Dirty, he felt dirty when he sat down at work. All those eyes were judging him. Those eyes, whether he saw them or not, were tearing him down with burgeoning piece of wispy hearsay. His affair with the recently fired receptionist, the one with the fetching blue eyes, was popular water-cooler gossip. The two were caught in a supply room, after hours, by an eighty year old custodian named Art. Art, who, in his younger days, had similar indiscretions, thoroughly sympathized with their predicament and promised to keep their secret on one condition: he got to watch. He escorted Art outside and left the door open a crack, enough for a curious prying eye to catch a glimpse. The two were utterly absorbed with the task they shared, so much so that they were oblivious to the sound of Art collapsing - dead, and lecherous grin frozen for all time.

inept gratification

[...]

His eyes became fixated on the snowy landscape, passed and forgotten by the bus. He let out a sigh and looked down at his blank notebook. He scribbled the following:

"inept gratification...ceaseless desiring...the end, the end, the end?"

The sheet was crumpled, torn up, and deposited into the 'trash' compartment of his bag. He turned to the snowy July landscape, his head heavy with nostalgia. He remembered taking in the crisp cold air into his lungs. He remembered the acrid scent of snow brewing in the clouds above. The autumn palette of infinite shades of red and brown soon would be overwhelmed by the multitudinous luminosity of snow - which left nothing untouched.

Snow in July was an inept gratification, a cheap substitute, and untimely, albeit cleverly crafted, insult to persistent, slowly fading, memories. Soon, even the remembrances would pass and be forgotten - as obsolescent as the world that inspired them.

He looked at his watch again to check on its condition. It read: 7:45AM. It was accurate. The bus approached the terminal in front of the building where he worked. The bus ran like clockwork as usual. He left the terminal at 7:47AM and the conveyor floor moved him towards the office, arriving at 7:53AM - on time, always on time.

Quarter past seven

Sunrise,

infinite sadness awakened him.

He glared at the alarm. It failed to go off, again.

Evolved,

humanity evolved involved three strips of bacon, egg whites, instant oatmeal, and a cup of generic coffee. Humanity devolved, well, was all over the morning paper's front page.

"Work,

you work to get paid,

get paid to get laid" -

He silently recited his mantra in front of the mirror while brushing his teeth. He grabbed at the floss to finish, but, oddly, there was no more. Since he had never flossed until then, its absence struck him as odd. He reached for the mouthwash - it would make due.

Getting dressed, getting ready, he checked his timepiece - quarter past seven; the bus would arrive in seven minutes. He rechecked his lunch, deemed it to be rather scarce and dropped an apple into the nylon bag. Satisfied with his planned midday nutritional intake, he headed for the bus stop and checked his watch - a force of habit. It read: quarter past seven. He panicked. Did it malfunction??? Did he miss his bus??? More importantly, was he going to be late??? He paced frantically, until he saw an elderly lady walk towards the stop.

"Hello madam, would you happen to have the time?"

"Quarter past seven," she replied, showing him the face of her wristwatch.

[...]

Control...

Control, concentration, calm, care;

Get control...concentrate, old friend...sputter away with courage...let the stream carry you to oblivion, concentrate with concern...control is futile, fortuna has your balls in a vice....stream to oblivion...sweet sexy stream of oblivion....without care to soothe, where mice moo, and cows gnaws on giant blocks of gouda - SACRILEGE!

Control...control control...concentrate on careful concentrations...dig in, set up, its a long way til the bottom, babe....careful, careful, now calmly, slip out of it, slink them to your heels, there you go, careful, careful, caress - concentrate, concentrate, concentrate....CONCENTRATE!

Care, with crack. Care with cruelty - cruel, criminal, care. Meticulous, inexorably so. The tiniest fleck opens a conscious stream into nullitude. Cruel, cruel, care...

Calm....calm....calm....control is gone....calm, cool cowering calm, croons a diddy - "CONCENTRATE! CONCENTRATE! CONCENTRATE!"

Concentrate, old friend; concentrate.

Dear...

Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow will be different. Today was a tomorrow. But today is no different from yesterday...

And on and on it went.

Reading a friend's diary entails a risk: you witness how pathetic and loathsome they are and wonder, with utter seriousness, "why do I hang out with his moron?"

You want to hear more?

