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“Um…I see. Say, Polly. Do you feel good right now”

“Me? Yep- I feel physically fine. Mentally competent. Somewhat bloated from the egg nog and Mexican tossed salad, but otherwise great. I need a hair-cut and this bothers me a little…not a lot as I don’t have a boyfriend, or soul-mate, or any other kind of primate to impress right now. Emotionally…I feel stable-a little shaky at times, but that’s due to dietary influences and rising/lowering hormonal levels. I feel witty…on a scale of 1 to 10…about oh’…pi…plus or minus a percentage point. I feel smug. A little sarcastic…just enough to irritate people an hour or two from a full-blown tension headache-no more, no less. That’s pretty much how I feel right now.

Lately, I’ve been talking to myself using short declarative sentences…using the intended ‘I’ to save time. I also answer myself using the ‘you’ understood. Most often though the conversations consist of sentence fragments with lots of adjectives. I don’t think this makes for good writing though. Nor does using the word ‘though’ a lot. I read yesterday that good writers use verbs-the action ones-and leave the passive ones to the novices to keep them poor and practicing. I tell myself it’s like reading a John Steinbeck novel...someday I hope to believe it. I tell this to my friends-all of who are invisible by the way. Most of my invisible amigos speak Spanglish which I appreciate since I love Mexican food and can now read the labels in the Hispanic section of Food Lion. Once, one of my friends-from New Zealand-asked me to fetch a trolley before we entered the deli section. I stood there in complete silence for an entire minute trying to translate this into English. A kindly cashier girl- whom I was not trying to impress due to my unique hair situation-asked if I needed any help. I said, “No thank you, I’m just a little confused right now.” She nodded and gave me a shopping cart to lessen my dilemma.

I thought about dating the other night. The Aztecs were good at it and constructed elaborate carved stones showing how to do it right. “The stones are still there,” Raquel told me. “Unfortunately the Aztecs are extinct and the stones untranslatable as nobody alive now speaks Aztec.” The Aztecs caused many problems going extinct, for now, nobody knows how to date properly. Although…the Mayans say we need not worry as the world will end at precisely midnight three years and nine days from now. I wish I were attracted to Mayan men.”