an unlikely playlist

The musical tastes of  H and I rarely overlap. He likes Rancid and Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers. I like Julieta Venegas and A Tribe Called Quest. But as it is with anybody you spend millions of hours getting to know, songs that normally would have made you turn the dial start sounding really good to you—partly because it's not just a song anymore, but a reminder of the person and the good times you've had together.

The other day I heard a Weezer song on the radio, and I was immediately transported to the Conejo Grade in the passenger seat of H's red car, dreading getting to the airport. It's always an impressive view from that 2-mile slope, and especially so for a Midwesterner whose closest thing to a local "mountain" is a little higher than a speedbump. And it's amazing how the first few lines of the song so clearly brought back the dry, dusty brownness of the mountains, the breeze through the windows and that feeling of cruising down the hill as though it was a rollercoaster with brakes. All that from one song. 

So I typed it into pandora.com and got a stream of other tunes I'd heard in H's car. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Ok Go, Green Day. All of it reminds me of him. I've been listening to it all day and feeling a little better about the fact that it's going to be another month before I see that grade and that man again.

Unfortunately, the music does nothing to satisfy the taste I have right now for an In N Out burger.

one less thing to worry about

So Illinois finally passed the bill that saved my commute. I'm greatly relieved about still having a way to get to work, but I'm anticipating the punch in the face I'll get from the Real Estate Transfer tax hike later this year. Part of the drama leading up to this "doomsday" scenario was that the proposal (which included bumping up the real estate tax in Chicago and the sales tax in the city and collar counties). But at the last minute the Governor said he wouldn't sign it unless senior ride for free.

Don't get me wrong, I love seniors; crotchety as some of them are, most are pretty darn cute. But in the coming years, there are going to be a whole lot of them as more Baby Boomers tire of the 9-to-5. What's going to happen then? How high will the taxes/cost of public transportation jump to make sure all of that is still covered? It's already so expensive to try and live "green," am I going to have to start walking the 72 miles every day? Wait, will I even be able to DO that in a day?

And what about Social Security? I've been paying into the system; am I even going to have anything to lean on later? Oh crap, am I going to have nothing to live on in my twilight years because I didn't set up my 401k until three years into my first job and haven't contributed much since then? And what about when the country goes into a Depression? Waiting-for-Reports jobs are already starting to shrivel up (hell, I practically had four different jobs in a single year).

Oh my God, I should be taking night classes in electronics or iPhones to have some kind of backup plan! What if my kids won't take care of me when I'm old because they're in jail or something? What if I don't even get any kids? What if I never get married and end up living in some ashram somewhere with only one tattered sari because I'm the social outcast that Bollywood and the Auntie Patrol have insinuated I will become if I don't hurry up and make a family before the expiration date stamped on my ass?

And here I thought my worries were over.

how the mortgage crisis saved my morning

After several days of poor rest, I knocked out last night and had some of the best sleep in weeks. It was so good, I can't even describe it properly. And this morning, when I jumped out of bed to hit the snooze five times, it was more of a sprightly hop than the usual half-dead stomp. Getting ready, I even flirted with the idea of humming. In the MORNING!

I knew it was going to be a bad day. Because when I wake up in a good mood, something always goes wrong.

The thing about this bad-mood crap is that calling it out doesn't seem to keep it from showing up. I got on the train, hoping to hold on to my peaceful state as long as I could. What a joke. My train nemesis came and sat down behind me, in all her throat-clearing glory. I've learned to recognize her woven-out-of-seatbelts bag (which I normally would think was cool, but I can't bring myself to compliment it), and avoid sitting near her if I can. I don't know what it is, but those noises she makes just freaking blacken my chicken. And my cold, cold heart.

I was sitting there, fuming, trying to read about this psychedelic-plant researcher, but all I could think was When is she going to do it? Is she going to do it now? How about now? It's been a couple of minutes. AH, there it is. Is she going to do it again? It was driving me crazy.

But then the guy in front of me recognized someone on the train and started having a spirited discussion about the mortgage crisis. They drowned out most of the throat clearing. I realize that normal people are more annoyed about loud conversations than can't-be-helped bodily functions, but I felt a sense of relief. Perhaps my day can be salvaged, after all.

out of the vault

Four years ago I got out of a relationship and got stuck in a dungeon. From there I started a blog, spouting out feelings thick as molasses until they were dripping from the ceiling like stalactites. It was miserable. Nobody knew about it but cc (God bless her, she actually read some of those posts all the way through). I have to say, though, letting it all out helped me get past it. And when all those sticky feelings started cramping my style, I got rid of that blog and started this one.

