If you stare at blinds long enough, it’s like you’re looking out from the inside of a zebra. That’s the most profound thought I’ve had all day, and it’s not very profound, just sort of disturbing.

If I were a robot, I would have eyes that changed color like a mood ring. And then people would know, know when they should give me a hug and when they shouldn’t mess with me.

I wish when I turned my phone off because of a certain person, the phone would send a message like “this person is so tired of you that she turned off communication with the entire world to escape you. Think about that for a while”.

Let’s pretend we don’t exist. Let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica. You are the only one I love.

I just realized that there is a bit of harmonica in this song. Cello solos aren’t always bad. The instrument really shouldn’t be held responsible for my failed relationships. Although let’s be honest, it had a fair bit to do with it. It can share with the piano and my psychological defects.

Time to turn off the phone again. This way it’s like you have self-restraint, but not really. Go to sleep and I’ll gather all my things, and I can call you in a couple of days.

I feel so helpless now, my guitar is not around. And what’s more, I have never owned a guitar, and I have no inkling as to how to play one. But that hardly seems like the most pressing issue.

I woke up this morning, and it seems to me that every day turns out to be a little bit more like Bukowski, and yeah, I know he’s a pretty good read, but who would want to be such an a**hole? Me, maybe. I’m a bit of an a**hole anyway. And when I wake up in the midafternoon to light streaming through my zebra carcass, I would rather be a world-renowned hungover genius who pays his bills by being thoroughly depressed and inebriated and sexed up most of the time.

And I believe it was you who I wanted to be talking to. Which is exactly why I turned off my cellular device. It was not because I was about to be enjoying a cinematic experience or live production. It was not an appropriate time for sleeping. And it was not because I enjoy the catchy jingle my phone plays when it turns itself on and off.

I feel like an idiot, because the only reason I’m standing here is because of you. The false hope never dies. Neither does Wolverine. Which is great, I know.

Tongue is spelled oddly. It’s like they wanted to make sure you could mispronounce it and add the word “goo” if you so chose. Which is only appropriate. In other news, I have an incorrectly spelled song by the Talking Heads in my iTunes. The Talking Heads probably pronounce “tongue” correctly, but I have no way of knowing that.

If we swam like dolphins through the crest and bathed ourselves in zebra flesh, it would be vaguely like my original idea, except we would be animorphs. Or animorphimagi. It really depends on what book series you’re more emotionally attached to. If we swam like lions through the crest, it would be the same, except it would make less sense, and our manes would get wet.

My tip for you today is to not mix your stripes with your plaids. But I’ve been downhearted, baby, ever since the day we met. And I doubt the plaids had much to do with it.

I can pretend like this is going to work. I can pretend I’m an acrobat, trapezing through circles of flame. They’re about equally effective.

And in the back of my mind, I can hear the ocean coming through the speakers. If I could dream you a Polaroid of sound, I would. But that seems highly improbable.

For you, I am sure I could steal all the Great Salt Lakes. Because although sometimes I get tired of your drugs and your disorders and your apparent laziness and your lack of intuition and you not conforming to be exactly everything I’ve always wanted, I really do love you. Enough to relocate large bodies of salt water.

Sometimes, we lose things. You lose your homework and I lose my car keys. You lose your focus. I lose my temper. We lose our passwords and our receipts and our self-restraint.

So the story goes. Faceless scrumbled charcoal smears. We will meet in the crumbled financial institutions of this land, and there will be a band, and you will have a bowtie, and we might have excellent repopulate the world sex. And there will be no butterfly knives and no adderall. And no standardized testing. But many butterflies.

The whole world is going to hell, according to every religion combined. So maybe it’s not a good idea of all the religions to unite. Maybe people should just be excited about going to heaven and not worry about everyone else. And we can all have our own heavens, and eventually maybe we can learn how to love each other and fuse our heavens together.

Wait, where’s the rush, where’s the hurry? You gave me such a fright, I thought you was a ghost.

I have since sensed to repeat this shrill sad cannonade. But as for now, I will wrap myself in dance posters and harmonicas and Bukowski poetry and zebra flesh. And we can try to love each other. Collectively. In the meantime, we can settle for not killing anyone. And we can watch lonely movie stories filmed by people who have no sense of reality and wish that we can love like that.

It’s one o’clock on a Friday morning. One hundred telephones shake and ring, and one of them is someone who knew you. Because days won’t get me far when you’re gone, and I wonder why we bother at all.

And that’s how you know you’re real.