unfinished

choirs unseen, but deep within
the curling, foaming currents,
swirling
half-formed thoughts,
ripening desire,
friends and fates, juxtaposed,
conspire while i wander lone,
begin doubt,
chorus voices beset, begin
and regret the ways you've grown.
lost or loyal, my platitudes push,
and empty, i recoil from the voices
i was, now the volumes
i am, unread
and conventionally obscure,
can we object, can we
abjure who we became,
with little effort, we will be
who we were
in that abstract ending,
future, descending into reverie,
the swelling seas of conjecture
and memory
collecting, compelled and coming
back to me.

stewart park

Early we stir in j stewart park
away from the banks of lava rock
away from the bloom of auspicuous june
here hemlocks strewn with birch tree bark.
sysiphus in the tent i like to say
to myself, rebellious in the algerian's way;
who would know the tragedy of his fate?
the cat's head? i would be shocked,
(though we all will know)
but we must talk, i said,
(he climbs back down on his web).
we will talk under the walnut boughs,
under feet, the drying amber leaves;
they crunch, but float down so assiduously,
"we will talk" you say, "under the deciduous tree,
among our hammock and tents,"
the rogue flowing underground,
the space we found at summer's expense.
as autumn grows, where it smoked it now snows,
and we must must pack, cold and slow, i believe
you will some distant september see
through the smoke and ash of past
the walnut, and you'll remember me.

Der Zauberberg

I stare out my trailer door, daily, at a girl folding clothes on a platform. She is neither beautiful nor impressive, but I still find myself peering to see her reassuring figure, her slender arms deftly and thoughtlessly folding someone else's shirts and pants. I am reminded of Sommerset's 'of human bondage' and his beguiling waitress; tall and pale with short dark hair, curiously cut and pulled back. She has almost timid features; a small mouth and closely set eyes that stare indifferently out onto her world of foreign garments. Tonight the walnut branches create a pleasing silhouette against the sky, illuminated by the distant flood lights. The yellowing leafs tremble with anticipation. I can see a single star through the boughs and I wonder how far away it is; a billion light years? Perhaps it's an entire galaxy whose light takes a billion years to reach my eyes. It has probably burnt away or exploded, I just don't know it yet. Perhaps, somewhere someone is watching us in a galaxy far away. Am I the ancient light in the eyes of some distant system, am I living out the projected reflections of a planet that died unfulfilled? Maybe somewhere far away a telescope watches me under the tree at night, maybe I am already dead; our planet has faded away and these are the words of my reflected projections traveling at the speed of light in to an infinite abyss. If they had a more powerful telescope they could see into my future, since I am already past, but all i can see is a girl on a platform, standing at my screen door at the speed of light. I seem to always be looking at what has already passed, the distance that separates is always stretched with time and reflections, silhouettes above my evening eyes casting strange shadows on the astral story of my life. Will they see me at the lake standing on the peek, sitting on the deck at the lodge sipping gin and tonic from a collins glass? will they see the turkish waiter? Do they know Thomas Mann, or what a sanitarium is? Did I die a billion years ago? I'm glad I don't know it yet. Maybe this is how i can live forever, as long as somebody out there can see me; the reflection of my life traveling at incredible speeds through the nothingness.

Quincy

the better realities
of the tragic mind,
with fidelity to the past
sew the ephemeral twine
of sleepers thoughts,
my morning dreams to unwind.
lingering like false memories
or hopes which fell behind,
she walks the halls of my closed eyes
where i,
in waking cannot find.
and what am i in waking
that a dream cannot rewind?

----------------


the day has ended,
the sun travelled, burned
and descended.
we now to compose our dreams
out of stories and hopes
which time has suspended.
good night darren,
say a prayer for all those
on whom you've depended,
and farewell we'll say
to this world which god has pretended.

Diaspora

Go beyond the stream, Brahmin, go with all your soul: leave desire behind. When you have crossed the stream of Samsara, you will reach the land of Nirvana. When beyond meditation and contemplation a Brahmin has reached the other shore, then he attains the supreme vision and all his fetters are broken. He for whom there is neither this nor the further shore, nor both, who, beyond all fear, is free - him I call brahmin.

