Prop.

Prediction: tonight, I will beg for a few dollars to go to a show. Just to go - just to be out among people. Pull the ripcord and hit the ground and stagger up and hurl my stupid backback into the dirt and pull the goddamn parachute out by hand and fling the silk into the still air as hard as I can. Other people'll think I'm dancing, but the fact that there will be music playing is pure coincidence to this.

Prediction: tonight, I stay in and watch Law and Order. Instead of asking for $5, I'll help with a quiet lawn project, listen to some music in the garage, and work up the courage to go running.

Prediction: I will look back on this time and wonder how I will ever get back to where I was before this time, and wonder how I will go on. I will of course, wonder which "when" I was referring to, but "why?" will feel like so much of a sucker-punch than I won't be able to face it very often or for very long.

My predictions are never about the future.

What happens to us is circumscribed by the relationships we maintain, and the heart and hope we put into them, is like setting a table, a simple, optimistic thing; a nice life is the one where new friends get forks and napkins and sit down to become family. A nice life has lots of new friends and old family. Sometimes someone will ask if they can peel an apple for you. You can peel an apple for someone else. It's not weird.

Dad got a neuropsych evaulation today. I got something to help me sleep. We're the only people here. He's asleep.

Prediction: I'll stay home to hang out with my dad, so I don't waste $12 and spend the night standing in front of a bunch of amplifiers, so I don't drive around any more little towns. I don't want to hear anybody or see anything, anyhow.

We shouldn't be surprised at what happens to us.

So it's down to a science: science is a description of things that keep happening over and over and over.  

Somebody predicted that if the temperature of the vacuum in our universe isn't actually at it's lowest possible value, it could skip down a degree or so and the moment and from wherever that happens everything becomes over: all the subatomic particles break apart and so do we, quicker than a flash of light.

Somebody else predicted that the whole universe is a computer, and whether it's on or off doesn't make any difference: if it's off, it's our destiny to turn it on, and we'll only be smart enough and ready to turn it on when the universe is dying. Just in time, we flip the switch. When it's on, everything that's ever lived will live forever.

So everything I've ever seen or had is a prop: then life is a theory, or life is a simulation.

See? there's a difference. On a personal note, could you slice me half an apple?

Don't miss the world because you only live once, they say: especially since you can't miss the world and you'll never die, I hear.

British Sea Power, and The Rosebuds.

What happens isn't happening, and in the meantime I'm walking around trying to figure out who we are and why the whole mise en scene looks so scab-thin and why the air feels scratchy and why our feet clop like hooves instead of the little slaps I was always accustomed to. Oh, life. Life takes a lot of believing.

In rehearsal: if your steps sound hollow to you, keep quiet about it or you'll deserve what you get.

Continuing, I addressed the audience. I'm 24 and too old to just walk around and look at people and wonder what I'm seeing. Don't waste gas. You're supposed to know by now.

            (The ongoing - it begins immediately.)

    Actually, hold on - lets go back a beat.

Why don't you?, accuse the eyes of successful people. My eyebrows struggle to explain to you, it's that I'm not used to being looked at. Now the corners of my lips go firm and I don't mean them to be. I'm just looking, I stare. We're not looking at you, accuse the eyes of successful people. The concrete creaks when I put my weight back on my heels, and I look down at my feet to see how that could be because how could that be?, and though my brain says I don't have any lines my cheeks go hot anyways and when I look up you can see I've forgotten them, and crosses all a cloud of trouble over my face. I love you for your poise. I love that poise!, and the flush of it excited me so much just now that if I knew who you thought I was supposed to be then I'd break character to tell you what I just saw. You've got so much poise, I don't even trouble you. Your eyes weren't looking at me to begin with, your eyes were saying. I'm sorry I interrupted you. The set seemed weird to me all of the sudden.

So anyways, after the show, I predict that I'll write you a prop letter.

Prediction: I will be thinking about what you might have read, long after we struck and the cast broke up.

Dear beautiful genius, fairy-friend,
 

        Predictions being what they are, we should never be surprised what happens to us.

And oh, life.