I try not to write

The bench I'm sitting on is green and dotted by varieties of bird shit. The weather is warm and the sky is suffused with a sort of uniform purple caused by the reflection of the sun through creamy cloud cover. I'm not saying much, am I?

I try not to write when I'm in love. I find that I rely too heavily on adjectives. Just let the damn thing be, I tell myself. The bench should just be a bench, it needn't be green or covered by shit. I'm talking about being in love here, not love. No, the latter is too tough to come by. If you want to know anything about love just read that section of Corinthians, and if you can find me a person who is roughly even half of things then give them my number, and I'll gladly throw down my profligate life. Better yet, ask them if they're capable of even a fourth after their boss has gone ape shit on them and the commute home takes an ungodly time because of the rain and general stupidity of other drivers. Though, I suppose, if they were exhibiting all those traits the other drivers wouldn't be obstacles but just more folks to love.

Anyhow, the sky is now doing this ostentatious sort of pink thing that's probably influenced by the high amount of smog in our little valley. A couple of crows dart across the horizon to improve the scene. When I'm in love I tend not to see things rationally. It always arises out of a sort of misunderstanding. A Gatsby type thing. It's never the women I really know. It's always the ones I don't. You know as well as I do why that is. It allows you to fill in all the gaps where problems might otherwise be. If I see my beloved infrequently enough I'll forget that she has a gap in her teeth. The less I know about a girl the better.

A blond couple is tossing a stick to a dog on the grass in front of me. I want to tell them to take in the sunset, but I can tell that neither one of them are in love, and that the beauty would be lost on them anyway. The dog is sometimes bringing back the stick and other times just sort of running in the general vicinity of the stick and then sniffing the bushes for a while before taking a piss.

I like dogs. I like taking walks after eleven on near empty streets. I think that might be an easier way to find a woman to love. Most of the day everything is so crowded. But when you walk the streets at night, beneath the sulfurous pools of light, it's easy to imagine running in to the woman you love and just standing there, not even minding the cold, your runny nose, your crummy job, it's just you and this girl that you've now realized you've been waiting your whole life to find.

You see, I told you it's a bad idea for me to write when I'm like this. Waiting your whole life to find. Drivel, though being conscious of it does nothing to diminish the actual impact of the feeling. The couple is gone home now with their dumbish dog, and I'm still sitting on the bench, in a dim pre-storm light, waiting for that walk home in the dark where I never talk to anyone but myself.