Descartes believed man's unhappiness was due to his being a child first. There is a certain disappointment in the slow realization that you will not always be protected, that with age comes insecurity, comes unwanted responsibility; the burden of hidden fears you never knew your parents bore. It may have been children Sartre had in mind when he said man is a useless passion. As to what or whom they care about, it is irrelevant, but to feel so strongly in youth's fleeting three-day weekend any available passion, this is the heart's learning how to anticipate the philosopher's pain. They send their hearts into the future, they place them on their youthful lovers so they can look back at themselves and feel feel valued, feel the excitement of the new, the expanding consciousness of a world they do not fear. Mental notes i write on the back of my brain as i ride home on the school bus. "Coach," she says to me, "that guy probably thought you were our dad." Children are heartless i think, but perhaps not in the way Barrie meant. Nostalgia, it is often the longing for a tangible past that never really existed, a homesickness for the idea of home more than the place itself. A place you felt protected and carefree, so certain in a world that was only as big as we could see. With age the rhythms of life accelerate at speeds not known to previous generations, the myth of progress is a centuries' neurosis that drives us to hold onto the past in photographs and souvenirs of the mundane. In missing the stability of our youth we develop a subtle fear of change, and ironically that which scares us the most is the idea of a life with no surprises left, such a life would allow us clear view to the end. In an existential angst we would be counting down the days till our death. I sometimes try to collect as many memories as possible to counteract the feeling of the future's gravity, an attempt to capture the present by swallowing it; by mentally absorbing as much of my surroundings as i can. But here too one cannot escape either past nor future as Annie Dillard relates about her youth "noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already pilling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life i failed to claim. If one day i forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the great cave would suck me up entire." In response to a fading past we miss and impending future we are not ready to make past, we become too self aware, too conscious of our present. It is as if we are so consumed with extracting value out of each moment we fail to enjoy them as much as our recollections about them. Sometimes it's difficult to enjoy the places i love to be the most because i feel as though i am constantly bracing myself for the disappointment of leaving; time only haunts those who are aware of it. The only way to enjoy the bus ride home is to ignore it, to close my eyes to the shifting bodies and darkening skyline, to breath deep and exist in the space between my rumbling seat and the voices around my ears. In her book on the subject of nostalgia, Svetlana Boym concludes with simple paradox that as survivors of the twentieth century, "we are all nostalgic for a time when we were not nostalgic. But there seems to be no way back."

the milky way

blind men seek a savior they cannot see,
faith is easy to have when you haven't sight.
spit in their eyes and with dirty hands
faith is exercised, now you see!
'go forth and tell no one what you've seen until i've died'
-you say to keep quiet, i want you to live
and you call me satan, continually
you deliberately confuse your own audience.
'i have not come to bring peace,
but to set those who love each other againt one another,
surely you not will love anyone more than me'

september [fragments]

ukiah's only street sleeps in its fading dream,
here a stillborn town,
the occasional water tender skulks to the corner and up the hill, while
the service station sours with it's incendiary signs
rivaling bakunin's greatest dreams.
inside, kids play pool while the owner's dad peddles his chair across the lot with a dog in tow.
the bartender knows by name, we know, they have all been the same
smoke and clouded skies, breeding thunder claps, and flash
to warn, to prolong, to rain ash again.

the grey-water girl steps out of the post office
with a tilted head, slender limbs and infinitly indifferent moods,
her small, upturned nose is my favorite place,
its marble perfection worthy of grecian hands (and keats urn)
of cousre, she's pale complected
and smokes her ciggerettes with juvinal fascination, in the style of a forties actress,
both charmed and bored with her fingers,
the smoke floats, i linger.
again the plains crossed, stalks and stems with heads of grain, lost in horizons, every road is the same.
what last words will make worthy impressions on those we'll forget?
-------------------------------

are we not all children, thirty-year-old kids with inebriated dreams,
who will deliver us from ourselves?
i think it was fizgerald who said that no one wants their youth back,
they only want another chance to lose their innocence.
how apropos, i think, as smoke fills the living room,
the dirtiest couch, the cushion springs freed,
our prediliction to waste an afternoon.

i used to know what i wanted, or i used to want something,
but now, now i forget that i am alive. i forget that there is anything
beyond being- we dream when we do not sleep!
we sleep and do not understand. we understand but we do not how
to make it important.
reader pretend they know! because surely they do not.

what is it we supress, the purity we long for
that never existed except in our ideals?
in the rain i am alright, seasons i have reconciled myslef to,
i have reconciled too.
i only dream when i sleep, but i am not certain if
i can live in a world deconstructed, no pretence of what is natural
no ghosts or second lives to brighten possible futures.
how much of men's actions, i wonder, are driven by bordem?

