And Then There Was (NOUN,VERB,ADVERB, OR LIGHT)

There is something sensual and holistic about taking whole tea leaves between my fingertips. I take a greater joy in this than ever would the man leaning on an open steel grate door pinching rolled leaves of ganja. I know because I've asked him. He told me to tell you: hello. I know the smell of black tea better than a wolf knows home. I've told him so and he just stared at me. I think I offended him. I want to rub tea leaves all over the world and have it fix everything. Which it does, for the five minutes it takes for me to finish it. War always commences when my mug is empty, though. Sorry, Earth, I promise I'll pick less flowers next time; though I promise it wasn't me who deflowered it.

First day back in the city, and already my mindbody is going through detox, and boy is it painful. A city full of people leaving you alone as opposed to a suburban campus full of people trying to grab hold of your buisness and stuff it in their mouths. But my buisness has no grisel, I try to tell the city, you don't even need to use a steak knife. But it doesn't hear me over snapping of photographs and smell of the subway grates, and it just gets distracted looking at the swinging hips and the clinking of purses and coins and the exchanging of left cheek then right cheek kisses. I guess I'm not its type.

The two hour train ride back from Stratford left me feeling even shorter than normal. The windows, I have found, on the MetroNorth transit line are arguably much higher than those in Jersey. Leaves me face pressed against the dirty window trying my hardest to see the backsides of dilapited buildings, snuffing as much recycled air as my borderline asmatic lungs can handle.I wrote for myself last night for the first time in a whole semester. It's as if I haven't had a self these past weeks. It's as if I've been an automated machine working on papers, worrying about internships and people and people's perceptions on me and I on them and them on me on them to the point that I took a raincheck on provoking thoughts for my own sake rather than other's. Not very like me in the least bit. My mindbody has welcomed back with open arms my conciousness; they very much missed one another and one owed the other a sweater.

I have the "Willie" theme song stuck in my head. The soundtrack to that film is so catchy; I watched it with both of my parents today. My Mother hmphthatwascoolprettyinterestinghmph-ed it, and Keith laughholyshitthatwasfuckingawesome-ed it. He got the weird vibe I get from it too, which in my eyes makes the movie successful. You can't forget Willie.I've watched two hours of Current TV-- my favorite addiction and my only TV addiction besides Californication and Weeds (not to be confused with a pot addiction that I don't have, the show just rocks my suburbia awkwardness and has a fantastic array of genres in its soundtrack)-- mostly about modeling in Brazil. Though it did have a segment on the Rio Carnival. I would like to fly there, please. It's okay, I'll just walk; I did buy new shoes today.

My Mom and I passed a terrible accident on the way to Connecticut yesterday. A lady was laying on the road covered in blood; people rushing all around the middle of the lanes. My breathe was short. I kept on singing along to the song playing because I didn't know how to stop acting normal. When we drove by the scene, you could see a Jeep on the opposite side of the highway that had collided with the guardrail; a man lay in the road near the car, and the woman on our side was across the barrier. She could not have been wearing a seatbelt. Two men pressed clothes close to her head, her feet kicking every once in a while. How fragile we truly, truly are. I hope, that they are both alright. We drove on and I texted Doug, telling him I loved him and that breathing is pretty cool after all. Life is so fragile. But its a beautiful fragility, isn't it? Wouldn't life be less beautiful if we all could withstand the sheer force of gravity, of each other's brutality, of nature?Doug's saying on the matter, later, when I rang him: "It's humbling, isn't it? But really, I mean as long as your not lying on the side of the road with a broken back and ambulances all around you, what do you really have to complain about? I mean you're you, I'm me, I love you, and you love me, and thats all we need! I mean what else matters?" And really, what do we truly have without connections to people, connections with animals, with things? If love is all you need and nothing else is worth mentioning, then there are a lot of poor people in the world and money won't cover the half of it. But if being bathed in gold means sticking my toes in gooey algae at the bottoms of lakes, touching every vintage fabric at a street fair booth, and Doug's nose tucked into the back of my neck, then lets get rich and give everybody nice sweaters, and teach them how to dance.

I'm writing a sidebar piece for a railroading magazine about Grampy and his HO scale train set. His journalist friend who loves fish and suds wrote a three-page story on his set and somehow stumbled upon the stack of pictures of myself behind a certain part of his railroad. Every other October since I was seven he's been taking my picture in that exact spot. I was always too short to see the set eye to eye when I was seven. I always liked watching the undersides of the faux mountains; hearing the little wheels along the tracks and hoping nothing would derrail. I stacked piles of the little plastic people onto open air freight cars. Cargo cars. Set them into motion and hoped no one jumped ship. My favorite was the sitting boy weilding a newspaper. "I want my two dollars!" There was no John Cusack figure, to my suprise.I have started Wesley's tour diary, and my favorite bits so far of the 566 pages in existence have been his mentioning of cassette tapes, Willie Nelson in women's clothing, and never having seen a Jam Band perform and getting utterly confused at a"jam sesh".

I have a good feeling about this summer. A warm feeling that smells like inky book pages, has a slightly British sound, and feels like Lally's fingers caught in the net of mine. Possible beach trip Monday, starting Zoe's Wednesday, Adirondacks on Friday. With that I bid the world of interwebs adiu, adiu, to you and you and you. "And here's your bit of zen" from one of my favorite men of science (mostly because it's a compilation of many of my favorite words):

Life...is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.

-Douglas Adams