I've become friends with Jason, a semiretired Elvis impersonator. Eighteen years in Vegas and ten years on the cruise lines. Before he was an Elvis impersonator, he had a career in the Marines, retiring as Major. On the day I met him he lifted his shirt to reveal a scar that runs from his navel all the way round to the center of his back. He said a .50 caliber machine gun cut him in half during his duty in Viet Nam.

He comes into the diner and tells me stories while I flip eggs. The stories are mostly from his Elvis impersonator days, not so much from his getting cut in half days.

He calls me Kid. I like that.

On Monday of last week a surgeon removed a squamish cell carcinoma from my right lower lip. Apparently, I'm goimg to look like this :/ for the rest of my life. I guess that would be like this :\ to you.

acutetriangle is gone.

Snapped through a salty windsheild this A.M.

Been hanging out with this pup. His name is Podge, but he is becoming more and more often referrd to by his descriptive nickname Pig-Bat, poor fella'.

Despite the fact that the current model of a loving relationship shies away from the idea of two coming together as one (or something more), I still find this poem achingly beautiful.

RE-STATEMENT OF ROMANCE

The night knows nothing of the chants of night.
It is what it is as I am what I am:
And in perceiving this I best perceive myself

And you. Only we two may interchange
Each in the other what each has to give.
Only we two are one, not you and night,

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,
So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,
So far beyond the casual solitudes,

That night is only the background of our selves,
Supremely true each to its separate self,
In the pale light that each upon the other throws.

Wallace Stevens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh8BD0quHwk