On Stuart Dybek's "Nighthawks"

So this was my sacred text?
My own personal Torah?
This world of stark,
dark images cradling
a kernel of hope.

How the years change a man.

This is why I wrote. I wanted
people to feel the way I felt
when I opened this story.

The goosebumps, the anticipation.

Wanting each image to last,
propelled to the next.
The world dissolved, diluted.
The story pulled my attention
deeper and deeper.

With age comes wisdom,
with age goes excitement.
The words footsteps on dry grass.
Images conjure my to-do list.

I once feared writing in the margins
now scrawled the embittered
scratch of a man once removed.

A resignation, of sorts: This life isn't me.

Goddamn

If you ever want something from me, ask on days like this.

I woke up expecting to drive to the coffee shop to study this or that but as soon as I checked my mail I abandoned that plan.

Walking from D to South I decided that being alive isn't that bad. The people crawling out of their hibernation. Children clenching a few bucks for a candy bar, the two dudes on the porch with forties. The car wash operating at maximum capacity. It was beautiful.

And the sky. The blue, blue sky. The bright and crisp sky. This is as good as it can ever get and I love it. It's so nice out I might retract all my anti-nature statements.

Sartre said that beauty is in a codependent relationship with sorrow. Since to know beauty is to know it will dissipate. But fuck Sartre. This is wonderful.

What else can one do?

After tragedies, the VA Techs and Westroads Malls, we the living emphasize that these things should not be forgotten. I never will know why.

I googled our nefarious executers. Cho and Hawkins. The news reveals a steady, but irrelevant list of stories. Cho's guns were legal. Hawkins' landlady is under arrest. And life rolls along.

Of course we forget. We have no choice but to forget. Between bills and school and the sundry other things that are cobbled together to form a life this is inevitable.

I still haen't been to Van Maur since, well. My readers know.

There's that boot to the face...

"The Nebraska State Patrol seized cocaine, marijuana and crystal meth during a 24-hour special enforcement effort over the weekend.

The saturation patrol took place Friday and Saturday along Interstate 80 from Lincoln to Grand Island, according to the State Patrol."

Saturation patrol is interesting, isn't it. Like claiming to be a custodian or pizza transferist.