Spiraling into the recesses of my broken heart, I wonder if there was space for another. Now that she was gone, I shuffle aimlessly from moment to moment, each less vibrant than the last with her absence...

Alright, alright, that should suffice. Another truism becomes evident: that which has expired makes for an oppressive specter, dressed with sentiment and unfulfilled ideals.

One more before we move on.

I see this accursed stretch of ruinous luck has sown the seeds of my undoing. I'm slowly building up the courage. Soon, I will attain a final cold comfort in the reaper's embrace.

Heard it before. This is why one should never take a peek, no matter how strong the temptation. It spawns a self-righteous 'duty' to intervene. It leads to meddling and undue anxiety for the voyeur reader. It transforms the nature of a relationship, tears down comfortable habits, destabilizes routine, and, sometimes, ends up in an armed showdown at the local roller rink.

The Avatar

Me...and...erring through metaphorical thickets,
cruising along this doom spiral towards elegant, exalted, salvation;
this doom spiral towards queer queries:
where do we go? what's to be done?

Me...and...erring through compassionate subterfuge,
pity these inflated sentiments,
stare down Schopenhauer long enough
and existence shall collapse your skull.

Me...and...erring into emaciated arms,
redemption enters a cave,
hears a distant sonorous voice exalt,
"Here lies our Saviour,
beaten, humiliated,
purple and blue,
human through and through."

Me...and...erring through mnemonic forests,
in search of lost time,
a persistent nostalgia...
and longing for eternal validation.

Me...and...erring into the abyss, I find Him
cold and dead,
human through and through.
He speaks:

"Life most sacred is in the dirt, the air;
our shared obsolescent glances,
and blemished beauty."

"Life cannot be without blood, sinew, and flesh.
Taste my tears, are they not salty?
Feel my wounds, do they not sting you as well?
Witness my pain and know the absurdity of their ways."

"Admirers plotted my ruination,
institutionalized my desecration."

"May they burn for usurping the throne;
their presumption, their falsified faith
sow the seeds of their doom."

Me...and...erring through tomes upon tomes of desecration,
I see crimson tears stream down his cheek.

"They have forgotten you..."

"...the moment I passed."

Despondent words accompanied his melancholy,

"I'm their avatar, their clown
- my death justifies their crimes,
those morbid profiters, those disingenuous crooks,
those pious egoists."

Me...and...erring through fire and brimstone,
I see Him puttering into the distance.

"Terror strikes the heart that cannot bear to be in the presence of beauty...
But fear not, he is mere image, another avatar, a projection against a wall..."

An apparition, an illusion, spectral like an oasis -
he haunted, he soothed, and he tormented;
and then He was gone.

Me...and...erring out of the depths,
anguished cries called out to the Saviour,
hoping for redemption....
silence...deafening silence....echoed from dark eternity to His tomb,
it read:

lasciate ogni speranza

Reluctance.

Reluctance was his ethos. He reluctantly teetered on the edge for a good while and reluctantly went over the edge, against his will. In hesitation he retained a fragile image of self and hence found comfort. He reluctantly finished school, found an office job, a wife, and sired two children. He went in and out of debt, accumulated savings, paid off his home, raised the children, sent them to school, retired, and went reluctantly with his wife on an Alaskan cruise for his sixty-fifth birthday. It was there when he reluctantly succumbed to death - unsure he wanted to go on living, unsure of what laid ahead. He reluctantly struggled against his murderer - but alas, his half-measured resistance proved futile. That was roughly the life of Plato Allen, nearly sixty-five years of reluctance.

Everybody has a price

Money. Its all about money, have it, want more, money makes money. You're nothing without money. Duddy Kravitz can have his land; we want money. Instead of focusing on excelling at something one enjoys, you're hassled, harassed, and constantly told to make money - lots of it - for the sake of personal and familial reputation. Actually personal reputation matters little; familial reputation trumps all else. How do you measure up to Mr. X's son or Ms. Y's daughter or X cousin or Y's niece. Man is the measure of all things. No, that is incomplete. Man is measured by money, wealth, cash and what and who he can buy with it. Money is the only measure. Forget art. Forget love. Forget passion and forget fulfillment. Forget social conscience, ethics, environment - hell, fuck the future, money can ensure your own and isn't that the only concern?

