(See what I am saying?)

having cake, and eating it too

i pulled the chocolate cake out of sam's refridgerator and stood in the kitchen eating it.

Sam's kitchen is almost done being remolded. As i stood there in the middle of the kitchen i watched a man lay the 2" tile around the electrical outlets. i ate silently as he worked silently. my eyes followed the tile along the wall above the marble countertop, around to the bar, and past the range and run around under the bartop. the white tile covered the room like pixels of light, at a resoulution of 6 pixels per feet.

i ate sam's chocolate cake and watched the man chip away at one particular tile to fit around the galvanized conduit.

"How long is this going to take you?" i asked, with half admiration, half pity in my voice.

"A lot longer than i thought." he replied without looking up from the 2" by 2" matrix.

"I usually have help. But i don't do this full time anymore, so i usually do it by myself." he continued.

I cut another piece of cake.

"I also do hardwood flooring. Or any flooring. Sometimes just general remodling. whatever needs to be done. But i would like to get out of this town." he said.

i swallowed my chocolate cake.

"Why?" i asked.

"There is no money here." he said.

"But there is wood." i replied. "which reminds me, i like to build picture frames for photographs. do you know where i can get any walnut"?

The man leaned up from his 2" by 2" world and leaned against the marble countertop.

"i have a friend i was telling sam about." he began. "Who owns his own mill about 20 miles outside of town. he does beautiful work and is real nice guy. i will leave his phone number and directions to his lumbermill with sam."

"And i have to tell you a story about him." the man continued.

"okay." i said.

"This guy used to work for the state. he was in the transportation department for a long time. and whenever the lottery was big he and his buddies would buy tickets." he smiled as we stood there in the silent kitchen, he with his tape measure, and i with my fork.

"well one day they won. they won big. and he quit his job and started that lumbermill because that is what he has always loved doing. and when you go out there, it isn't fancy, and he doesn't do it to make any money, but there is wood everywhere and he does great work. crown molding, shoe molding, all kinds of trim work. he just loves what he does and has always wanted to do it. I am sure he would give you some scrap if it suited your needs." he said as he leaned back over the marble kitchen counterop and stared at the grid of white.

Suddenly my ears began to ring in the silence of sam's kitchen surrounded by the white pixelated grid of ceramic.

I began wondering if it was such a oddity to do what you love for a living. i wondered why doing what you love and what you are good at never seems to be as profitable or as easy as doing just the opposite. It is never synonomous with 'doing what ever needs done'. it is never as pragmatic or as marketable as laying 2" tile in a quiet kitchen at 8:00 on a thursday night. i wondered if my odds at doing what i loved for a living were going to be any better odds than playing the state lottery. i wondered if i will ever be able to live my life and enjoy it too.

"would you like some chocolate cake?" i asked him.

"Oh, no thanks." he said to the white tiled wall in the silent kitchen.

untold

i hoped god was bulletproof.

because it looked as if someone had bad aim with the shotgun leaning against the door outside the cabin. the black sky was blown wide open with 100,000 buckshot holes that shot right through to the light of heaven. galaxies expanded above us like white gunpowder blown through a double barreled canon into the far corners of the universe.

the only other light in the world was unrolling across the lake like a pale white carpet from the flood light on the cabin deck. it drifted silently through the rising fog and scattered into the hemlock and oak trees on the far side of the lake.

i was lying flat on the dock in the darkness. the canoe sat silently in the fog among the shadows of the pale white light unrolling across the lake.

through it all i could hear them singing and laughing at the cabin. like a radio show from the 1940's, i listened and smiled, because i knew every face that belonged to every voice in the broadcast. and everyface was my friend. in the darkness under the hemlock trees across the lake 3 lights appeared in single file. i could hear prada and kiaya streak through the woods across the october forest floor past the three lights stumbling and laughing in the dark.

