Strange to be a few barstools down from you at O'Brien's. Yet, a decade away from you in time. Tim is handsome. I doubt that means anything coming from me, but I didn't exactly talk to him. Not much else I can say. You're still out of his league. Always dating down. Thank you.

When Tim went to the bathroom, I wanted to cut through the smoke and tell you I love you. Not in a gesture of romance. Not in an act of heartbreaking bravery. Really just to say it. I haven't said it to anyone in such a long time. I love you.

Before I saw you, I went to visit my sister at the hospital. Jessica switched to the night shift last week. She gets the pleasure of telling cranky old men no more Vicodin, and in act of mercy, God grants her a week of sunrises to be viewed from the wide windows of the 13th floor.

The nurse tending the desk told me Jess was making the rounds. I creeped into four or five dark rooms before I found her. Might've even woken a bald woman in an iron lung. Do they make iron lungs anymore? Looked like an iron lung.

Anyways, I found her in a room grabbing a meal tray and putting on its "kosher" lid to be trashed. "Hey, man. Henri, this is my brother Josh. Josh this is Henri," Jess introduced. I shook his hand.

He looked up at me through black, thick-framed glasses. Henri had one silvery capped tooth that became visible when he smiled. The smile crumpled and wrinkled his face like an old newspaper.

"If you want you can just stay in here," my sister said. "Henri's a cool guy and I need to go grab his sleeping medication."

I told her sure. Sat down next to Henri. He looked to be in his early sixties. Very lean. Sharp jaw. Large knuckles. If he ever stepped in a ring, I bet he made a hell of a fighter.

Henri removed his glasses. Placed them in his lap next to a collection of Chekov stories.  I told him I really liked Russian literature. No matter a person's class they always seem to have servants. A butler to tell them their molding slice of bread was ready, and a maid to serve it.

"I feel just as lucky. Your sister has treated me like I just walked in from Hollywood Boulevard." I asked him what he was in for -- like it was prison.

"Fractured hip. The most cliche of old-timer injuries. Not proud of it," he laughed softly. "I have been biking across the country and a little white sedan didn't take much notice of me -- well, until after they hit me."

****. I asked why he was making the journey. His wife died in the summer. His life stopped. "Life is measured in the stops," he told me. "When your job, your hobbies, sometimes even your friends all become irrelevant and time doesn't matter -- you've stopped. I locked myself in our house for a month. Told the kids I didn't want them to visit. I got the best woman on the planet. I don't feel guilty for taking her. Because believe me, I had to earn her," he looked to the side for a moment. Staring at the black television screen.

Then he told me that life may be measured in stops, but greatness is measured in starts. Journeys. I thought you'd like that, Ms. Anna. Henri then asked me that terrible question, "got a wife?" as if to make sure the conversation didn't center on him.

I told him I had gotten a divorce three years ago. He asked if I had moved on. I confessed, I've hobbled. His heavy brow grew heavier. His hands pulled the bed table to the middle. He asked me to hand him a pen off the dresser. He uncapped it. "What year were you born?" 1986.

"Okay, and you were divorced in 2009?" Yep. "And you haven't started over?" Nope. Henri wrote something on the napkin and pushed the bed table to me. With a shiver, a weight passed through me -- going upwards. The napkin read,

"Josh
1986-2009, 2012-"

"Don't waste three years of your life again."

I only went to the hospital because Jess has a friend she wanted to introduce me to. Her name is Macie, I think. Macie called in sick. I'll call it a fair trade. I've written too much again. I hope you read this late at night, and when you awake, I hope the coffee tastes new. Your newspaper isn't wet with rain. I hope your journey starts or restarts. You deserve the same unknown energy that seems to be coming from under the concrete.

transcript from a cult movie

bolec: O! zobacz bracie! spójrz jak oni sie ruszają; nie sądisz że polskim chłopakom też by sie przydało troche luzu? przykómaj te kocie ruchy! mogliśbymy sie od czarnych wiele nauczyć... koko-dzambo i doprzodu! to moje hasło, dobre nie? czasami żauje że nie urodziłem sie czarny. hej! chłopaki! a może macie ochote objerzeć film? ja ogłądam po kilka filmów dziennie: pościgi, strzelaniny, wojny gangów, to mój chleb codzienny... mam nowy zajebisty film... "smierc w Wennecji", nieźle brzmi, co?                spokojnie, zaraz sie rozkręci...

