pretty_straight_poison raze he found himself drifting into a very comfortable state of apathy, coloured with just enough rage to allow him the occasional burst of productivity. "today i will get things done," he said. "today i am in control." he found himself at a funeral for a man he didn't know. he listened to a man who wasn't dead deliver a eulogy & was moved by its simple poetry: "he lived. he died. he lives no more." later he found himself in a near-empty bar, drinking reasonably-priced scotch from a strangely-contoured glass. he studied its angular entrails while slowly dulling his senses. he talked for a while with a girl who could neither speak nor move of her own accord, such was her state of inebriation. he found her unremitting blank stare oddly comforting. a part of him wished for a life with her, away from the leering degenerates who clawed at her crotch with a bored ferocity. away from the cancerous air they had come to call sustenance. she left with the man who, in the sick wasteland of his mind, considered himself to be her caretaker. to be precise, she was wheeled away in an especially versatile garbage can that had been fashioned into something of a vertical wheelchair. he noted that such a thing would be useful for those who spent their lives searching for a pain that lived beyond pain---a divine hell. a secular thing. he walked outside in the rain & stared through wet hair at the most indecisively angry sky he had ever seen. the rain drops on his head felt like nails being dropped from several stories above him, landing precisely where their owner intended them to, in jagged lines that had an internal rhythm they were in no mood to reveal. he understood now what the dissonance was about; it wasn't meant to be an expression of a musical idea. it was a thought, or an expression of a feeling, captured by a musical instrument. it wasn't supposed to comfort you. it had more respect for you than that. there were ghosts, as always. not really ghosts, but he couldn't think of anything more appropriate to call them. they showed up at odd hours and hung around for a while, not harming anything or anyone, but projecting vague feelings of pain and loneliness onto whatever canvas was available. sometimes it was horrifying. other times it was nice not to feel alone. he didn't dare speak to them, though. he knew that if you grew to love a ghost, it would vanish. there was a logic to it somewhere...something about wanting leading to losing, or the illusion only being attractive because of the knowledge that it was a game carried over from one body to another. what kept him going was the same thing that kept him awake at night. 051113 ... no reason what part of him would wish for a life with someone he can't really see? just curious. 051113 ... raze que? the girl was a patron in the bar. he could see her. if that's what you mean. 051113 what's it to you? who go blather from