Don't sit down and read. Reading can't make you money. Making money makes you money. Don't think. Thinking doesn't make you money. Making money makes you money. Don't speak. Speaking don't make you money. Making money makes you money. All things that makes you money are good. All things that don't, bad. Simple enough eh? This new ethos, these now eternal rules are simple: fuck everyone else, what's in it for me and my people, my crew, my family, and my bitches? Gangsters, oligarchs, tyrants, and corporate superstars are cut from the same cloth - its of vile pale green shade. Money makes the world go round...round and round we go, where will it stop, nobody knows. It will assuredly stop with a whimper and a cry, "Oh my, money so much of it, with nothing to buy, nothing to eat, no one to exploit, and nothing to own."

Finicky Machine

The machine speaks.

0101110111011000010

The machine tells me to forget it.

0111000111010100010111

Imperfect, its needs energy - entropy, dancing entropy encircles him, seated, sedentary, and soothed by mechanical glow. Decayed, sapped, he who is seated knows little else than a familiar radiance.

The machine speaks.

&#)($)#)_@)#)$)#)$#((%)

surrender

Nov 5/07 @;#) AM

Nov 5/07 @;#) AM

Under a grey languorous sky, I looked at the body, specifically, the face with his lecherous smile still in place. He looked ferocious, even in death; evil dripped from every fang. And it dawned on me. One day, he would rise from the tomb and seek retribution. I started digging towards six feet. Six feet is the great equalizer. We may begin from different points - rich or poor, blessed with infinite talent or helplessly incompetent, but end up all the same: staring up at six feet of dirt. Well, six feet of dirt, if you're lucky. You might see it differently: being consumed in an incinerator or sinking to the bottom of the sea or dangling from a sturdy tree or hanging unceremoniously from a crucifix. Six feet, if you're lucky.

Stunted

Stunted, sustained regression, invariable decline, spiral, spiralling away, without flow.

Can’t fire. Synapses lie dormant. Flow is elsewhere. Erroneous thoughts, curse these erroneous thoughts. There’s no string…no connection…without chains in solidarity. Too much rest, I can’t stand sleep, dread of slumber, lumbering through slumber, drowsy, groggy, too well attached to reality, too conscious, that reality fades with each passing wink.

Deprivation, keep slumber from me…no more, to close my eyes no more…open and the world is flat again, the trees speak, the ground rumbles and roars…

Working in darkness, aroused by the cool seductive touch of night, I write…much of it is unmitigated rubbish, unworthy of either paper or ink, much of it simple uninteresting confession, complaints of the most banal kind…

I am or can be only in the act alone, can only become in words, undone by deeds…

Undone…distraction, intrusion, interrupted flow…

Left alone, festering wounds whistle a sonorous tune, an abysmal anthem, a serenade to nothing…a invocation for the grim and inescapable…

To waltz with entropy

To waltz with entropy

Con-jested. Blocked. Blowing. Flow. Frustrated.

Ferocious, ah, fallacy

bloated

off

dis en tangled from cosmos

……………………………………….Neglect

You…where are you here now, standing finicky in discordant ordered chaotic illusion,

reality?

Men crawl majestically amongst cockroaches,

Failures tail, close the heart,

Medicine for fractured being: Oblivion.

Stern humour,

Absurd scripture,

Constriction,

And grey concrete slabs move in,

With vice like malice.

Flow; flow, so foreign at present, so close, intimate; so profound in the unknown moment (to come)

Obsolescence…my fickle desires change on a whim,

and the tides….the tides…

Calcified, congested, trapped in compartments not of my choosing,

Flowing through plastic tubes of ethos;

Being in capitals

B-E-I-N-G

…tiny and forgotten

So where has Karma gone in search of dark primordial breasts and resplendent illuminate thighs…Ah, Karma, my ribald jester…Karma, my back-stabbing wingman…

Here comes trouble and I turn an accusatory digit your way

…”Curse thee, my inscrutable foe!”

We look through each other with stern determined gaze,

We look into ourselves, a hidden menagerie of cruelty and levity…

…moments…eons…divinity and cosmos…expire

We laugh at absurd looping moments,

screeching down the barren fields of eternity…

smile buddy….smile and await your turn

to waltz with eternity.

