Song: Gospel Train (Special 2009 "Red Hook" Version)

Originally, this song was the titular track from my homemade album "Gospel Train". I'm now re-recording it with my electric ukulele & synthesizers for my on-going Friends Around the Campfire Special Electric Ukulele Summer Covers EP - you better believe I'm still working on my summer project. Also, my covers album has broadened to allow me to cover my own songs. The 2006 recording of "Gospel Train" was once posted with the lyrics here.
Today's recording we refer to as the "Red Hook" version, for obvious reasons.


If you require to download this mp3, the album Stuck Home Syndrome available here! Friends around the Campfire on facebooks here!

Illuminations: Evacuate the Species Prayer

The fourth illumination of the Five Prayers, "Evacuate the Species", the text of which was originally posted here. Click on the images to read the poetry full screen. When we're all done, the entire thing will be included in the updated version of Prophecy & Doggerel, as well as get its own $1 Scribd book! Others of this 'Prayer' poetry, including the illuminations for the Seven Prayers, can be found if you peruse around itwaslost's Department of Prayers. Thank you & Gesundheit!

Three Years Ago: Essay on Distance

Our continuing series, a yearlong celebration of the three-year anniversary of this blog, we reprint what I wrote exactly three years ago, to the minute. This essay is interesting because I still feel similarly; & I've made drinking friends in Berkeley, some of which are the Brooklyn friends who slowly realized I was on to something by moving to Berkeley.

________________________________________________________

After college, many of my friends settled in Brooklyn, the only place in America I have no interest in living. I went away to one boarding school for four years & one college for four years (including one year abroad in England). Relationships are, of course, measured in both time & space. During my eight years of education, I developed many close friendships, all of which were displaced every spring. Few people, when they are deciding where to go after school, would take into much consideration where their friends will be moving. Ambitions, art scenes, employment opportunities, desire for travel, love – these preside over keeping “the gang” together. Drinking companions are best found around the corner, anyway, & are easily replaced. Still, some friendships are more mystical, inspiring, collaborative.

Look what happens to the average “long-distance relationship.” Either the couple is together, then moves to separate locations, & there is a gradual idealization & growing apart, resulting in catastrophe; or, they move apart, & then move back together after a time, & the gradual idealization & growing apart results in an awkward period of disillusionment. This is an extremely generalized over-simplification: some long-distance relationships have ended in the happiest marriages. What about friendships in the age of e-mail, cellphones, & MySpace? Perhaps, because there is no pressure for ceaseless love & daily communication, one can make these connections in college, for instance, & continue to receive the mystical collaborative elements thru e-mail, whilst receiving his drinking-companion needs around the corner (if around the corner offers no conversations about Bartók or Thomas de Quincey.)

My high school & college friends have settled in a startling plethora of locals – New York, London, Liverpool, India, Hainan, Alabama, Massachusetts, L.A., Brazil, & even Texas. I was saddened that few of my close friends visited me when I was living in Tahoe, a place I wanted to show off, but who can blame them with travel so inefficient & expensive. I've moved to the bay area to increase the feeling of community, & already surprising people have visited & plan to visit. I'm not having much luck establishing regular drinking companions, tho, but that comes with patience & employment.

The book I am reading is by William McDonough & Michael Braungart, a chemist & an architect who propose redesigning how things are made. Valuable technical materials & chemicals are regularly mixed with natural materials, & disposed in land fills where both are useless. They suggest that everything can be made to be infinitely recyclable or immediately biodegradable, separating the biosphere from the “technosphere”. Newspapers, for instance, are made from recycling things things that were not meant to be recycled, & are printed on with toxic inks, & bleached with more chemicals, & are useless after one or two cycles – everything is always “downcycled.” This book, Cradle to Cradle, is not made out of a tree, but of high quality plastics & safe inks. It is extremely durable & waterproof; but when it is thrown “away”, it can be washed & melted to create another equally high quality book. They suggest that current methods of recycling are merely “less bad”, & often placate the liberal masses with righteousness; however, it is possible to a create a system that is “good.” Slowing down the current destructive industrial system could actually be worse in the long run; & preaching “efficiency” & being conservative with resources just pisses off capitalists obsessed with growth. It pits environmentalists against industry. In nature however, growth is good. (Their example is of a cherry tree, whose excess blossoms & fruit are not “waste” but nourishing & beautiful.)