For awhile now, I've been lurking on indiebloggers.org, a place where some talented people have shared their writing. Basically you send in your stuff and Stacy and The Panel will post it if they like it. From its "About" page:

Absolutely ANYONE can submit - bloggers, writers, non-bloggers, non-writers, anonymous submitters and stick figures - but we are working together to raise the bar substantially.

And

in order to grow as writers, to learn from each other, to have pride in our work, we need to try hard and challenge ourselves.

And

Anonymous submissions are now being accepted and are welcomed.

What a novel idea! "Anyone" applies to me, so I dusted off a post from that long-deleted old blog—a longish recap I wrote while retracing my steps to figure out where things had gone wrong—and sent it in. "Anyone" can also apply to all of you. I happen to see a lot of great writing on the blogs I visit, and it'd be cool if more people got to read it.

Check it out sometime.

someone tell the boogeyman to leave me alone

Last night I fell asleep on the couch at 11, transferred to my bedroom at 11:45 and flew out of bed at 3 am as though my footie pajamas were on fire because even though the clock said 3:07, my brain read it as 8:07 and I thought I had way overslept, missed the only bus I can get (which is probably going to be canceled anyway) and wouldn't make it to a Very Important work day.

As I calmed myself down and lay down again, I realized that this is the fifth or sixth in a series of bad dreams that have shaken me awake in the last few weeks, including one where I was in an underwater knife fight with some broad with long red hair that was flowing around so much that I couldn't see well enough to get a good shot at her.

That's not the half of it. I know the last thing anyone wants to read about is somebody else's messed up nightmares, but mine run like feature-length black and white movies. Maybe one day I'll sit down and write about that time when I was this badass cop named Keshia who could actually pull off the running-roll-onto-the-floor-while-shooting move and caught the badguys or that other time when I was a 56-year-old white man contemplating suicide because I had shot my Throw-Mama-From-the-Train (I think it was that same actress, too) mother and the feds were coming for me. But those are stories for another time.

For today, I am TIRED. Normally I sleep like a brick—it practically takes a wrecking ball to dislodge me from bed, and with a few solid hits, at that. Waking up multiple times a night with nobody to blame that doesn't live inside my head makes having to actually wake up so much more agonizing when I realize it's the real deal.

So I'm going to need this to stop. Like now. 

if i never see spurting blood again, it'll be too soon

My brother's 937 miles away and on his way to the emergency room. Again.

After so many re-routing of blood vessels throughout his young life, the venous pressures in his body are all out of whack. You know, how most of our heart chambers pump with the right amount of pressure so that there isn't extra blood backing up in any one place? His are still a little off. So sometimes, if he's been standing too long or taking too hot of a shower or if the wind blows the wrong way or if the cable goes out, a vein in his left leg will spontaneously burst, spurting blood everywhere. And I don't use the word "spurt" lightly. When he calmly called to say he was going to the ER, he said his roommate, Mark, was fascinated by the blood. "He's never seen it come out like that before."

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time it's happened. In fact it's the latest of several. But every time is just as scary. This is what I wrote on July 12, 2006:

at about 9 a.m. tuesday, my brother (who is home on college break but taking summer classes) was screaming for me to help him. a vein near his left shin had burst and he'd soaked through an entire towel before he could wrangle a bandage on there tight enough to hold it back. of course i was in so deep an exhaustion that i didn't even hear him. finally he limped into my room to tell me to make sure the blood and bleach were completely washed out of the bathtub and went to class...

...after i got to work, i tried calling my mother to ask about the family, and got no answer. however, she called me shortly thereafter from the emergency room, where she had to rush my brother after she got home from work. it seems when she went to check his bandage, the blood started gushing out -- this is actually what she said, as she showed me her pinkie finger to demonstrate the thickness of the stream-- "like a watergun" and she was unable to stop it. my mother is a nurse.

Most people his age are worried about what club they're going to at this time on a Saturday night. Life is just so unfair.

i guess i still sound seventeen. but so does she.

