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April 30, 2017 - 188 words
They changed the outdoor patio! It is easier to sit now, easier to have a quiet intimate conversation, at least when a frenetic ambulance doesn’t shriek by these urban echoing corridors. We sit at our usual spot, huddled over the windblown candle and smudged ashtray, huddled under the mounted bleached skull: a stag or moose or elk. One of those magnificent things. It seems to be casting some kind of protective spell around us, encasing our charged conversation in a bubble. It’s as though we are stationed at the entrance of some Void portal. THE VOID. It’s always there just beyond the senses but sometimes the senses trick us, don’t they? Yes they do. We only believe what our senses tell us but that’s just a lie isn’t it?! Sometimes it is, and sometimes it also is. We distrust our senses and when that happens we get to part the curtain and peek into what? Reality. Hallucination. I dunno. One of those things. Doesn’t really mean much at this point because it’s THE VOID where nothing owes you an explanation.
We light our cigars and trade our woes.