I just got to a part where they suggest that all sustainability is local. Diversity, adaptability, culture, dialect: these are successful reactions to location for both nature & human society. And this Earth offers an almost infinite variety of locations, all of which life has adapted to inhabit. Sustainable local systems nourish your community, & add up to a fully nourished macrocosm. Liberals often point out that Super-Walmarts in sprawled suburban areas hurt every aspect of society: “Main Street” culture, the local economy, the quality of your neighbor's jobs, lack of support for local agriculture, the quality & ethics of distant agriculture, the amount of fossil fuels burned to transport the products, all the unnecessary packaging waste, and the list goes on. I would never imply that long distance friendships are the Walmarts of Modern America. But, your average white post-college American liberal tends to be semi-nomadic, befriending people everywhere, & settling in a baffling array of places. I would like to see a statistic for how many settled where they grew up. Conservative Midwesterners, as a stereotype, are much more family & hometown oriented.

Plato often evokes love for God by discussing love between humans, & mystics use the language of the natural world to describe the subtle heavens. Human connections – a web of nourishment, waste, & sustainability – can perhaps be understood with a model of community, agriculture, energy flows, and Walmarts. Or, more likely, they are a synecdoche (an inclusive metaphor, a metaphor which is included in what it stands for.) Friendship & love are as much a part of a balanced, healthy society as the politics, food cycles, architecture, & everything else. Indeed, this spiritual interconnection can be seen as the soul to a town's body. The Electoral College in a huge county deprives local communities of an actual democracy (in California, for instance, I know we'll get the democratic presidential vote, so there's no reason to campaign or canvass or even argue with my neighbor.) Could the combination of cheap travel, easy relocation, the Internet, and sprawl add up to a modern civilization where friendships are like the disposable diapers that fill up our landfills?

The Bridgiest Muse: What more Brooklyn Bridge Poetry, Part II & Final & Cock-&-Bull!

This website was nearly rent irreparably after a filthy political cleavage & rap-warfare, a few months ago. After hip-hop legend William McGonagall, famed bard of the Tay Bridge in Dundee, dissed:

The New Yorkers boast about their Brooklyn Bridge,
But in comparison to thee it seems like a midge,
Because thou spannest the Silvery Tay
A mile and more longer I venture to say;
Besides the railway carriages are pulled across by a rope,
Therefore Brooklyn Bridge cannot with thee cope;

Brooklynites didn't take this well, & for months it raged back & forth with odes & tight lyrics & nasty radio smear attacks. NOW! When we thought the issue had been resolved by popular election, the Huffington Post goes & publishes a completely one-sided unbalanced article about Brooklyn Bridge poetry, with NOT ONE MENTION of Dundee's famous bridge. And the media gives this a free pass.

It may seem odd for a bridge to be a focal point for poetry, but the Brooklyn Bridge has inspired a remarkable number of good (and some great) poems. The Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky was moved when he first saw it in 1925, as he described in his poem "Brooklyn Bridge:"

...it stretches on cables of string
to the feet of the stars.

I stare
as an eskimo gapes at a train,
I seize on it
as a tick fastens to an ear.
Brooklyn Bridge--
yes....
That's quite a thing!

At the time of Mayakovsky's visit, the American poet Hart Crane was writing his great poem "The Bridge." Crane lived, for a while, in an apartment overlooking the East River, and in his visionary mind the Brooklyn Bridge became a springboard to the spiritual. Here's an excerpt from the opening:

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

In 1956, the beat poet Jack Kerouac celebrated the bridge in another visionary poem (Kerouac's visions may have had a little...help) called "The Brooklyn Bridge Blues":

I looked at the red winter
disgusting dusk of the world,
saw the alleys beyond,
Brooklyn, Wolfe's redbrick
jungle (that I'd only
last night walkt, unto
Gowanus Cana!)----O!
--& I remembered the dreams
the dreams about racks
and Joan Adams and drear
and a tear appeared
in my eye over the river
on the Bridge of Sights
that as soon as I'd
(c r o c o d i l e)
crossed it, had taken
me to the shore
I was looking for!
Svaha! I am
the perfect man
the Buddha of This World

In case you're new to the Beats, you shouldn't worry if the poem doesn't make total sense. You might want to worry (c r o c o d i l e) if it does.

