Five Years to the Day

I had almost forgotten. It's been half a decade and he's not been at the forefront of my mind for some time. It's strange to think that, for a quarter of the time since I met him, he's been in the ground. No less...

Here's to Volvos
And Coffee
And Linux
And Disco
And Cyberpunk
And Dog Collars (Sometimes Candy Neclaces)
And Metal Briefcases with their Attendant Felonies
And Bananafone
And Mozart's Army
And The Future
And Darmok at Tinagra


"You know that thing that we do?"

"Where we entertain only ourselves?"

"Yeah, I think we're doing it now."

"I am comfortable with this state of affairs."

Under My Feet, The Grass is Growing

---

What am I doing here?

The walls are red and the floor is polished and the shutters are fake, nailed to the wall with no hinges to turn on.

A homeless man is asleep, sitting upright against the church wall across the lane. A yellow, sallow, fallow fellow, I presume to be sleeping because I'm not brave enough to check if he's dead.

The sun never rises high enough because it's always daytime in outer space.

Rain in the East pulls the pollen and putrid pollution out of the air; rain in the West seeps into soil and sweetens the stinking sewage, and any comments to the contrary are crass and condescending in the contemporary context.

Seriously, what am I doing here?

Who invented drop ceilings? Probably the same taste terrorist that invented drop biscuits and drop D tuning.

Strangers are running in the rain, congratulating themselves on their fortitude, as if sweating amidst drizzle was the test of one's mettle.Run in the rain on Venus and I'll be impressed.

Pico de Gallo is one millionth of one millionth of a Gallo, so I should stick with guacamole because avocados can't do math, though there may be merit to the bulk discount.

The man on the other side of the divider speaks like a robot with a hole in it's throat. A humming buzzing, retro-future sound best left to Cold War paranoia on the silver screen and to the Cylons from before the reboot. I'd put in my headphones and silence him with bubblegum pop if not for what he was saying.

Christ on a skateboard, what am I doing here?

The music is terrible. The food is worse. The company is detestable. And, it's just too damn loud.

Mealy-mouthed miscreants masticating moldering munchies always arouse my antipathy. Ah, arrogance.

I could sneak out the back, walk the long way home, going west across continental Asia, and come back for my car in a half decade or so.

There is finally an excuse for all the things I've been wanting to do but I'm sure that everyone will know that it's just an excuse and suddenly I'll be the selfish asshole that's being so so so. So what? Other than I didn't want to do any of that in the future so I'll squander my excuse for lack of an actual reason.

Whatever, I'm out of here.