today i attended an estate sale at the mystery house on the corner of my street. often josh and i would question the fact that nobody was ever there, but an eerie blue light, much like a computer screen, would remain on in the upstairs window. for eight months, nobody occupied the house, an adorable red brick thing on the corner. it was one of those flat front brick houses; probably there before my house was built, with tall, rounded windows that had swirling black iron over the bottom half of them. historical.

the tenants, we concluded, were in their winter home on the sunny shores of Florida. vacationing from never finding a parking spot near their house in the snow.

the mystery house's interior is an absolute wreck: the walls were yellowed, even brown (at the intersection of wall and ceiling) and the majority of the ceiling was shredding off in strips. one could contend that she was a smoker, this Sarah Jo Barth (i peeked at a single piece of mail sitting in her mailbox from the City of Buffalo. was this her death certificate?), as everything inside was cast with unfathomable dinge. the once wallpapered hallway exposed layer after stained layer of the history of the house: i wanted to see what the very first layer was, what year it was put there. the corners of the house smelled strongly like skunk. i like to imagine feral cats claiming chairs and creating villages out of this woman's withered books. the furniture was remarkably high quality AND out of my price range, although i would trade my shitty Target Wobbly Desk for a mahogany end-table with brass knobs and a velvet-lined drawer and just make due.

there is no continuity of objects in my bedroom; there is a halo of cloth and denim surrounding my bed.

there is nothing quite as satisfying as a bowl of Campbell's Tomato Soup with noodles. Bleached, white, floury, tasteless noodles! From a can, mixed with water, salty tasty soup!

as a child, i was not interested in the fake, rubbery chicken of Chicken Noodle: one time, i spit out a chicken chunk and TO MY HORROR, it was riddled with tube-ish arteries jutting out all over. never again did i eat chicken soup other than that which came from my mother's or grandmother's stock pot.

perhaps around the age of four or five, on a nondescript saturday in my life, my mother answered, when i asked, "what's wrong with dad?", that dad was sick and couldnt go to work so we had to work on something for him to eat. he was throwing up. he was out the night before. now i see: he was hungover, but he was never a terrible man. he was awesome; he taught me to fish. in my memory, i see a bowl steaming in my mother's hands, and a few pieces of toast wedged in a paper towel in my hands. we crept into the darkness; i could not see him, i knew to be very quiet. we placed our parcels on the side table carefully and he rolled over and smiled. i bet that soup was awesome.

joshua, up until about three years ago, had lived a childhood with no tomato soup. whatsoever. there was a day in which we decided to get some lunch and buy kit bowman a birthday present (which ended up being a Lightning Bolt CD, some pencils, and an andy warhol postcard of a man's body with a flaccid penis.) at globe market, he was introduced to tomato in a much richer, fancier fashion: tomato basil bisque. that was the day he told me he used to get yelled at for drawing poop and i told him i used to draw buffalo bills football players on the field.

tonight, my yawns are powerful forces; it is only midnight.
a yawn's main purpose is to cool off the brain; a thought fan. i am untangling a vast web of literature that will not untangle for probably the rest of my life. surely not in one month, the end of the semester.

my bathrobe smells minty, a sure sign that someone grabbed whatever terrycloth was hanging behind the bathroom door, and, pausing for only a moment to reflect on the deviance of their act and simultaneously regarding it as necessary action, swiped their toothpaste rimmed mouth on it.