Thursday, 06 June 2002 | Hockey players

There is a group of people who aren't originally from here. They live here now, because we pay them to live here. We dress them up in strange costumes with little bulls eyes on their chests and watch as they fight with sticks and little cakes of rubber. We claim to be part of them, and we claim that they are part of us. We watch them closely, very emotionally attached to what they do. We talk about them a lot, our words full of curses and praises and predictions.

Walked down to Moonlight Pizza tonight and got stuck behind a curtain of rain, stayed and watched people watch the hockey finals in which "we" are the underdogs. Listened to the synchronized chorus of groans, gasps, sighs, and yells. Got sucked in for a moment myself, but pulled away when the rain let up.

The amount of water in my atmosphere seems to be a constant. It gets released from the dank air as if a giant sponge is being rung out. And then, slowly, the water seeps back into the sponge again, filling the air with an invisible density that makes it hard to move or breathe.