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 I'll talk shit. I'll talk all kinds of shit. I'll talk shit to your ass because it's your ass's understood language. My shit will put your ass in a sling. I'll sling my shit at your ass and you can help but respond with another shit. But your shit runs away and mine's all serious like a compound fracture. I'll talk shit and you'll give me a job with three promised raises in the first quarter alone. I'll get all juiced up on coffee and cigarettes and talk shit at you for a whole hour while you try to explain it away. You can't explain it away. You can't carry it to a trashcan. I don't talk trash. I talk shit and my shit-talk doesn't flush in your toilet. It's too small and I disconnected your fucking water. Yeah, I read your books. I read them and I'm talking my bullshit about them in term papers. Then, once the grade comes back, I talk shit about your bullshit books and this bullshit grade. You can only give bullshit answers because you don't know shit. I know shit and I talk it all day long while you sharpen your pencils and suck the eraser. I'll throw a rock at your car as you're unlocking the door because I'm not afraid of cops. They'll take longer than it'll take me to run away and ditch my ski mask. I'll be spraypainting your house with shit while you try to describe an average person wearing all black and a ski mask. You'll come home and cry your weak eyes out as the cops through your report into the 'In a Pig's Eye' file and expect your follow-up call three days later. Guess what they'll tell you: not shit.
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 The universe constantly persists that it exists. It demands to be noticed by me, us. Not just that, it forces me to acknowledge it is nothing but a highly intricate, yet too large to be seen pattern that we play a kotterpin part in. This time it was during a screaming match on the street under the lamp on the pavement, with areas of concern and antagonism all unfolded like an awful picnic. Accusations and high-criticisms spill out like venom and molten ore. We want to make our faces melt off so we can see through each other's hardened appearances. I was there and so was Ian and we were boiled and uncomfortable and wanted to connect with knuckles, to make sure the mirror hadn't been lying to us. His teeth reflected the street lamp in my eyes and I thought of his retainer, worn for so many years to keep those teeth straight and perfect for impressions and smiling. Never once had he thought his perfectly straight teeth would be seen as a thing to fear, a sign to back away from, this I completely believe. And from behind those teeth he leveled the field with insult, victimization, and condescension. There wasn't any reason to pull any punches or restrain my opinions now. There was only this moment where we hated each other's skin and eyes and teeth. We wanted badly to feel the concrete on our cheeks, have it's rigid surface pull right through ours down to the roaring blood, inviting it to evaporate from its puddles the following morning. This was the fourth of July and we screamed firewords to explode overhead. We cursed and swallowed the pain with purposeless anger. There had been so little magic between us, around us for a while and we ached for its return to our home. We waited for it to leave a cigarette on the floor, a late student loan check for buying video games and comic books, running from Godzilla on a pier while the wind ruffled our hair, one last can of Sunkist, finding the perfect sock hat, or a box turtle left on the porch without any calling card. But those anecdotal moments had eluded us for so long that we felt used up, skeletons without any muscles, or traveling without destination. We grew into everything but our clothes and now we wanted out of our pathetic ditch. We felt each other's dying as a means to step away and grow reason to our lives. Our breath had become laborious and a single punch had yet to be thrown. A minivan neared the intersection and we withdrew to the empty lot keeping our eyes locked together. The minivan stopped and the window rolled down to reveal a black man listening to classical radio at a moderate volume. He said: "Fellas, things are bad everywhere, but you should remember that today is a day to celebrate your freedoms. You're both free to do whatever you want, whether it to be a lawyer or a painter, or maybe just take a moment to listen to the beautiful music." The man then turned up the radio and conducted from behind the steering wheel for our pleasure. He said: "Happy Independence Day." We said: "Happy Independence Day to you." He drove off smiling wildly through his windshield. Our stonegazes had become soft and jelly. Our spiked voices were rushed away in laughter. We walked back to the house as clear as the first night we stared through our bedroom windows before sleep.
I'm reminded of this moment when things are either very disconnected or too close to know how it takes permanence in anyone's life. It's my divining tool for finding the path my life is taking when I've run out of obvious options. I think it's easy to get lost when there are so many variables carting you up and down suddenly. I used to keep this box of memory markers. You know I'm sure you've done or do something similar to this. Keeping rings, letters, airline tickets, napkins, acorns, expired identification, and tea packages as landing strips for certain memories. Yesterday, as I poured through this box of flags and boundaries I found nothing to represent this moment better than the one thing not in the box. The memory itself. If I am part of this quilted universe where feelings are tangible sections sewn in with all the actual happenings and all the groceries and all the paint and all the work and all the lost, then any box full of out-of-context significance is worthless. Nothing will recreate a moment as perfectly as when it was actually created. I know we're all full of lightning and want to connect with anything we can surely influence. The box waits for a Tuesday morning truck to redisperse it through the cells of matter that no longer matter to us.