fred: ty jak ty sie nazywasz bo zapomniałem? kolec? stolec?

bolec: bolec.

fred: no, więc posłuchaj mnie teraz uważnie, bolek... byłeś w stanach?

bolec:  nie...

fred: no właśnie... a ja znam kogoś kto był... i opowiedział mi to i owo... w iesz skąd przyjechali czarni do ameryki?!?

bolec:  z afryki...

fred: no właśnie... handlarze niewolników przywieźli ich z Afryki... A myślisz, że to taka prosta sprawa wysiąść na plaży w Afryce, złapać w siatkę zwinnego, silnego murzyna i wywieźć go za ocean?!?

bolec:  chyba nie...

fred: no jasne, że nie... udało im się to zrobić ponieważ wywozili tylko takich co albo nie potrafili spierdolić przed siatką, albo byli największymi głąbami z plemienia i wódz sprzedawał ich za paczkę fajek, bo i tak nie miałby z nich pożytku. i ci wszyscy nieudacznicy pojechali do ameryki. pożenili się, porobili dzieci... świat poszedł do przodu... pojawiły się komputery, amfetamina, samoloty, ale co z tego, jeżeli ich serca pompują tę samą krew, są potomkami człowieka, który na własnym podwórku dał się złapać w siatkę, więc nie uważam, że naszym chłopakom brakuje luzu... kapujesz?!?

