Dissipate

I've run out of photos again. Not run out, exactly. I have more of the Polaroid series I could scan. For that matter, I have about a hundred Polaroid images from the "Postcards from Nowhere" series I could post, but I feel repetitious. I post close to four hundred images a year, I think. At least three hundred and fifty. Coming up with those is difficult. No, it is not difficult to come up with the images, it is difficult to represent myself in photos that many times a year. Maybe tomorrow I'll have something new, either that, or I will give in and post another shot from a series I've posted before. But I keep thinking, if I only posted an image a week. . . .

* * * * *

I got back to a town with a hangover. Halloween had been everything it was hoped. Now, everything looked beat, used up. Decorations were torn and tattered. Plastic cups littered corners and curbs. The energy was gone. And maybe that was the idea. Now it was time to study, time to prepare for the hard work that lay ahead in November. Halloween had been a catharsis, of sorts. The madness had dissipated.

The next week, I got a notice that the apartment complex in which I was living had been sold to the university and that no leases would be renewed when they expired. I had signed for only the term, so after Christmas, I would have to find a new place to live. Mick and his roommates were in the same situation.

"What are you going to do?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I don't want to live with these guys any more. You want to get a place together?"

I'd never had a roommate before, and I wasn't certain how I liked the idea, but I said, "Sure, I guess. You have any ideas?"

"I don't know. I'd like to live out toward the country, maybe. The rents are cheap."

And so it was decided. We'd look for a place away from town.