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09/16/2005: "Septuagenarian Roof Rambling"

Greetings from my rooftop at midnight. It seems an unsuspecting neighbor has wireless internet (I suspect it's Phil the landlord, who had WiFi installed in his backyard sweatlodge). It doesn't go underappreciated. Things in the household are fine enough; Tumble has immersed himself in a screenprinting class. Chestnut has taken up racquetball. Things are in a fine flux.

I started to write to you from the diner up the street, but they sat me by an old man eating dinner alone, which gets me bawling by my second cup of coffee. So here I am.

I've been working on this short story about a group of conventioners stuck in a motel room, where one conventioner is trying to convince the rest of them that the anguished wailing coming from next door is actually erotic moaning, if only to keep himself from wailing at the possibility it isn't. It needs work, but work is what I'm ready for. The couple across the street has been woken up by their newborn three times since I got up here. I never used to understand people's desire to have babies, to have twenty-plus years of your life devoted to someone else's wishes, but tonight I get it.

Who wants to be a lonely old man sprawled in a parking lot, dazed look on his face, attended to by strangers?

-F