and it takes just another big **** to have a one night stand,
and a big enough heart to have a relationship
so the soul enmeshes the juices - that famous
W.D. 40 moment - and a cheap U.B. 40 moment too -
it's a drag like that, he can run a 100 metres in under
10 seconds, but when he swims you just hear
dolphin cackling in the background - not **** aqua
for sure, that's me, with the myth of Atlantis -
orderly, please! line up! take your badges and disperse,
we'll be back here again at the fire-evacuation point
in the the near future - in the meantime do whatever
it is you do, and do it. shame really - you ever see
the fire equipment of 1666? a large water bucket...
people either had a lot of common sense back then
or had magnanimous airs about them
(see how many lawsuits were made in the past decade),
primitive technology - i guess people thought a lot
back then... no talk of dementia - they were hardly literate
but they thought a lot, becoming literate meant
becoming aristocratic degenerates - excess wine, *******
***, scab and crawling ***** on the cranium
intended as barbers - then too many synonyms came,
you said barber and he knew the beard and moustache
was an extension of the head - sure, softer keratin, the harder
version being - i've ***** on my face! i've ***** on my face!
short and briskly - freshly mowed lawn... mm, nice -
fiddle the other part, i'll take a Sikh's beard and make a
violin's bow on the sly - see how Mozart sounds after
that. the Mongol stank and conquered the Alexandrian
Dream - before the arrows pierced, the stench overpowered.
it's just a dreaded affair - in order to give pleasure
i have to give my inner life up - the Greeks called it
barbarism the over way round - words from a *******
as if implying i get really jealous and bring out a knife -
the wonderful phenomenon of the schizoid condition,
or as prior worded, premature dementia, yet such people
continue to be fully functioning in a sense -
language debris - a meteor's tail - politicised psychiatry -
the easy route - say the noun hammer and you know
exactly what to do, unless it's Heidegger's hammer
and you realise he's implying two labourers talking
philosophy while working manually - in that
the ego (nail) should be hammered into a plank
of wood (thought) as easily as the reverse - the reverse
being the hammer (extended into the profession that
uses it frequently - i, carpenter) utilised (being, a) -
i.e. i, being a carpenter, nails, hammering in.
i didn't think this through - what's bugging my certainty
in how to explain it without conversation between
two carpenters discussing philosophy, which never happens,
is not what i'm bothered with, the real issue is i have
with the inherent negativism of subjectivity in English
interpretation of philosophy, crudely:
subjectivity is bad, wrong, self-indulgent, pseudo -
this stress in English thinking with its glorification of
objectivity is, to be honest, strange...
it comes from a book review of Wagner's Ring of
the Nibelung - equatable words: banal and subjective -
banal - trite - well given the "success of the human species"
i'm surprised it's not a universal truth that
we've come a bit trite given the numbers - i've seen
cucumbers fresher than people, we're bound by
an approximate of 70 springs, cucumbers are bound
by 1 spring, you get fresh in a supermarket,
you don't get fresh in books, what with the third butterfly
species σκoνιςμυγα (skonismyga - so not -muga?
up Saigon? i thought you cut off the bits you didn't
want and put the other letters with the cut offs together?
no wonder - upsilon [u] isn't said - just like in Latin
in English we have why - iota not y - dust-fly, i guess
Babylon did survive, in the variations disguising "dyslexia")...
but why is subjectivity so horrid? i thought
we all had our take on things and none of us wanted
to speak for the whole of humanity? Nietzsche warned
and defended individualism like that - who
would want to speak for the entirety of humanity?
in the political realm in the west subjectivity is defended
rigorously - because if you begin championing objectivity
in politics the Iraq Invasion was a bit stupid -
despotism, d'uh - yet in England the tradition is to
have a culture of literature that shuns subjectivity
and champions objectivity - why is subjectivity so
negatively perceived? oh, you're afraid someone is
so ardent on their choice of interest they they might
by accident speak-spit into your face?
subjectivity can't be so ****** negative, it's an expression
of an escape from what objectivity already
defined in the pinnacle by Descartes: res cogitans,
(a) thinking thing - we only write subjectively because
we've been caged in that little no. 2 of a waiter's james
bond tux - we staged an escape, a self-worth fanaticism
on the subjects we love rather than "have to" investigate
without passions, just hubris - which is what
critics use - hubris, disdain - the study of language could
have a similitude to the math of
1 (hubris) and x 1 = hubris, 1 and x 2 = audacity, etc.
in the synonymous table - the lubricant factor.
so, anger over, back to Heidegger's hammer -
nail (ego)            plank of wood (thought)
hammer (therefore)                   a table (existence) -
so why need proofs? why do i need to prove i necessarily
exist (when i don't) or that god unnecessarily exists
(when he does) - why prove something?
so another million schmucks can come along and
prove it either way? it's the nonsense attributed to
Descartes - he stressed an impossible objective-subjectivity
(grammatically more understandable, rigid:
noun-noun doesn't work, ah, objective-subjectiveness -
noun-adjective, pencil-sharpener, pencil-needs-sharpening)
in terms of others - hence the existential other -
well impossible for anyone else to have thought it up,
the impasse of wanting to plagiarising it - a real cul de sac -
well, that's me done on the topic - sonic -
as far as i'm concerned most people keep rigidity
a tight collar of using language not coming across a speedy
suggestion to not think about:
the speed-game of preposition juggling and contras etc.,
the acquisitive use of a language v. the inherited use of a language,
two different ballparks - what i acquired i thus express,
what the organically-historic entity inherited he
will primarily convene to call Poles vermin - a little
perplexed by a more labyrinth style of language used -
it gets personal day by day - but of course the ******* are
a protected species due to their colonial roots - at least
with skin-shallow discrimination you have the obvious bang,
and the immediate retort... this **** is swelling, slowly...
slowly... slowly... those were 8 million or so
Polish-Jews... also vermin... this **** already imploded...
it hasn't exploded... it's a dummy bomb... it imploded...
it's swelling... slowly... slowly... slowly... and when you
won't know it... BANG!

