April 27th, 2003 - 6:47 p.m.

A late night essay.

We, as a race, pride ourselves in our tippled state of love.

Love lost and love gained. All is fair. Better to have had then, etc. The clich�dness is immanent.

We drink to it, from it, for it. We kill for it, from it, to get away from it.

"Love is suicide." A slow dropping of components like an infatuated leprosy. Murdering small, seemingly unimportant articles with a compromising serial mentality.

And then, alas, ideals are formed, regulations set. Like a sport, or a good game of chess. The fewest moves to check, mate.

Some buy it for time is worth its weight in carats. Others borrow it for lengths of mere minutes (if one calculates it properly). People cheat for it by perfuming themselves with an identity. Some others still, posture and play, leaping from one to the next. These are all very familiar details that streak the drugstore bookshelves with their sticky covers and predictable titles, and there shall be no more talk of such sordidness.

But, a small percentage of us, find a glimmer of it and run, shaking at the splendour. And for the majority, regardless of intelligence or charm can merely chronicle love: half fruited, then the branch grows heavy from an unexpected and dire frost.

There is no simple method of removing a coronary implant after it has overstayed its welcome. Except for a bottle of vodka and a five bullet round of Russian roulette solitaire; but one does not want to leave behind a legacy of mess for others to scrub. There is always bad poetry and alcohol. Cigs till sunrise, a cemetery of burnt ends. A mindless fuck or two or three. Soon, after the taciturn pall slips off and the sallow sunkeness has rotted away, one may begin to breathe again.

For many, hope and prayer are lost causes, (much like the insistence on sealed chastity) and search proves quite an endless parade of half clothed strangers.

For select few, one percentile, am told, find their grain of salt lost in a jar of sugar.

Here is to wishing that the savoury finds those who are sick of sweets.

"I'll drink to that," the ostrich cackles.

N.

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