I spent most of the day alone today, in and out of social consciousness, so to speak. One of those isolation days, like a renegade electron refusing to be drawn to the center
Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot bear the falconer, Things fall apart, the center cannot, mere anarchy is losed upon the world.
Random bits of poetry show up in my mind on days like this, like my subconscious is frantically running a search program on all my archived thought patterns for answers. An intriguing phrase surfaces in the search, one of those things you forgot about until cleaning one day, and I stare at it for a few moments, savoring it, like wine in the cellar or the last piece of chocolate you thought you didn't have. Then, just as I have countless times before, I shove it back into the mental filing cabinet for later use -- there is no expiration on fine words, only our memory of them.

Turns of fate: One friend of mine got married this weekend, two broke up with their girlfriends. One friend of mine got a job, another's husband still can't find one. One friend of mine was commenting on how he's had a good year, hasn't been sick at all. Another's daughter was in the ER last night, shivering in the palm of God. The economy is getting better they say, business inventories increasing, but I have a feeling there will be a lot more lay-offs before things settle down again, whatever that means. A letter with a check, a letter with a bill, a stain on a shirt, the clean shirt I thought I didn't have, a telemarketer, a long lost friend's phone call.
Yet for all this, shall we accept the good and not the bad?
This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper