Running Around

Still no phone. Bastards. They're screwing with my system. Started the day docenting the 'bad' kids (court assigned to a half-way house) and they had an attention span of about three seconds. Tough. They were better, at the end, when we got to the Native American artifacts. Weapons. Dealt with the trash, a record amount due the residency and various other events. Then worked on a grant proposal for the Emily Project. There still is, oddly, performing arts money available for bringing culture to Appalachia. Arts money is usually the first to go. Read poems online for an hour. Watched D and Sara designing the big fundraiser mailing, which, this time, is going to be six cards and a return envelope. They going Pop Art. The show hanging then will be "Wet Paint" and the theme is SPLASH. The two of them were laughing a lot. Pop Art will do that to you, but it always seemed to me it lacked any substance. Good graphic design tool though, and D is running with it. After work I met Andrew and B for a draft at the pub, we ended up having two and sampling the new bar food, a giant hot soft pretzel with a hot cheese dip, a meal for a buck-and-a-half. Who could pass that up? Lively conversation with two of the brightest guys I know. I feel like Mister Social, two nights in one week. Both Drew and B miss having a woman in their life, and I think about that, on the way home. Driving with the window down, waving my hand in the slipstream. I miss the company, the conversation, the smell of being with a woman, no doubt; but I can't compromise my time, what it comes down to. Relationships require a huge investment of time. I've lived alone for ten years, and though I'd rather more often spoon into a warm body late at night, I'm satisfied more often than not. Standing outside the various Venn overlaps what I see is a confused jumble. In some ways I no longer understand the world, it moves too fast. A fat opossum was moving across the driveway when I was coming home, a female, maybe a second litter, I understand they occasionally do that, maybe she heard the stock market would crash and she wanted a lot of kids to support her in her dotage. Whatever. I stopped, to allow her passage (I know she is female, because their body shapes are completely different) though it was at a steep grade and I had to shift into four-wheel low to get started again. Either just a fat possum or a pregnant one. Who's keeping track? I can smoke the back-up cigaret, the one I roll at the beginning of any night, to smoke if someone calls, because my phone is dead. In a certain sense, you don't exist, just trying to be clear here. What I thought I might have been saying. If my connection to you is lost, maybe I don't exist anymore, why I'm so pissed.