(Aug. + Sept. 2025) Sober Trip

Last night I spent a while cutting up a heavy yellow melon called “kandy” that was some kind of hybrid between a honeydew and a cantaloupe and something else. I was trying not to waste too much melon while I cut off the tough skin. It was sweet and somehow acidic, like pineapple. Later that night I had strange dreams with lots of responsibility. I can only attribute those dreams to the kandy melon. I woke up with a splitting headache and the urge to clean out my closet. I sold some clothes at a bougie secondhand store except they “had to pass today” on two dresses. Tonight, I hope my sister is having a great time at her high school dance. She said they were playing “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz and it’s funny to me how things are still the same in a lot of ways. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll have the same thoughts as today. That nothing can surprise me lately. Huh, more cynical and sad than usual, and then there is a surprising breeze that rattles my blinds. [Here in Los Angeles autumn is just an afterthought. And then suddenly its a mild winter.] But back to tomorrow. Maybe P and I will walk a mile to the farmer’s market. Maybe, if we wake up on time and everything else runs on time. Time promises us a lot. It’s hard to believe that promise: that things will change, or that they won’t, or that things will be better, or they won’t, or that time will heal everything and wipe out everything and someday mean nothing to nobody. The more I stay an adult the more I feel the cyclical pull of the generations and their patterns. The universe and its patterns. Do I sense myself joining the wheel? Will I become someone foreign to me? On the day after tomorrow temperatures are supposed to drop. Elsewhere, everything will be ending. I think I’ll feel the same, but I am frustrated at the idea. I am distrustful of time even though it is the most constant thing. Or is it change? Or is it evil? For a moment I think hard about the idea of ubiquitous evil. My florescent lightbulb flickers in the hallway next to the kitchen and I hear a maniacal dog barking outside in the warm night and feel my thighs and there are a number of bug bites and then consider opening the fridge to eat more of that melon. I think I’ll do that. The cold will chill my upper right teeth, like they did the day before.