an_anniversary_of_sorts birdmad i should have, as they say, taken it as a bad sign a night at work my license had just been officially yanked 2 days earlier for that last unpaid ticket. we had been talking all week we made plans for six months since everything in my house had exploded in a mess of betrayal and bullshit, we had come together and were exploring the possibility of something new outside of whatever had happened before i didn't get off of work until 11:30 and gave her my work number it was the first time i would see her since i had evicted Damian and the others from my house a night, a month before, in the arms of a familiar stranger, had cemented my resolve that i was no longer interested in just playing around, i knew what i wanted from life and i knew who i wanted to be a part of it and spent the weeks leading up to that night trying to get in touch with her a network of friends and acquaintences that Damian and i had in common clued me that he was circulating rumours that she had become a junkie, intensifying my efforts to find her, hoping that he was wrong but willing to endure anything for her if it turned out that the little bastard was right about her someone got word out that i was looking for her and my friends got her number. we started talking and the rumours proved false. the big night came, we talked repeatedly over the phone that night and she asked me where i would be i waited outside at the edge of the huge parking lot facing out on Union Hills avenue, i kept waiting, lighting a clove, smoking it down and lighting another as i waited. forty-five minutes had passed and she did not show, and another thirty, finally one of the members of the custodial team got off of work and saw me sitting at the side of the road starting to walk the two miles to the apartment where i had taken up residence i got a ride down and walked in to find my new roommates bearing a message that she had misunderstood part of my directions and had gone everywhere except where i had been waiting. that was three years ago, and i should have taken it as a bad sign 000924 ... Barrett I really can't say much (suprise) just wanted you to know it was read, and empathized. 000925 ... birdmad The very next night... you showed up we had not seen each other in so long i quickened my steps after running from the far end of the building we threw our arms around each other and walked arm in arm out to the car, visiting some of your friends before we went off to look for trouble did we really see the lightning that night on the hill or were we just hallucinating? god knows we were pretty stoned staggering up the broken hillside in the middle of the night as the lights of the city spread out before us. i couldn't take my eyes off of you -- we sat and talked about everything and nothing as the hours passed, perched on a rock by the edge of a place that would later be blasted out of existence every so often, in the midst of the cloudless sky, we both thought we saw lightning, the sky lit up as bright as day for a nanosecond and again we went on talking the inky night gave way to dawn and as we walked back down, we were able to see the park on the other side the bats returning to their roost deep within the hillside it was so very quiet there. as it is here now. 000925 ... birdmad last week...twenty-one years since i graduated high-school, eleven years at the same place of work, and a number of years since i found a letter in my mailbox essentially setting me adrift. It's stupid and self-defeating of me, i know, but then what else is new? This old weirdo keeps getting older and keeps getting weirder 100602 ... lostgirl milestones are good memory markers in the time line of this lifetime. you are young by the way! (a little younger than me, so quit making me feel old...) and weird is a good quality. so there! 100602 ... unhinged yesterday, a_year_ago as_if_time_had_just_begun my heart was suddenly wakened and this year has been a little insane but i feel like i'm coming out of all of it a better person 100602 what's it to you? who go blather from