I get this feeling sometimes when I am balancing my checkbook that I am playing with fire. No. Wait. Let me restate that. I say that out loud. I think about waiting for the next paycheck and cutting it close by writing a check early for bills or daycare and out loud I say, "Oh no, playing with fire." It's like a David Lynch movie for the thrift store set.

I went to CVS Pharmacy tonight doing a very dad thing, getting formula for the baby, for my little man. Doing the late night run is actually rather comforting, I can't quite explain it. I am walking through CVS which is surprisingly crowded for a late Monday night and two teenage boys ask an employee, "Hey, do you have birth control pills." They caught her a little off guard. Hell, they caught me a little off guard. "Why don't you try the pharmacy" she said. I felt extremely dad-ish in thinking, "wow, it's come to the point where kids think you can just go in and grab birth control pills like it was candy, or condoms. But then I bought an ice cream bar, perished the thought and was suddenly cool again and not old and cynical.

I keep saying in these pages that I'll explain what's been going on, what happened over Memorial Day weekend, what happened here and there. Well, I'm having a little difficult time doing that. I haven't even returned phone calls to close friends yet. I am watching movies and mentally writing poems about how the city is embracing me with pastel skies and tattoo clouds and the el drops me off like loose change and I still get frightened in the evening but now the ghosts steal me away. They take little things I need: breath, the consistent heart beat, remission. I fear them more now.

I have, in no particular order, have these thoughts in my head: sugar makes my throat hurt, coffee is ruining my body, winning the lottery would be nice, I can't listen to news reports where people abuse and kill their kids anymore not even in the background, I am eagerly waiting to read The History of Love and Bangkok Tattoo and reread Leaves of Grass. My man, Walt, you crazy fucking wild eyed man, I will sail with you. I want to teach again or at least work in the social work, teaching world. Maybe a case manager, an IOEP intaker, a crisis counselor. I want to learn how to fix a car. I am talking to a girl I haven't talked to in years and she is doing well and I am looking at my younger self shaking my head in disbelief. How strangely we grow. Human earthworms. I like Iron and Wine. I miss playing music live. The political life of Hamid Kharzai. Buying a knife set, cutting vegetables, cooking. Me and Irene on a rented sailboat looking at an old compass. The feel of water and my body adrift finally being carried by someone other than the people who love me.