The shadow of the leafy tree against the yellow house animate in the wind like this mediterranean dream: the construction primitive; the sun an obnoxious kind of hot; the people and the conversation the passionate and trivial kind, charming in the way a Spanish island makes you ignore your scruples and partake.
 When the boy died the crowd didn't help him. You were with the kid, then you were against the kid. What did he do to deserve it. Maybe he did nothing. Maybe the crowd doesn't know what to do. What's the story. Your brain solved problems like these while the coffee cooled. Petty, human, telling. You looked at the waitress, shook your head. What would she think if you ordered the wine. Ever concerned, conscientious waitress. She poured a new coffee, you took a walk around the block, ordered a wine.
 You looked for evidence of a reaction the next day. Who looked like they were still thinking about it, what did they think. They said nothing. They looked at your curious face, back at the soccer game. Fucking yankee gringo.
 You began to notice men who didn't smile, who got their asses kissed. Who were concerned with matters of coercion, or otherwise kept secrets. The coffee tasted a little bitter, the wine a little tart. The girls were less sexy and mysterious. When the waitress looked at you, she looked for forgiveness for what she was in your eyes. It gave you the confidence to fuck her, finally. That you should probably leave was something she wouldn't admit to you, because, like your desire to be in on the secrets of this town, it just wasn't cool.
 To anybody reading this who ever moved to a far away place because you thought you could engineer a better persona, everybody knows, and it's a bit pathetic. The idea that you could fool people is where the unawareness starts. Things you weren't aware of: what the town thought of you, who controlled the waitress, their plans for you. I shouldn't say that it's total unawareness. You did have a few sleepless nights before you wound up with a gun in your mouth. Some part of you knew, and you should have listened to it, obviously. But you didn't. You got out of bed and put on that stupid shirt, greeted people with that stupid smile, practiced the new you.
 The waitress the kind of woman who goes to psychics and waives away her inability to keep her legs closed as life.

The suicide rate of the elderly is rising.

I stand in the human highway and feel the vibrations of the train above me. The foot steps of those walking beside me heavy with their stories, marching on to where some place justifies its existence wit how many people go there.

Let me tell you what it's like to be inside my head:

I'm not the boy peering through the window, I'm the man sitting there in the cafe watching and listening, listening and watching. Like some creep, I suppose some think of me. If they only knew how much better than them I really am. Admitting my superiority is a mistake, so from now on we're gonna go on like I never did, like the way I talk to small people who are offended by that sort of thing, like this book is a bible where some God, not me, is the real source of information, and so should be the target of your scorn.

Let me tell you what it's like inside my head:

I'm not the boy peering through the window. I'm the man sitting there in the cafe watching and listening, listening and watching, watching you. Like some creep, so they say. If they only knew how much better I am. Admitting my superiority is a mistake. From now on we're gonna go on like I never did, like the way I talk to small people who are offended by that sort of thing, like this book is a bible where some God, not me, is the real source of information, and so should be the target of your petty scorn.

Let's split the night between the two of us
If if the silence begs a whisper

Reap the silence for a dream, and then lets
Split the dream between the two of us

See the darkness in the sunset, see it
For the darkrise that it is in the time of

Visions in the noise the real, and
The flesh the ghost

Let's split the night between the two of us
If the silence begs a whisper, reap the silence for a dream

The girl has dangerous eyes. Green and ready
To be fought for - where does her confidence come from

Just before night there is the hour when the sky
Remains illuminated by a sun already set

Makes you wonder if the night doesn't creep up from the streets
And the sunset isn't a reflection in a puddle of gasoline

In an hour like this she stood in front of me and said
I brought some wine, let's split it between the two of us

In the way she said wine all the romantic essence of wine
And the look in her eyes, I didn't have to feel lucky

Not to have fought over her, though threatening
That I might have to

I closed my eyes and wished she wasn't there
But she was, and talking in that dangerous way

Like she herself born of the negative space left behind by day
Like herself a dream to fill the silence

In the streets people not afraid to get involved in the lives of others.
They say things like, I miss him.
They smoke, and watching the smoke dissipate, they say that they just miss him, that's all.
I always think of that French song to understand, La Vie en Rose. I pretend to have a cigarette and walk down the street listening to that song. When it gets to sunset, and everything's awash in that hazy glow, I think I understand. To justify things people do with a shrug, to take selfies, have relationships you can't explain the point of.
No, I don't get it. It's all crazy to me.
There was one time when I was about eleven when I thought I felt the presence of God. I was living with Marty and Esther, and we wound up eating at a church. The church had bought us all dinner, and it was us and a couple other families. One guy was quiet and shy. He was a young guy, red hair, beard. He had a Mexican wife and three little kids. Anyway, he was quiet until it was time to say grace. He sang like it was an opera or something, loud and for a long time. I looked up and saw everyone was bowed the whole time. It was a very warm feeling.
Later, as we drove away, I looked out the back window at the sunset with its colors and its majesty and had this religious feeling. It was definitely a good feeling. It didn't last.
Marty was one of those guys always making up for his uncool childhood.
He was short and had a ridiculous comb over, but hey he played the bongos and smoked weed. I will always remember his understanding blue eyes.

I knew she was damaged as she sat eating next to me. I kept my eyes on the keyboard, but she ate and ate and looked around, her movements a little too inviting, her eyes a little too curious.

The thing about working in those places is, you never get mad at a computer. I mean you do get mad when it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, but those computers never made a mistake. Sometimes the arm would break a meat patty in half, and it would just pause there. It was a mistake, but it wasn't really a mistake, because it can't be expected to do everything right. It was just funny to me how it waited, it didn't have to wait.
 I got those jobs under the right to employment act, which said that every business had to have at least one human working there. I got paid a little more than the default ____.
 What was really funny was how they tried to explain it to me, why every place had to have one human. I sat there and I listened, it was always some interpretation of people's fear of closing the loop. If robots design themselves, they start solving for their own self replicability.
 It's not that they were wrong, it's that it didn't matter. I knew that the first semi biological machines would be so good at social engineering, not only would they immediately have control, but you couldn't prove or disprove it. After I designed the first machine that thought, I told them never to ask it existential questions. That didn't work. They kept asking it what was the meaning of life. It wrote programs that answered more and more to their satisfaction until they taught the damn thing to lie.
 I told them when it finally said, I don't know, that it was over, the singularity had happened.