what a damn year.

hell, not even a damn year, a damn half of a year.

which reminds me:

last night i had to retire a bottle of shampoo. i had used as much as i could possibly use. this bottle of shampoo lasted me... almost seven months.

oh oh, symbol. the shampoo pretty much lasted me over the course of this period.

not all bad, not all good.

just this period.

another symbol (i hated picking out symbols in english class because you can make anything a damn symbol if you try hard enough):

my friend works in this art building. i went and visited him tonight. as you walk in is this display, made by art students. they were given a rubber band, a piece of wire, some other stuff, AND A CRAYON, to make into art.

they took little pieces of junk, more or less, and made art.

crayon. art.

i met a ten year old boy today. his name is david. there was a big eating thing that i went to, and he was there, and i asked if he wanted to sit with us. he said sure.

i got him laughing at me, i got him talking, and i told him when he was 18 to register to vote.

he's a good kid.

today we performed. and my pants almost fell down on me. i had to be all smooth and wait until just the right moment to zip them back up and velcro the velcro.

i told david this, about my pants, he laughed some more.

for the first time, ever, i took a walk by myself here. a real walk, i mean i walk all the time by myself around this little neighborhood.

but i walked downtown. i walked around downtown. by myself.

at 7 pm on a sunday in a small town, there's no place open, except maybe a bar.

small town isn't really true. we graze over a hundred thousand people, but i come from a town of about a million, depending on how you look at it. so there's a sight of difference there.

i wandered their downtown, now almost my downtown, for an hour. i fell in love with parts of it and found, quite possibly, my favorite view. on top of this hill you've got a clear shot of the river, about a mile off and fifty feet below. the land here is flat, so it stretches out from where you are, and trees are present. there's a cleared off space right behind the old metal bridge. the sun sets somewhere between straight in front of you and to the right of you.

beautiful.

it smelled and felt like spring.

i realized something by walking around:

i will, most likely, always live in a small southern town.

something about it, something about the old shops and little houses and how it smells like soil and flowers and warm hose pipe water, something about it will always hold me.