the figments of my past are overcome by the lives of those around me,
we are all chasing someone else's illusion,
making them the realities of our own,
but where is the autheticity in me?
making my place from the better words of other men.
--------------------------------------

here in the early morning of the end, i cast into the fog
a spinner, a river with ocean tides
while lightning chides the not-too-distant coast,
hoping for a little less percipitation.
i believe that i have become ungrounded,
i am but tethered to a few familiar feelings
and nothing but, perhaps habit,
leads me back home

juxtaposed drowning!?

i have no ores for the hours
but this black inner tube to navigate the
umatilla- both unimpressive and unassuming,
impassive? no, but nearly impassable
in places, in spaces with depth and dimention,
and depths too where i can't see the rocks.
did god make these waves, or did they make him?
it is another question for another day.

i dreamt last night that i was on the beach,
the ocean was there too
and i lay between them, the two,
mediating the ebb and flow of their
conversations when a girl
washed upon the shore, a friend of mine
from some time ago;
someone had died, and she arrived
just in time for my ocean dream,
neither of us could awake so they took her
away, and then the scenes, they died, or changed

and today i'm floating on river
that will eventually reach the swelling sea.
there are islands, or unsuccessful forks
and deer cross ahead and climb the steep banks.
the rocks are conspiring, they are growing
life now passes by quicker.

through the window on the door i see her
lying in a hospital bed, but her face is blurred,
or obscurred like dreams always do,
talk to me, wake up before i do
her voice lingures still when no words are said.

i am holding onto a branch, pulled by the current,
matt is approaching and we meet, touch, fall
and i am floating under water, dragged along the rocks
i cannot stand, i hold on until i can regain my tube.
matt's tube passess me, matt still clinging to the tree
i chases it into the swell and sucken limbs
the current is now pressing and i am pinned.

she is awake but she is a child,
throught the door i see a little girl
getting ready for bed as i drift away,
but she always was a child to me,
and i believe she always will.
these thoughts will monopolize the coming day
and make everything feel unreal.

i cannot touch, cannot move and being pushed
under i hold onto the dead branch.
my body is soar, weary
i know i have to stay above, to fight
the current, through the pain,
but first i must let go

every afternoon

and how does the other half live?
a caramel swirl, some foam,
a pearl-skinned girl with hypothetical concern,
she doesn't know
but she does have a way of
shifting my thoughts, or concerns,
her name is, it's on the tip of my whatever,
even i still have much to learn.

we shift in chairs sometimes
and sometimes strangers
walk past with steps,
measured or heavy, amiable and thoughtlessly
shuffling their soles on hardwood,
stepping easily, lazily through life;
nudging tables and touching stools, or chairs,
who do they belong to?
the desire to touch that which is in the way;
brushing the walls, chairs, bricks and mortar grooves,
sometimes slides along my finger tips.
she delivers my drink, nimble fingers and parted lips,
i search my pockets for words to say,
coins, a thank you, a thimble,
a kiss!
there is an always of things to touch,
and of things in your way.

main street creeps with cars
circling the block for my amusement,
life is outside, but not within these
parochial means, or seats,
and despite my best efforts of thought
and theory, we are all sentient beings,
i think.
where is my concern? where did she,
o these diminishing returns.
make room for another drink of whatever,
make room for all that i have to unlearn.

why am i here again?

8/29/2006...

Each day here presents itself with its own problems and tendencies; people fail in work and relationships; bonds are formed and perceptions, good and ill, mesh so the the lines become more distinct as to who here is wanted and who is wanting. Backbiting, disingenuous, melodramatic, fallible; people. I am no longer amazed at the dysfunction and social atrophy of our little community, only slightly amused at the juxtaposition of intention and absurdity. Jeremiah is heart-broken, Solomon speaks of vanity, Sartre of nothingness, while J- and B- can only console each other for their senseless pains. They sympathize with each other and discuss the useless qualities of sympathy; one must be strong and stay positive. More persons arrive and tenitive plans are laid for the next season, so much better than this, our current blunder, but no one really knows, one can only romanticize this occupation so much; more talk concerning the nobility of optimism and avoiding the 'self perpetuating web of depression and feeling sorry for ones self.' No, that's not it, one must stare absurdity in the face, name it, and then move on, feel your pain and realize that everyone feels the same way. Smiles and weary souls breed retarded children, we are going to condescend, mess-up, miss the point and do it all over again, one might as well be honest with themself. This is certainly a comedy of errors and I am without a fellow spectator; I too have become a player. I hate writing about work, about how it goes and how that affects me, but my mind is so stultified by the lack of intellectual breath, like all this smoke in my lungs I am consumed with too many social issues that reek of humanity and infect my spirit, I feel rot inside. It would be a lie, however, to say that I have not learned anything from my peers, for certainly I have, I suppose something about them, about us, will appear in a poorly constructed short story I will write in the abstract future, but I am too weary right now. I think I just need someone else to make myself feel better; another person I can project myself onto in order to feel my own reflection and reassure myself of my own existence...