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 There are these seeds I won't identify inbetween the keys of Jared's computer. They make my passwords all incorrect every first and second try inputting them. I hate it when I can't just get right into something. I hate when my cookies aren't enabled. I really hate it when I only have to reset one password but then end up defaulting all over the place and having to begin again. I used to use the same password all the time until one day some dick messed up my blogspot login causing me to lose confidence in the original prototype. It was the name of a song from the band I used to play Fender Stratocastor in (it was Banana Yellow and I sold it to the lead singer for six hundred dollars. I think he sold it to a shaved head kid with leather armbands for five-fifty). Once the password was phased out, I worked out a four-part, key-based security measure. It combines the five-letter name of my self-published newsletter from highschool, scrambled pet's name, and the last four digits of my Nanny and Pawpaw's phone number from their house on Querens Avenue. If you're curious what the fourth thing is, then you'll be pleased to know that it's a layer of lying-flavored icing across the top to keep it airtight and classified.
My friend Taylor gave me a spare set of keys to his apartment while I stayed with him this past Christmas. "Now you're important, Zach. You can unlock three doors in New York City! The front door, the apartment door, and the maildoor." I thought it was weird he said the maildoor since there wasn't any reason for me to open it. I hadn't even given my parents the address. I fantasized circumstances where I would be needed to unlock the maildoor because Taylor had lost his keys and Nikki was at work and all the other roommates had flown to exotic countries where you have to keep your immune system in a regular freezer. "Sure. I'll get the mail seeing that I'm the only one who can!" And then Taylor would smile and pat my shoulder as he opens the big manila envelope from an eccentric Italian cobbler with a penchant for fine virtue and finer wines. These daydreams made me smile to the windows full of interesting succulents. Taylor was right. I was important now.
The first password I was trusted with will echo for eternity... my eternity... the eternity of my limited agency, there, that's better. I had gone to my first bestfriend's apartment when I was like eight probably. It was around nine a.m. and his Mom said, "Go on up, dear. He's up there sleeping. Stayed up all last night playing Nine-tendo." He had this weird cutout drawing of a mouth on his bedroom door. Between the 58 teeth, where the tongue and uvula should have been was all this capital printing: "ONLY HE WHO SPEEKITH THE PASSWORD CAN GANE INTRY." Next to that was a drawing of a mythical beast I was too stupid to know was a Hippocampus. I opened the door because I wasn't afraid of any half-horse/half-eel. "You can't do that, you have to say the password." I closed the door, "Oh... How about I just come in anyway even though I don't know the password?" He said it didn't work that way. I had to say the password to come in. "Why?" "Why? Because if you don't say it, then Robbie next door will just come in and play Duck Hunt all morning when I could be watching Top Gun instead." I didn't like the sound of Robbie. He seemed like he'd be one of those people who would just open your cookie jar and take all the Nutter Butters while your mom told you Aunt Grace might not live through her surgery. I had a Robbie in my neighborhood and his name was Brooks. Brooks had a rattail and a fingerless glove he wore when he wanted your Atari controller. I had always wanted a means to stop him from ruining my sorties on Choplifter! and now I had one. "Well, can I know the password? I won't tell Robbie. I promise." I could hear my first bestfriend shuffle to the door and whisper through the doorknob, "Purple Icecream." I took the purple icecream home with me that afternoon, set up my own little sign with a drawing of Robocop next to it. Brooks just put on his little glove before tearing it down. He probably hit me in the head a few times after that.
You should be careful who you share your passwords with though. When I was nineteen I thought it would be a safe bet to tell my girlfriend at the time, who we'll call Mercury Cougar, my email passwords in case I bit the bucket of the farm one day and she would need to notify my aol.com friends of the funeral or lack thereof. What actually happened: she took over my hotmail and sent weird messages to the people without penises in my address book. "When can we meet?" and "Last time we hung out was sweet," and "You're sweet too!" and "Remember that time we talked of fucking?" It was crazy. Mercury Cougar even signed my name on all the emails. The replies were better. Stuff like, "We can meet when planetickets are free," and "Is this Zach's weird girlfriend seeing if he's cheating? I heard your name was Mercury Cougar so I figured you for pretty insecure. I mean, the sunroofs on those things are like, 'Whatup thief? I'm totally easy.' You know?" Yeah, you've really gotta be careful with picking out a girlfriend.
