It’s hard to meet someone serious at college. Everyone’s busy,
self-centeredly grinding away at their dreams. So much so that
people tell you to not even try (especially as a freshman).

I was mostly at ease with myself—as a freshman. I had an
excellent skincare routine—it was downright luxuriant, and it
kept me going, through that romantically baren and lonely year.

But we humans hope—we buy lotto tickets to dream on—though we know the awful math. We Gen Z’s seem to have our own unique brand of loneliness, born of covid and Internet-age experience.

My romantic expectations, sophomore year, were low—ok, unmeasurable.

Looking around was depressing. There were socially awkward STEM majors, jocks, frat men (sure the world’s laid-out just for them) and ‘CSOM Bros" (business majors more interested in parlaying my Grandmère’s money than me) and the elusive, emotionally reserved, ‘regular guys.’

But the unexpected can happen. We all know how crowded campus coffee shops are—the students move in and out in tides as noisy as the real, salty ocean. And then there you were, a rumpled, 25-year-old doctoral student—from another world—asking to share my table.

The loudest thing in that room was your sense of stillness. You seemed to be a new and distinct species, and as we talked, you seemed to somehow smooth my anxious edges. After a few meets, the thought, ‘I really like this guy,’ seemed to have its own gravity.

We somehow managed to thread the ‘too busy to care’ dynamic, and as time went by, you helped me channel my absurd, fiery, pastel-painted, first-love, early-twenty girlhood heat into something longer lasting, deep and authentic. Congratulations! It’s been two years.

Separating now, would be like removing the salt from the sea.
.
.
Songs for this:
Playing House by Kudu
So Much Mine by The Story
After Last Night by The Revlons

it’s like I am reborn into confidence
drowning in my butterflies
feeling like I could run for miles
or maybe take my chance at flight

it’s like I am covered in warm blankets
and never hot enough to sweat
while snow clumps cling to trees outside
and I’m finally breathing air that’s fresh

it’s as if the world is completely changed
and there is nothing left to regret,
and I can finally breathe out calm air
and lay all my burdens to rest

it’s as if all things have disappeared
and the only things left are us,
but instead of feeling immensely lonely
I feel nothing except for your love

there’s nothing quite like my love for you
there’s nothing quite like your love for me;
thank you God for something so beautiful
thank you God, this was not supposed to be
and now I’m radiant in my care for her
and now I’m lost in a pleasant dream

it’s like commitment was never easier
it’s like love flows from bottomless fountains
it’s like I’m maturing in what love is
it’s like thankfulness and love is boundless-

He brought laughter and he was important to many.
He died 50 years ago and his name was Jack Benny.
Mel Blanc appeared quite often on Jack's show.
At the age of eighty, it was Benny's time to go.
If Jack had died one day earlier, he would've died on Christmas Day.
He was a very talented individual who died half a century ago today.
Jack was an actor and it's an actor's job to pretend.
He went into a coma before he died and it was sad because it was the end.

One year ago tonight, I had to watch as your life came to an end.
It was sad to witness your demise and I felt so much pain within.
You died in 2023 on the 9th of December.
You'll be a dog who I'll always remember.
When I saw you die, it was sad to know that you would have no tomorrow.
Each and every person who has lost a dog can understand my sorrow.
Last year, you didn't live long enough to see Christmas arrive.
Rest In Peace, Hazel, I certainly am sorry that you didn't survive.

At thought speed what's an instance cost
- adjusting thirst too much salt,
- take sweat stores, make spit,
- later, after recent thirst through
re examine the examined life,
worth it thirsty, worthit intuitively
quenched, no lucit licet vide
Gotta expand the penetralium,
gotta deal with spherical infinite points,
examining a lived life investment in others…

On the surface, just below the mountain tops,
certainty in time passing, here it was, today,
passing faster as I notice, half a day runaway
- it is 19:15, same day, that half later
whiling with a will to feel as fine as can be,
a one in nearer nine billion than eight, all being
the potential reader, the potential knower more
or less essential to the task at hand,
last straw,
Zippo all fueled, flicked in the wind,

telling who ever happens to hear,
listen, living with enough is enough for anyone,

living with less than a full **** sapien ration,
is a matter of mind and enviro-mental genetics,

breathe along the curve, think around the effort,
what knowing is called for to function animated,
become alive
in an active atmosphere of anxious thoughts, all
remenants of familiar spirits, the domain of we
the ones once called wise, for ways we know,

how we grow from suckling to sage stage,
wishing to know, both why and how, right now.

Wait,
we're here, we think
wait and see if we can think a way beyond,
same old reasons for defense spending,
same old reasons for earning a living,
same old reasons for holy terror and grace,
best breaths bet last,  you know,
confess, say you know the secret reasons
for war and hate of the others who speak

as dogs, barking, and smell, of smoked fish.

Starlink, think, everywhere we put a solar
water purifier invented by Dean Kamen,
we could make life possible, comfortable
and all the Earthlings could use Google translate,
to read centuries worth of discoveries since,
Gobekli Tepi was hidden until we could
make sense of logotherapy, personally.

EKOCENTERs wherever useful cost less, by far
than the war in Ukraine, as of 8/26/2024,
many problems are locally mini
we were thinking you were saying,
go exxon- no, share this think
The USA budgeting and borrowing servants
toiling away in oligarchical lobster stacking orders,
selected by committees with donor profit share
maximization on constant priority, ever spending,
ever raising awareness for the payoff on investment.

Round figures, $300 Billion, on a war
for profit, bottom line perennial expenditure,
Industrial Base Support, {nee Subsidy, to La. Distr. 4.
good middle class incomes, and devine exec perquisites. }

Where did who invest whose time invested
in a musing adventure past last edge we spoke of,

this is new, day for with chocolate in my some time ago
coffee, plus the diet Dr Pepper, half eaten Carl's Jr.
get home in time to feed the recluse, useless,
laughing to himself, type, archetype tuned
in to the many mirrored experience enchantment

mental attach mentenough for a burp alert
remenants, remind me later, ding, soccer practice
active bombshell grandma in anybody's seventies,

yes, nuffsthoughtoughtasaid
you seem to think along these lines, where
from my vape charging chair, staring past
a half-eaten carls junior burger reaching out to me
- thirsty and the Dr Pepper's gone, swallow
could we be shared madness therapy,
past certainty, we make chaos spin
phi final analysis, if we must agree
this is it, this is the same river,
one ready reader finds it worth it.
we were rating for trading with whom
they must have wondered, at Bonelli's landing,

spell it like it is, we say bewondered, blundering
on,
expecting edit rights, extend throo wow, how long
today is our anniversary and for this guy, I never
learned, as in when it may have done a lot
of good
to think you imagined I kept breathing, remembering
to breathe, and truly trusting sleep in peace,
what's conceivably real,
old guy's serving what purpose, if not thinking

mere, what ifery, mind you we form, inform
just enough turbulence to take a breath a while
to suggest// a [aipause. yes

When you died, you died too soon.
You died one year ago this afternoon.
A vet tried to save you with a blood transfusion but you died anyway.
You died and my heart was broken one year ago today.

I bought you in 2017 and you were only six years old when you died.
If a person ever says that I didn't love you, that person will have lied.
Some Chihuahuas are hateful but you were not.
You were one of the best things I've ever bought.

I took you to two vets but your life still came to an end.
You weren't just a dog, you were also a wonderful friend.
I have something to say and it is 100 percent true.
You were a very special dog and I'll always love you.