They don't stop selling liquor when things go bad.

Slept through another historical tragedy today. This is becoming a pattern, getting the word that our world has forever changed while I'm wiping the sleep from my eyes and trying to get out of my another-dream-where-I'm-trapped-in-a-mall-with-talking-animals late-morning/early-afternoon headspace. The morning the towers came down I was in a borrowed futon sleeping off a drinking binge with my girlfriend. We got the news from the futon's owner when he came back from class, waking us from a dead sleep at 2 pm. The tv coverage was already in recap mode. Which isn't as bad as my friend Neil. He was living in Brooklyn at the time. During that morning when everyone in NYC was scrambling to locate their family and friends, no one could get a hold of Neil. Eventually around 1 someone got him on the phone. He'd slept through the whole fucking thing. Something about me feels the need to commemorate the important things that happen during my life in the way I feel proper in order to get the maximum amount of Meaning out of each. I mourn dead rock stars with solitary drunken wakes. I wait for the wind to turn my spiritual weather-vanes in the right direction before I let myself put on the important songs so that they always keep their power to underline and italicize certain hours and minutes of my life. I don't know what I expect from history, maybe a phone call ten minutes before the event, "Mr. Raymer, it is essential that you wake up and turn on the news by 8:56. There is something you must see." I know I'm asking too much. Sometimes there's History In The Making and sometimes there's just terror sex on the couch.