For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.

It's late. I've been watching the carnivorous television show Mad Men for a couple of hours, in between moving around furniture and trying things on for size. "For size" is literal, my house is 360 square feet and every inch counts. You know how I feel about the inches.

For some reason, I got sad about poor people tonight. It's funny cos I'm one of them. But I was remembering how I feel (or used to feel) when I'm in line behind someone buying just a can of chili and a box of Saltine crackers at the store. (Oddly, this feeling often prevents me, myself, from buying Top Ramen noodles when I might really be craving them.) It's a paternalistic emotion, some would say. But I reckon that feeling is more maternalistic than anything else. And don't call me sexist.

When I went to the store tonight, I decided I couldn't afford a pint of good ice cream. I regret that decision. I want that ice cream muchly. I do not even care what flavor. I regret not buying it like I regret trying to shave my legs at 11 years old; like I regret trying to use that brick to hold down our "diving board" when I was five. Even, like I regret not stopping for that hitchhiker back in the late 90s. Now? It's all I can think of, the ice cream. Let's call it sacrifice and then raise it. By a dollop of whipped cream and two tablespoons of chocolate syrup.

There was a paragraph here that I wrote and lost. I can't be bothered to rewrite it. It involved the Teamsters, my decent health insurance growing up, the hoodlums that use to run the organization, working people undervalued, and the price of food. You know, shit like that. What it said was that I am in favor of unions. What it said is that I can thank my teeth to the Teamsters. My dad got paid a living wage. And what it said was "Yeah, those Teamsters got all Mafia up in this bitch," or as someone I know likes to say, "power corrupts." But unions were formed so that working (class) people weren't screwed. So they also didn't have to shop at the company store nor find themselves homeless as a result of a home mortgage crisis. That their kids didn't go off to war cos it was a job and MacDonald's wasn't hiring.

Fuck. I lost more than two paragraphs. The universe at work, I'm sure. It sneaks up from behind me at times, particularly when I'm putting on the high hat. God. What an editor.

Reader? I'm poor and prideful. Not the best combination. Tomorrow I've got some money on my side to buy food and coffee and Top Ramen. The last time I shopped, when I was clearly surprised by how much I spent, the girl said "That's what happens when you buy brand names." I was like, "Uh, this is what you consider a brand name? Hunts?" Sheesh. So, until I sell my novel about the adventures of two cats in a dysfunctional household, it is Western Family for this western famly. It's either that or dumpster diving. And yeah, my ass looks fat in that dumpster.

The photo is, of course, by Dorothea Lange. WPA and all. I almost took a house near the Grand Coulee Dam, built for workers in the 1930s. It was beautiful and perched just right to see the lake created. The foundation of the house, however was rotting away. A metaphor? Or just a shitty place to buy?

And nah, that's not me, that's Rainier Maria Rilke, a deep fellow, I heard. And this? This is a prelude to Pasternak, who speaks beautiful paragraphs about Rilke. Boris was an efficient writer and, you'll see, eloquent.