2008-06-19 - 11:05 p.m.

�����I sit/sleep with my head/back against the wall/window and I hear the not-so-distant rumble of the motorcycles venturing further north up the highway. Further north to faltering neon and faint echoes from the shoreline. People marvel at the bikes and walk around with "Laconia" shirts like they won a prize. If the contest was, "Who's Stupid Enough To Spend $40 On A $3 Shirt That Will Shrink And Fade Within Three Wash Cycles??" then yes, indeed, they won the prize.

�����This whole week has permeated the area with an electric charcoal scent that I just can't seem to shake. And I don't know that I want to. The peculiar mid-June smell swoons well with the lower than usual hanging leaves up and down the streets that branch off my street. Now that the bikes are passing through, their sugary exhaust is mixing the smell up into something more recognizable. Something that complements streetlight walking and hats pulled back while catching up to a group of friends on the sidewalk - only to fall back to the group behind you - and continue to modulate yourself between the two until you reach your destination.

�����Maybe I was being a little too obtuse about that scent I was refering to in the last paragraph. It's that smell of future present tense. Summer tinged with feet in too-tall grass with a propane receipt in your pocket and a grass stain on your ulna. Trying to protect your back from the sun while you spin your head on cool, crisp salads and cooler, crisper bottles. Baseball fields unplayed on and passages overgrown - either due to the insurgent temperature or indolent temperment. Butterfly petals that move so fast they don't show up on the film. Pulling in your stomach and tightening up your head with intentions of floating and boating about. Those small bits of ash that look as if falling from constellations? You know - that smell?

�����Maybe I lost you on the whole "smell" thing? It's ok. That happens. It's that time of year that opens up hearts and minds - and bones - and often, in a race to get the words/thoughts out, the messages and meanings (the morals of the stories) get jumbled like some sort of a word, well - jumble.

�����I'll be walking down the street with my two feet, trying half-heartedly not to brush my forehead against those low-hanging leaves, and I'll look up at the overlapping clouds, adjust the strap on my bag, fix my gaze back to straight ahead, balance my glasses, and wonder how I ever got through all those pieces of broken glass, blaring speakers, wooden stairs, curb-side pick-ups, tree climbing, birthday parties, campus visitations, brushfire sand dollars, automatic redialing, speech delivering and baby rocking and made it out on to this side of 29?

�����I have more hopes and less fears than before. Let's clink our glasses and fix our collective gazes straight ahead and understand that no one is in this whole thing alone. Join me, won't you?

������It's been real,

���������Green Seventeen

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