Passwords are great. I love passwords and all their incarnations. I love passwords that are so good I forget them even though I made them up. I keep myself out! My all-time favorite password was the silent one you give to your girlfriend when you really tired of watching TNT and would rather play sexy games down the hall under a hail of loud rpg music blaring from your brother's room. That's the best. Because it's just that look and nod. Like your head's a shovel and you're throwing some dirt on your girlfriend's vagina. Knocking on window passwords are great too but they can be risky. Mega-man nine energy tank passwords are nice insurance when you haven't rocked an NES in a few years. Crib-sheet passwords for getting a degree in anything you really don't have to use. Man, it's all fucking great. It's like these passwords of mine are all little doors in Mississippi that only I can unlock. I forgot to tell you, I named my brain Mississippi.
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 Kevin was known for his years of living life in costume. He stuck with a time that spent off into oblivion before he was born. His vests matched his pants with designs that mimicked the garb of a wealthy cowboy who rarely adorned a hat. He kept his brown, curly hair long, straightened, and worn in a ponytail. His wife, Annie, had met him in college. He had majored in wasted time while she pursued a degree in the avant garde. Finding his unusual clothes very 'on edge', she slowly acclimated her dress and mentality to his attire. She took his need for visual attention to the old west and expanded it to the history of the time period, allowing it to permeate through their lives completely.
Annie's parents helped them to finance their first home. At first the neighbors seemed pleased with the new couple, they came to the front door and shook hands on the front porch. Kevin would invite them in for frontier coffee and the neighbors who smelled of Tide detergent and Old Spice would gracefully decline. "We'll call," they would say and Kevin would respond, "Can't call a house that ain't got a phone, can ya? Just come on over when you get some time on your hands." They never came over again.
Within a week, Kevin brought home a mutt he found wandering the neighborhood. Annie named it Vaquero because the light markings around his neck reminder her of a cowboy's bandanna. They didn't own a television. In the evening, they read old dime novels Annie found at a nearby antique shop. They replaced their electric range with a coal burning stove and neglected the use of their air conditioner during the summer, trading it for open windows and paper fans. Kevin refused Annie's father's offer of an electric lawnmower. "I prefer this push-mower. A man makes it work." They both began to play the part too often. Then suddenly it had become apparent they had cloistered one another from the rest of society.
In their period of inadvertent alienation, they struggled against the urges to give in to the sheets and pillows. There were long days with muscle soreness and a complex rationale for staying in bed. Most days, Kevin would wake to watch the overcast skies behind the ascot valance and curtains. He would search the clouds for a change that may have taken place during his slumber, something he could seen through the translucent fabric covering the glass. During this time they attempted various jobs with little recompense. Annie tried to start knitting circles in their area but was met with disappointment. She threw her needles at the bedroom door, just missing Kevin's glass cuff links resting on the edge of their oak bureau. "I'm sick, Kevin! I'm sick of these walls. I can't keep handing our debt over to my parents. I want to stop living off them. I want to start living again. I want the days to just go on by again without me noticing." Kevin just rolled over, covering his head with their flannel comforter and drifted back into sleep.
"Here," Annie pulled the covers from the bed and handed Kevin the car keys and her Visa. It was obvious she had been up since dawn; her eyes were solid with stoicism he hadn't seen since before their marriage. She wore a smart pair of dark slacks, a tastefully patterned blouse, and a new pair of pumps. Her hair had been cut to her shoulders, it seemed to have a bounce to it even though she was still. "Where the hell am I going?" but he knew before he asked she meant for him to change. "It's just another costume, Kev. Only this one will let us go anywhere we want."
In the department stores he became panicked. He hadn't minded the confused looks while shopping in the grocery store or picking up a coffee before one of his many failed occupations. But here, staring at the possible combinations of success, shape, and color felt like a foreign country's citizenship exam. He held pants against shirts against ties and could make little decision on a suitable outfit. The salesgirl with long black hair and smooth cheeks dressed in all coffee-bean browns asked him if he needed any assistance. Kevin muttered something and walked away staring at the red and yellow carpet converge into an orange triangle just before the door.
