There's nothing accidental in this song
Summer couture: a pair of pants I cut into shorts and a two-dollar assortment pack of different colored t-shirts. Walking down the road, brandishing an ice cream cone, and showing off your bony kneecaps to the world. It feels pretty good. The rain has decided to let up a day and you feel your urge to crumble turning into a veritable wellspring of hope and good intentions. Whereas two days ago you felt the urge to climb to the top of a very high place and plummet off, you now find yourself smiling on the world, not even minding when the neighborhood crackhead makes fun of your curly hair. Yes, you think: everything is going to be alright.

I don’t have a job anymore. Apparently, to score 11th grade science exams they want you to have some recollection of the periodic table, which is absolutely necessary to locate the right answer. How I managed to emerge from college without a solitary shred of this totally essential information on my transcripts is a complete mystery. But it is real and it is true. Talking to the kid who sat next to me for a bit, I had to deliver the essential information. “You’re an English major?” I said, “You mine as well go ahead and drop out now and learn a trade or something. Become an auto mechanic or a plumber.” He laughed it off, thinking I was joking. But I was at least one part serious. There is absolutely no point in going to college, the main premise of these institutions existing, essentially, as a way for aimless adolescents to become less poorly socialized and get away from their parents. Sadly, the particular college I went to didn’t even offer me that. Where my guidance counselor was in high school, I don’t know. But if I had access to this information, it may have saved me years of toil, student loan costs, and useless knowledge. Instead, here I am, completely broken and sketchy.

Walking down the street, swinging my arms lackadaisically, hanging limply like telephone wires. Some guy in a suit is yelling indignantly into his mobile phone on a lunch break. “You tell him I said so,” he says into the receiver. “No, you tell him I said so, though.” The person on the other end is not getting the idea, however, as he keeps emphasizing this one point. I try to imagine what it is that needs saying and the individual that needs to be reminded of the saying so. The linkage has been broken in the chain of command, and someone needs reminding of something or other. There is some executive order that needs carrying out, and someone not quite willing to do the carrying. Who could say what the problem is? The guy hangs up his phone and glares back at me as I lick my ice cream cone. Strawberry, my favorite flavor.