I'm keeping a list in my head of people I mean to talk to but don't. It starts about ten years ago and ends this past Sunday. It's not a list I worry about, just one I consider, adding names to it and crossing others off. It's all so accidental.

The thing that was weird about Saturday night is that I almost didn't go. I always intended to, but when it the time came, I just couldn't. I got the strangest sort of cold feet about the whole thing, and I still can't find a reason for it. In the end I didn't get there until well after midnight, well after my voicemail had been filled with where are yous. I barely got to see Francis at all, just a few minutes and a few photographs, and then he had to ride his bike across the bridge. (At first I typed, "write his bike across the bridge," and that's so much nicer, isn't it?) The thing is, I didn't feel like the drinking or the volume or the talking about the same things all over again. Then I felt guilty, so I stayed too long, hugging the Death Machine even though I didn't want to, talking to Falton until I couldn't like her anymore, letting Unix tell me about the rules of winemaking for one thousand years. It was alright with Danger and the camera, and with awkward Jenny, and with the Egglet who gets better and better, but by and large it felt like some sort of penance.

This weekend I said I might go away with some people, but it feels like a bad idea. I said, "Yes, probably," because all my head could think of was riding a train and sitting in the grass, but now I'm considering the company and I don't think I'll like it. I spend too much time with people I'm not sure I like, sometimes. I haven't really got money for train trips right now, and I haven't really got patience for people I'm not sure of. There's probably grass somewhere around here I can sit in, and probably someone I could be happier sitting in it with. I just want to be quiet a while longer, I just want to remember what missing people is like.

Every day feels like the end of the world depending on who you talk to. There are just so many people, I don't know how the world takes it.

What I need is a huge board to mount on the wall, covered in row after row of colored lights. Each row would be assigned to a different person that matters somehow to me. Depending on the combinations of colors lit, I could tell who I am to each person and how, I could see feelings change and turn. I could know. It would all be in code, but there'd be an explanation of the code in the instruction manual, which I'd keep under my pillow to refer to whenever I couldn't sleep, whenever I was alone in the dark with nothing to see but the rows of light.

I found my long lost bird ring today. It's better than I remembered it.

p.s. Did you remember to wear a sweater today? I almost emailed you to ask, but then, you know, I didn't.