Words, words, work, work, home, other city, this city, dogs, rats. I’m taking things slow, chewing carefully, trying to steer my cow-like existence closer to one of the more sprightly ungulates. I’m looking earnestly to fortune cookies for advice (“It’s okay to slow down and smell the roses”) and for flattery (“Your nature is both dramatic and romantic”). In some form I am here but it’s nothing you could use to block a strong wind.

Come to accept there’s no combination of micronutrients that will have me all jumping around like Jack LaLanne now or likely ever. Double down, then, on the cool color spectrum, on the moon and outer space and meteor showers to forget to wake up for again; on bodies of water, on river cities, on sparsely trafficked pockets in crowded dirty junk towns, on the ever/over-sentimental, the drowsy beat, the baby, baby, babe, bop ba da da da da…

“I opened the bed fastidiously, lay into the middle of it, closed it up again carefully and let out a sigh of happiness and rest. I felt as if all my weariness and perplexities of the day had descended on me pleasurably like a great heavy quilt which would keep me warm and sleepy. My knees opened up like rosebuds in rich sunlight, pushing my shins two inches further to the bottom of the bed. Every joint became loose and foolish and devoid of true utility. Every inch of my person gained weight with every second until the total burden on the bed was approximately five hundred thousand tons. This was evenly distributed on the four wooden legs of the bed, which had by now become an integral part of the universe.”

From The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien to me on a night of roll on, buddy.

Usually the book is better than the movie but in this case this is a situation where I prefer the movie to the book. “Do you know what is white and crawls up your leg.” Do you know what to do without a fire, if you don’t have a fire here. Do you know what the word is for when you cannot see farther than the front of your eyes. How do you know what the word is for when you cannot speak it right. Would you or would you not be able to watchstand if called upon.

Do you know how to respond when you wake up and find the world full of dull magic, listless rabbits falling out of hats and doing their taxes, pulling coins from their ears and dropping them into savings accounts. “A young man who is constantly too reasonable is suspect and of too cheap a price.” Nightertale in Chicagotown in the merye, merye month of May and what, what, what are you going to do.

“I just want to make sure we’re super choiceful,” and so we see even before 10 o’clock in the morning that the only difference between baby talk and contemporary business jargon is a lifetime spent learning nothing at all.