2:37 PM PST - Jan. 13, 2004
long day i. we believe what we want to believe. the sky is blue. chocolate is good. there's a hole, there's a hole in my exhaust manifold. i spent this morning arguing over the notion of perception -- that what was perceived and what was reality were apples and tarantulas. that if i could somehow explain that i honestly thought i said what i said and convince her of my honesty would have been a miracle. but it's true. it happens. like the way i think i tell my son i love you before i leave for work. or the way i think i say thank you after each coffee i buy. or how i tell my employees go build this server for me. please. ii. the rustle of a maple branch ( . means there was ) the wind before. iii. in the end, what i didn't know is what she knew to be safe. in the end, what she didn't know is what i meant by trust. iv. there's a place at Berkeley, outside Moses Hall, where two old lions sit as guardians of a glass door. an evening, some fourteen years ago i found myself there with the wind of dead leaves and a slice of cheese pizza in my hand. there was a girl, pretty i thought, who knew Blake and Keats as if they were phone numbers, and we had breakfast and lunch together for what seemed like years. just us at the dorm cafeteria tossing salt like confetti and speaking of love as if it were in vogue to do so. that afternoon she said she couldn't love me and with all things before the age of 20 the universe was to become a green paper crane before the match i just lit. that she was going to be and only going to be my wife, my lover, my one, the woman who i would bend the steel lampshade for, douse my hand with kerosene and feed to Cerebus, and like all things before the age of 20 there could be no other. and i heard her walking by with two other friends laughing away as if it were just another evening saying i can't believe michael thought i would ever fall for him and i just stood there watching the green backpack float away from me smaller with every step and second that passed.
