another one from workshop & sort of the same guy showing up again - unplanned - although this time a little younger I think...

I'm too old to be surprised again - something he thought some random four a.m., some late night/early morning when rising from an empty bed into the quiet, the dark - nothing around but the slow ticking of the clock going through its paces - that quiet reminder of time passing. The days were gray, sometimes bright and sunny, but mostly gray and he didn't mind this so much. more it was the forgetting, the not knowing if it was Monday or Thursday, the pointlessness of Friday afternoons watching the world ready themselves for the weekend for that next slice of excitement of fun right around the corner. And now with fall in the air - that's what everyone kept saying - that fall was in the air and all the Halloween decorations the remembered joys of parades and candy of favorite costumes and the hum, the buzz of the night rising and lasting forever it seemed only to rapidly descend into all those family holidays the ones that stood up and pointed at him and said - where is your family and if no family than no holidays for you. He thought of the time he'd gone alone to a diner and had their Thanksgiving Special - how terrible that was - not so much the food which tasted like glue and water with liberal doses of salt - but also the simply fact of being there, alone, among all those sad old men mouthing, gumming at their mashed potatoes, like it was some diner in Hell, not just Sixth Avenue. And now sitting here, four a.m., telling himself "I'm too old to be surprised again," when really he was not so old - barely fifty and what was that anyway - just a number. The simply fact was - he preferred his own company and when he thought of the girls in the park, the late autumn sun reflecting off their hair or that woman at dinner last night, her long pale fingers blurred in motion or the way her rings flashed and her laughter, like a bell really all these things, event he slow blur of traffic at this hour at four a.m., it was all beautiful, it was all life and really every moment every heartbeat every breath ever word was a surprise. (c) 2010