You can allow yourself certain grievances and sort of step aside from it all when nobody’s looking, and just leave things right in the middle of the road. And whatever speeding young man chooses to fly past it, does. And whatever unconditionally reckless young lady might steer headlong straight into it, does. What gets left there is a pile-up that takes—basically—a team of firefighters to pry open for what remains of our dear friend(s).

I got a call from Travis Cambridge a few minutes ago while typing this. Apparently he’s leaving New York City for Seattle, to spend a month documenting the growth of a cloned alligator.

Asking him what the devil they might be up to with cloning alligators in Washington, Travis said, and I quote: “Do you think the Murder City Devils will ever get back together, by the way?”

How the fuck Travis gets well-paid month-long reporting projects and seems never to truly find himself reasonably relating to anything even for just a few seconds, I guess we’ll all never know. Shortly after he told me about the laboratory in Seattle and how there was a dreadful fire there which ravaged the fucking place last year, he excused himself to answer a fax, at which point he started giggling practically like a child, and came running back to the telephone where I was waiting, blammering on about how one of the scientists in charge of monitoring the heart progress of the clone reptile was just found hanged in his house in Aberdeen.

Travis read from the fax: “He left behind a wife and three children, one of whom became deaf at the age of 14 with no medical explanation whatsoever. This caused a rift between him and his wife that had become a problem in his life that he refused to leave at home. Gradually he lost all the respect of his fellow scientists, despite his being one of the top heart specialists in the U.S.A. and Canada. His funeral is Sunday.”

“I’m flying out early, kiddo. It’s hello fucking Seattle!”

I gave him my friend’s P.O. box number and told him to send a postcard with the f-word on it somewhere. It’s as simple as that sometimes, you know. Good luck, Travis. Maybe you’ll even get to sleep with the dead scientist’s widow, eh?

When I got up from sleep this morning I noticed two things. One, that the pitter patter of rain from the other side of the window pane was heavier than just the regular, simple pitter patter I was used to. And two, the smoke detector was going off. It sounded a lot like a police siren. It was so loud, in fact, that it was some marvel that I’d even heard the rain over it. I guess the intervals between howls were sufficient enough to let other noises slip through the cracks.

I pitched my shoe at the smoke detector and it cracked the white plastic shell off, loosening the screws, and the whole thing fell right out of the ceiling. The wailing cry of the alarm (that’s really what it was) warbled out with a pathetic, watery fade as the system swung listlessly from the cable still grasping the inside of the ceiling.

There was no smoke in the room, and I couldn’t smell burning. Probably someone out in the livingroom had lit a cigarette, that’s all. I don’t like cigarettes in my apartment, though. That shit isn’t funny or cute or clever or necessary.

When I finally got to my feet, I walked over to the window and lifted the shade. Yep, it was pouring outside. There were spiders all over the window, so to get a more detailed view of the downpour I had to wipe a path into the window with my arm. All the spiders that didn’t fall to the sill or stick to my arm all scampered about like dangerous looking, many-legged lightning bolts, furiously bolting this way and that, going nowhere. Turning around to go the other way, going nowhere.

Some of the spiders on my arm were crawling into my shirt, while others stayed put, seemingly content with just biting me. I cleaned them all off with a damp washcloth from the bathroom and threw the washcloth into the bathtub. Spiders urgently darted off in all kinds of different directions. Much like the ones at the window, these ones weren’t going anywhere either.

They just climbed the walls of the bathtub and fell helplessly down to the canyon floor again, failures all.

So I guess January’s ending, huh?

What’s next? February? There’s never any surprise with months. Each day is a new one, sure, and that’s great, but why does everything always get bunched up into sections and numbers?

I wish it were March. They have really odd looking turtles in March down by the highway by the sea.

I’m starting to think that maybe offering to partake in a train robbery wasn’t such a good idea.

We got the blueprints in today and Trav gave me my own copy. It has my name on it. This kind of bothered me. After the meeting, I pulled him aside and asked him what the fuck using our names is supposed to accomplish.

“We don’t want anyone having someone else’s blueprints, man,” he said. “They’re in sequence.”

“So you put our NAMES on them?”

Trav shrugged. “Well . . . yeah.”

Great. Out of the five people we have for this job, I only really trust Sammy and myself. Sammy’s done this shit a lot, most recently in Alabama as a birthday prank for one of his closest friend’s fathers, who was on the train, carrying a large sum of money in a black leather bag.

The other guys are sort of okay, but Trav’s fucking dangerous. He’s going to get us caught. Why don’t I ever just say NO?

The full moon sucks my will to live. It used to be one of the most important things to me, and now it hurts to look at. I couldn't escape it last night and I wont be able to escape it the rest of my nights to come. For three years of happiness I traded a lifetime of reminders.