we watched them walk through the woods. laughter murmured through the fog and past the canoe floating silently and obiedianlty beside the dock. her heartbeat was gentle. it slowly beat against me, reminding me that she was real. we laid there silently as the laughter walked across the white carpet of light and fog unrolling across the lake and through the hemlock and oak trees.

i wasn't cold. i wasn't hungry. i wasn't tired. i wasn't anything. i put my arms her around her to feel her gentle heartbeat and the life in her skin, because thought maybe i was dead. but i wasn't afraid of the thought. and should i have had the luxury of having two lives to live in this lifetime, i would have ended one right then and there with her dark hair falling over me on the dock the hung out over the fog and the pale white light unrolling across the lake.

the three lights went out and bonwag's guitar began to play soflty from in the darkness under the hemlock trees across the lake. i could feel her smile. i saw the galaxies expanding. and i knew that god must be bulletproof. and suddenly, for the first time in my life, i didn't need to remember any of it. i didn't need to tell anyone else about it, because i could feel her gentle heartbeat. and i could feel her smiling, i knew she was watching the gunpowdered galaxies expanding above us. i knew she was listening to the guitar. i knew she saw saw everything.

and there was no one else anywhere in this galaxy that i needed to tell.

daylight saved

saving daylight

Bonwag said he wanted to capture it all on tape. he said he wanted to save it.

All the microphones on their stands were listening to the creaking hardwood floors and everytime the screen door shut on its hinges, made the green LED lights twitched and flexed in the dark cabin. The green lights especially flinched every time Molly sang.

I looked around the room. The air was warm and soft and seemed to melt and drip onto the wood floor with the candle wax. Shinny was sitting in the corner by the fireplace singing with his eyes closed. In between the candlewicked reflections in the window i watched stephey, cara and annie on the porch under the feeble incandescence recite the scripts of their lives. they were framed in the window pane like characters in silent movie screen acting out their life for me to see right there on the porch under the slow and lonley burn of a 60 watt stage light.

Suddenly i realized it is too big to capture. it is too big to save. i walked outside. under the darkness that warped over the tree tops and through the stars and silently enveloped the universe, i only felt smaller. I walked down the stairs off the deck and looked across the lake.

"i cannot save this", i thought.

i can not record it onto to tape, or to film.
i can not back it up on any hard drive.
i can not write it down.

i can only live through it. i had been looking forward to that night. i have been looking forward to my whole life. and as soon as it always comes i begin looking back on it.

i walked around the cabin. woody was sitting on the split log bench talking over the campfire light about the tax evading tactics of the Pfizer corporation and the quality of the motel life in Hoboken. so much for ghost stories. and without warning perez and george appeared out of the vignette. and soon bonwag with his guitar was strumming and soon everyone was singing and dancing and laughing. everyone was making what bonwag wanted to caputre on tape.

only there was no tape. there was no microphones. (except for the one woody unplugged from inside the cabin and was singing into as he danced around the brick fire ring like a sioux at a sun dance.) there was no way to save it.

as woody spun around the campfire, i spun around in my head. i realized how vain the attempts are to capture a life such as this. and how much time is wasted looking forward to and looking back on life. and how little time there is to live. i will never take a picure that will be better than the moment i pushed the trigger. i will never write a word more accurate then the moment i lived it. i will never be able to save my friends dancing and singing all around the fire. i could only dance with them as the whitepine burned soft and yellow in the brick fire ring. i could only join in adding a verse to the song about woody and i kissing all the men in new york city.* i could only keep my eyes open and be a witness to my life as it happened.

and later, in the darkness of the cabin, stepheys' voice rose off his pillow from the bottom bunk and into the rafters. it bounced off the underside of the roof with the firelight and the conversation in the soft cedar air. "Is everyone just taking an intermission from sleeping right now?" he asked.

perez was laughing somewhere under a blanket. snags was making sure woody was still breathing. and kiaya's tail was slapping against the bedroom door.

