making name badges.

listening to june of 44,

tropics and meridians, four great points.

everyone a picture inside a picture inside a picture

letting them call my name 4 times before i answer

pretending i'm underwater again

salt stinging my eyes

i can do this all day long if i have to, pretend that i am alone

my daydreams on the way to work today were thick with sense data:

the smell of afternoon, the song of leaves. soft cotton tshirt warmed by the sun. the backs of hands, boney wrists. daydream or memory? light caught in the ends of eyelashes, bare ankles itching from grass. feeling invisible glass between myself and the sky, i can hear her breathing next to me. making church steeples with fingertips, daydream or memory?

when i get like this, it all becomes very real to me. or, at least, because everything else seems like it is written on tracing paper too, memory is as real as anything else. which is to say, not very real at all. a worn cloth, the end of a sodapop glass, penning notes on open palms, my name breathed into my ear, a knock to the head and the lowering of lights, it's all one constant hum of near zero.

knowing nothing lasts, thankful for it this time. waiting for the sun to set to bring me back again. hoping on a drive to pull me back into focus. a coffee, some cigarettes, louder please louder.

i know nothing's wrong. i just like the road to confirm it for me. for the short time, the time between up sun and down sun, this time too shall pass.

thankful for this.

(ephemeral E*phem"er*al, n. Anything lasting but a day, or a brief time; an ephemeral plant, insect, etc.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, � 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

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ephemeral adj : enduring a very short time; "the ephemeral joys of childhood"; "a passing fancy"; "youth's transient beauty"; "love is transitory but at is eternal"; "fugacious blossoms" [syn: passing, short-lived, transient, transitory, fugacious] )

i have been thinking a lot of the comfort of maps.