if my computer were to die it might be the end of me, at least for a little while.

not the end of me at all, of course, but an obstacle.

nevertheless, this is not an obstacle that I would like to face.


I noticed, looking down at my slim black shoe landing firmly on the sidewalk, that I have grown  less superstitious. It happened gradually, so that I do not know when I was, by definition, a superstitious person, I do not know when I became a slightly less superstitious person, and I do not know when it was I stopped caring about things like stepping on cracks in the sidewalk or the appearance in front of me of a darting black cat. Nevertheless, I do still double-check to make sure the oven and all of the stove's burners are off every time I leave the house. But I suppose this qualifies more as a compulsion, or some symptom of a more generalized anxiety or, in a more positive light, just good common sense, and, as such, serves no indication that I continue to be, as I once was, a superstitious person.

It served its purpose, I think, at the time. I was nervous all over. Now I am less nervous and more worrisome, but not all the time, and in more appropriate ways than I once worried, I think. Now it is less caring about what people think of me and more worrying about paying the bills that come to the mailbox in the front lobby every other day, it seems, each time elating and then dropping from a very high altitude my spirits as I discover what I thought a letter to be, instead, another claim over my resources.

I do not like this pronoun, my, or its variations, most of all mine. They cause such mess. Still I find myself, when I am worried about paying the bills in their crinkly white envelopes, thinking, "goddamn all these companies taking my money." I think this despite knowing that money doesn't really-- existentially-- exist. Then again if I go down the route of deriding money as a "human-made" invention I might as well throw myself out with the bathwater. We are all, to some extent, human made, I want to say-- but then I think of those little baby squirrels raised from day 4 in the hands of humans, still munching down on nuts and sleeping through the day and learning, on their own, at night, to fly.