Annie locked him outside when he arrived home four hours later emptyhanded. "Oh boy!" she hollered as Kevin tried to inch his way through the bathroom window. He fell on the grass after she poked him in the eyes. After Annie locked it, he screamed, "You can't do this! We can't just give up who we are to be actors at a cash register." She opened it back up and looked him over with the same sternness as earlier that day. "Do you remember when you were real little and your mother said you couldn't dress like that while you lived in her house? That when you were older you could dress however you wanted? Well, it wasn't a freedom of expression she was talking about. It was the freedom to find what works and what don't. That," she motioned to his ribbon tie and outfit that could have been found in Twain's closet, "definitely don't work." He stood up and stared her back behind the once again locked window. Sitting inside, Annie heard the car drive off. She ran to the door in time to see the taillights disappear around the corner. Near the threshold on the porch was Kevin's ponytail rubber band.
When Annie answered the front door, she asked the man wearing the periwinkle blue V-neck sweater, "Can I help you?" Vaquero growled at the man from behind her calves. When he reached for her shoulders and she slammed the door on him and ran to the bedroom. He banged on the door with his hammer fists. It resounded through the den and into the hall. She hated Kevin at that moment for talking her into phone-free household. She screamed to a window A mirror from 1867 fell to the hardwood floor without breaking. Annie picked it up and held it to her chest. She cried, "I'll call the law, boy! You just go!" in an attempt to scare him away. The pounding stopped. "Did you buy a phone today too?" She unlocked the door and looked on him with disbelief. His hair had been cut very short and styled evenly. His mustache wiped from his lip like unimportant spilled milk. His black, patten leather shoes gleamed under the cuff of his stiff bluejeans. "Don't for a second think I'm going to like this." She hugged him inside the house to the bed where their naked legs kicked the bed liner from mattress.
The next morning Kevin rose at sunrise. Annie, with her head covered by pillows, peered through a small opening admiring his body as he dressed. Kevin faced her when she giggled to herself louder than she expected. He smiled and dove on top of her, attempting to tickle her through the comforter. She squealed and kicked and told him to stop without any real intention of wanting him to. He chortled at her now squinting eyes and asked her over and over what was so funny? As the blankets and pillows receded, he was able to expose her weak spots and get under her arms with his fingers. She squealed louder as he asked, "What? What?" Then something dangling over her face grazed her skin lightly. Her delight shifted to horror as she threw herself away from him into the corner, swatting at her face for the unseen insect. "What's got into you?" Kevin asked. Before she answered she noticed the bolo tie hanging from Kevin's collar. She pointed to it, "Sorry, wasn't expecting that?" Kevin looked at its tails from the palm of his hand. "If it has to be their way, I'll follow it on my own terms." She kissed him and pushed him out of the bed towards the door.
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 I've been doing this a lot and I mean to put it someplace else, but please, indulge me one more.
Somewhere in the backthere, a heartbeat started. I felt this heartbeat start. I'm sure it hadn't been there the day before, but today, in the rightnow, the day before the heartbeats began doesn't even seem to have been there at all. It wasn't a soft place where I found it, and nothing too solidly supported. It was prostrated against a cold, hollow examination table, waiting for human fear to come close enough to attach itself. And once I found it, I knew I could never do this again. I could never do something so jeopardizing to my peace in life. And with it beating like a furious parent on a locked door, I felt the steel fingers enter my ear, bumping and nudging against the canal walls. My heart was throwing off the doctor's precise hands. I tried to remember times before my heart got so loud and with uncertainty told myself it would all soon be over and I could go back to the silence. When the doctor got the rock out, I pulled myself up quick and away from that empty arena of echo and silence. I wanted the trees and flowers and dirty nails, the couch and carpet and brand new sneakers, I wanted to run the mile, do the chin-ups, and be thankful for only a red patch instead of the blue one--it's better than no patch at all. He asked my mom if she wanted to keep the rock.
It's been recorded many times since it appeared. I have writings of it in books, notebooks; marginal musings of it scribbled with a clock in between ventricles, attached to the septum. I was so afraid of it. I wanted it to just stop pounding in my chest, shaking the optimism from my skeleton. That it's something I can't control causes me to recoil in eventual exhaustion. And then I thought if I could calm it, would it just stop? But it's simple to become emblazoned with malign when the sky keeps the blue depths of hope cold in overcast. It's too much clutter to even organize a simple idea or task much less look past the same nothing you've become accustomed to over the past five years.
