I've been having dreams about Canada. I know nothing about Canada and I always have a sense that the whole country is exactly like Portland - which is unequivocally wrong. I've been thinking about going to Canada and finding myself there exactly as I was before, totally unchanged. I've been thinking about going to Canada and finding myself there exactly as I was before and moving there only to discover it is just Chicago or just Stamford or just New York or just Iowa City/Sioux Falls/Cedar Rapids or JUST BOISE. I think, "What's the difference between Toronto and Montreal?"

And my attention slips.

I'm interested in chewing on my fingers - as an academic discipline. Naming differences between tastes of certain fingers, textures of certain nails, cataloging hangers-on or little pockets of pus. Taxonomy of tearing at my cuticles. Families and subtypes. Breaking it down to a very specific science - how many categories could I think of in all? Hundreds on an okay day filled with sleepy eyes and thousands if I pushed it. Of other people's fingers I cannot muster the courage to ask.

I'm bored. And boring. I tire of my own sentences half-way through (imagine for a minute how many words I have already deleted). I just want to hear other people talk and ask questions that lead them to rambling monologues. I want to wear a shirt that says, "Ask me no more questions, tell me no more lies." Is it acceptable in this day and age to hold off on talking for a little while? Try a day or two days, see how it goes, if it saves me any trouble in the waiting out of whatever this is.

Dear-oh-dear, as my grandmother might say. Go have a cigarette.