Wordsmoker

1. Recently I was repeating the dumbest thing in my head for like two hours at home… oh, it was something not very funny someone said on Facebook.

2. When that happened, it was the closest I’ve ever come to understanding nihilism.

3. But then I remembered that I was going to reread One Hundred Years of Solitude, and that I have two trips coming up, and how much I love airports.

4. I wish city bars were like airport bars, or that I felt the same in them as I feel in airport bars.

5. When I was traveling home from Phoenix, there was this cactus themed place at my gate and I went up to order a drink, but there was the worst smell there at the bar, like one of the guys sitting there had shat in his pants. I left before ordering, but no one else seemed to mind it. Why?

6. Sometimes I think I might be depressed, but I guess if you’re willing to hurry all the way over to another gate to get a drink before your flight to avoid somebody’s shit smell, then you’re looking out for yourself, and will probably be just fine.

7. Did you ever feel sure you were going to die? I did once, and I wasn’t as scared as I expected I’d be, but I imagined a phone call about it to one of my brothers, and that felt worse than the dying part.

8. Would you think of a certain phone call, or what would you think of? I read this thing once that said if an announcement came that the world was about to end momentarily, everyone would just get on the phone. It would be funny to see everyone walking off by themselves over toward the curb to speak into their hands, and then when the big disaster came, no one would be looking at each other. Not funny, but… not as sacred as you expected it’d be.

9. In airplanes, I wonder about the people sitting next to me, whether we’d clutch each other if the plane were crashing. Do strangers do that?

10. I get touchy when I’m drunk or in love, and I’m assuming I get touchy on a crashing plane.  Only in those three instances.

11. If someone gets touchy with me when I’m sober or not in love with them, that’s fine, but it makes me feel clumsy.

12. If there was no one left anywhere who you wanted to want to have sex with, would you look in the mirror very often? I’m not sure.

13. Sometimes I sing into one after a shower to see what my mouth looks like when it’s moving, but I roll my eyes so I’ll know not to take it too seriously.

14. I like people who use first names naturally; it’s endearing, but not people who sound stilted or over-enthused about it. I don’t use peoples’ first names very often, unless I’m calling them from another room.

15. I think this is because I usually feel very close to them or very distant from them, and in my head, neither of these emotional graph points lends itself to first names.

16. Mostly, I love people who give nicknames. I think they’re the same people who will grab your hand impulsively when speaking excitedly to you and squeeze it and drop it easily when they’re done with it.

17. I don’t know where they learned that.

18. When I tell you why I love you and you’re standing right next to me, I have to say it like a list and my voice goes high.

19. But when I write it, it flows out of my hands like dark honey, or blood – not spilled – the good kind, rushing from a bright, fat bag up a tube into someone who needs it and the sound that I want to put into it is low like a lullaby.

20. When I’m reincarnated, I want to be that little big-eyed boy at the party who jumps up and kisses people on the cheek and then runs away laughing to hide under the table with the dog.