But there were times where it seemed like it could beat after I had folded over. Dim and warm times that were wet with saliva, sweat and sea salts. Some were frigid and looked like the world had water spilled on its paint through the windshield. The defroster pushed it around, bleeding the greens and blues into the orange circles. The car engine rumbled around us as our fingers grasped for anything soft and living. We mimicked the beats with shouts to the ceiling, palms against the upholstery. Our lips kissed shared breath, breath that reminded you of the home you didn't have yet but would one day own. Those hearts beats came like simple dancing instructions, showing you the path to a sure future, showing you your own bright glow in the center of the universe, giving your perception the notion it's nothing but one point on an infinite number of planes instead of a black hole, eating everything inside-out. I tried not to look in the mirror. I wanted to remain a part of these beats than to become a metronome again. The ticking needed tocking so the ticking could go on seeming good. When putting the same ear that once held a rock against a shoulder I had pulled up from earlier, I heard that second heart cooing the song of certainty.
It's easy to run from it. You wouldn't want to, but it's easy to pull out and run. And why would you want to? Why would you want to run from something that felt so good and right and comfortable? What could possibly be in that empty storage unit I call a bedroom that isn't already in someone's head as a good idea for a start. What blew my mind so bad that I can barely focus on a warm exchange over lunch? Tonight we stood around a fire that was dying before it had felt a spark. We questioned about the best way to get it going, glowing faces a foreground to the moonlit trees surrounding the backyard. I couldn't think of a more perfect mass extinction but for the big fires of years before died out a little more each year. And it's our fault we let it get so low. Our fault for not learning how those before did it, how they were able to make it tower with ingenuity and starter instead of failure with matches and gasoline.
The jokes worn down by drugs, laughter labored by the windchill, most of the grouping left for the warmth of the indoors. I stayed behind and fell in and out of the conversation, distracted by my heartbeats. There, with numb fingers and toes, I felt all right with not speaking up in front of a crowd. Just standing there and studying each face without the torture from looks of judgment. I felt spared of guilt for a moment and visualized the blood pumping through my heart as colorless light, illuminating all of my muscles and organs. I stood, staring into faces that saw me from the corner of their peripheries as a working invisible man model. There, I felt my heart beginning to beam me into the days ahead, the ones I wouldn't see until they were happening static-electricity-quick around me. It would shock me into non-thought again and I'll slide around the mountain of my life and love. Once there I'll stop listening to it like a doomsday radio station. The semantic noise of everyday will just become the banter to forget by bedtime. The aching will vanish with shaken hands, committed promises, and the high likelihood of fruition with longterm investments. Support will be a thick mattress and a down comforter from December through early April. I felt my heart so close, and still so close, in the rightnow. And it no longer seems like an empty well of desperation and fear, but a potter for a lonely seed of possibility, filled to the brim with all the organic and emotional compounds to sustain a life.
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 We can break through this and find life on the other side, that'd be as easy as getting up in the morning. You can dance the mambo through the sunlight and the grass no matter the temperature. You'll still sweat in your T-shirts and slacks and make the world hold their noses. There's nothing to overcome, nothing challenging. Just yourself. Just yourself and remember what you've already done a few times. Make jumps to get out from the swamp of your bedroom. Prepare a trajectory that will send you through the door for good. Don't come back. We'll smile for you as we remember your trail of broken homes and windows. We'll paint ourselves with your rage and salute the sky with empty beers. We'll say, "It'll do him some good," and "I wonder what he's doing now." Yes, we will all smile for you so don't begin to think you'll disappear.
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 Over the summer when we got back, I was so excited to be that close in again. I remember the home was warm and golden, shoes all rowed together under the Peruvian chair. And it was called out from beyond the bookshelves, "Who's there?" and laughter like rapids, "<i>Stop it...</i> Hey! Really, who is it?" as I set down my mandolin and sleeping bag. I'm thankful for those kind of embraces, thankful for the ease they set over people. When did we reach out so far into space that we forgot how to touch hard. But here we stand in rock and cracking into each other when we get off course. I miss the days before learning how to spell ennui.
