(In the clouds in the rain) in this room where you are telling me once again what my faults are, having numbered and diagrammed them so painstakingly as to require a 3 hour visit to Kinko's simply to produce them in a blinding array of colors; in this room once again where the walls are silent and spongelike, absorbing our unkind words, but not like us, not harboring the bad thoughts like so many criminals; in this room that I will soon leave, weighed down by some possessions and the crush of who you once were, and who I once was, and what it was all supposed to mean; in this room I am a stranger.

Do you imagine the stars collapsing in on themselves, the fury of women scorned, the feverish desire of a man rejected, the way the wind howls when it is in heat, the subtlety of a touch that can send earthquakes through every cell in your body. Imagine it now, and know that such sensations do exist.

Still hard at work on my candy classification system. It's not as simple as grouping chocolate with more chocolate; there are shells and fillings and nuts and blends to worry about. Hard candy, soft candy, fruit flavors, powders, and of course, the sweets and sours. Linnaeus was a madman; this could take a lifetime.

All across the land they journeyed to see the miracle. The great stone monolith that had risen out of the ground one morning, etched with a language that nobody understood; the slab was constantly surrounded by worshipers and linguists who would kneel or study, and after a time it became difficult to tell them apart. Eventually, the harsh weather that followed the emergence of the monolith wore away the writing, and the crowds dwindled, until all that was left was a rock and a legend and a small boy who would often climb the rock and perch upon it and daydream of a land that nobody has ever seen yet all will see.