11:06 am, on my work voicemail:

"Boy, you have a very nice voice on the voicemail! Your mother must have taught you how to speak so well. Please give me a call and have a pleasant morning. Bye, I love you."

11:22 am, on the phone:

"So you liked my message, huh?"

"It was very clear. You didn't even stumble or say 'um' at all. And it sounded very sweet."

"You do realize that I have the same voice as you, right?"

"Only it's forty years younger."

"Um,  you were 28 when you had me."

"Whatever, old is old."

who says it's too late to talk about presents?

I'll be honest, I'm on the fence about wrapping paper. On one hand, it's pretty for a minute, then breeds in big bunches on the floor. But when it's done right, wrapping paper can make something really gorgeous, and the anticipation of opening it can be as nice as the gift itself.

Can you have the pretty without all the throwing away*? Perhaps.

I got this for Christmas, from H's sister:

A lovely shade of green, too.

Inside:

A handmade (!) wreath

And it came with these:

Handcrafted ornaments

Close-up:

They were addressed to both H and I, so the gifts are nestling comfortably at the top of my closet until we get around to living in the same state. But because she wrapped the lid and the box separately, I didn't have to tear the paper--I can still enjoy looking at the pretty box when I'm struggling to choose an outfit, and I'll never forget what's inside so it won't accidentally get crushed. The box may not last forever, but it'll keep things nice and safe for a good while.

I was inspired. Why not wrap more gifts this way? It'd save paper and your handiwork could live on for a little bit longer. So this Sunday, I'll be bringing a lid-and-box-wrapped-separately gift to the holiday brunch with my girls from college. ANY OF YOU ANGELS READING, PLEASE AVERT YOUR EYES. I even included a cheesy tag; it's a secret white elephant gift exchange, so we're not supposed to reveal who brought what and I wouldn't want someone to start ripping and defeat the whole purpose. Thankfully, this is a group of people with whom I have been my most ridiculous, so I'm betting they wouldn't mock me to my face.

Whether somebody enjoys the box or not, I feel better about it. Now I just hope the gift is not the one that gets rejected and passed around like a hot potato. Maybe I'll just focus more on the mimosas instead.


* You can definitely have the pretty without all the throwing away when you make the wrapping part of the gift, like putting it in an awesome duffel bag, like the one I got from cc.

suddenly, $22 a day for parking seems attractive

So the State of Illinois can't/won't pay for mass transit. They're supposed to vote about it today, but the systems (buses and trains in Chicago as well as the suburbs) have already announced what the hatchet of cutbacks will come down if they don't get the aid.

As is, I stand outside in my neighborhood at to catch a 7 am bus to take me to the Metra train station in suburbia, which takes me to Union Station, where I wait for another bus (when it's cold) that gets me nearer to the office. When it's not terrible, I'll make the 25-minute walk. 

After the cuts, the bus from my subdivision to the station as well as Union Station to my office area will be gone. That means I either have to wake up (and make others get out of bed) at the crack of dawn to get a ride and walk the rest. I'll have to leave later, too, so someone will be able to pick me up when I finally get home. So my door-to-door time will go from 10 hours to something closer to 13. 

This is the kind of stuff that kills the buzz I had over being a non-car commuter.

seven months late to get up to speed

Last night I reached into the mailbox and found a postcard from Egypt sent by pp. She had visited there LAST SPRING and apparently sent it then, but there was no postmark to cancel the stamp. Maybe that's why it took an entire season for it to arrive--even if a little battered from the trip--at my door. And as usual, it made me smile.

She had written a pretty detailed message; something about being tempted to trade our friend the Kind Dentist for a camel, but holding out for a better offer; pp's definitely not one of those "Wish you were here!" card senders. In fact, I was going through a huge accordion file of cards and letters I've saved over the years recently and came across some real gems from over the years. Laughing about the card that came better late than never, I realized it'd been several months since I'd hung out with pp and nearly as long since we'd had a nice long chat. So I grabbed my phone.

The best part about longtime friends is that you can go months or years of not being in close touch and pick up as though little or no time has elapsed. The conversation will no doubt include phrases like, "you know how I am," or "some things just never change" and it's so warm and comforting to be reminded why you thought the other person was so dang cool in the first place. Then of course you kick yourself for letting so much time go by.

