Last thoughts for an expiring notebook: 6/24 - 7/16

"EAT
ANY
HELP"
-sign, black marker on cardboard, Broadway

Jesus, I just saw a pigeon with orange eyes, and then another. Do all pigeons have orange eyes?
-note

"...when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises."
-Paul Coelho, The Alchemist

Turns out all pigeons have orange eyes.
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"I preformed as a shark last night."
-overheard, park bench, Cal Anderson

I sneeze, and the woman on the bench behind me says "bless you." I have no idea what she looks like, which feels like a disadvantage. Through the back of my wool coat, I feel a strong heat coming off this woman, though I'm also fairly certain I'm running a fever by now.
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"Blackmoose keeping it outside."
-overheard, hipster bicycle-polo, Cal Anderson Park

"A number of panelists admitted to being so vexed by the word [banal] that they tended to avoid it in conversation."
-usage note, American Heritage Dictionary

My girlfriend insists that I meet her friends, and my immediate reaction is that I should kill myself. I might be the most selfish person I know.
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"I hate it when darts become questionable."
-overheard, unknown bar, unknown

...tattoo of a tie-die mouse...
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"I'd feel closer to you if it weren't for this giant metal wall."
-overheard, work, cubicle

"Dude, happy 4th of July duode."
"Dude, back to back World War Champions."
"Word, dude."
"Dude, right? BACK TO BACK World War Champions."
"For sure bro. We got the nukes dude."
-overheard, unknown bar urinal, unknown

...shell-breathing...
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Tons of addicts in this city, in all cities, but hard to notice them sometimes, interpolated in the general flow of average & unremarkable citizens, folded in. Like the few shining bits of glass in a handful of sand.
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"...furniture and the little niceties which are not only the diagnoses but the boundaries of our civilization."
-John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

"It means 'Celebrate America' in Vietnamese."
-overheard, unknown country club dining room, Federal Way

"First US President to ever use boss as an adjective."
-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

"Kiara got a rude awakening. This shit is not no joke. Not no joke."
-overheard, daytime walk, Madison

"For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be a better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. This last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma."
-John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

[Describing a hangover] "Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily, like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool."
-John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

"The thunder's died down to a mutter, and the window's spatter's gone to a post-storm sad."
-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Last thoughts for an expiring notebook?
Every day sober is just as hard as they were before. They're not more so, they're not less. They just are, and they probably will continue to be so.
I long for my future.
I ache for my past.
I am.
I am.
And I have to work very hard to remember that.
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