"what time is it? leanne asked.

i pulled my arm out from under leanne, and/or snags, and/or woody's breathing body, held it above the mass of heavy blankets, and looked at my watch.

"4:oo am." i said.

"actually it is 3:oo" she said.

i smiled into soft air and listened to the rain begin to fall outside. suddenly i saw the entire universe gliding through the unimaginable darkness. suddenly i saw our particular sun shining on the other side of this cockeyed planet. suddenly i saw the north american contintinent in the shadow. and i saw the smoke rise from the chimney into the hemlocks above the cabin into the darkness. suddenly i saw the whisky bottles and the candle wax sliding onto the hardwood floor. suddenly i saw, very clearly, woody's sock sliding off his foot as his leg flopped across my face.

i realized that i cannot save time, and it takes forces as big as the solar system, and the eternal momentum of this planet spinning around the infinite energy of the sun to do so. maybe it was intermisson. it was an extra hour of life we were living. and for the celestial time-out, i was surrounded, in very close proximity by some of the best people i could think of on this cockeyed planet.

i cannot save my daylight. i cannot save my life, i can only try to remember it. i felt honored that bonwag should want to save our time together. i felt lucky that i have a life worth trying to save. and i hoped bonwag, as he laid silent and stiffer than the logs the held the roof over all of our heads, knew at least one hour of our day together was saved. and it wasn't with microphones, or cameras, or even with words. and the best way to take advantage of the time saved was too keep my eyes open and watch this cockeyed world spin and dance around with my friends and i.

living comfortably

"Okay. I'll just have to tell you." stephey said. "woody bought a new car. An infiniti something-or-another luxury SUV. leather seats. big wheels. remote keychain thing that starts it. and he wanted to surprise everyone at the cabin this weekend... And he didn't want you to make fun of him for it."

I hung up the phone and smiled. i smiled because he bought a new car. i smiled because he could. i smiled because it reminded me that there are people in my life who are good and successful at what they do.

The phone rang again.

"What do you think about me being a pharmacuetical salesman?" Leanne immedialty asked. "It is good money. I get to travel. I get to go out to dinner." she continued.

"and I like all those things. Especially going out to dinner."

i was trying to imagine her in a business suit. i was trying to imagine her as something she is not. i was trying to understand the consequneces of trying to make a life out of what you love and who you are.

"What about your design jobs?" i asked as every secret hope i have for her started sliding towards the edge youth, and in danger of dissapperaring into adulthood forever and ever.

"I just want to live comfortabley." she said quietly. "I want to have a room where i can fit a bed and a desk in it. i want a room with windows. and i want to not feel guilty for going out to lunch."

maybe she should move into woody's new car, i thought.

"and what i want to do, i don't need to be at a company to do it. i will do it anyways. and i will keep doing it. and someday when comes my way i will get a job doing it."

i tried to listen but it made me sad. it made me sad to listen to her talk not about what she wanted to do but what she felt she needed to do. and i smiled. i smiled because i was trying to imagine her being a pharmacuetical salesman. i smiled because there is a good chance it will never happen. i smiled because she reminded me that there are people in my life who are good and successful at what they are, and maybe someday at what they do.

i hung up the phone and turned off the computer. i wanted to keep working. but i couldn't. i couldn't look at the actionscript staring indifferently back at me from the screen. i couldn't look at the cutting board and the scrap cardboard, or the exacto knife or the camera and it's green light glowing ignoranlty at me in the dim room.

for the first time in my life i wondered if it was worth it. i wondered why i what i do doesn't allow me live comforatalbly. i don't need an infiniti SUV, and i am not willing to do what it takes to get one. but i would like to eat lunch once and while. and have a room big enough put a bed and a desk. i thought about the consequences that come with the fact that i would do what i do no matter what. and sadly, it that is exactly what i am doing.

