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(red hot chili peppers - under the bridge)
Every day I wake up, and I'm reset. It seems that way, at least, but things are always different. My eyes closed for so long, they've had time to change themselves, resting under my skin. The light that comes in through the window is new, and so are the eyes that see it.

One of my earliest memories, actually, is sitting in the car back in Chicagoland, listening to this song. I think I tried to sing it, even then. I tried to sing everything. Not much has changed, I guess.

Looks like I got out of K_____ just in time. Radar shows a massive storm that's wrecking the Breadbasket. Looks like your city is on fire again, though. Try not to breathe.

I think I need a balaclava and a scarf. Yeah, maybe that'll scare the local farm folk. Dude crouched over engine, red scarf stretched out in back, ninja-ing over countryside. Hoho.

It goes without saying that I miss you, and I hope you're doing all right.

Time to take off.

--

Man, it's so cold. I'm hauling ass, but damn! I put my left hand into my left side vent just to warm it five degrees. There was two minutes there where I just said "Arr!" over and over again, just to keep warm. Maybe I shouldn't have left that hat.

I felt a strange sense of elation, though, when I made it to the I______ River, and when I crossed the bridge into Q______, entering the Land of L_____. Yeah, all the hills in I_____ are rolling. All of 'em. Don't argue with me about this. I feel real comfortable here. All the names of places set off ghostly impressions in my head, because I've heard these names many times before.

Lots of milestones. I passed over the spot where Exit 0 and Mile 0 meet, I went through 90-degrees long, I rode over M___ T_____ Lake...lots of the silly lines people draw, but it's all right. The sky is gray and the grass is green, in a place where Christmas trees grow just for the hell of it, year round.

I stopped in W_______ to don another pair of socks, and put both sets of gloves on. I'm covered in layers, 6 up, 4 down, but it's the cracks in the insulation that do it. There's a little crack in the bottom of my visor at a certain pivot, and I finally figured out how to force it down.

The I______ state police appear to be lenient, and so I'm gonna put the blast on these last 30 or so miles to C_______. This'll probably be the last time I write for a while. There'll be lots of things to distract my thought.

But I was thinking, you know, that the things Billy Joel says are right sometimes. I was thinking that I was born to the sound of Thelonious Monk. I was thinking that the grey sky is when you get to see things clearest, especially for us brown-eyed folk (I'm told the iris applies a light tint). I was thinking that I'd like to see you again and tell you a couple of the things I've learned, if they are tellable.

But it's possible that all this is just the cold getting to my brain. We'll see.

--
(kings of convenience - parallel lines)

It's night, and it's quiet enough now to hear myself think. Sort of the problem, ya see. In such a vast emptiness I see from my bike, the space in my head expands; the thoughts in my head get lighter and stretch further. And then in front of a person, in front of people, they coalesce and condense, finding a shape that responds quickly to the impression of another. So I will never find any kind of peace from the storm, in simple solace among others. Which is fine, I guess. Wouldn't want to be quenched so easily, would I...

I saw the town my mom lived in while she went to college. I saw the region, and the places where she lived. I know it's not a bad place to grow up, I know it's not a bad place to go to school (The U of __ is supposed to be impressive, right?). But was it a good place to be stuck in? I know I'd claw the very sky in two if I couldn't leave here. I know my journey doesn't end here. One of those resolutions that's so strong it dictates from the inside--something that may upset a few philosophers.

In either case, I have seen my friend again, and his wife and kid. I know for them, it's a little bit like pushing a boulder to stand up in the middle of a featureless expanse, and trying to keep that rock up. But they've made it these three years, past a slew of squalls and downpours, literally, and figuratively. Their boy is about to pass over to eleven. He's going to speed up, and get a little strange. But unless he's totally nuts, even more than I was, he probably won't be as fiery as me. Which might be a good thing. The world needs more good kids in it, maybe, than it needs me. And I'm not particularly quantifiable as it is. We'll see if these presumptions are borne out.

My journey will cease here, for a short time. I need this check to clear and I need to square some things away.

Why don't you write me?

I guess I've held back the question. I am not one to attempt to wake Schroedinger's cat, and you hold things in even greater transcendent abeyance. Or something. You're special. Shut up and listen.

I may be shining too intense a light on you. I told myself I would be honest with you. This is because I cannot in fact do otherwise. I won't. The best I can do is delay. And so some of these thoughts come out overwrought, and some of them come out dissipated. I share the feel of my life with you, the image of a hand on a polished, glassy surface, in quick recollection, with you. I do this because the points where we meet, meet so closely indeed. And so for someone who exists in such great facility, for someone whose eyes see all the way into me, for someone who I could find in a dark room in dead silence, my eyes removed and my ears blown, their light so bright, there's nothing I'll do in a place so absolute and terminating, except what I have done already.

