2004-10-03 - 11:35 p.m. Well, it gets clunkier and clunkier, doesn't it? Tough luck, I suppose. 1. My mind has been on Halloween for months, but it still startles me to see the Halloween displays in the stores. Already? I have a bit of sewing to do. I need to find my eyes. How can it be so close? How can it practically be November when yesterday was July? 2. Things have been interesting. I'm trying to pull myself out of habits. It's hard to find the right ones. Sometimes I can't make myself get off of the train at the right stop, so I go a bit farther and walk back. I take the long way around to everywhere. What I really need is that seaside town, or Niagara Falls, before it gets too far away. Or is it getting closer? 3. This is the month that all of the old friends come back. Creepy. The Old Mr. O'Connell has been here for a couple of weeks, but he's so fantastically easy. He just blends right back in. The other two are going to be trouble, and one will certainly involve drunken tears and clasped hands, but it will be brief, at least. I wonder how long the feeling of being in a place where no one knows you is a relief. How long is it good before it gets lonely? 4. A couple of days ago I saw a boy on a pogo stick. He was smallish, maybe nine or ten years old, moving steadily down the sidewalk, his little boy face seeming too high off the ground. He was good at it, and that surprised me. I didn't know that kids still had pogo sticks. A while later I was coming out of a drugstore a few blocks away, having forgotten about the pogoing boy, when I heard the creaky sound of the springs. There he was, moving easily around the people walking, as ordinary as a boy on a bicycle or rollerblades, except that he kept bouncing into the air. It's hard not to like someone who keeps bouncing into the air. 5. I guess these numbers don't really mean anything, but I like them. I like the spaces in between. I should start numbering everything. And maybe making charts and graphs. I don't know, I guess I have other things I should be doing, and five is good for now. before - after old | now | profile | mail