I walked up the alley and past the girl vomiting in the trash can while the police man waited politley for her to finish. i was wearing my sister's hooded sweatshirt that was too small for me. i took it off. it was cold out but i was tired of everything feeling too small for me.

suddenly it felt like i didn't know anything, and i wondered if i have ever learned anything. it felt like i was still playing soccer in the elementary school grass. my whole life i have only done what i wanted to, and it has lasted 25 years. i have never learned how to be a finacial anaylist, or a pharmacuetical salesman, i have never learned numbers or science or anything that didn't make sense to me. for a split second in the cold and dark i stood there on the street corner holding a sweatshirt that didn't fit and listening to the girl vomit in the trash can and thought about infiniti luxury SUV's, business suits, and bright rooms big enough to fit my desk and a bed into. for a split second it felt like who i am isn't all that comfortable anymore.

jody calls it a quarter-life crisis, and she is making a magazine about it - and i am supposed to design the logotype for it.

i call it reality, and i am trying to make amends with it - and all i want to do is find some common ground between being good at something and being successful at it.

i walked across the street and wondered how infiniti SUV's handled on the road. i wondered how often pharmacuetical salesman get to go out to dinner. and i decided to consider myself lucky that i am 25 years old, and up until now, i have no idea about either one.

and i felt lucky that what i want to do, i am doing it; as uncomfortable as is sometime is. and maybe i don't need to be at a company to do it. because, for better or worse, i will do it anyways. and i will keep doing it. and i am living. and someday - if it comes my way, i will live comfortably.

rewarding modern medicine

She took her elbow off the dinner table, leaned back in the maroon upholstery, and looked at me like a child who just broke the cookie jar.

"I guess that makes what we do sort of unnessary doesn't it?" she said as she turned to me.

We were talking to Mike about his experiences diagnosing Addison's disease, delivering babies, and all the things med students do that remind me that there are always people who are smarter and spend their time better than me.

She felt like i feel every time i listen to someone who reminds me that my perspective is always too narrow, and my mind is always too small.

i thought about my friend chris south who is 4 years into becoming a doctor, and how he has taught me that there are people who work hard to do real things for real reasons that have allowed me to tie a tie around my neck and pull my chair under the white table cloth and enjoy a wedding rehersal dinner.

I looked back at her and smiled with understanding.

i took a drink. i thought about countless phenomena, - only the likes of chris and mike would know- that were at work that allowed me to taste the white wine in my stomach and in my head. i leaned back and looked up into Pittsburgh's Grand Concourse through the dark air fermented a century and two years longer than the wine in my glass. The oak colored air acended into the mahogany and marble mosaic overhead and the ornamental phasade hung on the arched clearstory and arcades that bent and wrapped around and through the oak colored air and bowed sliently over us in honor of our presence.

i took a drink and watched the bride and groom kiss and groomsman toast and parents laugh. i looked at the sterling engraving on the teaspoons and dinner knives and followed the gold pattern on the rim of the dinnerpate as it tied itself in knots around the ground pepper scattered across the ivory china.

I looked at her looking at me. i thought about everyone who has ever taken advantage of their beating heart and voltaic mind to make the things i see more beautiful than they needed to be.

i thought about everyone who has felt their beating heart fall in love. i thought about everyone who has had their voltaic mind try to make sense and find grace in the world they perpsire and laugh and love and ache a lifetime through.

i thought about everyone who has acknowledged their retinas and corneas and contracting irises and looked at the world as if it were all the rewards of good - or at least corrected - eye sight, and a life allowed to be lived by good health; and protected by med students who work hard to do real things for real reasons. by doctors who are smarter and spend their time better than me. by farmers and biologists, botantist, engineers and chemitsts who have made it able for me to put my black patent leather shoes under the white linen table cloth and eat and drink and celebrate a new love under the mahogany and marble mosaic that arched and bent and wrapped around over head in the oak colored air.

I thought about everything i have ever seen in the world and held in my hands and thought in my head, and how it is both a reward of and reason for modern medicine.

