walking outside is much like walking around in a fresh cup of tea. i think my lymph nodes are swelling with the exposure to 99% humidity; i am miserable and teetering on passing out. the moisture level of my body is exactly the same as the surrounding air and this makes me suspended in slow motion as the backs of my knees slip with moisture.

People lay sprawled, five points of their body; starfish baking in the sun being prepared for sale, in Bidwell park. Often, i question the comfort of these people on bare grass: Harry has often urinated all over this park...what if i told him that people all over the city had been marked by that little dribble? It doesn't matter. Harry is a dog, and he probably doesn't care.

squinting down each side of the park, the trees are pillars emerging from a green river, this is not Chicago and it is not St. Patricks day. I am Alice, through the looking glass; my head is so swollen with moisture, i can hear the sizzling of that man's chest and the gnats in her unwashed hair.

Olmstead, you sick bastard.

times like these, when i'm drunk at 9:30 pm (friday only, mind you,) and i end up cruising social websites (facebook, myspace,) that i realize how much i ACTUALLY REALLY HATE some people. its awful. im a terrible person.

<3 parents.

Carol Krywalski and James Latchford were married in Paul’s backyard pre-swimming pool, before the click and whir of the large pool filter in the garage, before the pool’s cement would rub the bottoms of my toes raw and painful, just to the point of bleeding, or snag the shiny spandex of my suit bottoms when I sat down to just put my feet in, when I would swipe my fingers across the deck to smear those tiny speck bugs we called Bloodsuckers; before the shellacked but slivery pool deck was the site of card games and boxes of wine. It was 1980; I know so from the Gold Circle Photo stamp on the back of the small photo. This sepia world faded the green of the plastic porch furniture strewn about the yard; it shaded everyone’s limbs a crisp brown that seems impossible for an Irish guy and a Polish girl in July. Sepia has since absorbed like iodine into their bodies and bloodstreams, a poison that surfaced as wrinkles for Mom, and skin cancer for Dad. But here, they are languid and lazy, wispy-haired and as soft as linen, their mouths formed mid-sentence O’s; this whole place is a whisper from their ring-mouths, the smoke from their July cigarettes.

sometimes, people from my past have sifted through time so quickly that it seems as if i never even knew them; not even for a second. the time was never spent and i have no recollection of them other than a trip to the flea market or a high school locker combination: i am indifferent about these folks but this does not cause me sadness. i will not mention their names; most of which i have forgotten anyway.

others pop up repeatedly and happily; a slight wave, "hello! you'll never see me again!" and it warms my heart as much as it makes it weep: evelyn, the old volunteer at the hospital gift shop; larry, my tenth grade buddy with the blonde skater haircut; mr. olly, the neighbor across the street from my grandmother that worked for general mills.

some people's limbs turn creamy caramel;
mine stays sallow and spotted, like the cement sidewalks i observe walking down Ashland.
the copper/bronze company implants in the sidewalk make me wonder why they ever changed the formula for cement.
why?

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf...

I am...george. I am.