When I awoke from my nap the clock said 10:12; the room, dark. Almost automatically, my awareness drifted down to my legs and found him: there, snuggled close. Not interested in being cuddled or petted, but in nearness, in gathering warmth. I swirled fingertips down his back, and his muscles quivered and rippled in response, his spots and orange splotches shivering with the touch and then settling back down to their normal spaces.

"We've got this black-hole policy. Things that get said at the compound stay there."

"Funny," I said, "because we've got something just like that here."

With that said, Chris visited, but so much of what we talked about falls so squarely into the realm of "no one else's business" that I hardly know what can be said about the time he spent here except to acknowledge that it happened.

Funny how sometimes the things you dread and put off don't even bother to live up to how difficult you thought they'd be.

Databases were like that for me, once; I woke up one day and said, "It's time," and cracked open my books and studied up and about two days later, I realized at least three-quarters of my fear and doubt went away the moment I transmuted worry into action.

"Cable knitting? But I don't know how to do cable knitting..."

"oh my Lord
why's it taking you so long
to give me grace
and the dignity to right these wrongs"
- Jonatha Brooke, 'Deny' (bonus track from _Steady Pull_, 2001)

It's a chorus, really; voices in my head taking on the voices of two particular friends, taking their words, doubling, tripling them until the sounds of their voices drown out my own.

Time to issue some belated congratulations to Kat and Sean, as Saturday was their wedding day... (Click photo to see larger version.)

I can almost hear the voice, tactile and smooth in my imagination, curling and settling softly in my ears like the finest, cleanest lines of Miles Davis.

"This is the all-night request line, for those of you awake enough to know we're closer to daylight than midnight. Got a request? A dedication? Something on your mind?" A pause. If there was such a radio show, playing at an hour like this, on a night like this, I could imagine a speech like that hanging on a pause and finishing with "Give us a call. We'll see what we can do." The hiss of dead air would be followed by the the shuffling of notes and fingers, followed by shunting the current phone call to the live audio feed.

After all, a show like this one wouldn't exactly need a tape delay.

* * * * *

"A good night to you, caller. You got me. I'm listening. Talk to me. Tell us who you are."

"I'm Amy, from Huntsville. I've been trying to call in for ages, and just couldn't ever get through."