Have you even ever rented a room
Spring has shown by to the wholehearted jubilation of the entire populace, who has crawled from the cramped corridors of their rental compartments and sauntered out into the new day, with the possibility of anything. Your skin itself registers this fact on some surface level, its pours opening and soaking in the vitamin rays of the sun, which elicits the chemical reaction in your head that convinces you everything is going to be OK, and everything’s going to work out how you planned it. It’s impossible not to walk down the street and connect with just about everyone, because fuck: it’s nice weather out and nothing else matters. Unless, of course, you’re me.

I spent the weekend in a state of total inebriation, shambling and confused, the only thing separating me from the vagrant population hanging around downtown was the fact that I actually had a home to go to, sort of. Although that did not prevent me from actually going to it. I woke up on a grassy knoll one morning, my shoes and remaining life savings in tact, a dollar thirty-five from the previous evening still in my pocket, which I immediately began calculating for a future expense. I dusted off my clothing and headed in the general direction of my house, proceeding to discard the memory of waking on a tepid grass from my mind completely. It didn’t seem fair to officially count it, since I couldn’t remember the events which lead up to it, and so it seemed unfair to keep it around--which is the carefully conscripted rationale for things that happen in my life which I don’t want to own up to.

Any number of days may have passed like this until Sunday night came around. I walked into the Central Avenue Hannaford in a state of disrepair which nothing would ever again fix, praying I wouldn’t have a run in with that albino grocery bagger, an individual I may have been heard making fun of earlier in the weekend, and who was no doubt lying in wait for this exact moment, staying late and working overtime even--to see me in a state of disrepair that nothing would ever again fix—and to send me over the edge completely. I ended up running into Adam Lynch instead. His face appeared to me like an anchor of familiarity in a sea of faces floating like images in a surrealist painting I would never be able to fully comprehend. He had to call my name twice before I was able to recognize and then proceed to have the total meltdown that there he was and there I was, too. It wasn’t entirely special, though, because we were only standing in the doorway to the Central Avenue Hannaford, one of the more mundane cross sections in the world, and who really cares?

It turned out that he was also at the conclusion of a similar bender, minus the whole grassy knoll incident (unless, of course, he was outsmarting me by not telling me and thus not counting it as an event which had actually happened, because he could not remember the events leading up to it, etc, etc.). In fact, we had apparently been hanging out together earlier in the weekend, unbeknownst to one another, except that we had attended the same rock concert, and may have even arrived in the same automobile. An apology had seemed in order, but from who seemed entirely unclear.

We talked for a while about the house we were moving out of. It was also in a state of disrepair, and its own sketchiness could only exist as some overt symbol of the lives of the inhabitants living within—inhabitants who were currently standing face to face in the doorway of the Central Hannaford, and soon to be shot to opposite ends of the universe. For some strange reason entirely unclear to me he had chosen a sordid domicile across the river, which is a euphemism in my lexicon for we’ll-probably-never-see-each-other-again. But still, despite the inevitable denouement, the encounter left me feeling uplifted and ok-seeming. Adam was a good egg, a good friend, within an overarching solar system of broken yolks and cracked shells, tiny little umbilical cords sticking out of your omelet and making you throw up.

Before parting ways, it became clear to me that the people you meet in life are like cardboard caricatures, cartoon faces painted on and intricate detail. Sometimes you came across a cutout that may be imbued with something which vaguely resembles your own, with the inherent experience and frayed edges. It wasn’t a bad realization to have. I wondered if he was thinking about that, too. It didn’t really seem like it mattered much, though. Barring dramatic interpretations, at least we had the weather. I never liked Spring, but it seemed to be catching on. It seemed like it should.