Poor Kneecap

Riding a bike, you often take motion for granted. Even when you ball your hands, and squeeze into a stop, it is for the purpose of moving in the future. Wobble, slip, crash, pavement, slide. Balance can be as hard as blacktop. Luckily, I have always wanted a pair of grungy tan pants with holes and scuffed up bits. It would have been nice if such things were of my own volition. I might've worn a helmet.

With a reminiscent clack, (I say reminiscent, because "clack" is the sound my gears make now.) the cue ball hits the racked bright yellow one. With the semi-recent ban on smoking indoors, pool halls aren't like they are in the movies. I've done my time at our hall of preference, and am a little disappointed that no one has smashed their bottle and come at me with it. There isn't a trough in the boys' bathroom. I reckon my imagination will have to be enough.

Our place is furnished with pew benches. Some like to joke that god is on their side when they make a great shot, or at least I like to think that they do. Then, I think a lot of things, it would seem, that aren't real. I reckon my imagination is tricky like that. I can have a brawl in my head for my own amusement so long as I'll let myself be lead on. If that is the trade off, I don't mind.

After the pool hall is the other diner again. This time I notice the pictures of trains on the wall, and smile softly to myself. Some friends are finally home from school, and they dine with us. I hate how you can never find the jelly that you want. Then, maybe that's for show, a quirk for my companions to remember me by some day. I'm not scared of being forgotten, just human. The trains didn't sing tonight, but that's all right. They've stopped for the purpose of moving in the future, I hope.

Regards,

Caleb

P.S. bats in the belfry - eccentric, insane

P.P.S The last two days these posts have come the night after the day in which they occurred. I plan on righting this as soon as I get into a groove with this stuff. Pictures, too, shall be at the end of every post, having been taken, just not uploaded. This too will be righted.

Colder

I'm terribly sorry, I wrote a post for you full of wonderful allusions, the phrase "balling the jack," and, in my opinion, some of my better writing. When I went to post, the cursed blogger told me to sign in, and those words were lost - to be replaced by these ones.

What I wanted to talk about was the power of words, of biking in the rain, and dimly lit rooms which tick and play off-versions of Edelweiss. It was quite pretty, I promise, but I suppose that sometimes words just escape you. So it goes.

Today was the end of something important, something not meant to end. It is really astonishing how mad you can get before you realize that it doesn't matter. Most times the worst days have the best nights. Mine started with a bike ride through the rain with slick breaks that refused to stop, and ended, for my purposes, in that room with pillows and blankets. I can still hear the clocks. They chime the hour - one, two three, and I am gone.

Regards,

Caleb

P.S. habitué - One who frequents a particular place, especially a place offering a specific pleasurable activity.

P.P.S. I am sincerely sorry those five paragraphs escaped me. I'd say that it won't happen again, but there is no wood to knock on or salt to throw over my shoulder.

Bound: Anywhere

Temp Agencies can be the scariest places, but often you may find on a desk of that sterile, off-white place a drop of happy, pink, strawberry ice cream, having dripped to its current location from the jowls of the foreboding “The [sic.] Man.” I may have a new job coming my way, and I'm happy of that. They tell me that it'll be working in a factory building motorcycles. I don't mind. Work me to death, I need it.

Today was rainy, the wet still clings to the sky and promises to stay for the next week or so. Days like these are so unlike Spring. You bundle up under jackets and sweaters, and wonder when the leaves will start to change colors. When will the birds flee from this hemisphere? Weather like this makes me cuddly. I wonder what my sisters would do if I held them close and popped in one of my black and white films.

Went to the other diner by the trains. There is a certain mysticism to the screeching of iron on iron. From a distance the locomotives sound like those nights that I've spent with the best possible people, just talking, making false resolutions, nothing mattering more than the early hours themselves, which wrap you in their dark comforter. Sit close on the back steps, pass a fag between the two of you. I don't smoke, but every now and then you feel the rattling intake of breath, only instead of nicotine, the night fills your lungs, courses through your veins, fills you full to a soft, quiet bursting, and then you do.

That is what the breaks and whistles and chugging sounded like, that hiss of releasing hydraulics. At night, you hear your own midnight revelations echoed in train song. If I could understand their language I wouldn't listen, because those conversations mean something more. They are sacred. As it stands, I was glad of the far off din while I waited with a friend to be remembered.

There is enough will to change in me now. I feel it growing every day. Before I explode with it and give everyone something to remember, the hope is to let it begin to trickle out, storing enough to keep the pressure up, but doing enough to be proud of. I'm going to start submitting my work to periodicals. My children don't have it in them to make it, but a simple no is the best motivator. I send out my hope in exchange for a respectable dashing.

Regards,

Caleb

P.S. tipple - To drink intoxicating liquor, esp. habitually or to some excess.

Yassou!

The beeping of my dying cellphone has finally left my room. It's strange, the silence that has fallen now. Whereas before, while I was setting up my profile and such, the noises drifting around my head were measured by the once every other minute bleat of Dad's old silver Motorola. The cars on the highway, the overhead fan, and the various chat program blips have no law about them now. I think that I liked it better when my thoughts were interrupted, and forced into segments.

I quit much of social networking two calendar days ago at the early Monday time of this posting. I don't miss it. I'm determined now more than ever to change my life for the better, and Saturday it was kicked off with the Greeks' "yassou!"

Greek pastries are delightful, how they sort of fall into your mouth. Gyros are kind of wieldy with or without their foil, like the little kids that I got to play with, brothers of a friend. They were nice little chaps, but I wouldn't trust them with the cleanliness of my shirt. I suppose getting onion all over myself was my fault, but that's that. Friends, movies, a decidedly good day.

Today, well, yesterday now, I rode my bike to a friend's. The gears worry me a bit. I don't like how they make sounds when I shift, but that's that. It was beautiful, and I imagine that I'm in that one old Disney cartoon, the one where a character is walking down a path whistling, and everything around him dances and has a smile. I can't for the life of me remember which character was in it, though I could whistle you the tune. I have spent the better part of an hour looking to no avail. There's a new pizza place on 3rd Street in New Cumberland, in that retail spot where pizza places go to die. I suggest stopping in before it goes too. Delicious and cheap.

I'm going to wake up early today, and go to a temp agency as a part of this whole renovation project on myself. It worries me, but a lot of things worry me - money, women etc. Let us hope for something better, some change, something new.

Regards,

Caleb

P.S. edetic - Marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and exacting recall especially of visual images.