I have a picture to paint, a book to write, a job to find, a self to find, and a future to choose, and what am I spending my time thinking about?

Well, what little is left over from imagining romances that will never happen, goes to stuff like this:

Pigeon girl. On a cold day, I pass a girl on the sidewalk. I smile at her. She ignores me because she is looking down and smiling at the fat pigeon waddling by on the other side. And I think: A pigeon is a pretty unremarkable thing to warrant a smile. They’re all over the place. Scavengers. Rats with wings, really. Yet she smiles at it like a sunlit meadow full of butterflies. I imagine that she knows this pigeon. That they went to high school together. That they go way back. That they see each other every day on this sidewalk. That she is fluent in pigeon-speak, and as they pass, they exchange a pigeon version of “Hey you. What’s shakin’?”
“Same old, same old. Just a few feathers less”

Maybe its fat, jerky ridiculousness in this cold, dead, concrete world is all she needs this morning for a smile.