Storied Girl

There were stories about her. Some tales were simple and straightforward. Others were complex esoteric constructions. Like any gossip, it was descriptive hearsay layered on top of more general hearsay. As a consequence, I rarely subscribe to hearsay. In any event, these stories were rather banal and uninventive lies that ran the usual gamut from chronic promiscuity to, uh, lax grooming.

“It comes with the territory,” she told me. Indeed, from my experience, disarmingly beautiful women – not simply ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’ girls; no, only beauty that would make Helen of Troy seethe with envy – are the subjects of rumours, stories, and innuendo. The reason is quite obvious. The majority of women are highly insecure, neurotic, and unattractive or plain creatures whose under stimulated and often unsatisfying romantic lives compel them to gossip vociferously about statuesque ‘threats’, either to protect an erroneous idea that ‘my man only has eyes for me’ or a self-effacing consolation ‘she’s not that hot’. In the end, the homely girl buys what the celebrities are endorsing – hence, ostensibly using – and wear what the beautiful people wear, use the same makeup they do, date men with similar builds and hair that the beautiful ones do. But, embedded within that mimetic admiration is a virulent hatred and envy of beauty. “If I consume you, do I become you?” they ask silently.

Yvonne was the office beauty first, an accountant second. All the men – from Mike the custodian to Hunter, my boss – were aching with a very primordial pain in her presence. She knew what was up. She would flirt and play with them, however upon being asked out to lunch or dinner or, as Mike did one time, to an Ultimate Fighting event, she would politely decline, citing that she ‘has policy of not dating co-workers’. Fair enough, most of them would eventually say, possibly after several more lame attempts at circumventing her stoic defences – they would forget her maxim in a week or so and make another attempt.

“You really can’t blame them for trying. It’s rather admirable,” I told her, knowing full well half of them were cheating bastards with partners, girlfriends, or spouses who simply wanted to mount her as the mantelpiece of an imaginary trophy room.

“Why haven’t you taken a shot?”

“You’re not my type,” was my dry matter-of-fact reply. Her mischievous glow dissipated and not because she was hurt by my comment. No, I suspect she was deeply offended by it. As much as she tired of all the attention, I knew she needed to be wanted by everybody. How can I not be your type? I’m the very definition of fuckable. If you were to look up fuckable in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of me in a pantsuit and you’ll still blow your wad. A fuckin’ pantsuit would make you cream your khakis, you pathetic little boy!

Appearances, however, eventually returned to homeostasis. She patted me on the shoulder, let out a giggle at my ostensibly humorous comment, and returned to her desk.

It was true that I never asked her out. And she wasn’t my type. Did that mean I didn’t want to fuck her? Hell no. But only a moron would come out and say that in words, deeds, or gestures – consciously or subconsciously. I was biding my time. It’s more fun when she can’t stand it anymore and jumps your bones. I couldn’t imagine a greater ego stroke than becoming, if only for a moment or two, the object of desire for a staggeringly desirable woman. Keep her puzzled, keep her interested, stay an enigma, and let her drive herself crazy with thought and longing, let her descend into a state of confusion and longing and irrational desire.

Having been the only one not actively drooling all over her ample breasts or spreading absurd stories and lies throughout the building, I became by default her confidant. Initially, she found our incomprehensibly chaste repartee a welcome relief to the contrivance lobbed her way during any given day. And I welcomed her presence of course. It made me feel exceptional. As a middleman spending most of everyday facing a grey cubicle wall, any exceptional thing – no matter how big or how small – gave my life some meaning. Sometimes I would peek outside of my cubicle to see her bouncing buttocks shaking like some wondrous jelly, shaking, I like to believe, for my personal edification. Stolen gazes were fine and dandy – until you get caught. Getting caught is often not an option, unless, of course, you consciously want to be found out.

[blank]

I am an enigma

I am an enigma

In a mirror
I see strange baleful eyes
a futile chase

Morning dear,
would you like breakfast in bed

If its not a bother, sweetheart

No bother

No bother...
she's lost as I

Our eyes meet,
spectators again of hidden selves -
misery, boredom, disdain
lay beneath bacon strips and freshly squeezed OJ

No bother, she mutters again

I am an enigma to her.

One morning she will awake next to me -
cold, unmoved
waiting for breakfast and an infernal embrace.

