(and)i would (someday) tempt the mist from
the shallows of your eyes, don’t fret the
bats from the bottom of my heart (flapflap) ,

september 23rd, 2003:

luckily, i have saved every leftover chunk of wax from every scented candle i have ever covered up stink with. there is a lot.

i cut up the leftover wax and place it into a jar. i put the jar into the oven and bake for 20 minutes at 300 degrees.

the wax melts.

i slice an old sock into strips of cotton. i twist the cotton and immerse it into the molten wax. i hold the “wick” aloft with a piece of wire from my guitar, and i drape it over the top of the jar.

i repeat the process.

by the end of the night, i have made three candles. now i only need to make matches.

september 24th, 2003:

pangs of hunger. i wander outside the dark apartment building and into the darker streets. the air is cool and there are few cars.

i find a severed branch and peel off the twigs. i find a sharp rock and carve a point onto the end of the branch. i have made a spear.

i discard my shirt and apply mud to my face and chest. i catch the scent of what seems to be a boar. i track it along cary street.

at cary and colonial, i come across the boar as it sniffs through some garbage. i throw the spear and it decapitates the boar. goddamn, am i good!

i use the sharp rock to carve the boar into bitesize morsels. i ponder creating a fire, but i’m too lazy. i eat the bitesize morsels raw.

the boar is much furrier than i think boars should probably be.

an unruly hipster tries to take one of my morsels. i decapitate him with my spear.

i discard my shoes and run home barefoot.

september 25th, 2003:

i am commuting home from work, deciding who i might trap, strap to an altar, and sacrifice to some sort of pagan god, when i pull into the driveway, and notice a strange brilliance emanating from the apartment windows. i approach with caution.

fixtures at the doors, in the ceilings, and on each of my endtables are glowing with some sort of magic.

“what devilry is in this?” i say, picking up a remote control and pointing it at the television; some deeply-implanted instinct that i hardly recognized. to my amazement, the television comes to life! it glows with the sounds and images of people.

jon stewart says something funny and i laugh.

ha ha.

by the end of the evening, i’d totally forgotten to whip out the altar. but i did get way caught up on laundry.

everything by candle light.

i can write this only because my office is across the street from a hospital, which is probably the reason it has electricity. my apartment does not have electricity, and probably will not have electricity until thursday or friday.

i was just in time.

i drove into town on sunday evening. i slowed down and stopped at intersections where the traffic lights are dead. some cars would stop and some cars would speed on through. i always stopped. there is no red, no yellow and no green. nevergreen.

on ellwood in the dark i saw shambles of walls and roofs mingled with pieces of branches and tree trunks. a bastardized clusterfucking salvador dali of a tree-house. a crushed residence.

my boss said that someone down the road was killed by a falling tree.

the winds were not any stronger than northern blizzard winds, but the ground is just far too soft.

my malvern is a shambles of broken branches and dying green severed twigs. they are being organized into piles.

trees look so much bigger when they are blocking off roads.

at night, it is especially dark, and i sit in my dark room with my candle and i listen to other people stumble through the entryway and fumble for their keys, and feel their way up the stairs.

the smarter ones have flashlights.

blocks and blocks and blocks of urban neighborhoods completely black is such a strange sight. what civilization abandoned this lovely place? you might ask. when driving, the Only Lights are from headlights and brake lights. cars. it is such a strange place, where the only lights in the dark are headlights and brake lights.

i have spent almost a full 24 hours in richmond, for the first time in a long time. it is a sad, dark place with no television football games or cold sodas.

on saturday, near albany, my other brother got married. i was standing about five feet away when it happened, in a tuxedo and with a rose pinned on. this was it, i said, there are no more siblings to be getting married. later, my younger brother danced with my mother, and then my older brother danced with my mother, and then i did not dance with my mother.

i got very drunk and made an ass of myself, instead. i was loud and obnoxious. i breakdanced and then i faded away.

i realized that i was stealing it, but i wrote “here i am! rock you like a hurricane!” inside the rsvp anyways. i handed it to kris and rebecca on friday night, eighteen hours in advance. i informed them that i would, in fact, be able to attend the wedding and reception. the outside of the card had a “M________________” which i filled in to make “Mmmmmmm! it’s tim!”.

from here on, there isn’t much energy left.