Oh, it makes perfect sense to us, HUFFINGTON POST! You go & lick your bridge on its central girders. "I seize on it as a tick fastens to an ear." Disgusting. True poets know a real bridge when they look on it in so grand array.

an argument for the superiority of the brooklyn bridge

TAY BRIDGE, SCHMAY BRIDGE

While visiting the city (nearby Dundee), Ulysses S. Grant commented that the Tay Bridge was "a big bridge for a small city".

BY THE WAY, AMERICA. ABE LINCOLN was just numeraled #1 president of ALL TIME.

YOU KNOW WHO Abe Lincoln REALLY LIKED?

ULYSSES S. GRANT! (american hero who has a good eye for bridge environment aesthetics)

You know who the Tay Bridge likes?

SECRET DEATH

"Tay Bridge" was the codename for the funeral plans for Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother.

WE CANNOT TRUST SECRET DEATH AND WE CANNOT TRUST THE TAY BRIDGE!

Based on my not knowing if the Brooklyn Bridge has been refurbished and my stubborn belief that a TRUE AMERICAN BRIDGE could and would never need to be refurbished, I am betrayed by the Tay bridge (a refurbished bridge).

In 2003, a £20.85 million strengthening and refurbishment project on the bridge won the British Construction Industry Civil Engineering Award, in consideration of the staggering scale and logistics involved. More than 1,000 tonnes of bird droppings were scraped off the ironwork lattice of the bridge using hand tools, and bagged into 25 kg sacks.

PORK BRIDGE SPENDING. IS A REFURBISHED BRIDGE THE SAME BRIDGE?

WHO IS THE "TAY" BRIDGE?

WHY DOES IT NEED REFURBISHING?

Does the Brooklyn Bridge need refurbishing?
Not as far as I know.
Probably not.

Check this out. At the time of the Brooklyn Bridge's completion, the first and last names of the President of the USA and the New York Mayor, individually, were slant rhymes!

President Chester Arthur and New York Mayor Franklin Edson


hm... Queen Elizabeth

Also,

George Parker (1870 – 1936) was one of the most audacious con men in American history. He made his living selling New York's public landmarks to unwary tourists. His favorite object for sale was the Brooklyn Bridge, which he sold twice a week for years.

And it doesn't stop there:

Other public landmarks he sold included the original Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grant's Tomb and the Statue of Liberty. George had many different methods for making his sales. When he sold Grant's Tomb, he would often pose as the general's grandson.

George Parker, Ulysses S. Grant, Abe Lincoln, Brooklyn Bridge, America.

DO WE WANT A refurbished, secret death UNAMERICAN Bridge?

NO!
WE WANT THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE.

Crickets & Rats on the Brooklyn Bridge

I notice it's been a week since my political attack ad hit the radio waves - the Brooklyn Bridge: IS IT LONG ENOUGH? And yet, I haven't heard a peep from Brooklyn.

The rap battle between the New Tay Bridge & the Brooklyn Bridge can be traced to several "hip-hop" songs, all available in our 2009 debut EP, rap songs about bridges, from bridges, for bridges. They are here.

I mention this all, because I have added a poll to the lefthand sidebar, just below the tweetosphere feed, to get a feel for how the electorate is responding to the attacks, before the 2009 election. James Carville worries that William McGonagall's negatives may have been ratcheted way up after all the radio spots, but we're in crunch time here Turd Blossom.

Our friend Dr Eley-Nelson was kind enough to e-mail this doggerel in support of our hip-hop work set to classic bad 19th Century poetry about bridges:

From: "Dr. ___ Nelson" _____@gmail.com

To: "James Welsch" _@itwaslost.org
Subject: Benefactum

Nice work. I'm sure McGonagall's spirit is suffused with warm well being. Or rather,

James Welsch, you have to music put
A poem about trains and their attendant soot
Or rather of the bridge's o'er which they roll
Which strikes this writer as being rather droll
Your take on the work of William McGonagall
Will surely be well received by all.

Conversations: & notes from the from 22nd Century itwaslost.org board meetings

Grâce has joined

Olaf: sweet potato. delicious.

