Carrying your torch just to burn things down

No what? No swimming? No dumping? No stopping / standing / loitering / parking? No ninja turtles admitted after nine? I don't remember what the sign originally said--only that it stood four or five feet high. So yeah...that's like four feet of freezing, murky, sewage-runoff water. The skies wept in gentle torrents for a solid two or three days before the temperature dropped about 30 degrees. Now there is ample ice skating along the banks of the swollen Blanchard, across Frazer Street, and down the sidewalk on my way to Wal-Mart. I pity those whom the fire department had to remove via electric boat in the storm's aftermath.

I was making a u-turn in someone's driveway the other night, when I heard a horrific metallic scraping sound from underneath my dying car. In the rearview mirror (one of the last few functioning features on the vehicle), a fairly sizable chunk of muffler or some distant vehicular cousin of my muffler lay forlorn and steaming on the edge of their lawn. Like a jagged, rusty turd. My thought process went something like this:

"Your car just took a shit on their lawn! Go pick it up!"
"No! It's steaming!! I'll get burned!"
"What if it's important? Your car needs it!"
"What the hell is my car going to do with something forcibly pooped out?"
"Good point..."
"Damn right it's a good point. Let's get out of here before anybody sees."
"Don't forget to wipe..."

But as of late, everything is very much like my car--minus the fecal humor. All these little things in my life are coming apart or falling off, but they don't impede my push towards moving to Japan in January. People I knew, things I never said, places I didn't go to, holes I never patched...They're things I should probably go back for, as in some shape or form, they hinder performance--hinder my conscience, but don't prevent the wheels from turning...so I don't. Everything here in Findlay only has to last two more weeks. After that, it's no longer mine to worry about. Devil and God came along with incredible timing...everything on the record is this carefully documented account of my last four years...under normal circumstances I'd quote lyrics that were important to me. But these are so precise, it hurts to think that someone might actually be able to put the pieces together.

"Jesus Christ...that's a pretty face..."