DO NOT DESTROY

Someone's got death on the brain.

The world seems particularly lonely to me today. Connections seem fleeting. The little bonds seem oh so tenuous. I've been living it all on the interior for a while. Maybe that's where it comes from. The inability -- the reluctance to let the questions surface.

After Saturday's shows, an air conditioning problem in the theater drove us all out on to the rooftop, beers in hand. I put my tennies back on and climbed up the ladder through the hatch. The roof felt soft underfoot. And the line outside Bar Dynamite was distractingly long. I appreciated the lights and my distance from them. I felt myself wanting to be carried off onto the freeway. Northward. We did notes. We drank. We laughed. We told titillating stories. Well, I did, anyway. And the night felt young, even though we were well into the wee hours before I ventured back home.

But even when I'm in the reassuring clutches of a kind embrace, I am keeping secrets. And there is a sort of tired urgency tugging away at me. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Did that bit in the movie strike you the same way? Did that song send a fizzy feeling into your belly like it did mine? Does the smell of the next day mean anything? I ask no one. I am answered accordingly.

I laughed a great deal this weekend. And toyed with tears. I made more of my time than I might have. Less of it than I could have. I never quite went to sleep.

Sepulchral masks in the museum. Six Feet Under. The daily news. No wonder I'm thinking of dying.