I looked at the chandlier light that fell into the wine glasses and refracted through the green iris in her eyes.

"I think he would agree," i said quietly to no one in the world but her, "that life wouldn't be worth living- or saving - unless it was so beautiful."

black tie affairs (are not fair)

I was carrying out the trellis under which bonwag and mya were to be wed later that day. O'brien was on the other side, and when we set it down on the deck over looking the 7th hole, mya's aunt came up and tapped me on the shoulder.

"Um,. i think you look cute, but the country club people don't think so. they told mya's mom, who told me, i guess they want you to leave." she said with a sympathetic smile.

it wasn't that i purposly wanted the $400 a month pastel clad members in the club house to have to look at me with my puma's my dog chewed on, and my black t-shirt with the lion and lioness airbrushed on it from the north carolina zoo.

and as i was; they didn't want to look at me either.

and i wasn't really surprised that bonwag- and the tuxedo i was to wear- were late to their own wedding. so as i sat out on the bench by the parking lot waiting for my suit, and thus my acceptance into the establisment to arrive, i watched the old men and women stroll out of the country club and onto their golf carts. i watched the seersucker and pleats sit down on the vinyl seats of the golf carts, slam on the eletric peddle, and lurch silently down the black asphault path.

every status has it's symbol. and as a few of the men smiled at me without much effort to look sincere, i smiled back. not so much as to return the apethetic favor, but because i was thankful for the visual differences of wardrobes and age and class that we have in this world. It made me happy to realize that the tags on both of our shirts would reveal that the difference is not in the product, but in it's apperance. and apperance, is what kept me out of the bar and on the sidewalk. it is what keeps books from being read, people from talking to each other, ideas from being shared, people from learning, goods from being bought, businesses from thriving, economies from prospering, cultures from advancing, and wars from being peacefully avoided with enlightened and well-bred minds.

and thus, thoughtful, appropriate, and well designed appearances can save the world. or at least get me a drink in the club house.

So as it was, i waited on the bench for bonwag to arrive. the golfers and i were both were wearing %50-%50 cotton polyester blend on our backs. and they were both likely made in Malyasia/ Sri Lanka/ or some country that would remind us that mere fact that we here can choose what we wear is embrarassingly overlooked. and they might even have the same vendor number stitched on the back of the care tag in back of the collar. the difference is that theirs had a bigger collar that folded down. and mine displayed a beautiful painting of the rare and powerful kings of the giant cat family, which once lived in the very contintnent in which all of our fine garments were manufactured. - until the very jungles they lived in began being destroyed, and in the mountains eroded, to make the t-shirt factories.

There i was, on the bench waiting for the groom, with my t-shirt honoring the top of the food chain on the great African Savannah, and furthermore- lamenting the realities of the world. and there was everyone else, in their pale pink and green plaid shorts with their wallets bulging out of the pockets with the fake pearl buttons.

There i was, celebrating the visual differncences in the world and what they can control.

There i was, realizing there is no such thing as ugly.

And there i was, thankful, that, while i couldn't be in with the other groomsman on a bar stool, at least no one was wearing abercrombie and fitch.

The tux came, and i was allowed to attend the wedding. The Black tie was also my ticket to the dance floor. and after the second set from the band, i had worked up sweat swinging my Beautiful dance partner across the floor. So as perez and i cooled off at our table with some Old Crow on the rocks, i took off my dress shirt, leaned on perez's knee, and let the big cats growl to honor the North Carolina Zoo, the chance at World Peace, and to Bonwag and Mya's long and happy marriage.

not needing words

The sun had set and the leftover dinner was neatly packaged in white cardboard and styrofoam on the back seat. She had been talking about god and faith and all that she had come to believe.

and i was listening to every word. the conversation started at dinner, and even the waitress and the unlimited pasta bowl she kept refilling in front of me did not distract me. we talked right through the check and past the greeters saying goodbye at the front double glass doors. we sat outside the resturaunt on the bench and i listened to her as the waitresses and cooks left work to go home. we talked as the resturaunt closed and the windows went dark. we talked as my mind opened and my convictions lit up.