Busin'

I got on the bus, the driver told me it would be an hour plus before getting to town. I was fine with that. I needed the time to sort out things.

A wise man told me that people go to graduate school for one of two reasons. One is utilitarian - how can I upgrade and profit from it? - in short, education as an investment. The other is Kantian - you go because you want to figure out yourself - in short, education as essential, an insatiable need for the restless mind. Then again, he left out a third option, my reason: avoidance. You go to school to avoid both the utilitarian world and high ideals. I went to school to delay the inevitable, to past time, to avert my eyes, to forget, to neglect, to preen and pose, and to wait indefinitely for a most definite - and inescapable - sentence. I went to school, on an island, to move on and purge her from my soul. It never did happen.

Sitting at the very back of an empty bus, I looked out at the modest and beautiful landscape around Swartz Bay. I took in a deep breath of the sea air. Being a dilettante and all, I honestly thought smelling nature is experiencing it. That misconception is borne from my inability to do anything else but smell when in nature. While I 'experienced' the natural beauty of the island, an acrid scent perturbed my reminiscences.

An awful world

In the absence of a singular deity, Man creates his environment. Man, a limited finite being, names, gathers, and develops systems of knowledge to organize and categorize it, i.e. statistics. This capacity for partition - division, ennumeration, and categorization - remakes 'the world' into compartments and a whole. Knowledge describes and limits environment. The world, as understood by Man, is finite. Knowledge, historically constituted, endures and comes to predate man - that mortal, fleeting, limited beast.

Knowledge (logic, numbers, ideas) compose and limits 'the world'. Man is enslaved to systems of knowledge and its techne - its much too large to be mastered. As a consequence, man fears the world - a fear stemming from an inescapable impotency.

"Fear, whether an instinct or an acquisition, is a function of the environment. Man fears because he exists in a fearful, an awful world. The world is precarious and perilous."

- John Dewey, Experience and Nature.

The modern subject is a paradox. It aspires towards autonomy, but is fearful of what it may entail. Descartes is rejected. "I think, therefore I am" is incomplete. To be free, truly free, the modern subject cannot avoid venturing into 'the world', the environment shared with other subjects, who are equally free - a confounding notion for the ostensibly unique and autonomous subject. To be free is to be limited. To be limited is to be exposed to limiting relations with 'others' and the environment - when the world challenges, can one simply retreat?

A setting sun

Sunset - I sat on the rocks beating off to a spectre. Some time passes, darkness descends, climax follows. I clean up and head for home. I felt relaxed, refreshed, invigorated and all that feel-good crap. Some sage advice from a long lost friend: Walking soothes the mind, but irritates bunions. I passed the posh condos along Cook Street and approached my right turn along Fort. Then, she ran me over.

I opened my eyes. I saw the doctors – still in the middle of the procedure. I saw blood. I saw their utensils. I saw my spleen lying in a sterile pan. But, one look at the doctor’s belligerent butcher eyes put me under again.

I awoke, this time to flowers and balloons and the cute eyes of my would-be murderer.

"I got the girl in the end." Uncle Vance said, stifling a drunken chuckle.

"You did?"

"Yeah, I did, in the book."

He closed his eyes and hoped never to open them again. Why? Pain awaited. Consciousness, unbearable consciousness, wore him down. Slumber numbed yearning for scars.

In praise of American thought

America, the vilified, the villain, acts as a whipping boy for the world's indignation. To call the US incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan unpopular would be an understatement. In spite of the grounds - or lack thereof - prefiguring its supposed imperialism, it would be wrong to summarily condemn America, its citizens, and the ideas borne from its turbulent history. It was Tocqueville who first grasped the potential and perils of American democracy. Indeed, after a Civil War, numerous foreign conflicts, slavery - then segregation and ostensibly disenfranchisement, the ideas and ideals girding the very notion of America are constantly under threat - diminished, nearly forgotten, and their demise no longer inconceivable.

A history of pragmatism - stretching from early statesman and revolutionaries like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, through great minds like Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, and John Dewey, and leading up to contemporary voices for democracy like Cornel West - has been swept aside. The new destiny, represented as an old, immutable one in the form of a "national calling" - ironically built around the dissemination of freedom and democracy throughout the globe - is implicitly derived from Hegel's philosophy of history and adopts Marxist method - more appropriately, an appropriation of Trotsky's "permanent revolution". For pragmatism, knowledge can be adaptable in pursuit of truth. For the latter, ostensibly operating in our present times, truth is immutable, while the world is malleable, adaptable, and, hence, disposable and superfluous in the service of Truth.

