Fine clouds of sparkling snowdust blown from the trees just now, like albino fairy magic or some shit. Sundays from another planet where we’d have brunch in one of the ten million run-down diners in SF or LA. Like Ship’s where you could cook your own toast right there at the table, get it just how you wanted it and not be at the mercy of some lunatic short-order cook who thinks he’s mister toast expert of the USA. Ship’s RIP—

(Hot item on the menu in run-down diners in West Chester, PA? Scrapple: a bewitching blend of ground pork and cornmeal that is set in a mold, then sliced and fried.)

At least two hours in the diner, idly making batik patterns with ketchup, voices graveled by grease, the, uh … the inertia sweetly palpable. Then: garage sales, riding in battered station wagons bought to carry band equipment, a kind of flat heat, scanning upcoming concert listings—

(The last concert I went to was Stars of the Lid here in Portland, just a month or two ago, but before that I hadn’t been to a show since Cornelius in SF in like 1999, I think. And Stars of the Lid just did these incredibly long, quiet drones in front of soothing undersea footage so it’s not like a total Rock Show, it’s more like Let’s Be Alone With Our Thoughts. Opening band: a postrock outfit where the drummer had his back to the audience [emphasis mine].)

—short-sleeve button-down shirts with ironic patterns, flipping through racks of used albums with intense speed and focus, renting some acclaimed documentary and not watching it, coming up with the opening line of a movie and not making it (“They said we couldn’t find our ass with two mirrors and a professional ass-finding guide.”), quotes, references, footnotes, and then we’d go our separate ways, return home, wait as our apartments turned dark and filled with a vague unease. Maybe I’m ready to turn thirty after all.