The moving has somehow already begun. I’ve managed to locate a new abode in the Lakeview area, and deposit gripped firmly in hand, I’ve procured movers and started the lengthy and arduous task of packaging my meager belongings. The management company appears excessively paranoid, perhaps even fanatically rabid when performing background and other sundry checks on prospective renters. What began as a simple rental application quickly escalated into a veritable gauntlet of eerily invasive and laughably obtuse hoops I leapt through in hopes of obtaining shelter. Along with the usual credit check, my boss was forced to endure a questionnaire on my overall employability, containing such gems as: “What is the likelihood of this employee remaining employed over the next year?” Both he and I openly wondered if they wanted a number in terms of percentage, a repeating decimal, or an R-squared analysis based on my last performance review. Then came the deposit, either a Cashier’s check or a money order, no other form of payment would suffice. I kept waiting for them to require a DNA health-risk categorization to ensure I would outlive the lease.

Holy Shit! Keith Olbermann seems to be a Democratic version of Rush Limbaugh, but that video is scary. It also doesn’t help that the Republicans are now questioning the freaking Democrats about their silence on the Foley scandal not days after reports Republicans knew about Foley for years, possibly even a decade! I understand a party may want to retain power, but Jesus Tapdancing Christ this is absolutely inexcusable.

And you are faded, and I am gone. To this, answers flutter from within dark recesses unbound and belittled. I’d seek no relevance through the unkind sights or withering sighs, but for all masks hidden in our eyes. So in the glimmer, a stark contrast filtered through and through, is flown beyond oblivion. There were once wishes in the unbidden, sake for sale, and writ bold by sole and solitude. So the wavering visages of the ides walk, undaunted by rage or irony, slackened not by tidings of two and seven.

I will never present a prepared speech.

Should the opportunity ever present itself, I could not in good conscience immediately rush to a pad of paper to start weeks of planning and a proper outline. Memorized or read from a worn and curled deck of 3x5 index cards, my inteded sentiment, whether melancholy, uplifting, somber, nostalgic, or zany, would lack every iota of my spirit. I’ve been called many things: old soul, arrogant, intelligent, asshole, creative; each moniker I’m given seeks to define a sliver of my personality, while none are even remotely accurate. I am the universe, and more. But more importantly: I am oblivion, and far less.

I thought I could be stoic about all of this, but I can’t. This is all really severely depressing. It’s not the “you need surgery,” that I feared, but it’s not really much better. Suddenly the fact I have a man-made ventricular septum, and outer vessels confusing enough to baffle an entire cardiology department has gotten to me. I’ve grown accustomed to having an abnormal heart, but drugs reintroduce a visceral reality of mortality I don’t want to remember.