attending an aa picnic for lack of a better thing to do and am using the opportunity to people watch. i must try to unleash the barriers of my mind and emulate spontaneous prose ala kerouac.
i’m not exactly cold but i feel chilled on the surface. like the thin layers of ice, cracked from pressure over tepid water as if in an ice cube tray.
compartments:
everyone here is broken off into little groups. talking, chatting, chewing. wet lips forming words around mouthfuls of macaroni, potato salads, thick bites of greazed burgers being passed between teeth and eagerly tongued to the back of throats obstucting with throaty laughter all the while meandering from group to group, tiny invisible people lost in tiny invisible cities searching for a niche where they can belong if only for a blink of moments. people unable to let other people be out of fear of being alone.
“hi, how are you—” perhaps the next person they meet will be enough to fill that lone, dark, empty corner at the bottom of their hearts.
everyone here is living the same lives. they’ll go home and feel accomplished, thinking they’ve lived, been out in the world that day, feeding themselves the lie of unreality… whatever makes them sleep soundly at night when their head hits the pillow.
