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Town | Dec 24 2002

You’re at a party and it’s not so bad. It’s not great either, but not so bad. At certain points you have no one to talk to, so you sit and look at all the people talking.

Earlier a man told you that he’s trying to become a clown. He said that when he was little he had a recurring dream (he was just remembering this when he was talking to you) that there was rocking chair horse in his room, and that this rocking chair horse looked like a clown, and that this clown had a searing bright light above it and that above the light was a trapped door. It was a scary dream, he said, and talking about it now, he wondered if it had something to do with his wanting today to become a clown.

The dream didn’t make any sense, but still it was the second best thing to happen.

The best thing was hearing a song about a town that’s going away or something, you couldn’t really hear the lyrics over the chatter. “On our town, on our town” it went. It was sad, but not sad sad. It was like something beautiful was dying and you were saying goodbye to it, but it was also vaguely okay because everything dies in time, and now here this too, although lord knows it was sad.

Or no, it was sadder than this. The thing that was dying was not supposed to die, or even if it was, there was no way to accept it, and yet here it was, accepted or not, approaching, and the person singing could see it, and that’s what she was singing, she was singing that she can see it and feel it (both equally: seeing and feeling; neither without the other) and that this was what it meant.