What I propose - and what I would like to investigate - is a form of pragmatism forged by great thinkers confronted by substantial and profoundly difficult problems of American political context. C.S. Peirce - the great logican and thinker - starts us off with the problem: the problem of chaos, a world outside of determinism, a 'chancy' existence. Peirce, by refuting with his requisite zeal any kind of determinism, demonstrates to us that in all things governed by law, there can be no certainty, only probabilities. In a world without certainty, where divine providence is assumed MIA, man is assured of no favourable odds, no longer sheltered from the whimsical hand of risk. He can still reason and analyze, but whatever decision he arrives at may still go terribly array. Faced with such odds, some - often those in positions of power and influence - throw up their hands, succumb to the pressure, and just invoke an otherworldly power of guessing - the great American satirist and humanist Kurt Vonnegut presciently lampooned contemporary decision makers as "guessers", playing rock, paper, scissors with the lives of its citizens at stake. In what way is that democratic? Well, on a semiotic level it is. Of course, Charles Sanders Pierce, ironically, has been called the creator of semiotics. Pierce thought semiotics as any action of affect that involved a sign, its object, and an interpretant. Does this triadic relationship translate into the political context? Is it as simple as a sign, a lie-truth, and citizen-dupes? No, that would be a crude and disjointed account. Peirce, the popularizer of pragmatism, objects, things, and the interaction of people with them over high unseen predetermined ideals. With that began an encounter between a pragmatism unique to the American context and an idealism, as exhibited in the work of emigre thinkers such as (but not limited to) Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss, which derived largely from German philosophy - Kant, Hegel, and even Herder.

The richness of American thought is owed to this unique convergence of continental philosophy and homegrown pragmatic thought, for a lack of a better term. This study does not intend to sanctify one wing in relation to another. It intends to first, draw out the historical and philosophical ties of these two tradition, second, to demonstrate the influence both exerted on major political events, and lastly, to diagnose the current maladies afflicting contemporary politics in America.

[Part I]

Medication

"You didn't take you meds, did you?"

He ignored my question, opened up the fridge, unwrapped a day old ham sandwich and took a bite.

"Hey, nephew, you're here on my dime. You're here for amusement and companionship and conversation. You're not my nurse," he said, mouth half-full with sandwich and belligerence. He opened up a cabinet and shoved his head in, ostensibly in search of something.

"Don't just stand there," I heard his doubly muffled voice. "Come help me find the Jaeger." He pulled out the bottle and took a long satisfying gulp before I could be of any assistance.

"Here, have some."

"Its a little too early for that, Uncle Vance."

"Its never too early, never too late, for..." he downed another voluminous swig, and extended the bottle as a wordless invitation. I accepted.

A few dueling swigs later, Vance held an empty bottle.

"You know, son," he looked penetratingly at his vanquished friend-foe. "We all need something to make life bearable. Some prefer expensive cars. Some enjoy cheap women adorned with pricey trinkets. Others prefer the company of a book to anything else. They name their boredom hobbies or interests or sex or a career. In the end, they grow tire of it and buy a better car and find a cheaper whore and go to a movie. More or less, the majority of humanity are intransigents desperately denying an inescapable desire: to be done with it all."

"Something keeps us going. You know what that is?" He asked me.

"Fear."

"Yeah. As much as we want to be waltzing with the Reaper under a starless sky, we are afraid of what follows."

"Nothing follows," I said rather confidently. His eyes turned from the bottle up to meet mine.

"Are you certain of this?"

"Well, no. There is no certainty either way. All there is is belief."

"Speculation. All there is is speculation - desperate attempts at making the ineffable coherent, the uncertain definite, and providing consolation for earthly misery," he took a final bite of his sandwich. He finished chewing and continued.

"Eventually, if you're around long enough, life becomes an extended bout of quiet exasperation." He finally tossed the empty bottle into an almost full bin - I would soon escort them to the nearest liquor store in exchange for another round.

"You're how old now?"

"I'm 25."

[incomplete]