Life is absurd. The connections within are sometimes so deep and so abundant that they start to become meaningless. The patently absurd becomes profound—watching The Expendables in a taqueria at 10PM. A white boy laughing at an explosion on a screen, surrounded by people he has positively no connection to, seems somehow lovelier than all the stories of Joe and his friends, glimmers of “the old days,” or any plans of recapturing that past in the future.

What’s real tonight? It’s cold. The stars are out, and every once in awhile I pass by a homeless man in a wheelchair and wonder where the hell he’s going to sleep tonight. I feel a gust of wind that is preternaturally cold, which reminds me that I am alive and, somehow, taking part in this whole thing.

The best expression comes out at wit’s end, when exhaustion or panic has set in and you’re honestly just too confused to do anything but tell the truth. It’s no act of initiative, at any rate; it’s just that the castle walls have been battered down and the keep is showing through the holes.

The world is changing and I am my only constant companion; or rather, my confusion is, my incredulity. I look around and things are foreign, funhouse mirrors twisted even in real-time out of recognition. Only the past, our memories of comfort, seem concrete and tangible, and then they too fade.

I am a ship whose compass has been scrambled in the storm, bearings lost.

Now, lost is all we seem to know. The only signifier of location: lost.

Bold, uncharted territory. We’re en route to the Indies now; no maps will show the way.

Bon voyage.