(We've very quickly reached the point where the words are slipping, failing to catch on the things they were made to carry. I imagine (I really do) this is where you tell me to shut up and quit thinking so damn hard, and you do something I can't guess at.)

What have I done? From the moment I first met you, what occurred? Who was I then? That person, that way, is inaccessible to me. I don't know what was missing from me then, because I could not feel it or conceive of it then. A blind man stumbling around madly in a world that has no words for seeing, certain in place where there could not possibly be any real certainty. What did we talk about? I remember you discussing the job you had. I remember we discussed something having -something- to do with our dreams, our realities. But did either of us know what those were? I don't know.

In this way I travel from not knowing, to the illusion of knowing, to something that seems greater.

I remember being in your car heading west from W_____ and P____, looking up at the clouds. I remember they were beautiful, and one of us mentioned it. The day was warm. What was I doing?

I know I was trying to get closer to you. Another incision, we may see the heart yet. Pulsing and throbbing on the backdrop of its enclosure. Is it right to continue? Is it safe? I don't know.

Yet all these times, I felt that I was always trying to show something to you. An idea that occurred to me, a thing I'd seen...they came at ever increasing velocity and frequency when you were around, and after I'd met you. What did it mean? I felt that something in my world, something of my world, was opening up, and there was a rushing in. My sky is miles taller because of you. A painting that slips into motion when you are the slightest bit inattentive, tall enough that you crane your head up to see all of it.

What did you see? I remember I was a fucking wreck then. In a way, I still am. But then, you could see the wires connecting me, holding me together. I remember this truly. So truly it scares me a little. So what did you see? Those sandals you bought me I blew out on C______ walking north at one point. Because it was my habit then to walk a long way to get somewhere.

I can tell why you were reminded of R_____. But she and I are different, and the objects of our different intensities are also separately changed. The only thing in the end that remains the same is the fact that we both appear to be human, and we're both intense. But I guess that leaves a lot of room for a lot of things. And a lot happened in so short a time.

I remember that smoothie was the most intense thing I've ever tasted. When I saw you again in L______ A______, I remember the feeling, and I remembered it consciously again today, that it was and is good to be in communication with the parts that had ceased to function for so long. I remember my receptors, parts of me, were crying out to see you again. Like the part of your head that sees, not your eyes. But that area where sight is mixed with everything else.

The things I realized were true. I know that. But did the words come out right? Sometimes I've asked myself that question. But I figured you understood, and you seem to. How can I explain? I thought that. But it was when I stopped thinking that and just did it that it came out right. I'm a fool for ever slowing down, but I need to get as far as I can. Did I think that way, then? I wonder.

Do you think we're getting somewhere? It seems like I find more when I find these places, in me. When I touch these edges. I can't feel them unless they're new.

And you? What thoughts entered your head, before the end? Some send-off you got. Geez. Fuck saying you brought it on yourself. You know you didn't, and I hope neither of us thought so. I never did, and I still don't. But you were involved. In the way that I'm involved in the events that lead to my death, even though I may not bring it on myself. In the end, I do, because I eat, and am hungry. Or maybe this is all foolish bullshit.

But I hoped with all my heart that I brought things into your life that even came close to being what you brought to me. What you were to me. What you are. "So this is a loop, and this is you throwing me for it."

So this is a loop, and this is you...

And this is me.

I love you.

Just understanding isn't enough. And chewing over the past doesn't really do it for me. I just bring it up to see you. Because you play your cards real close, and I play mine real loose. But when it's time to show, we both have the same number of cards on our table and both our chips are down.

I just wish I could see yours a little more often. What a sissy. I write, and I am forced (I consent) to content myself with knowing that I'll just bring these to you when I'm finished with my journey, and you may yet read them. And then you'll do something, and maybe one of us will understand.

I'm too foolish, or maybe not foolish enough to hope that we'll both understand. But I wish it because I know it's happened before.

So learn to take a compliment, especially if it's one as hard to understand as this.

Love, joy, and admiration.
and a lot more.
-T.

"Individual? You mean 'thing that cannot be divided,' right?
Well, other than the physical reality that you can't just go around cutting people in two, it also means that they're more than the sum of their -parts-, am I wrong? But it sounds like just a scale problem. You just need to think of the universe as all one thing. And then, you need to abandon your definition of 'thing.' Maybe then you'll be ready to write in a language without spaces."

I like to see people of many shapes and colors. It's like when I was in H______, it's like, "Dude, you're funny looking." "Dude, -you're- funny looking." And then it's a party.

roadkill
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