a time for everything...

The street was loud last night, with so many vibrating car stereos and the drunken disputes on the sidewalks, the sirens and barking dogs, I used to tune all this out when I lived down here, but now the floor below is empty, and the dog I watch is old, and the sense of vulnerability is strong, the nightmares are incoherent manifestations of the week's anxieties and I can't tell if I've slept deep or not at all, but waking up drained, drinking coffee in the pew trying to make sense of everything, unable to sing because these words on my lips would not be true, trying to remember that I've come through more crazy things just fine, and I'll be ok here too, that the emotions are not necessarily the truth.

The ennui hits every summer, with the heat sapping the strength, the lack of sleep, watching another set of friends pair off in wedlock every couple weeks, housesitting while everyone else gets out of town and goes on vacation somewhere else, and having way much time to get existential about the realities of living in a dying city, where everyone leaves, gets hitched, get stupid, or is just too poor to get adventurous. There are the occasional interludes of bliss, but they come few and far between, and seem to be fewer by the year...