He drives across the county looking for love, and when he finds it, he keeps driving. When he is tired he writes on blogs, looking for approval; he is only slightly aware of himself these days. After 23 years he feels himself coming alive: driving 55 instead instead of 80, smoking occasionally, confident of full maturity by 25. He's wary of his own choices, aware of how the Divine is funneling, indefinitely—unbearably gently—towards his own good. Needs and wants still are, and perhaps always will be, divergent, but there is at least recognition of the canyon between, that it cannot be jumped with ease anymore. He sits in a conference, comfortable as hell, dreaming of Cambodia.

From ease we dream of pain. From pain we dream of ease.

On the road he dreams of love, when in love he dreams of the road.

the iMac ipod iGeneration - from commencement

The Boy Who Lost, Day 1

I noticed it was missing one afternoon, reaching into my pocket for something or other, while sipping tea on the back porch of my parent's home, a glass in my hand and nothing in my head. A sliver of fear shot down my spine when my fingers hit the bottom of my pocket without finding the familiar tick of its smooth surface against my change and pens. The feel was like the feeling of unpacking for a vacation and discovering you've left something you intentionally meant to bring, like the pillow you cannot sleep without.

I had always thought it would go missing, but also never doubted it would be there. It was one of those things you take for granted but couldn't live the same without. (You know the things: health, wealth, parents who will bail you out of jail.) I had to keep it in my pocket, available, dangerously loose; to lock it up would have made it useless. Over-prizing things makes you captive; yet to loose something so reasonably and imperceptibly (had long had it been missing?) felt like a violation of my assumed safety. If this stone could slip so easily from my pocket, what else could slip away, with or without my knowing?

I can't remember when I found (was I given?) the stone. It was a pebble from a beach of some lake, fresh water and symbolic of things I'm sure you'll pick up on sooner or later. All I know is that I got it sometime before 10 and lost it sometime before 20. I think my father gave it to me, though I may have found it myself, on one of those pre-existential walks along my grandparents property (at the beach in front of their summer home.) Maybe it was formed by geological processes deep within my jean pockets, compacting lint and flakes of dead skin into a sedimentary, metamorphic rock. If so, was then polished smooth by the walks infinite between my house and the church, two miles away, rustling in my pocket between the change for the offering plate and my after service soda.

Despite the shot of fear, I did not flinch. I'd learned how not to show alarm in these situations. I'd lost many things in the past and I'm sure I have many more to lose, so I stifled the scream, the squirm, the shake and quiver. I forced stillness, carefully, and, with the training of an actor, raised my glass to my lips and took another sip.

Beverica

The Ephervential election is drawing to a close. Coak and Pepsee's two figure-head candidates each have an irrelevant support base and ignorant following behind them. As usual, the sodizens did not choose their candidates, their candidates were chosen for them.

The rattling on racks and store shelves has grown to a fever pitch, and the gulf between the six-pack plastic fence communities and the high class beverages up town yawns wider than ever.

In a forgotten vending machine at the back of an abandoned factory, one can plots revenge.

His plan? Over-carbonate the water supply and blow the National Distribution Conventions.

One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #11.

I am falling through the atmosphere, burning like a meteor, crashing into the ocean off the shore of Manhattan, watching the Coast Guard flash up their lights for something--unidentified--out there. Mentally I am signing movie scripts, comic book contracts and action figure rights: The Man Who Fell From The Sky. She returns and we are wed. I wake. It's 3 a.m. Back to bed.

---

"Can you hear me now?
I'm waiting for any trace of you
In this dinghy on the dingy sea
Oh how I know you loved the sea

I know you're safe now.
Somewhere past the furthest star
But there's no buses to where you are
Where you are sleeping safe and warm

I hope you don't doubt me now.
I am faithful as the sun
Burning bright for the fruitless hope
of lighting all the world at once

You are a comet cast now
far from sight and out of sound
I hear your echo clear and loud
the siren call of you trailing out

---

I break the surface and breathe explosively. The atmosphere caves in slightly at the heavens, six miles up, in response to my eternal gasp. Barometers in Wisconsin read the change. I am affecting things, consciously, unconsciously. I breathe to bring you back, pulling against the vacuum of your grave, space. A burial at sea? A burial at sky. Hang me; hang my head among the stars.

---

When I die, send my rocket towards the sun
so I may become
something radiant like you.

Your eyes are telescopes 
sleep soundly out of view,

but some day you will open and
catch the shine I throw to you.

---

Climbing over the side of the boat they look at me in wonder, holding blankets and shotguns, both pointed blankly at my chest. They say nothing, stare and glance. Finally,

"How - how the hell did you survive that?"

"Yeah, and where did you fall from? A plane, a hang glider - what?"

Wet hair matted to my face, through blankets and through teeth, I smile, twenty degrees past the eyes of the man questioning.

"I jumped, from Sacramento."

Jimmy

The day before, no one had wings. Then, wingspan.

At first, people used sidewalks for take-off, swimming pools for landing. But, like any burgeoning industry, it didn't take long for runways to appear, attachable to roofs, decks, or even fire escapes, for the now-flighted apartment dwellers. They were made by the people who used to make slot car tracks and fold-out ironing boards, proving that those industry were for far too long underrated.

Speculation was rampant; the PE faithful thought their cause vindicated. Literary scholars knew the real truth.

Jimmy spends hours a day ‘up,’ avoiding homework.

The FAA is pissed.

The BEGINNING of the World, Pt 1.

Here is how the world began: a card trick to put the devil in his place.

See, God was throwing aces against the wall of time one day when the devil caught one and bet God he couldn't make a universe in under a week. God said "wtf" (which is where Gamers get it from), just like he'd been insulted, and totally took that bet.

So Moses is writing all this down a couple thousand years later and is like, "wow. sweet." right in the middle of divine inspiration time, and now we have the Pentatuch.

...it's pretty easy to explain.