2004-11-10 - 8:26 p.m.

It is while I�m smoking outside, just recently refueled by the best of the Simpson�s countdown, that I see them. A girl in a red, off the shoulder tank, bounds down the stairs into the open arms and lips of a man whose face I will never see. Without expression or communication, they greet each other with the kind of veracity that makes half the crowd coo over their drippy love, and the other half aim an imaginary gun site to one cranium, considering that with a shotgun, a single shot would drop the two of them.

The PDA is a device constantly in flux. When without, it seems garish and needy. When you have hands at the ready to dance within your locks, it seems a natural extension�the very fact that your bodies are within the same vicinity almost demands it, as if keeping up a semblance of decorum would simply be a crime against nature. Viewing the PDA you are immediately aware of everyone viewing it, seeking out compatriots in your hatred. Encumbered in its web, you are aware of nothing. Nothing. It is most likely this fact that makes such displays so easy to embark upon. Once in the trenches, the rest of life falls away, and you�re standing in an open field with only two arms, two legs, a pair of hips holding you up against the void.

There are so many things I don�t understand.

The pointed shoes that cling by the thinnest of leathers to women�s feet; shoes that look like they were outright robbed from a elfin cookie factory, and could only be used for the skewing of men�s testicles.

I don�t understand those who seek individuality in Urban Outfitters, looking for an original t-shirt along side twenty other hipsters.

I don�t understand how simply feeling something; having an emotion traipse through your blood, while you sit calmly; how that can physically exhaust you.

I will never see eye to eye with people pushing thirty still using backpacks for non-camping purposes.

I will never understand why spackle isn�t considered an understandable alternative to teeth whitening.

Why anyone would keep people off my roof in Brooklyn, where all of lit Manhattan lays itself down to rest each evening, remains a complete mystery. Why there aren�t deck chairs, and an awning, and an open bar. A marketable experience is being lost.

Shiraz can drop me in two glasses, but whiskey takes six. Call NASA.

Blockbuster still considers Adaptation a new release, and hence is due back in two days. Nostradamus should be put in the case.

Men and women alike avoid winter hats despite the onset of flu season in order to avoid hat hair, while another segment of the population, tearing their jeans and burning cigarette holes in new Ramone�s T-shirts, strives to have such tresses.

I cannot comprehend fate, which seems so heavy handed on so many occasions, as if the three ladies of destiny huddled together to ensure the most exacting of snips in one�s possible future. How screamingly they can enter our lives, and then leave us. Standing. Waiting for a whisper. Daring us to talk to ourselves.

I understand the complexities of laundry. The stages from, still clean, to Febreezeable, to science project. Every single man should be honest, and lump his dirty clothes into bins according to the three stage system.

This and the excellence of a good cup of chicken noodle soup, versus an inferior one�(Chicken shouldn�t be red.)

These things translate well into the pragmatic conception that we adhere to for the lack of anything else, but so many puzzle pieces don�t seem to mesh, as if stolen from someone else�s scattered image.

Moments like this pass. They are the rumblings of a dam that needs just one more finger in one other division. Easily patched and forgotten. These little flicks of the second hand scutter by, usually about the same time the cider makes its merry way through one�s liver.

They go, and the construct returns. Or exhalation drifts down from heaven and changes everything.

What I worry about isn�t these moments, isn�t erosion through habit. I worry about the absence of clarity that sustains these moments against jubilance and boredom.

The echoes drown the sounds of those things we heard bellowed before, but somehow maintain the mumblings of the just now, just happened, just real.

A zero sum game. Constantly opposing frequencies slam against each other to dispel sound.

I don�t fear this moment.

I worry about the time when I won�t recognize it.

If that means anything.

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