The street felt too open.

Judging by ze way you'f been talking to me.


How do I talk to others? Careful words. Tended and trundled through care and consideration. All until they are as close as can be to 'say what you mean or mean what you say' in an acceptable span of response time. I am called cold by a misanthrope. A heart of fire in a tomb of stone. Cold why? I was so careful, trying to impose as little as I could on his freedom, but he felt a slave? Endeavored I to not impose my opinions. I bit my tongue on many subjects. I asked direct questions, wanting his opinion. I did not indulge want of a debate and just listened. Listened. Stood still and by and wondered at the stink of cigarettes and how often he looks out, in, anywhere not at another person's eyes when he whispered hints of closer things.

So Still cold, is suspect and not celebrant? Why does a misanthrope want warmth? Why would he want me to admonish him to eat up, to not do drugs, stop smoking, ask 'how do you feel' when its asinine? Ask someone in withdrawal how they feel- it was already plain. I tried to offer comfort of a kind even.

Quenton lifted a hand, keeping the palm face down as his gaze bored through it- the black feathers of hair a memory conscise as etching on glass.



I knew I should'f kept my opinions to myself.
I should'f stifled my personality
I knew you'd pull s**t like zis



The privacy had never really come down. Alois had a different definition than most about a lot of things, 'opening up' being one analog to being bricked in as an anchorite with a window only for trays of food and the occasional brush of fingers. Unless I am missing something. I cannot...think of anything specific. Even wracked the conversations feel like the same cadence, the same sparring. The rest a month and more ago- from the start.

Is the only acceptable response to never admonish at all? Alois gets to do as Alois pleases to anyone and anything, and damn the lips that dare speak of some courtesy not sycophant to his whim? I have been careful...since that excellent trap- that I should just like telling him how he is wrong. Until mistreatment of an animal, and his response was that vehement? An expectation absurd. But he hates egoism.

's**t like this' - apt enough. When have I lasted longer at saying nothing at all? While boundaries are necessary for the myriad to flourish, married have I been to them since the first.



You do it out of habit.
You do it because you're bored


Inborn it may be to adhere to structure, but it isn't habit. It isn't thoughtless. I don't do it out of boredom. Who has so much time that they whittle it to mother others incapable of simple values of life ? What is alive yet contributes to the wonder of the world. What is dead nourishes the next. It all has value. But why, then, do it? Why correct others at all? Is it some idiocy and personal foible like Stroud's obsession with 'Flow', feng shui and all her 'efficiency'? Maybe. An Architect. One who would build. From Greek arkhitekton the "master builder, a director of works." I would not see things remain ...as they are, whatever that is. they can always be different. They should always be changing, growing- wondrous variety though it stretch and groan our joints and jaws.
Is he projecting onto me why he does such things?
Is he bored of his habits? Just ...bored? He incites it so specifically- doing things so contrary especially to get a rise out of people, but then imperious that any dare call him on it. What is wall in the way? I am missing something.
What does he fear?
I do not want him to die, physically or in some other sense- some actual slave to addiction, poverty, worst of all bald fear. We have hardly had chance to push each other to better potential.



The idea of taking the bus now was abhorrent. Being so near others when his every nerve was stripped to livefire around datapoints. That was cold, to consider things only in chess terms. The deeper matter, at least, was not so cold considered.

Perhaps the chance is lost already to see through to the other side- he is so good at closing doors. The Unwanted Son in his paper crown and sewer-tatter cape. Perhaps he laughs at the welcome offered now. Do I still offer it?

Of course.
I cannot close that offer- odd he may, but he has been glad grief. Brought questions and richness of other views I've not had to consider before. Tests of my resolves and ideas that others wander from like black-marked doors. Is it only selfish then? No...Or why would you worry so much and turn it all over and over again- Quenton, you hoped all along you presented the same.



Maddening.


Perhaps, then, I do. Damn it, Quenton.