This morning, I knew I only had $30 to last me until next Wednesday, but I needed breakfast. I wasn't ready to start Saturday on ramen, just yet. So I went to what Byzantine and I call the crack Robert's supermarket and picked up some milk, a loaf of bread, a can of Hershey's chocolate syrup, a pack of sausage with vidalia onions and two packs of Smack (gotta love that name) ramen. I made us French Toast and sausage. I tried to down a glass of chocolate milk, but then I remembered I hate milk.

We had bought 2 six packs of beer the night before, and since I would be out for a while with Mike, I asked Byz to leave me at least two beers; he had finished all the beer once before while I was sleeping, so I had to restate my interest. Sheri, my friend and neighbor who works at the hotel our landlord owns, brought us a bottle of Jim Beam last night, unopened, that had been left in one of the rooms. When I came back from hanging out with Mike, however, it hadn't been touched (I don't drink bourbon, but Byz does), and Byz was sleeping. So I thought that was a good idea. Sleep.

After breakfast, Byz left to visit his grandmother and parents in Pascagoula, Mississippi for Mother's Day weekend. We had listened to Car Talk during breakfast and after he left I found one of the Bill Hicks' CD's jessicapierce had left me when she and yossarian had visited weeks before, though now it seems much longer ago than that. So many things changed in a few weeks that it makes me wonder if there is any continuity to life or if because it's inconsistent, that's what makes it consistent. Like when people tell me that I am predictable only in the fact that I am unpredictable, and all the air is removed from my ego.

So now it's 11 in the morning, and I'm deliberating what will become of my remaining $20. I scooped up and threw away all the classifieds sections Byz has been scoping through for jobs to send resumes for, using Sheri's borrowed fax machine, which now lies dormant on the front room floor, the room without an air conditioner that has remained unoccupied and instead collects items of furniture I'm not currently needing. I'm drinking the last 3 beers in the fridge.

When I had a reliable and well-paying job, I wasted a lot of my earnings and never saved. I relished in the fact that all my bills were paid and left it at that, never thinking I would lose that job. Now I am realizing what we all realize at some point; that nothing is guaranteed, and to lean on things to stay constant isn't always wise. All those past reflections come washing back at the worst times, the times when you simply have nothing else to do but wait. Wait for life to need you again, wait for some sense of purpose and meaning to return to your life, wait for you to figure out, in some cathartic coffee shop revelation, what exactly you wanted from life this time around. What is the flavor of this week?

I have this destructive nature when sitting idle. I think we all slip into it when we're sitting with someone or alone, thinking aloud or to ourselves what we've surmised about life. We tear napkins into tiny squares, folding, crumpling, forming tiny characters from paper and the sweat from our glasses. I tear off the labels of beer bottles, feeling their slick gummy backsides between my fingers, crumpling them up and tossing away these objects of a mechanized world. I wonder what the machines look like that make the bottles and slap on the labels, and wonder how the rest of the world seems like those machines, always clicking away whether we notice or not.

I've said many times aloud and to myself: this will be a slim summer, hard, sometimes cruel, scary, and puntucated with laughter and joy. I can see it coming and I'm not happy about it. I am, I am trying to see the dawn, to learn from people less mired in their situations that I am in mine right now. I say aloud to Byz in the darkness, I don't want to have to go through all this again. And here I am, realizing the hypocrisy of my poverty when I used to be proud of my situation until my situation dropped below even my feigned tolerance.

I am, I am trying to see all the good about my life, as we all do when we believe the sky is falling. That good is what I cling to as I would the edge of the roof before falling down, trying to get out of a burning building.

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