Pp is in much better touch with our girls from college than I am, and gave me the nitty-gritty lowdown. This is very valuable because we're all getting together for brunch next sunday and I haven't seen most of them in a few years. Some have gotten married, some divorced, some have more kids, new careers, new homes and all kinds of good stuff.  And it's a good thing I got the rundown, too, because there are some once-very-prominent fixtures in the group who have slid into the He Who Must Not Be Named category. The last thing I'm craving for dessert is my own foot. Thanks, pp! 

late to the party (fashionably?)

Happy New Year and almost one week, people!

I don't usually do recaps at the start of a calendar year; I save them for when the blog hits a milestone. So far they've been a regurgitation of things I've already said, partially digested and snippety, yet somehow still extremely long. But now that I'm past 500 posts (shit, when did that happen?) and there are four of you out there paying attention, I feel like something needs to be said. So for the next one, I'm promising to do a *real* recap. Maybe. Lucky for me, I have until March to figure out what that means, exactly.

I know, that wasn't much to say when something needed to be said. So my promise to you today is daily posting for a bit. Normally this isn't too unusual, but I've really been slacking for no good reason at all. This week I will make up for lost time: My colleagues are leaving me all alone to hold down the fort/put out fires/organize filing systems/photocopy the side of my face/create contracts/establish protocol for the coming months/listen to pandora.com and dance around to my heart's content for the week while they tend to East Coast clients.

I wasn't too keen on staying behind while they racked up frequent flyer miles that I certainly could have put toward a free ticket to visit H, but I'm over it. Last night, Kaiya and I were catching up over Sizzling Rice Soup and Beef Noodles in the town where we grew up and talking about passion. Not the stuff of daytime soaps and new relationships, but the fuzzy, contagious kind that makes everyone around you feel better about being alive and able. You know the people who have it: they really care about something enough to make other people care about it, too. And not only that, they make people want to go out and do something about it, whether it's saving orangutans, eating lentils, planting trees or wearing UGG boots.

On top of that, this morning I was catching up on Salon.com's Broadsheet posts and spent 18 minutes watching a speech given By Isabelle Allende at a conference for intelligent forward-thinkers, coincidentally called "Tales of Passion."

I was so inspired by Allende's phraseology, humor, charm, delivery and innate passion for other people's passions, that it made me want to throw off the comforter every morning with the intent to do something truly good. I know this post has a lot of links, but if you can only click on one and make some time to watch it, make it this one. [via salon.com]

I hope there's stuff we can all be passionate about in 2008. You know, besides daytime soaps, new relationships (where applicable). Oh, and cookies.

tunes to tame the Scrooge

I freaking love Christmas music.

everyone should just give cookies for christmas

I like to read this columnist on Salon.com, Cary Tennis. The best thing about his advice is that I often have no idea what angle he's going to take in response to a question. Take, for example, this woman who wrote in a while back: The gift exchange in her family has turned into kids asking for gift cards and instead of putting what they want on the list, it turns into a list of what they don't want this year. It saddens her that she doesn't have the opportunity to pick out something special for her family anymore and now the whole thing just sort of really blows.

As I was reading it, I was all Yeah, what she said! Gift-giving sucks these days! Everything is all hype and commercialized! Down with shopping! But then I read his response, of which here is a snippet:

"Where, I ask you, are they supposed to find the values that you are talking about? Sure, parents can try to teach them these things. But kids look at their parents, and then they look at the world, and they go, What the fuck? They see the toys spewing out of the world's vast maws of plastic-mold technology, they see the microchips doubling in speed and know that in a year they will be faster and faster still, and tinier and tinier still, and more feature-rich too. They see the new dresses and the new videos, and they know they'll be changing faster than they can change their own clothes. And then they look at their parents, who seem to be moving in black-and-white slo-mo. How can they feel anything but pity and scorn? How can they have any confidence that their parents will even survive the acceleration? In fact it must frighten them that their parents seem so ill-adapted to the world that parents themselves have created."

Suddenly I found myself thinking about how my parents never read this blog because they have dialup and it's such a hassle to get online and then if someone calls the house, they're bumped off and it's totally not worth getting broadband for them because they likely won't use it. What also came to mind was how my dad insists on watching television "live" and won't allow us to start late and fastforward commercials, even though many of the programs are on Indian channels, which aired YESTERDAY over there, so it's really never live for us at all. And my parents aren't even old yet!

