22:12 - October 03, 2002
sharp edges
Duct tape. Fuck. The entire world knows how many uses there are for duct tape except me, and there's a roll of it just perched on the shelf of my desk, looking at me, daring me to know what to do. And I don't. It won't even stick to the grimy walls here in order to keep the computer wire out from under my feet.

Somewhere a hundred or five thousand or a million metres from my window there is somebody starving to death, surrounded with other people starving to death, surrounded on a greater scale with other people who are not starving to death, people who will spend enough money to feed the world for lifetimes and lifetimes on bombing things and blowing things up. The money that isn't used is given to subsequent richer people who will use the remainder of it to blow up what has not been sufficiently blown up by the previous 'mind behind the money'.

Thursdays are my late nights, have been my late nights as far back as I can remember. Grade school cello lessons, junior high piano lessons, high school working in the store. And now college composition training. The instructor lives way down by a creek I didn't know existed behind the recreation centre, along a dark wooded path strewn with tree branches that blew over last night when it fucking snowed. Walking back and trying not to get lost, I passed three bikers wearing headlamps, pedalling furiously though they were going downhill. I imagined some monster in breathless pursuit farther up the path. I imagined tear gas, napalm. I imagined a knife propelled by tiger legs. I imagined allied tennis balls at top speed. I don't know what I imagined.
The bus stop is a spot of brilliant white light in an ocean of darkness. A boy with a pick protruding at a perfect right angle from his massive Afro is smoking a fat joint, while an Indian girl who I recognize from Farrand rests her feet in his lap. Joggers who have lost their minds run by in shorts, legs covered in goosebumps, headphones blaring from around their necks (if you buy headphones, why do you not put them over your ears? especially when they could double easily as ear-warmers?) breathing raspy. This altitude is not funny, you know.

Because of all this I spend my time in class, in between rapidly taken useless notes, drawing things with sharp edges and angry faces.

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