I was reading Hunter in this dilapidated park I used to live by. It's right next to this concrete V-shaped sewer and I figured if I got bored sitting at the park, I could go sit on the sloped walls of the sewer and remember a time when decisions were made for me. A time when it was easy. I was a product of parental control and I didn't care much about anything except riding bikes and beating boys.

I had stopped reading to smoke a cigarette and swing. The metal chain was rusted and made this terrible scratching, of a factory machine that needed to be oiled. The noise triggered my inspiration and made me notice the black man, across the street, as still sitting outside under the shade of a tree. I wondered if he thought I was crazy. I had been at the park for a couple hours now and had switched reading spots five times, each time picking up my purse filled with pens and books and notes scribbled on napkins and receipt paper, then dropping it and sitting down a couple paces off to continue reading. I was in a black tennis skirt, the kind with shorts underneath, but I wasn't sure that he could tell and if not, he was probably a little shaken by my careless exposing of myself.

This made me smile, because I felt we had some connection. We were the only two sitting outside in the neighborhood, relaxing in this Missouri detriment of my personality, officially called Cape Girardeau. I wondered again what he was thinking and thought about walking across the street to strike up a conversation, but decided some things are better left undiscovered.

He didn't look too old, but he was black and his hair was still dark, so I couldn't be for sure. His clothes made it seem otherwise though; his chicken legs, covered in jeans, were crossed so that the bottoms rose up exposing high, white socks and loafers. He had on a plaid button-down shirt with suspenders, but I still couldn't be sure of his age.

I was being harassed by an ex, so close-minded and judgemental that I'm completely dumbfounded that I spent a year and three months under his insecure wing. I suppose I was playing pretend. He was, well his family was wealthy and I enjoyed snobbing with those prudes for a while. They rejected box wine, only wetting their palate with vintage European wine and over-priced duck.

Like I said, I was reading Hunter, so maybe his anarchist spirit influenced me to rage against that family. They were pretty nice people, in all honesty, but I was on the inside.

I was reading "The Rum Diary" and had just finished the first part of the fifth chapter, in which he realizes he doesn't necessarily like talking in big words, ambiguous words, such as "love" and "happy," most probably because of their misuse, especially in the career field we share. I talk about these big words, but always negatively, as in they don't last and basically they aren't real. I'd rather find shelter under words that I can fully explain. so then I'm never proven wrong.

My mom and I got into an argument today because I don't believe in the same values/vices/morals she does. She said I've always written dark things, and although I'm not quite sure what she meant by that, I do know I find those "dark" things beautiful and their mystery is alluring.

God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
          -William Blake, an excerpt from Auguries of Innocence

She can explain these big words, or so she thinks, or so she pretends and tricks herself, through religion, through God. She told me to research, but that is so completely ludicrous because, unfortunately for her and the millions of other believers out there, faith is defined as the confident belief or trust, without any evidence or proof, in a truth or the trustworthiness if a person,idea or thing; "without any evidence or proof" being the key words there.

I think it'd be much more commendable for the religious to stop pretending they can prove God, and instead say something like: "Yes, science is an amazing thing, that is certainly making it harder for people to believe in a divine creator, but me personally, I believe all this beauty cannot be an accident, a gigantic speeding meteor or an explosion caused by infinite density. Period. (Yes, I just used the word "period.") That would make them seem less like lunatics. "Phonies."