The pale green and anemic violet light of the car stereo and dashboard reflected on the inside of the windshield and windows, it slid down the glass like melting ice. and the milemarkers blinked past the right side of the jeep like tiger's eyes in the black jungle. She was leaning against the seatbelt like it was a sling helping her hold up the weight of all the thoughts in her head.

The night was big and dark. It felt like it did when i was a little kid and the world was bigger and it was darker and everythng was yet to be understood. It felt like it does when i think too much and understand too little.

I listened to what was right to her. and to what was wrong. I listened to her for real. and for the first time in so many converstations of the sort, i didn't judge and i didn't interrupt.

and for the first time i was envious.

and for the first time i almost understood.

i was envoius of her absolutness. i was envious of her simplicity. and i tried to think of anything in my life that i could compare to her convictions. i was a child in the sandbox wanting to show i her i had big shiny toys to play with with too. i ran through my entire life from that sandbox to the black night with the pale green and anemic violet light sliding down the inside the glass like melting ice and the leftover dinner neatly packaged in white cardboard and styrofoam on the back seat.

She made me tally up what i believe in and what i don't believe in. She made me recite to myself what was right and what was wrong. She made me think about what it is that i want to do. what i should do. and what i wish i could do.

I thought about what drives me. what frusterates me. and what makes me do what i do. I thought about every photograph i have ever taken and every color and shape and every letter of every word on every line i have ever i pushed and pulled and bent and have tried to make mean something more. and i realized the only way i can explain myself and what i do is by continuing to do it. to continue to try to do what is right. to continue to try to understand. to continue to try make what i feel into something i can see. and to make what i see mean something more.

and all the times in my life i have and haven't accomplished that came flashing past me in a slideshow faster and faster until all i saw was kodachromed confusion.

"How do you know what you feel is right?" i finally asked her. "It's like love. how do you know you when you are in love?" i asked.

"with love and faith." she replied, "i wish i could invent new words."

she looked out passenger window into the dark hillsides at everything we did and didn't understand.

"because there are no words already made that will work to express it." she said.

i looked at her looking out the window with her head resting on the seatbelt. and right there i understood her. i undertsood myself. and right then and there she made me believe in what it is that i want to do. and what i should do. and what i wish i could do, and that it has a place in this life. and maybe my understanding in god and faith and love isn't yet completley certain, at least i can believe i am working in the right direction towards them.

"i suppose sometimes it is not always words you are looking for." i replied to her with a smile in the dark.

what money can buy

"the lottery was $150 million last week." he said over the hum of the interstate passing under us.

"I bought a ticket on the way work with my coffee," he contiuned, " and i was thinking on the way to work, after taxes, it is about $50 million. Cash it out and you get an allowance of about $670,000 a year for fifty years. what would you do with that money?"

"i would give it to you to tell me what to do with it all." i replied. already the math was giving me a headache.

"yeah but how would you spend it?" he continued as he changed lanes.

Without much of a wait, i answered, " i guess i would keep doing what i do now."

"being with friends and getting inspiration from them and using it to make my work for them. only i wouldn't be broke anymore."

feeling i wasn't puting the thought into the coverstaion he was hoping for, he offered his own solution. "Here is what i would do:"

"the biggest burden in our life is this-" he began, and pointed at the time on the green LED clock in the dashboard. " So i would quit my job," he continued, "and i would travel the world. I would quit my job, and take my time. it is plenty of money to get around. I could travel to exotic places for 3 or four months at a time, just learning and seeing, and deciding what to spend all the rest on. and i would still have plenty of money left over each year."

The sun was setting. the girls were sleeping in the back. one on the other's lap, and the other against the black suit cases wedged between the seat and the hardtop. he was staring ahead thinking it through, and the clock on the dashboard waited to change.