nullity and retention

possession; to retain the person, the object, the image that elicits your happiness. not wanting to have happiness but to be happy; to identify with that which is possessed. the violence of emotion, their seeming tenderness and safety, they are self-sustaining, self-perpetuating, creating vacuums for other emotive states to push you around. seeking favorable situations and personalities that might raise the corners of your mouth, the peptides in your head; create favorable memories whose future absence will soon haunt you. it is never enough to know, one must possess meaning, purpose, or fulfillment; awareness-of only permits you to believe that it is other than that which you are, if somehow possession equated absorption, assimilation; a fulfilment of being; you would be what you seek. this is the cupidity of identity.

one is not smart, one acts as if he possesses smartness; one is not humorous but exhibits characteristics of humor. striving to be the descriptions you seek to accumulate, empty vessels who pantomime the reality they have constructed in order to reaffirm its image. you want to be something, to be someone, which only serves to prove that you aren't anything; you're a non-thing, the absence of what you seek to be; the only thing you are is continually trying to construct a representation of your desire to be noticed, to be recognized and validated; there is nothing there but your desire and misguided effort; an emptines;, a nothingness. your identity exists as an abstract, an illusion; you simply exist.

desultory

you think of the year as you climb down the stairs
all your saccharine dreams and unanswered prayers
'maybe this is the taste of failure' you hear someone say
as you slide through the door and silently slip away

it seems as if something is missing, you are forgetting...
you shiver as the details fade, the wind-chill besetting
the walk to your car, when you notice across the lot
the face of a stranger who brings a wandering thought

she looks like so many girls that you used to know
in her face and her gait, but her prints in the snow
prove that she is real where the others cease to exist
you reach for your keys and some ineffable wish

sunday night

silent mantle,
dusted picture frames,
rust-colored wall paper
above crusted window panes,
hardwood fades into muted browns and grays,
unlit candles grace the living room
above the forgotten fire place.
outside new snow proceeds,
falls, and collects on old objects,
slowly a new winter bleeds
over places we used to live,
we have forgotten, and gone,
we have moved, and moving on,
this to prove
everything we must make true,
but at what cost, once
we've forgotten our bedrooms.

summer is only slightly missed, in moments of weakness
overcome by memories
of a december tryst.
even so, i see the familiar cove,
the bulrush and the heather stalks,
sun-kissed, the tiger lily spots,
and the fir boughs shadows
stretching across the vacant docks.
i am here. but i hear
face-down, the spectral sound, pleading
of listless waters begging,
entreating, but for what,
for snow? no, for meaning,
for something more than the cycle-seasons
lack of real death, lack of reason,
the water wants out
and all i want is to stay,
but for us, nature provides no such treason.

i remember everything that is,
that was, for all that is, to me
only exists as a memory,
and i cannot fathom how elusive
this thought is, and the profundity
that no one seems to believe.
i can see the snow, and i,
i can feel the ghosts
but i am not afraid,
i just don't want to run away.

bitter pill manifesto

romantic- so do you miss her?

stoic- who?

r- your girlfriend.

s- she wasn't my girlfriend.

r- i thought you two were dating.

s- no, we were together for a month or so but it was never very serious.

r- ah, well, whatever she was, do you think about her much?

s- i don't know. i try not to think about much of anything really. i mean, i guess i do sometimes, i can't forget her or anything, but i'm not losing sleep if that's what your asking.

r- so she wasn't that important to you? i thought you two were pretty close and all.

s- we were, but not so much anymore, so it's like, why worry about it. i mean, it's not worth thinking about, because she's gone. i've moved on, i mean, what's the big deal? i'm not one of those people who invests a lot of meaning into relationships and then feels crushed when it fails, i just don't see the point in it?

