last christmas anna asked if i wanted an i-pod for a gift. since i walk to work she thought listening to tunes would be a great way to pass the 30-45 minutes it takes to get to the office. a generous gift, but i told her no, since i like to listen to the ambient sounds of the streets and overhear snatches of conversations of other passersby. also, i enjoy the songs that loop within the inner-ear. i still have 'down in the park' by gary numan looped. wasn't it schumann who went nuts cuz he said he got one note stuck in his ear?

writers are rather snoopy creatures. at least i am. often i regret not having pen and paper on hand to record the talk i do overhear. enigmatic chunks of language spoken from the ether. but no, not really the ether, since the speaker usually has a listener. even the street people i see talking to themselves have an inner audience. me, i'm just catching a few pieces, like lines of poems, or parts of songs, or fragmented soundtracks to the movies of our lives.

sometimes those snippets of language do find their way into poems. sometimes those chunks become a story i tell to friends. often i forget them after an hour or so. even then, i wonder about the person talking, how s/he came to be using that phrase at the moment about that subject. sometimes language is a mirror to the soul. most often it obfuscates its speaker and deepens the mysteries.

and sometimes i wanna yell, shut the fuck up.