"How do i know right now what i could spend it on?" he asked.

"and after half my life i think i would know what i wanted to spend all the rest on. but sitting here right now i know i have no idea what is out there. How do i know what to buy? there are things i have no idea about."

"i think i would also pay people to be my friends and go with me from time to time." he added with an involentary smile

i looked back the sleeping girls with hair as gold as the sun and as black as the night. i looked out at the setting sun and the dying fields of crops affored a season of life courtesy of the last continental glaciation. i pictured him searching in polynesian grass huts and deep damp equitorial jungles and lonely siberain bunkers. i looked at the time on the green LED clock in the dashboard. i thought about what he had said and what it meant.

and i realized that knowing what i want to do in this life can be as important as doing it. but sometiems even more expensive. and that even without the burden of time in our life, we are still pressed by the length of our lifetime.

and that all the money in the world, and all the time of a life can't buy certantity. all the money in the world, and all the time of a life can't buy clarity. all the money in the world, and all the time of a life can't buy peace of mind.

and that you don't need a dime in the bank or even in second on the clock to know that you don't have any of them.

skipping sinatra

The windows were down. the Cd we got as guests to the wedding was playing in the stereo. It was skipping on the sinatra track. She was sitting shotgun with her feet propped up out the window resting on the rearview mirror, letting the dry air and clean sun shine down on her cowboy boots. I was driving pat's car. Somewhere behind me on the road that carved through the corn fields was pat and woody. somewhere close ahead was my home, with my parents and dogs waiting for our arrivial. I steered the car over into the middle of the road until i was looking straight down between the double yellow lines. Right then and there, for the briefest of moments,

the landscape of my world was completley symmetrical. it was completly in balance. my horizon was a mirror image, it's axis running right down the center of my periphrial. drawn right down between my eyes were the bright yellow lines. moving out in perfect proportion in both directions were the two lanes of new black asphault heating up in the dry air and clean sun shine, then white lines, the edge of the black asphault, the limestone lining the road like a doyle draping over the pale green ditches and then the desaturated brown of the october corn fields. Everything in the world seemed to be balanced in both directions of my vision. Everything in the world seemed to be balanced in both directions of my mind.

I looked at her and her cowboy boots propped up on the rearview mirror. She looked at me. i ignored the stop ahead sign long enough to smile. My world right then and there was in perfect balance, and neither of us made any effort to fix blue eyes and the trouble he was in. She smiled back. We didn't say a word. i didn't fix the stereo. i didn't wish to be driving faster. i didn't wish to be older. i didn't wish to be younger. i didn't wish for anything. i don't know whether she knew it or not, but right then and there driving down the middle of my life on the double yellow lines on the road that carved through the corn fields, my life was in balance.

changing names

Any conversation I share with Woody would be uncomforatable to have in a church. So as we stood waiting for the ceremony to begin, surrounded by mahogany and marble in front of the confessional booth, Woody decided to start telling me of his recent endeavors with the oppososite sex. The sister coordinating the procession was reading of groomsman names behind me. The conversation continued until i felt the hair on the back of my neck raise and the surrereal feeling of the situation made feel i was in the company both heaven and hell. I least i was wearing a tuxedo for the occasion.

I want thank all the members of the St. John's Cathoilic Church of Middletown Ohio for their generous offereings that allowed for their new sound system, and for the quality amplifier that was strong enough fill the buttresses and balconies with the sounds of the brooding organ that overpowered our conversation.

Soon i was sitting on the front pew, watching body turn to bread, blood turn to wine, and my friends who used to makeout on the bunk bead above me in college, turn into husband and wife. i sat there and looked down the row at my dapor friends in their black suits, i admired the bridesmaids smiling gorgeous and teary eyed. and timidly, i thought about what woody was thinking right then and there. and i thought about all the conventions we rely on in our life, adjusted my tie, and was glad that some names can change, but still mean the same thing to me.