Verbal exfoliation is good for your soul

Tonight, with a marble notebook spread on a table in a Dunkin Doughnuts, I realized I should be keeping a blog for a strange array of reasons – all of which are vain, none of which are good. I sip French Vanilla coffee, stare out the enormous fishbowl windows, and watch the traffic move in waves of headlights and tailpipe exhaust, vanishing into the frost air.

“And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking,” wails Pink Floyd into the depths of my inner ear (thanks iPod headphones).

“You’re much too existential, Mr. Pink,” I think with a smug smile, and add, “Much too loud, as well.”

Actually, that’s a lie. Pink Floyd is not playing on my iPod. “Wordless Chorus” by My Morning Jacket has been played three consecutive times, and I anticipate it’s good for at least another three more. The line about “running to catch up with the sun” is a stilted ploy to contrast the opening image of writing, passing cars and ethereal clouds of exhaust. With Mr. Pink and his lyrical existentialism I hoped to suggest this blog will concern itself with capturing a web of somethings. Moments? Fleeing sentiments? The attention of a bored internet reader? (Hi, by the way.)

So I’m still waiting for these obnoxious high school kids to leave. They’re crowded like a knot around two tables pushed together with their football jerseys, acne, unrealistic aspirations, black North Face jackets, insecure babble, and communal sexual ambiguity. They’re making me very anxious. And the group is growing. The glass door snaps open, brining more in. Always in groups of odd numbers. Gaggles of threes and fives. Sometimes a hapless one, a lone nightwalker acquainted with the night. They pull up screeching chair, collecting like a tumor. None ever leave.

But, as for me, it’s either very late or very early. So I’m just going home. To hell with these kids.