So then I was all Right on, Cary Tennis! I have way too much crap in my house, too! I don't need any more things! Everyone should just give heifers for the holidays! Gift cards aren't such a bad idea! Because if I get run down by another shopping cart at the mall I'm going to kick somebody! And people don't really like most gifts anyway! And anything I get my parents they're just going to be like, "oh you should have saved your money!" and likely it'll sit in the package for a year until I force them to open it. But then I find myself saying and doing the exact same things and I'm all pissed off that I'm turning into my parents. Then after all that, I start thinking about carving out time for one more trip to the mall this weekend to finish up what shopping I have left to do.

We got a lot of scrumptious cookies at the office this week. And there is a good possibility that I have consumed way too many of them today.

no question is left behind

Today I will be answering Becky's contribution to my request for NaBloPoMo ideas back in October:

1. what's your favorite color, and why?

Right now, my favorite color is green. Mostly of the shades-of-grass variety. But I have been known to change it up from time to time.

2. do you miss the dungeon? even just a little?

Yes and no. I absolutely do not miss sitting around till sometimes 3 am in a tiny windowless cinderblock room. However, that gave me a lot of time with my thoughts and a great excuse to write lengthy emails to this guy who lived all the way across the continental United States and realize that he got me so much more thoroughly than anyone I'd met who lives in this county. I don't know if I would have given the idea of him and I a chance if I weren't trapped in that room so often or if I wasn't on such a late schedule that I could devote so much time to getting to know him because of the time difference.

Also, during that time in the dungeon was when I started this blog. I had been going through a very crappy situation that normally would make being alone with my thoughts an absolute nightmare, but because I had the downtime to troll around and find you guys, and the fact that some people seemed to want to read what I was writing, that time was actually therapeutic. The kindness-without-obligation and support helped me fix my broken heart (not to say the love I got from my real-life peeps wasn't totally and completely appreciated, too). I really miss the time I had to myself back then. These days, I rarely have a minute to just sit around and post or watch a movie with no interruptions. But it's not worth not having a life at all. And don't even get me STARTED about the parking.

3. what was the last thing you purchased at the grocery store?

String cheese. Frankly, I think I have a problem.

4. if you could go anywhere in the world, to visit or live, money not being an issue, where would you want to go, and why?

Everywhere! I got on a plane for the first time when I was two and I've pretty much never stopped thinking about where I might go next. I'm obsessed with culture, food and traditions, so I think I'd want to hang out with all kinds of people and learn about how they live and maybe write about it or take lots of pictures to share with people for whom money is an issue. A lot of the problems in the world today are because people are so trapped in their own little bubbles and don't take the time to see things from some other point of view. Some places on my going-there-when-I-have-the-money list are Iceland, Japan, Brazil, Ireland, Kenya, southern India, Mexico and South Dakota.

it's all about leadership

"That Frank Caliendo even nailed the president's facial expressions! 'Just like Charles was in charge of those kids'! Bwahahahahahaa! I loved that show back in the day."

"I never wanted Charles to be in charge of me."

"Don't you worry, I'll be in charge of you."

"Um, thanks. But aren't you supposed to say something like 'no honey, I'd never want to be in charge of you.' ?"

"Why? I'd be benevolent dictator."

that's one hour i'm never getting back

Over the years, I'd heard people reference that film Mannequin; the one where Andrew McCarthy makes a department-store clotheshorse who comes to life as pre-Sex in the City Kim Cattrall. Sure, it's a stretch of a premise, but I suspended my belief and got it off my Netflix queue, because I'd heard it referred to as a "classic."

The movie was ridiculous, people. Kim Cattrall was supposed to be an ancient Egyptian trying to get out of an arranged marriage to a camel-dung dealer, but "The Gods" sent her all over the world for millennia, only to end up a mannequin who can only be seen by this one random guy. I pretty much watched the entire film on 1X fast forward with the subtitles on, and I'll admit to skipping a few chapters. I just wanted to see how it ended. And I've gotta say, I was pretty disappointed. My mom even got up and walked out of the room about 1/4-way through.

I'm not sure if everyone my age loved that movie back in the day because we were 11 or because people in the '80s were way more forgiving than I am today. It probably didn't help that the movie I saw right before it was Kate & Leopold, which had just as ridiculous a premise, but executed it slightly better.

