'The wonder is that this disintegration of self leads not into a void but into an ecstatic fullness'
---G. O'Brien, on Kenji.

Maybe there's something real in music, life, that isn't there in words, fiction. Something about life in dull streets and forgotten towns, miles away from any place that is any place. The average person who when asked: "what's your story?" has only a few lines to speak, after a false start or two. The soul, held together by what? The need to escape, a lack of courage and imagination.

Off the beaten track, the roads not on any maps. Off-centre, ec-centric.You pass someone by on the streets, and it could be anyone. There's a kind of poetry there. A place that offers you one crack at something else, where older people stare out of cold windows in winter, full of regret. Under the fading sun the desert ain't no different from the city.

Some simple idea. Or like a small, single idea somewhere in his mind. Like murder. There were people who in mid-afternoon were filling out forms, even though the game was up, and others vacantly surfing the web, trying to find some deal or way out, determined to make something of their lives. It was those people he hated the most. A cheap 8-dollar dream like a whorehouse in bright morning sunlight. 

The shops on the main street were being boarded up, like a storm was approaching, and signs were going up, written in large block red letters: 'everything must go'. The Zen essence of capitalism. All that shit floating from the south seas making its way here, poisoning our kids.  Things were better when we didn't know no better. But we do. That was the sucker punch. We didn't see it coming; thought we'd cleared the ground of the fucking reds, only for their ghosts to haunt us in the dark rain.

Life insurance. I can't afford it.