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 As of midnight, the Earth felt another of its children step a year closer to decomposition. All of the children around him cheered him for coming this far. He smiled above them, urged them to run with him, to win the race before the ground could use their parts to repair, rebuild in the place of their footprints. The Earth let a tear squeeze past to feed the blood-hungry soil that allowed their feet to tramp it. Once the children had run another year, their pace began to slow. Some held their hands over their heads, breathing through their gaping mouths, others clutched their sides and squinted their eyes in pain. The boy who had urged them to run at first called out at them again to run. Run! he cried to their exhausted, sweat-ornamented faces. He implored them to run and touch and see and taste and yell and think and think and think. The Earth turned against them as it always has, giving all who wish it, a place to run forever. After years of running, some of the children stopped with promises of returning to the race. They were circled and circled, each time a longer standing reminder they gave in, that they stopped compromising for themselves. They wrote in their dreambooks every morning in hopes a specialist would be able to give them course and direction. But after years full of birthdays and anniversary and nicknames forgotten, the runners stop coming. They're running too fast to pry up a stump of dead wood, to even check if it has anything growing up from its decaying place in the starved soil. They've run around the world so many times they've stopped yelling back to keep the pack together. The pack is reduced to single units running in all directions, touching and feeling, seeing and tasting, yelling and thinking, thinking, thinking. And though the Earth cried each time they lapped a year, it cried it so the soil wouldn't eat the ones with light feet, because they were the ones the Earth hoped would keep it crying forever.
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 I feel okay this morning, like something settled over the lawn and left a residue of comfort in my few hours of sleep. When I stepped into the steam-breathing temperature my skin tensed for a moment and then rode out the shivers, like a mild withdrawal back into a less stuffy, better lit world. I decided on shaving my face much like one would mow the grass after a week's worth of work; taking care of something mildly neglected. I've read a few stories and reread accounts of my life stuck in the whirlpool of past moments. It led me to listen to voices dead and gone, of those who died just to see what it felt like. My heart hurts for all those who haven't had the world cracked open and poured out for them, an omelet of everything frying away into inexistence. I'm worried for them and their sensitive skin, their unready mouths destined to burn on hot food. My compassion is with them right now. I wish I could be subtle for them, to ease them into this world that doesn't want them to fit. I want to help them all into this place I've found where everyday leaves traces of discord and concord. If they could be brought in without nerves kicking their bodies into convulsion I would be so content. But it's not that way. To see the world is to be forced through its skin, to have your head rubbed against the concrete with all the splatters of roaches and fallen flower petals. It's to be coerced into mediocrity against all of your agencies. It's the divine principle that divinity is a joke. Ultimate irony through violent sacrifice. How I want. How I want to grease them all with durability and push them right through into that amazement without all the loss and grievance. There, they could sleep together in a bed of the world unafraid of the cold.
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 I too used to be a kid. Strange thinking back on it now. It's like you're born with tunnel vision, like someones holding their hands on the sides of your eyes, keeping you going straight into whatever you're getting into. Then one day, the hands are gone and you can't remember where all your friends went. You get mad and stop caring and start giving yourself these easy little goals that'll get done whether you think about it or not. But you don't want to hear about that. You want to hear about how I can read your mind. And you should want to! It's a careful art I've spent the bulk of my lifetime perfecting. To be able to know exactly what you'll do next. Now, now! Easy... I know you want to inch on out that door, but it's not happening. Now son, don't get scared now. Think of this as a blessing instead of an intrusion. You're lucky I'm a gracious old man who never had any intent to do anyone any harm, physical or mental. I mean, sure I've hurt a few people, broke some hearts in the process of getting here, today, but I never meant to hurt any of them, never once. Sometimes I just got a little caught up and lost the matter at hand and dove into my personal grief, other times I cut to their bone because it was for their own d***good. It pained my heart something awful when I told my mother I didn't believe in God's good graces anymore. But I couldn't lie to her anymore, it wasn't right. And I lied to so many people, son. So many and for no good reason but fear. Fear of their faces crying, gnashing, or just being indifferent. I loved seeing them smile at me and descend on me with their tickly-fingers and praises. And you know what I learned in my years? Do not fear. I've spent too much time with it keeping my laughing for only a close ear, handcuffing my fight to the hearse's steering wheel. So if you go marching through that door, away from here and what could save you a whole lot of time learning by trial in error, in fear, then you're already taking another step in the wrong direction. You hear me? Anyway, what was I saying? Boy! You've got to be on the ball here. You can't just sit in the back drawing pictures of missiles and soccer balls all d***afternoon and expect it to happen. Good things don't come to waiters, they come to workers! And work isn't in some factory or a business suit, it's how you decide to sow the fields of humanity. Now I know that sounds all new-wavish or hippie-punker-nouveau-post-Andromeda-Strain-whosits, but it's the truth. Not God's or Franklin's or Tenzin Gyatso's truth. The truth. You can't be afraid. Of anything. Can't be afraid of bobcat. Can't be afraid of sex. Can't be afraid of guns. Can't even be afraid of the toilet seat being cold in the wintertime. You just gotta be smart. You don't live to read minds being afraid of things. You live to read minds being aware of things.
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