i don't recommend the-two-martini-and-a-bite-of-mozzarella-prosciutto-panini dinner.

it feels right and good when you're with your friends at joe's pub bobbin' to the music and wheezing with laughter, but soon, after you've left your friends and you're alone on the R train, a dark haze begins to descend, and you know this might not have been a good idea. you are not nauseated. you are not going to vomit. but you are, my dear, going to cry.

oh scheisse.

why? because this is what drunk girls do. it's in the manual.

so, after you've exited the subway and you're walking down your street towards Old Faithful (your bed), you see a very sad thing; an enormous tree that has been chopped into massive chunks littering your neighbor's sidewalk. ever-hopeful ivy still clinging to parts.

now isn't that sad?

i'm not sure there is anything sadder than a chopped up tree. at least not tonight. not after a -two-martini-and-a-bite-of-mozzarella-prosciutto dinner. and so, you plop yourself down onto the most massive chunk. the one that's sitting upright as if it's a tree trunk rooted into the earth (but not, and isn't that sad?) your butt touching the many lives of this tree - ring after ring after ring after ring. your drunk butt sullying the holy majesty of this ol' tree.

he doesn't seem to mind.

so you cry. and it feels good.

who says, by god, that tears have to be a bad thing? that sad has to be a bad thing? it's all part of it. i don't mean "you have to taste what is bitter to know what is sweet" and all that rigamarole. that's good too, but don't we all have an embroidered pillow or cross-stitch plaque reminding us of that every day of our blessed lives? i just mean sad for the sake of sad. mad for the sake of mad. not so you can know happy. but so you can know sad. so you can know mad. so you can know alive, for heaven's sake.

you don't sleep on the stump. your vigil is very short - a few minutes at most. you head home, trudge up the stairs and you must've wept to sleep because you wake up surrounded by little white blossoms of Kleenex. you giggle. you wonder now, in the brilliant spring light beaming through your blinds, what the F all the fuss was about.

who knows...but it sure was nice.