Grâce: OH MY GOD

so many virtual handsome men

10:34 AM Olaf: hey everyone is here

Grâce: in one chatroom

so much virtual facial hair

it's overwhelming

Olaf: i have been eating a lot of baked potatoes and sausage

me: Not me, I'm as naked as a baby's butt

10:35 AM Olaf: i am returning to my roots. i used to hate these things: oatmeal, baked potato, sausage. what has happened?

i am irish

Grâce: haha

10:36 AM liam's mixtapes are crack. does everyone concur?

me: I call this meeting to Hors d'œuvre

Grâce: I propose a motion to officially say that liam''s mixtapes are crack

me: I second that motion, but forward an amendment

To spearhead an initiative

10:37 AM Of free love on the free love highway

Olaf: hot love where?

Grâce: sounds enticing

me: All in favor?

J___ Quill: why limit it to the highway?

and I think it should be on the freeway

Grâce: yeah. i'm with quill

me: Peg-legged Pete?

J____ Quill: because the hot love is already on the highway

me: "Arrrrrr!"

Grâce: the freeway, and the highway

both

Olaf: hot love on the on the hotlove high way free love on the free love freeway

10:38 AM Grâce: welsch, this dialogue should be included in your text message novel

it should be a chat and text novel

there are too many good chats

fo them to be excluded

J____ Quill: so much intermingling on the internet

everything is a part

10:39 AM Olaf: of everything

Grâce: Quill, what are you wearing?

J____ Quill: boots

Grâce: excellent

J____ Quill: I flooded my kitchen doing laundry

Olaf: muddy? snowy? laced? furry?

10:40 AM watch out!

J____ Quill: they seem to be laced

me: Let's twitter it.

Olaf: soapy flood

Grâce: how does your cat feel about the flood?

Olaf: did you slide around?

me: Tweet

Grâce: is it on the lamp again, or whatever?

10:41 AM didn't the cat go up on top of something and made you jump and cut your head?

I totally don't remember the story right

J____ Quill: he doesn't care for the flood so much

Olaf: Headline news in Santa Fe, "Nurse: 'Fiero Pompous and Drunk'"

i love your photo in the paper james

me: What does that mean?

Olaf: it really does look like harry potter

J____ Quill: Labor!

Grâce: headline news in new York City: "the economy is shit"

10:42 AM me: I'm sick of the economy. Can't we have another election?

Brooklyn Bridge Attack Ad: "BUT IS IT LONG ENOUGH??"

D.B. Steinem says his Brooklyn Bridge is the "fulfillment of an artists dream."

But do the facts check out!!??

At fifty-nine hundred feet long, the so-called BROOKLYN bridge stretches almost five thousand feet shorter than the beautiful NEW TAY RAIL BRIDGE in Dundee.

Is that long enough for America?

At 10,710 feet, the New Tay Bridge is the longest railway bridge of the present day.

William Topaz McGonagall wrote that the beautiful New Tay Bridge is "strong enough all windy storms to defy".

Can we even trust the Brooklyn Bridge to stand up to the wimpiest little gale?
Can America risk finding out?

Doing the most basic investigation on the Brooklyn Bridge on the WIKIPEDIA, we learned that suspension bridge-making pioneer John A. Roebling, whilst surveying for the Brooklyn Bridge, got his foot "badly injured by a ferry, pinning it against a pylon; within a few weeks, he died of tetanus." What's the matter, John A. Roebling, jaw too LOCKED UP to complete the Brooklyn Bridge? Succeeding him, his son Washington Roebling, came down with a little case of THE BENDS. Does this sound like confident leadership to you, or does it sound like typical New York politics, typical Kennedyesque nepotism? LOCKJAW? DECOMPRESSION SICKNESS? That doesn't sound like competent bridgebuilding, that sounds like DEAD bridgebuilding.

"Besides," says William Topaz McGonagall, "the railway carriages [on the beautiful NEW TAY BRIDGE] are pulled across by a rope, / Therefore Brooklyn Bridge cannot with thee cope."

...is it long enough?...
...wimpiest little gale...
...typical Kennedyesque nepotism...

Sorry, D.B. Steinem, the fulfillment of the artist's dream was built in Dundee in 1883.

Vote NEW TAY BRIDGE in 2009.
Strong enough for Dundee.
Strong enough for America.

