five_years raze on the drive to value_village, cat stevens sings about what a wild_world it is out there. and he would know. he gave himself to the california coastline before changing his mind and asking to be saved. half the people in the parking lot are masked. the other half show their faces and take their chances. "feels like it's 'limitations day'," one woman tells another. a man with a barbed blue scar running down the bridge of his nose walks past shelves stocked with books and dvds and says, "wow." what he finds amazing is a mystery to me. i play a black toy piano that's on sale for twenty bucks. my fingers tell the keys to bully the hammers into striking a row of fixed metal bars. i find a pair of secondhand levi's in what i think is my size. they don't have dressing rooms here. not anymore. guesswork and blind trust. that's what we're left with. steve perry begs me not to lose faith. i leave before the guitar solo kicks in. a smiling man on a billboard says, "take flight." david_bowie sings about all the fat skinny people. all the tall short people. all the nobody people. all the somebody people. "i never thought i'd need so many people," he sighs. neither did i. what this song's really about is a fear_of_flying and the premonition of an early death. he screams about how little time he has left, not knowing he'll live almost another half-century after the tape stops spinning. we turn onto our street as the string section soars skyward, leaving his broken voice behind. an american_robin follows suit, and tears sting my eyes. 220612 what's it to you? who go blather from