T was obsessed with making a get away. He never got very far.
They have to accept me in Ecuador in case the next president is a conservative, said T.
Obama hasn’t done much, said Sue.
Yeah that’s right, said T.
Every winter I give up fighting my depression, said Sue.
Exactly, said T. When I began with medication I was terrified I would have to be on
meds for the rest of my life. Now I’m terrified of getting off them.
I have to keep my ears open for possibilities, said T.
I realized that it is the end of winter when opportunities for housing is the best.
I have my luck in feb. Whenever he goes he will be on a waiting list if you are
going to look for a place in the last month.
I was happy to have T and Sue together. I hadn’t heard them have a conversation in a couple of months. Whenever they got together they were like two great jazz musicians
improvising on each others’ musical words.
You should buy a house when they sell it before christmas, said T. I’m not buying a house. when I listened to their conversation I felt like they were all heading towards something important. I was disenchanted when their conversation broke down into
Sue only reading her paper and T reading his paper out loud to himself.
Women have more orgasms when they are in a relationship, said Sue. It was written by a woman someone named natalie.
uh huh, said t.
I had read that huh has been posited as the one universal word thats everyone understands. I felt like the narrator in Proust’s novels who doesn’t respond with his
senses understanding and according to one French philosopher without his organs.
veterans who collect cans don’t collect on veterans day, said s.
Maybe it’s a cop set up in Sausolito, said T. They outlaw people rummaging through
the garbage.
That’s bullshit, said s. They brought that to the supreme court and it is legal.
The whole thing went to the supreme court because some guy went through Bob Dylan’s trash.
I was scared an insular man next to me was going to poison my drink. I thought about the rape stories I heard about women who were drugged and raped. I suspected the insular man’s errant dick was plotting its way into my mouth. The insular man was giving me the I know something about you that you don’t know look. I didn’t think to use
my knife when I ate my salad. Like Proust’s narrator I didn’t want to live my narrative I wanted to record it like a machine. A machine isn’t tormented with hope. It only knows industry.
I go to the base camp, said T. Its full of young unemployed people.
I thought what you said about having the right to rummage  garbage was
interesting, I said.
Yeah there was the Bob Dylan case when someone went through his trash to produce
documents that connected him to big time corporations, said Sue.
The waste of food in the States is exorbitant, I said. Do you see a lot of waste of food
in Portland?
People are somewhat involved in compost, said Sue. One woman leaves moldy baloney in the garbage. I left moldy baloney in plastic wrapping and I had to remove the wrapping. I couldn’t always be around to remove the wrapping.I remove the plastic bags with poop in it. The city wanted to fire a police woman for living with a drug dealer. They rummaged through her trash and  chemically demonstrated that her tampon held cocaine. I put my hair brushings in the compost.
Sue has a history of run ins with land lords who find her behaviour bizarre.
She and T have to heed their landlords, without their masters they would have no one to hate and love.
A young ex con man goes by the street name critter, said Sue. He’s chatty. He’s been locked up. He talks to make up for lost time. He was doing it for two weeks. Maybe he was taken back to prison. He wasn’t threatening. He was tedious. I’m tedious.
I talk too much.
No you don’t, I said.
I gleaned internet offal:

“For several months I had been having trouble. It drove me nuts!! I talked to my doc (she is very benzo wise and a compassionate soul) and she prescribed lactulose. Here in the US it’s a prescription drug — in Canada (and maybe UK?) its OTC. It’s not a harsh laxative like ex lax and the others . . . you can use it every day, which I do. It just draws water into your small intestine, softens things up, and makes them easier to pass.”

There was something unwholesome about a middle aged dude in an orange sweater, I thought. He played tracts and instructions from a guru on his Ipad. He  took copious notes in a composition notebook.