r- what good is a relationship if you don't invest yourself in it? it would be meaningless. the point is to be in love, to feel something, to be alive. don't you want to feel alive, or are you just trying to protect yourself?

s- perhaps, i dunno, it just seems like people take themselves too seriously, you know, like their life was some epic drama where they live and die by every relationship. that seems ridiculous to me, like they have an inability to separate fiction from reality. everyone is trying to write their own biography while they're living their lives, dissecting every inane social instability and recording it all on paper or posting it on the internet so that others acknowledge the unique existence that is their life; countless records of an inconsequential life, same details in a different order. people are so insecure, you can talk about individuality and everyone being unique, oh you are an original, but everyone just wants to be recognized, so they'll create any artificial distinction in order to feel like an original, but really they just want someone to acknowledge them.

r- you can't fault people for being emotional, it's only natural. besides who doesn't want friends and to be recognized as an individual? i realize that you don't have a lot of friends and your used to do things on your own, but relationships are important to everyone else. yet you speak of them as if they're all fake or for the weak minded. have you considered the possibility that, perhaps, you were just born without a heart?

s- i've explored that possibility yes, but it seems unlikely. no, i think people create these bloated versions of their lives and the relationships they have to make life feel important, because deep down everyone is insecure and scared that life really is pointless. so they create an arbitrary social matrix in which they can play the role of hero or victim or tragic figure, whatever it is that makes them feel better about themselves. they just distract themselves with their own invented dramas.

r- that's quite impressive, you have reduced everyone's problems to insecurity and an inability to cope with the world, is that about right?

s- close enough, yeah.

r- it must be nice living in that black-and-white tower of yours, not having to come down here with the rest of humanity and worry about things like loneliness or acceptance. it's the human condition my friend, you can act like you're above it, that's cool, but i'd rather live a life of meaning and feeling than live in your passionless, cerebral existence, you say everyone feels alone, well what about you. you're ignoring everything that is human in order to convince yourself that maybe there is no such thing as loneliness.

s- that's not quite how i live actually, i'm just as much of an existentialist as the next guy, probably more so. i realize that life doesn't fit inside a box and life cannot be systematized, i know exactly how you feel, but the difference between you and i is that you romanticize life and try and make it both beautiful and tragic, you wear your heart on your sleeve because the depth of your emotions gives you a sense of purpose and reality. but me, i'm not afraid to embrace the absurdity of life. there's nothing out there, no one can make any sense of things because eventually you grow up to find out the world is not like your parents said it would be, it's been painted with a grey brush and nobody knows what hell we're supposed to be doing anymore. and instead of playing tragic lover like everyone else, i'm trying to cope with the world as best as i can. so you can play drama games if that helps you, but just realize that it's only pretence.

r- pretence? who are you to invalidate my life and everyone else's just because i don't have the same cynical view of the world as you do? i think you're just afraid to put yourself out there because you don't want to feel pain or humiliation or loneliness. how is it, in your mind, that everyone is living only in the semblance of a real life?

s- because somewhere along the line of human history people decided that it wasn't enough to be a person, they had to recognized as such by others around them. it's socialization; you move everyone into bigger cities and tell them they have to compete for their jobs, become rich by selling people crap they don't need, exist among countless strangers, perpetuate a consumer based life-style, and do it all while maintaining a unique personality and without feeling lost. it's universal angst; the postmodern condition, why do you think everyone has thought about suicide at some point in their life, everyone tries to define themself by the clothes they wear or the possessions they acquire; everybody looks like their wearing damn costumes but we call it fashion, people are hopelessly insecure because they feel like the world is swallowing them up and no one is noticing. so you become neurotic, you invert your personality and write out your life like a narrative; relate it to those around so that your story proves that you still exist, you are an individual with real experiences and real feelings. it is the custom to conform your life to whatever art you find to be beautiful and profound; life imitating an art that never had any foundation in reality, so what specter of genuine humanity are we chasing? people are messed up man, and i get that people use their social network to find some corner of the world to call their own, but you gotta remember now and then that it's just your distraction, it's not real.

r- so then what is real? if i'm just inventing all these problems and magnifying all my emotions, if i'm just overly imaginative because i don't want to admit that i feel lost, even though i do anyway, then where is the real, what am i supposed to do? because even if things are as you claim, i'd still live in my 'delusions' because there is nothing else but the cold stale reality in which people have made themselves sick with their own existence, but you can't fix life. so maybe we will buy a new car every few years and wear nice clothes and eat fancy meals while the africans on the t.v. starve and kill each other and the third world is exploited by big business and the different religions kill each other in the name of a good god, but if that's the world than i want nothing to do with it, i'd rather live in my own version.

