that is the good thing about readings i think, they tend to outlast their bodies
i carry home little bits of reading-soul every time i leave
stuff them in my pockets
find them later
when i am doing the wash, when i am digging for change

oh, i think—i forgot about this one

remember.

remember. three readings in 8 days, maybe a fourth in late november. getting published in three different publications, and working at the link like it's no big thang. they treat you like you mean something. two articles in a row in three days on the maisy website after the internship was up. and you got published in rover arts this summer too, shit. remember: you are lucky. remember: you are happy to be here. you have opportunities other people aren't getting. make them work for you. don't get cocky; don't get jaded. try to stay happy. push the circle your world is circumscribed by. push.

funny

looked over at u&me noodles a few nights ago at work—

the neon sign inside was off, or gone, or both. anyway such was the effect that i couldn't see it from my store, just the reflection on their old windows of the mediaphile sign from across the street.

funny how things work out like that.

u&me

across the street from my store is nouilles u&me. it's got a big yellow sign that i guess it was kinda known for, before it got shut down a few months back for health code violations. i remember a tourist asking me and some friends of mine about the chinese restaurant with the yellow sign during grand prix week a few years back. i didn't know which place he was talking about at the time, but it must have been nouilles u&me.

anyway, i saw on this restaurant website that they'd had like 13 violations or something. maybe 13 is the last straw, once you hit 13 it's like, okay, clearly you have zero commitment to cleanliness or whatever. it makes me kind of glad i never ate there, i guess; makes me pity the poor schmucks who used to come in to my store and ask what happened to the place, it was their favourite chinese place, their stuff was the best. god knows what they were eating, although probably nothing so drastic as my boss joking to a customer that they'd been caught serving human flesh; that the chinese triads were disposing of their enemies in the food, bit by bit, little take-out boxes as tiny coffins. he really sold it; straight-faced and everything. the guy who asked bought it for a few seconds, even. he was so embarrassed afterward he told my boss to go sit in traffic for a bit. what a dope.

anyway the reason i bring this all up is that every now and then when i'm at work i look out the window, and my eye catches on the neon sign inside the restaurant. u&me, it says. u&me. it's still on, though the restaurant's been locked and dark and empty for, god, maybe five months now. i look at that sign and i just laugh, because, shit, what else can you do? it's the kind of detail that tells a story in and of itself, you know? i just look at that sign and i see all that is poignant and redolent of emotion in the stories we tell ourselves. it makes me glad it's something that exists in real life, and not in a movie, because if someone had come up with it, it would be considered heavy-handed.

"oh, i get it. the sign still being on after the restaurant has closed parallels the character still having feelings for his ex after the relationship has ended. how perfectly symbolic. though it burns bright within the dark, quiet emptiness of his life now, eventually, the restaurant will be turned into a new business, and the neon sign will be turned off and thrown in the trash."

well la-de-da, mr. screenwriter. and shit, who has a neon sign inside their frickin' restaurant? no wonder these chumps went outta business. that's top-down incompetence, if you ask me.

this has got to be

the most exciting thing i've seen on the internet since the dawn of forever