July 22

It's been dark outside for a few hours now. I am with some friends and our location is less than fixed. This is not simply because we are walking. If the ground beneath us seems infirm, our coordinates incalculable, it's because it is not ground, per se, that we are walking on. We tread, my friends and I, the arc of our voiced thoughts, the meeting-point of our interests. A bridge, a fragile one, of hair and bone and words, is formed between our lenses. We traverse it. It coaleces, that bridge. It fluctuates. It breathes.

For a while we are speaking of our histories, our principles, our tenuous futures. The sinewy threads that bind us to our felt trajectories, these are apprehended subtly more than they are discussed. It's something that people do, you'll find. Chat. Feel each other. The content varies, when talk happens, but the structure is often the same. While we talk we sit out back of a cafe, and consume, like good Americans.

Then we are walking. Red brick beneath our feet. The bright, pencil-crayon green of tree's leaves contrasts a construction-paper sky. Purple, yellow. Our conversation turns to the plight of our friends as we perceive it. Being in the world means wishing everyone the very best, and going about your way. Here we see if there is anything else we can do. But no, not really. We can't.

Then we are sitting. Sitting in front of a house of product. A palace of variegated necessities. Convenience store. Pick your pleasure. I'll take one. I'll sit back down. I'll take more. There is an appropriate settledness to us now. The wheel that is 'us' has found its hub. A hub that, eventually, accrues bored drunks like planks in lakes acrrue algae. But not before a story is unravelled. One of those really compelling stories, unspooled like so much yarn around the fire that is our willingness to stay together. A true story, for as long as it's being told. A story that scares you, makes you want to smoke, deepens your stare. It's a story about the end of the world. As it's communicated, the landscape around us is retextured. This peace, this endless seeming peace of Boulder 08, now hangs by a thread.

And then that thread snaps. But there is no war. Only silence. Dumbass deer. Newspaper men. Quiet, heartfelt goodbyes. The will and volition to do this all tomorrow.

Somewhere, in a new voice, a voice that isn't my friend's, the story of the end of our world is still being told. And so, of course, it must be true.