Even if the world isn't being washed clean, my old jaded heart still believes that the rain is at least giving it the old college try.

Tonight I took a walk with my senses oversharp. The air is thick, hot, amniotic. It's nights like this — when the atmosphere is insistent, overbearing, tactile — that I am most aware of being alive. I don't mean aware of the act of living, if the act of living can be considered the mental determination to cart the body around. Tonight, I carted without thought and simply was the body.

It's the kind of night that makes melancholy beautiful. When the skin takes over, it wants to feel, connect — but the thirst is as important as the satisfaction. It's heartening to know that in the automatic animal places, I am still reaching out, still believing that connection is possible.

Yesterday, I got to feeling a mite cranky whilst thinking about my cubicle. Really, it's a nice cubicle, as cubicles go, but like everybody else, I never thought I'd be trapped in one. I was supposed be a rock star by now, or the Great American Novelist, or somesuch.

Anyway, I was feeling woefully inadequate all afternoon, so I went home and wrote a song to cheer myself up. It came out a little grim, and a little wry. Wryly grim. Grimly wry. And elsewise.

Here are the lyrics:

I had a dream last night
and you were in it
you stuck a knife through my hand
told me to "hold this a minute"

I bled from the palms and
we talked about issues
you said "I'm more likely to love
the kind of girl who does dishes"

so I took out the knife
and I washed it for you
after all that I've done
it was the least I could do

it's the least I can do

It's a beautiful day here on the floor seven, with the window open and the plastic Britney chair gleaming wickedly in the sunlight. I have a flowering branch taped to my monitor and iTunes is playing "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard." I know I shouldn't sing along, but I'm having a hard time remembering why. It feels like summer vacation for no apparent reason.

I'm suddenly flooded with gratitude for having a job that can ever seem like summer vacation for no apparent reason. Part of me wants to run to the elevator and skatebikedancefly around the free world, but part of me is perfectly content to sit here at my desk, making lazy half circles with my rolly chair, listening to good music and not doing work.