s- but that's just the problem, everyone is so concerned with their own shit that nobody realizes life has become a figment of our collective imagination, there is no substance, only countless images because it doesn't matter what actually is, only what people believe; as long as people think you're doing fine, as long as you don't let her know how much she hurt you, you just have to be strong and confident because everyone is forming opinions about you, and they are going to judge you whether they realize it or not. there's never enough time to get to know everyone, so we make assumptions and judgments to fill in the blanks, and it doesn't matter if they're right or wrong, because everyone is just acting anyway. so fuck it, why even try.

r- because what's the alternative? you have to find meaning where you can, and once it's gone you just have to make it up for yourself. nobody's going to save the world, so don't sit here and wait to be rescued, alright, you've gotta save your own piece of reality and make it your own, otherwise you're just going to go on living as if nothing mattered, loathing everyone and everything because, to you, a bitter reality is better than a subjective one. i gotta say, that doesn't sound like the ideal situation. besides, look at your parents, look at my parents, it seems like you're only describing young people, older generations don't seem so lonely and uncertain of themselves.

s- no i suppose they don't, but whose to say what different people repress, or even always fail to realize; that life is only in their head. eventually people get married and have kids or become absorbed in some occupation and that's what life becomes about, work and kids and after school sports and weddings and grandkids and anything else to divert your attention from your unnecessary life as it spirals towards nonexistence.

r- huh, well for not being a girlfriend she sure as hell messed you up. your such a downer, kid. you should call her up and get back together so you won't depress your friends so much, hell, i'll call her if you want.

s- well it has nothing to do with her, and we're not getting back together, we never really broke up technically.

r- how's that.

s- because she's dead. she' d been depressed for a long time and finally decided she didn't want to deal with it any more...so there that is...

goodbyes

"Airports are depressing, don't you think?"

"yeah. i have a picture of jesse, heather and i lying in the middle of the phoenix airport. we've got this mexican blanket heather bought the day before, we're covered up and we have this pillow that we're sharing; we're taking a nap or something. i had my new indiana jones hat pulled over my eyes and we all have sunglasses on. all three of us have this hollow expression on our faces; like a mixture of exhaustion and peace. it was right next to the ticket counter, everyone was standing around using up the last of their film, trying not to think about going home; we just laid there on the carpet after we checked our bags because we had nothing to do."

"Do i know jesse and heather?"

"no. you know aaron though, remember him. well anyway he was there. i have a picture of he and i later that morning hugging these stupid, abstract egg-shaped sculptures in the terminal. these giant white things with blue dots."

"I remember aaron, he moved right?"

"yeah."

"Do you still talk to the other two in the picture?"

"no."

"I couldn't imagine working in an airport, you know, like being a ticket-taker or something. everyone there seems so vulnerable and out of place. people try to act like flying doesn't bother them, but they're always apprehensive about going somewhere new or having to say goodbye to all the new people they just met. there is something so temporary, so ephemeral about an airport, it's like a small city where nobody lives but everyone visits for an hour."

"i like to guess which people are leaving and which are going home just by looking at them. sitting in the terminal looking at all these people and giving them homes and lives, guessing which ones are waiting for the same flight as i am, hoping i get to sit next to the girl across from me, until her boyfriend or husband comes over and i pretend to start reading my book again. but maybe he's her brother, probably not though. and when we land some place strange it's home to some of the passengers and some are just catching another flight, or just visiting, but you can't tell. it's weird because you almost expect to see them on your flight home but you never see them again. nobody knows you don't live there, and then you go home and people think might think you're a visitor."

"Whenever i'm at the airport, even if i'm just picking someone up or something, all i can think about are goodbyes. like those movie cliches where someone is left crying in the terminal."

"we tried to have one of those dramatic scenes at an airport once. it was that same day, when we landed jacob and i decided to fake one of those meetings and so he got off the plane first while i waited, i was probably the last one to get off the plane and i ran out of the gate just as jake yelled my name. we ran towards each other and i jumped into his arms like we hadn't seen each other in a year."

"Nice. was everyone staring at you guys?"

"no, not really. there was this asian guy staring at us i remember. it was pretty crowded."