It’s all too new, and too obvious in its pretense of having an identity. Tucson has more soul– more character. Or maybe it’s that the street names don’t stay consistent. It was cobbled together like Boston and New York. Not a rigid plan like Phoenix.

Anyway, it was not home. Neither was Peterborough. Or Tucson. Or maybe they all are, since they each feel like putting on a well-worn pair of sneakers, or an old jacket.

Home like love and self is just an illusion. A state of mind, just like everything else.

I do miss that ride though. Twenty years on, riding into uncertain certainty, starting again, nothing but the endless road ahead. I do miss that ride.

I’m not sure exactly when it was I’d died. Could’ve been any of a half-dozen times. Three I can think of offhand, all attempts to OD. I had a rough few years. What can I tell you?

I always wondered what would happen when I finally kicked. Tunnel, light, heavenly hosts, all that bullshit I think not. The pineal gland in the brain puts out this drug called DMT. Causes shaman spirit-guide Carlos Castaneda kind of trips, so they say. Anyway, a lot of the stories you hear from the Jesustards who claim to have “come back” all read like a dose of this DMT the body just dumps into the bloodstream when the end comes. Too bad their minds were too hidebound to really enjoy the ride eh?

I will tell you exactly what happens when you die. You ready for this? No bullshit.

This morning I woke up before the alarm. Happens. Anyway, it was out of a dead sleep, which starts to make more sense when you think about it.

It was a dreamless sleep, which by itself is kind of odd. The night before, my mind was boiling over with thoughts, emotions, patterns, so many things going on in my life, what with work and the drab bunch of philistines pulling a paycheck alongside me, the sad fact I haven’t had a hand down my pants that wasn’t my own in six months–and don’t think my willie hasn’t noticed. The one thing worse than whiskey dick or coke dick is bored-of-jacking-off dick.

All these thoughts and notions crashing like waves against the craggy rocks, making my attempt to sleep like Scylla and Charybdis. Breathe in, breathe out…in…out…

Pow. Here I am, staring at the ceiling. It’s light out. It’s not Saturday.

I am awake. My head is not foggy, my body is not tired like an overflexed muscle. So I slept. I think.

Usually there is a dream or the remnant of a dream. Some kind of memento from Morpheus of his visit. Even if it’s of the brain assembling the mind again from the porridge. Nope. Nothing. Just me feeling a bit disjointed. Like falling asleep in your clothes and stumbling around the next morning, only I sleep in the buff. Steady ladies, I know it’s a heck of a vision.

So I get up and walk through the apartment, seeing what was what. Sure, it was my place. No one else would have a Kandinsky print in my age group. These idiots couldn’t spell Kandinsky even if they googled a picture of it with their phone camera.

Kitchen still stunk of biomatter, which happens when the dishes sit in rank water for a week. I’ve been busy, alright? A cigarette stubbed out in a shot glass. Hmmm. I haven’t smoked in eons, not since the last time I–

Oh. That.

A flash. Not an image, more an emotion. Then the pictures come. Handful of pills, a whisky chaser, another whisky chaser. And as much heroin as I could stuff up my nose.

It’s a weird sensation. Snort, snort, tilt the head up like you’re in some tacky ’80s nightmare, only instead of the slow rush like coke gives you, heart making a fist in your chest, it’s a slow falling sensation instead. Falling into cotton candy only instead of sweetness in the mouth, it’s a blurry bliss. And instead of that icy taste down the back of your nose, it’s, well, a taste kinda like tar smells. Or the packet from mushroom ramen soup.

I wander back up the hall to the bathroom. I scored the pills from this kid at the bar the night before and this girl helped me get the heroin from these two white guys in a brown Thunderbird. She was cool about it, I set her up and didn’t even ask her for a blowjob so she scored a handful of little baggies of powder for me too. I told her she could stay the night.

But, it appears she had the bad taste to die in my bathroom, the needle still in her arm. She’s motionless in the semi-dark room, her legs akimbo showing off some stubble and a small yellow pool.

I am not surprised though. We fucked the night before. That’s come back, how ’bout that? She smiled at me really sweet, said I was a nice guy, cupping my face in her hands. “This was better than I thought it would be,” she said as she left the room naked and shapely. She was maybe nineteen. Her face now shows a hint of that smile though her lips are blanched.

Why am I not surprised about this? Why am I not pissing myself as well, only with terror at the dead teen hooker in my bathroom?

The same reason I didn’t freak out at what I found laying in my bed. The same reason I wasn’t surprised at who I met in the hall outside my apartment naked as she was the night before.

The same reason I am standing at the front of this building now, still fishbelly naked. No one even giving a second glance except for all the other wandering nudists oblivious to the cold but not to my slowly dawning awareness at what the end really is. They all shake their heads, young and old as they too wander and stand and watch the cars and the world go by.

This is what happens when you die.

I’ll be seeing you.