Don't let our youth go to waste.

I really don't know how I've managed to corral such good karma, but I must be doing something right. After three days of working at Voertman's, after the post-hiring discovery that I was merely a "temporary employee" brought on for the back-to-school rush, I got a phone call from an unknown number. I rarely answer my phone when I get calls from people I like, let alone numbers I don't even recognize; but, for some reason, I answered this one. It was the manager of Art Six, a local coffee bar in Denton, and he was offering me a job.

I'd turned in my resume almost a month prior and had, by that point, put the entire prospect out of my head. I never get my hopes up if I can help it. The universe really came through on this one, and it didn't do such a bad job when I fell in love with the job and the people (or when I passed the excruciatingly nerve-racking efficiency test and was officially brought into the fold.)

But, still.

I've got this job that most would kill for. I'm going to school at UNT, my self-described dream university, and I'm living in Denton. This is the life I was pining for not six months ago. Why do I still feel like half a person? And, almost more importantly, why am I not surprised?

Even on those bitterly cold nights driving through central Oklahoma, swooning over "It's Gonna Take an Airplane" and imagining the indescribable bliss of getting the hell out of Dodge, I knew the move would fix nothing. I even halfway knew I would immediately begin the process of romanticising Ada. I knew I'd miss the simplicity, the comfort of being surrounded by nothing. I knew I'd grow quickly calloused, unamused by and completely over the cold pretentiousness of the fleeting music snobs and intellectuals. But I still did it.

Was it to prove to myself that I could be spontaneous? That I, like so many others, had the courage to flop awkwardly into the deep end with no regard for anything but the act of it? For the sake of my own mental health, I wish I could answer this question. I have no idea why I'm here, and I've never felt farther from home.

It was lonely awake on the bus.

[Work in Progress]

"I Can Hear Them Now, Even Here"

Tuesday, out of eggs; a trip to the grocery store, dodging awkward glances. I hear them when I crack one brown egg on the side of the counter, and I hear them when I'm whisking the egg in a glass bowl. TV's too loud. Turn it off altogether, it's making me feel stupid. It's evening, almost fall. I hear them when the thunder claps over the apartment. Forecast said rain, but until now I've seen no evidence of it.

A time before, though. This time before I was on the bus to Dallas. Some buddies of mine and me went on the bus together, a dollar two ways. We drank at the bars and met (but did not sleep with) many women. It was nothing unusual. The seats on the bus were nice, like airplane seats. The two other guys, my friends, slept through the ride home. The dusk looked like a bruise. We had a pretty good time, and I halfway wished those two guys would wake up and talk to me. It was lonely awake on the bus. It was not really that unusual. But driving through Dallas dusk! That's the thing.

I can hear them now, even here. I can hear the violin. There's a sudden collapse of the memory, an implosion of nostalgia that grabs the shoulders, and I can even hear the baby laughing. I can almost be right there, where I was on so many soldiering nights of my youth, smoking a cigarette on the apartment steps. Faint saw at first, then a quick beautiful swipe. Then it starts, the music.

I heard this poem once: "Why is fortune so capricious? / Why is joy so quickly done? / Why did you leave me? / Why have you gone?" And I think it's mostly true. When I hear the wild ducks leaving the pond where I am now, I think it's true. There's a place I'm going to one day. A violin swells in my brain and I know it's true. I don't claim to understand poetry, but I can recognize it when I hear it.

I stretch up and out against the kitchen wall. Shower's running, but it's too late. Ear against plaster, I stretch my fingers out across it and I know they're there. God, I can hear it as if I were in their room! And I can almost see them, the way music makes us almost see things. I have seen all of this before: an older Asian man, he's playing that violin to his child, a baby. His wife is making breakfast for dinner. Shower's on and I lower my head slow. I've played the stock market and I know about a gamble, but if there's something ever missing in the world it's men with families, playing violins to their children.

And sometimes I think of that poem even when I don't hear them, when I'm not even thinking about them. Every word turns over and shows me itself from every angle, and it's just got to be true. I know it's true when I wake before the sun's up, scared; when I'm alone in the supermarket, collar up against the cold; at home where it's so quiet I can hear a book sliding from its sleeve; when there's a paper headline I find interesting -- "YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN TEA AT HOME" -- and I put it in a box. (I'll eventually do something with all of them, but I haven't decided what.) There are things you just know, but there are people in the world we can never know, and it's mostly a shame that it's our only life.