Didn't Hear a Peep from the New Tay Bridge

Unearthed: D.B. Steinman Records Rap Track Regarding Bridge Design and Beauty Before McGonagall, Before His Own Birth!

Brooklyn: love it or get the hell out. subtitle: chocolate video games

Correspondences: "Whoo-hoo!"

It's hard to describe the pandemonium in San Francisco last night, a copacetic time that will be a joy to tell my grandkids about.

Here are a few of the text messages sent around the country - - since text messaging is a temporal art form, we're living in the middle of the golden age, I'll post some here for posterity:

From Seattle to Berkeley 3:14pm (all times Western):
"Kentucky was just on npr because of long lines in democratic louisville. If that's a toss up state tonight, the pope is a rabbi."

From Berkeley to Brooklyn 6:27pm
"They called Ohio! We're close. You online? I'm liveblogging alone."

From Santa Fe to Berkeley 6:36pm
(A historic moment, the first text message I've received from this number.)
"I love you."

From Berkeley to Santa Fe 6:37pm
"New Mex was just called for Barack. BILL LOVES YOU TOO"

From Santa Fe to Berkeley 6:40pm
"I just heard you are the fastest texter"

From Berkeley to Seattle 7:53pm
"Election party in the mission. Repubs can't steal it now..."

From Brooklyn to Berkeley 7:59pm
"VA. FOR BARACK!"

From Brooklyn to Berkeley (Now physically in San Francisco) 8:02pm
"CNN DECLARES OBAMA PRESIDENT ELECT"

From Berkeley to Brooklyn 8:03pm
"Ho!"

From Berkeley to Brooklyn 8:40pm
"I'm at an Irish bar, people are quiet & contemplative."

From Berkeley to Incline Village, Nevada 8:47pm
"Exciting night to be in San Francisco. There's dancing in the streets."

From Seattle to Berkeley 9:10pm
"Wish we were watching this together, dude."

From Berkeley to Denver 9:24pm
"Sophie! Sophie! Sophie! Sophie!"

From Incline Village, Nevada, to Berkeley 9:39pm
"Enjoy. We all voted for Obamam"

From Seattle to Berkeley 9:44pm
"Nevada's blue!"

From Oakland to Berkeley 10:02pm
"Rock, rock on! Here's to the new american century! -nn."

From Berkeley to a variety of places 9:59pm
"Good night to be on the streets of SF, We were just offering champagne to people in cars. God bless Obama's god."

And, here was my brief chat today with Miss Sophie L___ (campaigning for the last month in Denver):

12:10 PM Sophie: JAMES!

WE WON

I wanted to callyou but my phone died

12:11 PM me: Oriane & I called you.

Sophie: omg

me: We were in San Francisco, first at a lame party, then at a raucus Irish pub to watch the speeches. Then there was blocks closed off with percussion & dancing in the streets.

12:12 PM Sophie: omfg

that sounds amazing

me: Then I think she wandered off to a club in the castro, I kept dancing then made the last BART home.

12:13 PM How was Denver?

Or where are you?

Sophie: denver was amazing

12:15 PM for the pastfew weeks ppl haven't wantedto talk about the election--obama or mccain supporters but then we were all at a bar and everyone was screaming and running around the streets and cars were beeping and suddenly everyone was an obama supporter

i lifted up a homeless guy on my shoulders

me: Yes, it was like that here, but without the cryptos.

Are you headed back to Mass. Change your flight & come here!

12:16 PM Sophie: i thought about it but i'm not sure if i can

12:17 PM me: Do it. Yes, you can.

Sophie: haha

me: That's what we were saying last night.

Sophie: si sepuede

12:18 PM me: There were these people dancing on top of cars in the crowd, & someone was like "Are those people on cars?" & we were like "No, people can fly now that Obama is elected."

Sophie: yes. yes they can.

how amazing was his speech?!

me: Dude the whole bar was crying

12:19 PM Sophie: srsly???

me: With him at every word

Well, not the whole bar

Correspondences: Nude Group Chatting with Miss Proinseas, Mrs Shitchrist, Mssrs. Mary & Welsch

Coming soon to our popular Correspondences Section: Peace Negotiations, Revisions, Squabbles & Outtakes from our Special Political Editorial: Endorsement for President of the United States of Frontier Village, Nebraska.

