The set of characters.


1. Eva. At the end of her mid twenties. Greg. The man who is fascinated with her, is at the end of his mid 40's, & greying.

They see each other often, late in the evenings, til late in the night, 'til the bars close shop.

They talk. They drink, & they talk. They go for long drives, without music. They lay on the grass, on blankets, with poetry & wine, and contemplate silently, separately. They go to riverside towns. They drink on the rooftop-bars of the respectable adult society.

They toast & make friendly banter with a CNN reporter, a doctor, a wife, and a somebody else. The man is charming & polite. It looks like they're going to be bantering small idle talk all evening before dinner, so his girl, is bored, and so, charmingly & decisively, says, "Babe, there's space over by the water, let's go sit." Lovebirds, you know. And to the crowd of old boring fogies, "It was such a pleasure to meet you. Have a wonderful rest of the evening." She names their names. And then she smiles at the man, and takes his hand, and leads them away from proper society's summer-dressed folk.

They sit. He says, he thinks what she just did, was so cool. He would've never done that. He would've just gritted his teeth and bullshitted & smiled his time through hanging with these boring people.

She is secretly angry. He took her here as a surprise. Dinner reservation. She wasn't prepared & was rocking her artist black jeans, and an art print on her t-shirt. She looked practically like a young teenager about to go off to college, while he had a casual blue summer button-down. He fit right in with this aging, suburban bourgeois yacht scene. She looked right out of East Village. He liked her for the rebellion he perceived, that he highlighted & enforced by context.

They're happy anyway, strangely enough. The evening is beautiful. The city is both far away, & close.

Next week, things would be different. Next week, she would be having coffee with his ex-wife.
Next week this would be over, and they would never see each other other again.

all those moods & ghosts.

when the joy strikes, i am out, sidewalk-skiing on my own mania & sunshine, lit by some internal fire or sun-glow. i take life like liquor.

the things that burn on the way down, kills you deep & slow.

played the music box right on my chest,
slow-cranking the tiny, dinky silver lever.

i think some days, when i am nothing but only tired, and even the lively edge of bitterness is gone, i'm just not there. like, hello, eleven-year cycle of fatigue & sleeplessness, i did not miss you. what is there?

i could spill away; i think about it. i think about how love saves the day, but only hand in hand with the truth, because love alone is just feeble, aimless emotion, and truth alone is too much of a cool-hearted, solitary companion. these things temper each other.

well, i don't know where love is, but i've got a lot of honesty, which is the thin safety blanket that i'm sitting on. what does a girl have to do, to disappear?

she said that she found that sad things troubled me more than i think they will, and she's right. at least i've got my guitar. i spend time holding onto its hollow body.

it was nice for a while. i thought things were going to be different.

i laughed.

these people caught in their scripts. spirituality, signs, mistakes, love & home. free spirited. up and down tones of their voices, & they're running their lines, signing their papers, finding their next space for their things & their bodies. are you annoyed?, he asks. leading questions, i think, to misdirect into an argument over negative emotions, instead of finding growth. the woman loves him; she thinks he is a more honest, fairer, kinder, more beautiful man than he actually is. we both see his potential, but for her, it is enough, and for me, well, darling, we all have potential. she likes the organza of romance, and he likes to weave, because all that is keeping them going in the largely unfulfilling rote of their lives, is this grasp of flimsy human interaction, which truth be told, bores them existentially.

he is casually cruel, or desperately stupid; likely both, and disrespectful of himself & others in an inherent way. he is entitled and lazy and bad to his art. he is fearful, and insecure. he hurts others, knowingly, and blames it on moods and foolishness and temperament. he is the everyman in short stories, but the one that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, because he doesn't move his soul or behavior to transcendence, but cops-out, continuously, repeatedly, from person to person, situation to situation, until he dies a largely ordinary death. he fails to live his life truly & compellingly, but slips into occasional acts of style & ability. most things are done with some fear, which he could overcome with acts of bravery, but he has yet to do it. maybe he'll accomplish it at 78, when he is old, and a grandfather, in an act of true moral courage before a child, and be a changed man. i doubt it.

not because humanity is not beautiful, but because he is a man who chooses cowardice & ease when he could be the man who chose to live vulnerably & beautifully. i would never love the former, and to the latter, i'd helplessly, willingly lose my heart to.