the ruins of how

“I am going to die.”

“You are not going to die.”

“I am going to die and there’s nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it.”

“You’re being childish.”

I tell her I am going to die as am I laying on my back, limbs sprawled out on the floor of the kitchennette area of my apartment, as if I am going to make a snow angel there. Regina lights a cigarette and steps over me to get to the fridge.

“Could you not smoke in here? Smoking gives you cancer, I hear.”

“Hear from who? And what? You smoke all the time.”

“I probably have cancer. I am probably dying of cancer right now.”

“You’re not. I promise.”

“You don’t know.”

Regina takes another long drag of her cigarette and sighs smoke into the air.

“You’re not going to die,” she says finally.

“Everyone dies.”

“Okay then. You will die.”

She is right.

---

that is bad dialogue that i wrote, perhaps as a part to be of "The Ruins of How", which is the tentative title of the story that i have developing in my head and which i described to alec as "postmodernist fantasy centering around alienation, psychological detachment, and the feeling of the familiar becoming disturbingly unfamiliar", after which i winced, because of how pretentious it sounded even to me. i was scribbling out diagrams of important characters and concepts on the back of an apartment advert that i received from a man on the street outside the subway station, funnily enough while i was lost and looking for alec's apartment.

i stopped at an applebee's while i was lost and sat in a booth across from a man with a lazy eye and tourette's style anti-bush sentiments on his breath, things like "fuck... bush... and if you don't you're a fucking idiot... bush." i made the mistake of making eye contact with one of his eyes.

---

"those glasses perscription?" he asks me.

yes, i tell him, and look back out the window in an attempt to avoid any further conversation.

"they look like mine. they got stolen from my backpack."

he is wearing glasses. these glasses are mine, i tell him. i sincerely hope that this man doesn't think i stole his glasses.

i pay for my drink and hurry out. the man stands up and walks in front of me. he blocks my way.

"whadja get."

just the drink. he finds this funny, and as he yells for a waitress i duck under his arm and nearly run out of the restaurant. i walk fast the way i think the apartment is. i don't really care at this point.

(after i wrote this post i realized that i switched tenses, which made me feel embarrassed)

---

by now i've lost the paper that i wrote the diagrams on but they are probably obsolete by now, as i finetune the crux of my story. there was going to be a man named jean gerard blank, who describes the everyone theory to How, a theory that i "made up" after being exhausted in the city for too long. there was the faceless woman, met in a subway station, wiped clean and robotic after feeling too much (like the time i whited out). in my mind, these characters are pretty out there, or would be on the page, and i don't know if that's the direction i want to go in at this point. there is also Regina, How's tentative girlfriend, who maybe will play a part in his psychological fugue through the vehicle of some sort of traumatic event. it all sounds very trite as i write it, though.

my eyes don't want to focus on the screen. it looks too white for some reason.

i have a sore throat, a doctor's appointment tomorrow. i don't mind feeling sick at this point, especially because it is a familiar-feeling sickness (sore throat). i hope the doctor is able to tell me something encouraging.

i am nearly twenty. i felt as if someone is pushing me along, but as i am becoming more comfortable and happy with exactly myself (the events, or one could say the non-events of this summer have come together in such a grand way as to lead me to that) i am becoming more accustomed to that fact, that i am perfectly qualified to have lived twenty years, and that in fact i have done much in those twenty years and that every day i am able to do more. it is a great boost to my whatever. i'm sure many people have already arrived at that but for me, it is very new and just a little bit exciting.