Meantime, here is a lively chat amongst some of our contributors:

4:23 PM Annalee has joined

Olaf: will it be glossier?

me: It'll be nakeder.

Grâce: Annalee!

Annalee: oh goodness.

hello!

Olaf: annalee? holy shitchrist!

Grâce: ah!

hi!

virtual hello!

Olaf: what the fuck is going on?

Annalee: just annalee is fine.after the divorce, i dropped the 'shitchrist'

Grâce: thats how i feel too

Annalee: seriously.

4:24 PM also, grace, is it true you're in brooklyn?

Grâce: um, yeah?

me: You got divorsed Grace, or just un-shitchristed?

Grâce: where the fuck are you?

Olaf: right here

Grâce: not you

me: Who me?

Annalee: i'm right here, too.

Olaf: i know....sorry

Grâce: in brooklyn?

Olaf: we're all right here

me: Hu's the president of China?

Annalee: third base!~

Grâce: no he's not he's a political prisoner

4:25 PM me: Let's group-chat, dudes.

Annalee: i think we are.

sort of.

and yes, grace, i'm in brooklyn.

4:26 PM Grâce: what part man? what are you doing tonight? Im going to a rock and roll show at public assembly in williamsburg

the only time ive been to williamsburg the whole time ive lived here was with liam

when we got drunk with a bodybuilder and a sexy egyptian lawyer

and saw some avant garde dance

Annalee: wow.

i've been to williamsburg a million times, but have done neither of those things.

Grâce: but i might be going again tonight

4:27 PM Annalee: actually, i've seen avant garde dance.

me: The World series! What'll they think of next?

Olaf: yeah! say, fuck that show, you guys should come on over to my pad in santa fe and watch the final episode of UFO! yeah!

Grâce: fuck the world series

Annalee: sounds like a plan.

Grâce: it's dead to me

it's dead to quill, too

4:28 PM Olaf: grace, your description of the night is wonderful

that night

Grâce: thank you, I'm glad you think so

Olaf: sooooo

Grâce: the red sox made me cry this year

4:29 PM remember when quill punched a hole in the wall?

Annalee: of course.

Grâce: new mexico doesnt have any sports teams

i think Liam should start one

Olaf: yup

okay!

lets seee

maybe, um......archery!

Annalee: i like it.

Olaf: i just bought a bow and arrow today

4:30 PM bunch of injuns roaming these parts

Grâce: any good moroccan sports that would transfer well? camel racing?

me: The Santa Fe Bill Richardsons.

Grâce: you're hilarious james

Annalee: archery... on camels.

Grâce: excellent Annalee

Olaf: yeah, camel archery

Annalee: archery... with camels?

Olaf: camarchery

Annalee: you'd need a bigger bow.

Grâce: bow-and arrow camel polo

me: It could be like the terrorist biathlon

4:31 PM Olaf: archcamelry

maybe we should add skiing

Grâce: with bunnies instead of a ball

Olaf: and hold it in those indoor ski slopes in saudi arabia

me: So, what are you guys wearing?

Olaf: yeah, an lets throw in shetland cattle and log throwing

4:32 PM Grâce: did anyone else see the thing on TV about the french guy who is in charge of the indoor snowmaking in dubai?

he was like, younger than us

Olaf: well, a sweater, and some...

Grâce: he made me feel like a loser

Annalee: and full contact flower arranging.

Olaf: underwear

Annalee: flannel.

Olaf: but grace, you are writing the CONTENT.

no PR bullshit, or gant bullshit,

Grâce: I'm wearing a jacket i made. it was inspired by jail.

Olaf: grant

4:33 PM me: Dude, I recommend yer skivvies

Grâce: ah yes

Annalee: you were in jail?

Grâce: no but i look like i could be right now

me: I've got some prison pants I sleep in.

Orange

4:34 PM Jenny's ex-boyfriend stole them from jail, & I stole them from her.

Grâce: we used to live in a house together, and now we meet in a series of tubes

Olaf: Clementine

Annalee: like you do.

Olaf: yeah, like, what the fuck

Annalee: seriously.

Olaf: i have to leave my house to talk to you

Grâce: it's a series of tubes!

4:35 PM me: My tube seems to be growing smaller as I progress thru it, yet there's no way back.