I have been so very tired lately, wiped out in the truest sense.

This semester has stretched me beyond anything I thought possible. There's been a nervousness in my stomach this week over a lot of things, and sometimes I wonder why the hell I am here, what the hell I am doing.

Then I sit down and eat my turkey sandwich at T-Bone's, and Mik buys me a cup of coffee, and there's the pumpkin cheesecake they have this time of year. The Pixies' song "Gigantic" comes onto the stereo, and I sit there, my sandwich and side salad with thousand island on it near my hands, two cups--one holding coffee, the other ice water and a lemon--in front of me, that pumpkin cheesecake with the whipped topping and pecans sprinkled on its top resting near the corner, and I listen to the song and see my friends all the vinyl and the movies and the art and Mik talking Faulkner with me and I thank God I am alive.

That's all. I don't have a damn thing else to tell you.