very much not in the mood to write tonight but i will for the simple sake of getting it all out. cleansing the system... you know how it is.

adventure today: went and got a flat tire fixed on my mothers car. of course it ended up being more complicated than that but for a while my directions were pretty straightforward: get flat right-rear mended; switch it with the spare; and have the tires rotated. the man that attended me was fairly short and probably in his early thirties and had a good friendly demeanor about him. he made the process easier than it had to be and pleasant to boot. he pointed out the elementary flaw in my father's plan which is that by moving the spare and the left-rear to the front (the front tires are better than the rears) the front would have a new right tire and an old left tire and would pull to the right due to better traction. never a good idea. this was alleviated when he got me to call pops up. so i ring his mobile and tell him that 'mike from ____' was here and wanted to talk to him. mike explained the situation and worked out a new plan from the remnants of the failed one. i sat in the lobby (basically a quarter of the same room: bad television on drink machine, three sets of two chairs - one of each occupied after me) and cracked my new hip dense reading material for a go. turns out it was so dense i only read thirteen pages the entire time i was there. go figure. mikes people find a problem in the tire. he calls me over and explains there is a nail (a nail!) in the tire and was pretty much fucked. he could get two new tires from his warehouse in-town and rotate them on the front (my father on the phone agreed) but it would take an hour and a half or so. ok so im stranded at the tire place with a broken phone and a dense book. 'all my children' had just come on abc. deciding to make it a bold day i took the book under one arm and strolled out across the strip mall (careful for holes and earthquakes) and got my phone fixed at the alltel store at the other end. the man working there looked lonely so i talked politics for a couple minutes and did a stupid bush impression so he gave me a new antenna for only ten dollars (retail thirteen). actually he just didnt have change. but i appreciated it anyway.

feeling hip and bold i strolled over to the chinese place next door and ordered (because it was only three dollars) a large hot and sour soup. well... much to my surprise a large hot and sour soup is something around 24oz. oh holy mother of soup. (hot and sour soup is a jumble of all sorts of stuff. sprigs, greens, leeks, mushrooms, tofu, chicken, fungus... etc. appears to have been collected out of the bottom of a chinese pond) i walk proudly back into the tire place with my book and a big brown bag of chinese and resume my sitting. popped out my mother of all soups and sat with a spoon and ate it while watching the soap. used a dollar i didnt have before the soup to buy a sunkist from the machine. feeling cool now ohh yeah. mother of all soups and a sunkist and i am the hippest kat in the tire place. believe it. people generally appreciated the rule of singularity and didnt pay any attention to me at all although when mike walked in the door i raised my mother of all soups in a macho sort of toast and made some inane comment about the length of time i would be spending there. yes, go me. the next half hour or so was spend in routine fashion. eating soup, drinking sunkist, staring at the standard blue and white diamond floor, watching 'all my children' (which i understand) and reading my superdense material. that and checking the bathroom locks. one time it was actually unlocked so i used it... just after the soup. i was in there so long that i ate all the soup... all of it. amazed myself and probably nobody else but thats good enough for me. im sure i was subtle enough in gloating by waiving the empty container about and asking mike where a trashcan was. im sure he appreciated it.

so later as i was finally called up to pay etc. i decided to well... brighten mikes day a bit. i tried to slip him a fortune cookie with my credit card ("they gave me two...") but he would take it. i turn and offer it to both a middle aged man and a cute teenage girl behind me (who giggled) but neither saw it fit to take. maybe they suspected i poisoned it or something. so much for that. so chinese brown bag, book, bill and keys in hand i stroll out and into my ride (my mothers ride) and back home. adventurous... hell yes i am.


tonight driving home from soccer and listening to some tunes (dig it) i managed to round a corner wide of a guy walking down a sidewalk. occured to me then how insignificant i can be. to that guy i was just an asshole in an suv taking a corner too fast and playing music too loud. to the woman across the intersection i was simply a silver jeep liberty. to the kid a couple miles away... i am nothing. i realized driving down that dark country road then that i had my entire life inside this vehicle: intelligible music, relations with my life, thoughts on my relationships, myself... everything in this car. in the cosmic sense of things though, my entire life is just an isolated incident on the road. just a bassbeat blur flying past. my entire consciousness on the road. to a passerby it is nothing. just as everybody i see pass on the road is tagged by their vehicle so was i. its all i am. just one human in his car. an isolated incident. even though ive had my contacts and spread my fingers deep into nebraska, new england, england, italia etc. i, i... am just an isolated incident on the road.