Going Inkless

It's an unsettling feeling to be halfway through telling someone something and realize that you've said it all before...to the same person. There's doubt, too, because they didn't stop you. So, you try to gauge from their expression whether they really don't remember or are merely being polite by not calling you on it. You continue speaking because you can't be sure, and well, you've come this far already, but underneath it all, you're thinking, oh no, I'm that guy. We've all known someone who repeats their stories or jokes so many times that you wonder if they even notice their audience at all or if they just play back the words in automatic response to a given stimulus. Could they really not remember that you were there the last four times they recounted the funny thing that happened when...? For me, the supreme example would be my Dad, who generally entertains with his nonstop tale-telling on first meeting, but after a few decades...

The street I live on branches off a larger artery across from an old industrial building where they work with giant concrete blocks. The place is nearly abandoned. You never see anyone working there. Only occasionally are there lights on or a truck parked nearby. I imagine that the property is an unprofitable piece of some larger construction empire, caught in an economic limbo between life as a viable working factory and value as someone's tax write-off. So while it waits for the balance to shift and make it valuable enough to tear down and build another dream, it has been our landmark for directing visitors to our street. "Keep on the main road until you see the big ugly thing on the left, then turn right." It's plenty ugly, too. Every morning as I go to work, I sit at the stop sign waiting to turn onto the main road, and our big ugly landmark just looms on the opposite side, staring back at me. Stark and cold, its face is the sort of sickly yellowed brown ...