On July 1 EBT cash came out; $250 per neglected child.

Only July 5, those whose last names begin with A, B and C will get the “food side” of their card loaded.

But for now, on the eve of this nation’s anniversary, when I was hoping to have finished out the day with a nap, the damp, cool, summer night air is crackling with dundididmaself fireworks.

The roommate’s girl is yelling at him for being a dude—which I had thought was the entire point of his birth.

I’m too tired to write reviews or impressions of any of the 14 chapters and stories stacked up on the air filter.

I feel incomplete, having wanted to do a number of things today.

Oliver did his sprints in between jobs today, so I didn’t get to demonstrate silverback knuckle running to the young bull.

I have had a copy of one book each for Hawk and Quinn, two older fellows I see at the mixed race sports bar. I considered dropping the books off at the bar and stapled them in envelopes this afternoon. But, I had boxing articles to write and I was so tired that if I had one beer it would have ruined me and if they were there when I stopped in I wouldn’t want to be rude and just walk off. It’s been since February I think, since I’ve seen them.

I wanted to stop down this evening after I was too tired to write anything decent, but I don’t feel like rolling the dice and coming up snake eyes, which is about the odds that I’d have any problem with hoodlums tonight. Some other time. I’ll take my walk at 4 a.m.

This morning I was headed to breakfast after work in the passenger seat of Capri’s new pink minibus with the gray primer flowers, when she actually stopped for the yellow light instead of disparaging rival motorists as she ripped through. This gave me time to regard the yellow house—a house I did not realize until this morning was yellow, even though I have seen it hundreds of times. When I have time to stop and consider a frame house, of the kind that one finds on country roads in Maryland and Pennsylvania, with a yawing porch reminding me of a mouth and nose and two upstairs windows seeming like eyes under the pointy crown, I wonder about the people stuck inside, which is how I have always thought of people, stuck inside, like me sitting between book stacks and drinking cheap beer while…

Well, I just looked at that house knowing that it had been there long before that 75 by 75 yard patch off asphalt where four streets [one of them schizophrenic and two others dying of loneliness] and three parking lots merge into one forever empty space…

So, as Capri pulled through the intersecting moonscape without a tree or a bush obscuring the house from this view of road tar, I mused, “Imagine, waking up every morning for years, for decades and looking out that front door—at this.”

Capri laughed out loud, uncontrollably and almost ran over some tiny Dindu, who she cursed, “Oh get out of my way—you don’t even speak a real language!” and then smiled rosily at me and quipped, “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

I proved her right, after a fashion, “Never fear, Baby—every cloud has a gray taint and I’m here to remind you.”

So, please, to the readers that somehow found themselves here, at the end of the internet, to sort through the downloading of a damaged brain, yes, its terminal, and I can’t help it, but wouldn’t if I could.