some evening, somewhere

In this wonderful, wide world we have lakes, rivers, trees, books, friend's father's ashtrays, strange collections on shelves in the houses of neighbors, peeling paint, anxiety, fake rocks that you plug into a socket so a reptile you keep in a cage can digest its food, bottle rockets, prisons, algae, titles to books that stick with you, porch lights, elation, quotes, pencils with hard erasers that are too short to hold, immense heaps of trash that stretch for untold leagues, rubber bands, fish that live very deep in oceans, moss on oak trees, and more words than you or I will ever speak.

Yep. And there is no map at the corner store to help us navigate. How about that? I mean, where do we start...or, perhaps more importantly, where do we want to go?

For some reason, shitty paperbacks from the 1940s to the 1970s are "collectible." That's strange. They're called vintage paperbacks, you know--they're the ones with painted images on the cover, usually with a woman wearing few clothes or some guy with a pistol and lots of shadows. Do collectors read them? Maybe some do, but most, I think, collect them and nothing else.

And what's with collecting, anyway? I've got nothing against it in principal; I mean, folks probably consider me a collector, what with this comic book thing. And when I was younger, Star Wars, and, before that, Robin Hood books. Really, with the comic books the joy comes from reading them, not from having them. And Robin Hood is just awesome. Seriously. Talk about an anarchist revolutionary.

Anyway, I am just traversing this blank screen. Or what was once blank, anyway. I didn't set out to write about medieval thieves resisting the state (or however you think of Robin Hood), but this is where we are.

Pictures on the wall are weird. There's plenty in our house, but they're still weird. Do people change the pictures on the walls or do they live their lives looking at the same ones?