The October Ledger

The rain this month is still warm enough that standing in it for a minute makes sense—briefly, before sense catches up. I’ve been doing that. Dancing in it a little, in the last of the warm downpours before the cold takes over for good. That makes my current list of things worth doing.

Other things I’m currently for: chocolate muesli with honey eaten in quantities that would alarm a doctor, fresh-squeezed orange juice that has stopped being a luxury and become a biological requirement, running a playlist on loop until the songs lose their edges and become something like texture. Learning Katakana because my brain needed a new problem. Karen Gillan. Puffy nipples, fully and without qualification. Comforting friends when they’re coming apart, because it’s one of the few things that actually works on both sides of it. Riding the tram across Berlin at night with my thoughts unsupervised. Stopping ticking clocks just to watch the second hand freeze. Cucumber slices on the eyes, which I tried once and will absolutely do again. Finding something genuinely worth masturbating to and doing exactly that. The new Zelda, which I’m still unreasonably excited about. Fish.

The opposing ledger: Ed Hardy, which refuses to die. Geocities, which is finally dying—not fast enough. Windows 7, which wants my enthusiasm. Cold feet in both senses. Fruit flies, who serve no function and deserve nothing. Britney Spears as she currently presents herself. Flying somewhere when you shouldn’t have to go alone. Cookies without milk, which is a fundamentally joyless act. Piercings placed without thought. Fungal infections. Mini skateboards. Stress. Meat. Girls who don’t love boobs, for whom I have only sympathy and mild confusion.

When the bad things pile up: cry. That’s on the in side too. October apparently requires it.