Preface

Beep.

Conversation with Mels

Mels (8:58 PM):

Cookout tomorrow after 2 at my house for ben's bday. Byob.

reads the text on my phone.  Giggle.  "Conversation."  Makes me wanna attempt a LOL.  There hasn't been any conversation for months, possibly a over a year.  I don't even want to bother responding because I know I will not go.  I would like to go but there is really no excuse.  If I could show up with a full-grown beard and long hair, or full of tattoos, or scarred from the flames of some fire that was in the papers, or an amputee, or with a new language, it might be ok.  There would be something to account for all of the time I have not responded and not shown up.  But none of those changes exist and there is no way to show them the measure of deterioration that has happened since my gradual wiggle out of society.  There is no measure for them to see, no outward evidence of my time spent.  I look the same as they last saw me.  How do you spend a year and a half unemployed and in almost-isolation without doing anything?

Q: How have you been?  What have you been doing?  Where do you work now?

A: Oh, I've just been withering away, being surpassed by the younger generations.   Attempting amateur aloe propagation and self-transfiguration into a turtle.  Sporatic encounters with the human race very sporatically.  Sporatic sporatic.  Been writing a book but only in segments while on the freeway or when recently-awakened from a nap, without contacts or looking at the actual words

processed.

No.  My mind is withered lettuce and limp asparagus.  Sat in the fridge for four years unused.  Limp like a wet-towel-Asian handshake.  Void of all crisp color and posture.  Gosh, and oh yeah...shrug.  I need to get out of here and resurrect myselvesies.