No one will ever take me on a ferris wheel ride, and I'll never forgive any of you for the neglect.

Late last night I started to watch a scary movie, but it was too much and I had to stop. It's sort of a nice feeling, to be afraid in the dark, because it's a reminder that I don't have control over my feelings, even the ones I know are ridiculous. It's like someone saying, "It's alright, go ahead and feel whatever you have to, you aren't doing anything wrong. It's alright to care, you don't have a choice." Really, this might be the most maudlin summer of my life, but maybe I'm just getting it out of my system. Maybe? Sometimes it feels good. He said, "Everyone else is going to doubt you anyway," and it was the most optimistic thing I'd ever heard. Still, I sort of wanted to cry, but at least it was because I was happy.

People say things too easily when it doesn't mean much and not easily enough when it does. Obviously. Deep down, I knew it was doomed that night we walked from the park and suddenly he had his arms around me, saying, "You know I love you." I think I said something like, "Everyone knows that," but my face showed that I was happy, and there was nothing I could do about that. He was like an experiment in unlikely behavior, an experiment in looking right at someone and letting him see how happy your face is. Now it's something I'm not sad or hurt about at all, but I am a little worried that I invented my own feelings because I wanted to have them, just like the guy who invented the surfboard because he was bored with swimming.

In my sleep I turn on the radio. This is not the same radio as the one that used to turn on on its own, that one stopped doing that and I'm giving it some time off. This is a different radio, and in the night I get up and turn it on, and then right back to bed with me, to half hear news stories, to misunderstand what is happening in the world and turn it into dreams. There was a story about wildfires, and I heard the words right, I could see the letters and all in my head, but somehow I made the word fire mean flower. Wildflowers consuming acres of land. Start worrying.

My record player won't play properly, and no amount of needles will help me. The neighbors call me sweetheart. I killed a mosquito two days ago and I still feel guilty. Whenever I catch a glimpse of this skirt I've got on I can't believe how pretty the color is, and it sort of makes me gasp, on the inside. I don't know what to make of anything. I don't know what matters enough to mention, or I think something and find that someone else has already said it. It doesn't matter that we likely mean completely different things, probably always meant completely different things. I still feel like an echo.

Apparently, the cloudberry harvest in Lapland is like a runaway train this year.