It's almost Halloween

Poem written at 29 thousand feet
Adam Clay

When you laugh your knees
shake and I can feel like

a joke unfolding
then crashing into

itself, a wave of noise
but silent from the inside

view. I wish you
had been there with us

watching the mountains
and drinking beer in

October. Lucky for us,
the mountains won’t

go anywhere, but we will
or we did, and we’ll go

back to the mountains
and drink beer on the hood

of Brandon’s car again
and I will shoot an arrow

straight up into the sky,
tear a hole in it,

and wait for the arrow
to make the type of sound

an arrow shot
into the sky should.

All those glances that we stole, sometimes if you want them then you've got to

Well then, they ask again, what does the air feel like? And we have to think about this. Air feels like air, we say, and the fishes laugh mirthlessly. Think! They say. Think, they say, now gentler. And we think and we guess that it feels like hair, thousands of hairs, swaying ever so slightly in breezes microscopic. The fishes laugh again. Do better, think harder, they say. It feels like language, we say, and they are impressed.
-Dave Eggers

It's been one of those falls, already. People getting sick, dying , losing jobs, pets, friends. I was so high strung last week I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. So high strung I couldn't stop moving, went running, got drunk, and finally slept again. I feel better now, but don't know how to fix things for the people I would like to make everything right for.

It was my sisters birthday last week, and this time last year I was in Disney in the crazy heat and fighting with my family because they are nothing if not difficult. But for now, for this weekend at least, I will appreciate the good parts of fall. The cool weather and the sun and the people at festivals. Hiking til I can't breath and learning to bike again, on my new bike which is slightly too big but I believe a good replacement for the bike that worcester ate.

I think I'll go to Boston, Think I'll start a new life

I love where I live. It's been a while since I could say that, since Minneapolis at least, but old Minneapolis, before I realized that it was suddenly too small for me. Before I went to a bar and was about to hit on a boy before I realized I had brought him home the year before. Before I knew everyone, or everyone I knew knew everyone else. Before Minneapolis was not enough for me. But it was always a step up from Worcester. And now Boston, which I love, because I can walk everywhere. I can spend hours on foot pacing from one end of the city to the other, and love every minute of it. And it will get cold, and I'll be able to walk around in boots and winter coats and see my breath and it will still be good.

And so we start again, every year it seems now. And I rearrange, and figure out what will fit, what needs to be let go, what I can't leave behind. And I go out drinking with old friends, dance in rain boots, make a complete ass of myself, and laugh myself home. And I had a night reminiscent of nights with Lex on Friday, a mixture of drinking and laughing and bar hopping and staying up far too late and doing stupid and irresponsible things. And I enjoyed every minute of it, so we will see.

And also, writing recommendations for yourself is painful and unnecessary.

And, a poem, cause why not.

Subterranean | Eric Gamalinda
Let me be the first to say
that I know the name for everything
and if I don't I'll make them up:
dukha, naufragio, talinhaga.
Just like the young
whose hearts give no shame,
I love the excesses of beauty,
there is never enough sunlight
in the world I will live in,
never enough room for love.

I fear none of us will last long enough
to prove what I've always suspected,
that the sky is a membrane
in an angel's skull,
trees talk to each other at night,
ice is water in a state of silence,
the embryo listens to everything we say.

I am afraid for the child skipping rope
on the corner of my street,
the girl on the train with flowers in her hair,
the man whose memory is entirely
in Spanish. I am more afraid of losing consciousness
when I go to sleep, or that in my sleep
I will grow old and forget how desire
once drove me mad with wakefulness.

Just like the perfect seasons
they will die
and I will die
and you will die also;
no one knows who will go first,
and this is the source
of all my grief.