I remember when we first met, you were so pure and i was full of regret, even from that first night my heart was yours you just didn't know it yet, i fell in love on the spot i just couldn't show it yet, a connection that formed so fast, completely erased the pain from the last, you accepted who i was even despite my past, burned so many bridges without a second thought, each day thinking how lucky i am for what I've got, each second together spent wishing more could be bought, but then you were caught, they watched as we fought, they said you could do better than someone stuck in the same spot, i gave you everything from my soul to my heart, handed it over thinking we would never be apart, little did i know you had been lying from the start, i don't even know who you are anymore, but then again i guess i didn't even know the real you before, you let me build our life on lies knowing exactly what was in store, now I'm back to wondering what the **** love is for, this has changed me as a person and that's something i just can't ignore, feeling the pain radiating from my core, stuck between turning my back or walking back in the door, bloodshot eyes spilling tears on the floor, no matter what you will be my last, even if our time has passed, starting to feel like i did right before i crashed, this will surely bring tears that i know, what the **** would you expect though, i waited eagerly as i watched you grow, knowing it was worth it because one day our love could show, dull grey eyes that no longer glow, so many lies that i don't even know what to believe, don't you know it would ******* **** me if i decided to leave, a life without you is something i could never conceive, i gave you my ******* soul Macie and this is what i get in return, you would think after the life I've had that i would learn, I've been in your shoes so i guess this time it was my turn, don't ******* act like it is now because before this my life was never your concern, just remember that you get what you earn, and to feel the flame you must first burn...

Why did you do this?

Honestly, I trusted you
Of all things you could have done
I never expected this.

When I caught you,
you acted like I was dumb.
"Macie, it's nothing."

I remember when I had to tell her.
I remember looking into her eyes
and telling the most beautiful person in the world
that her husband had broken her trust.

I had to break her heart for her.
You have no clue how much that hurt.

I had to look into her large chocolate colored eyes
and tell her the words you laced around the other girl.
Do you know how that made me feel?

I remember when I went out to dinner with her
because she wanted to be as far from you as she could be.

I remember her not touching her food
and holding back the tears.
She decided to color
because she needed something else to focus on.

With every ounce of pain she was collecting
in the biggest heart I have ever known,
she told me "I can't believe he did this to us."

She is humble enough to say
that you didn't just mess things up for her.

I didn't talk to you that night
or the following day

The second night, you came into my room and apologized
As if you deserved my forgiveness.

Your words didn't just wrap around the other girl
They wrapped around me.
How do I trust my dad when he not only broke her heart
but he destroyed mine?

No one knows how much you destroyed
except for me.

Only 17 years old and somehow I'm holding our house
Not just with my words, but with my hands.

People always said I had mom's hands.
They're chubby, but my fingers are just like hers.

They have the power to hold my mom
the way she held me after every time you yelled at me.
That means a lot.

The fact that this wasn't the first time makes me hate you, Dad.
I wish I could not hate you, Dad.
I wish you could just get up and leave, Dad.
Please try to fix everything, Dad.
I wish you would realize we don't want you, Dad.
I need you, Dad.

I can't believe you did this.
How could you.
You didn't just cheat on your wife of 18 years who gives you everything. She was the best thing that has ever happened to you. She's beautiful, sassy, outspoken, and unbelievably in love with you.

You cheated on your 24 year old daughter. She was the best thing that came from your first divorce. She was the only thing about your life that wasn't a nightmare.

You also cheated on her husband, and your two grandchildren. The little boy being the most outgoing, sweet, honest boy. Only 3 years old, yet he is brilliant and the center of the universe to you. There's also the little girl. She is the most beautiful face on the planet. She adores everyone and everything. Especially you, Grandpa.

You cheated on your 17 year old daughter, who is everything you wouldn't want. Outspoken, gives empowerment to those who need it, feels everyone is an equal, that drives you insane, doesn't it, Dad? I remember when you were mad about me telling you I had a date, this was a couple of months ago. I had to wait until I was 16 to date.  I stand up for what I believe in. I say whats on my mind. I fight for what I want. You try to break me down and respect you, but you lose my respect every single day. Yet you know I adore you. You know how much I desire a relationship.

You cheated on the twins. Two 8 year old children who you adopted. Remember? They endured neglect, pain, having their mother give them up after she couldn't be clean. You accepted and loved them.

Look at your life. Everything you have. Why would you throw it away for someone who isn't worth half of what Mom is worth?