But at least I can cross this off the list. What's funny is that I had much lower expectations of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, but that one blows Mannequin out of the water.

office space

A few things we didn't know before signing the lease to this place:

a) The people downstairs give dance lessons. promptly at 3:15 yesterday, the lilting strains of "if you don't know me by now... you will nevereverever know me... OOOoooOOOO" started, then continued. On repeat.

b) neighbors who like to jump rope

c) neighbor who listens to voicemail on speakerphone every day after lunch

hello my name is: confused

I've mentioned before that sometimes people look the same to me. Other times I think somebody looks like another person, but no one else around seems to agree. So today I decided to put it to the test. I'm not usually one for tests, but I recently was ridiculed for my constant confusion between Ryan Reynolds and Jason Lee, so I felt like I needed some validation.

I guess it's not as bad as I thought: I scored 94% (84th percentile) on the face recognition and 100% (93rd percentile) on the "verbal" (recognizing names in print). However, in recognizing objects, I only got 88% (55th percentile). However, I'm not really sure how scoring 20/20 still puts me at only 93. I also got 93% on the recognizing famous faces one and 94% on the regular-people faces.

still, i think everything would be a whole lot easier if everyone came with nametags.

bees and dogs can smell fear

Without going into the messy details, let's say that there once were some people who got overlooked in favor of something bright and shiny that turned out to be a big fat letdown at the end of the day. You know, kind of like how Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character in Jerry Maguire was overlooked by his agent in favor of that guy (not Uncle Jesse) who married Rebecca Romijn. And let's say the agent never came to his senses in this particular scenario, so one of the people got fed up, took a stand and pulled a Jerry Maguire "Who's with me?" speech.

Well, I'm one of the ones who went with. And now I'm starting a new job and hoping for the best. It's not going to be easy, but I believe it was the right thing to do.

However, me and my eight-pound human head are still a little scared about it.

i think my mom even has that sari

Back in October when 30 consecutive days of posting were glaring at me from the calendar, I put out a request for post ideas. Guyana Gyal suggested I let loose a stream of consciousness--with no editing*. I tried it a few times, but most of my consciousness streams are just spouty releases of my mental circus of neverending worry: How's the job thing going to work out? Is my brother going to make fun of the woolly socks I'm knitting him for Christmas? Will I be able to make my mortgage payments next year? Did I forget to set Pushing Daisies to record? Am I going to have to run for the bus again tomorrow morning? Are H and I going to have to move to Poughkeepsie to be in the same zip code? Are we out of oatmeal?

But I just watched a movie that liquified my already-chewy center, so I'm feeling a little more consciousness-streamy than usual. It made me cry the good cry. You know the one: when the tears slip down their tracks and make a puddle in the hollow of your neck. As opposed to the ones that fall off the side of your face and into your ears. I really hate those; they're uncomfortable. But mostly because things must be really, truly crappy if I've burrowed under the covers to let it all out.

It was the movie based on The Namesake, a Jhumpa Lahiri book I read years ago and adored, not just for the premise of not knowing where you belong (with which I identify very strongly), but because there weren't any flowery descriptions or clever setups; the author just said it how it was. And honest, that IS how it was for me. The extremely specific details snuck up on me like a fight scene from the Batman tv show. The author was just going along talking about these Indian people trying to get their footing in America and BAM! I recognized the nervous excitement from snapshots of my mom getting off the plane here in 1977. POW! I saw a freeze-frame from an auntie party in my own living room in 1995. WHAM! I heard a snide remark like ones I made to my friends back in junior high. I knew these things were coming, but I had no idea they would hit me so very squarely upside the head.

I gave the book to my mother and she identified with the characters too; mostly the parents' struggle to figure out what the heck they were doing when they got here and how to hold on then let go of their children after they'd sort of gotten an idea. However, other people have said the story was too typical. Cliche even. And that might be true; this is a land of immigrants. But aren't we all just writing about what we know and hoping somebody else will read it and get what we're trying to say? I know I am, most of the time.

One thing's for sure: I've never had a story capture feelings of my own experience so precisely that the glimpse of a mustache in the cold drawer of a morgue seemed so potentially familiar that my heart constricted in panic, if only for a second.






*Sorry, gg, I had to edit. The actual stream-of-consciousness version of this post didn't make no kind of sense.