There's nothing for me outside. What's there has been there and will be there tomorrow. Ma's sleeping the heavy sleep of the miserable. It's a nihilistic sleep, rife with worry and ulcers. In the ghost light of a dim bulb, 20 watts no more, I flip through "Stranger in a Strange Land" again. Mr. Valentine never knew his earth parents... There's no real relevance for his story in my life, but escapism. I don't want to be here, but I am. And I don't want to leave either.

"Ah, such is life."

I toss the mildewed paperback (I read in the tub) at a pile of other fungal infested paperbacks and stare at cracks in the ceiling. I imagine a map superimposed above me and the web-thin lines are the routes my father has taken. A red-eye out of South Bend to Providence, maybe. I always wanted to visit Providence, the Renaissance city. Perhaps when I do, he'll be waiting for me.

I splay my toes and think of Hobbits. Sneaky, tricksy Hobbits. I wish I had a ring to make me disappear, to make me special by elimination and estrangement. Yet nothing is special about being alone. It's all too familiar and boring.

I'm at the window again and the world is black and still, but the fog persists. It grinds against my face as I poke it out from the sill. It worries me, the world. It's vastness and my timidity don't mesh. So I sit here in my baobab tree. But no life sprouts from my roots, only melancholia. I reach for the pad on the desk and free write, stream of consciousness from an unconscious, pessimistic child. I hate my writing. It's so... Well, it's untempered. No life to back it up. Plenty of knowledge and style, but nothing beneath. Just like dad.

I see him in my dreams often, he wears soleless shoes and he limps.Sometimes he's Kafka's roach, whispering to me from under my bed, telling me to find him, to get off my **** and find him. But why should I search him out? He made me, not the other way around. I hear a cat calling her mate with a sound like gargling gravy. Gross. I guess I should go to bed. Tomorrow's another day as they say, and that's the problem.