Another month, another 3000 words, that's just the thing isn't it. Just words spilling out onto the page. I did most of July and then chickened out. Afraid I had been too open, too raw, writing about things that even now cause me to shudder. Have you ever dropped a bunch of coins on the floor and watched as they bounced and rolled away, looking for patterns, which coins roll, which bounce, which just lie there waiting. Waiting like a blank page, waiting for you to drop words onto it. Words that tell a story, your story, your secrets revealed.

A woman's lips, is there anything more perfect. Feeling them on your skin, watching them smile or frown. Could nature create something so exquisite? I know a girl who can break your heart with her smile. Most men take for granted the sheer erotic joy of kissing a woman. They shouldn't, they should savor the tenderness, the warmth. Close your eyes and you can feel the pulsating flow of blood below thin skin. Kisses should last forever instead they end. Lips were made for kissing, but like fools we ruin the plan, twist our mouths into bizarre forms and talk.

It's not what you think. I mean, I'm a big strong guy, 6'1", 170 pounds, can lift big heavy things, but when I hear Un Bel Di, I cry. It's not just that, whenever I'm confronted by great beauty I cry. When Susan took me to Notre Dame, I cried, in Berlin looking at Degas' ballerinas I cried, when I read the last page of 100 Years of Solitude, I cried. Why? Why does beauty make me cry? Maybe I'm sad that a world that produces so much pain also produces such beauty. Beauty redeems the world, it needs redeeming.

Sometimes it's tough to remember all the people I've been. Found an old photograph today. Me, years ago thinner, clean shaven, wearing a trench coat. I looked at the photograph a while remembering, then I dug around found an old cassette tape, Dead Milkmen. I listened to the tape, then put the photograph and the tape in a shoebox in my closet. If we were all born understanding who we really are, would we be better off or worse? Do all our false starts teach us anything? Once I wasn't a good guy, I'm better know, not perfect, but better.

Love exciting and new. Is it always? I'm cursed. A hopeless romantic, always falling in love. Falling in love again, what am I to do? Honestly I try to resist. I do my very best. But my heart constantly leads me astray. Your cheatin heart, will make you weep. Do the women deserve any of the blame? No. Even if they can't or won't love me, I will still love them. Love like death is a capricious thing. Is it possible to figure love out, to understand it? They say love is just chemicals in our brain, but it's not.

I?m not perfect. In fact I?m well aware of my faults. First there are the women, but you know about that. I?m still too quick to anger. I could be more compassionate. I have delusions of grandeur. I?m not is smart as I think I am. I?m a hack writer. I was a poor student. I?m a hack photographer. I hate people. I?m too self-critical. But in spite of all this I still think I?m a good person. I could be better. I feel so alone. Sometimes I just want it to end, but not really. Life is funny, no?

Have you seen the movie Scent of a Woman? Women really have scents. Did you know that? I find it?s strongest in around their neck, or in the small of their back. A sweet ambrosia that fills your nose when you?re near. Sometimes I just like to savor it. I let it swirl in my nostrils I can almost taste it. I wish I had a girl to smell right now. But I know if I did, I wouldn?t be content just to smell her. Am I getting repetitive? My life isn?t all about women. It just seems that way.

Words, from the TV of my childhood, randomly collected here. I'm just a bill. Here in the Hall of Justice. Where's the beef? You're soaking in it. It's time to meet the Muppets. Billions and billions. Barnaby Jones. Smiles, smiles, everyone. We're off to outer space, we're leaving mother earth. Go Speed Racer. It's the story of a lovely lady. Conjunction junction what's your function. Panch and John. Starbuch and Apollo. Bo and Luke. Easy Reader. Break out your backgammon boards lucky Buck is back. This episode of 100 words dot net has been brought to you by the letter A.

Most people give up on their dreams far too easily. They cash them in for a job or a big home or a sense of security. I sold out. Confused by too many dreams, I let them all slip away. Is it enough to be just a good person, a good husband, a good father. I don't know. Were my dreams so special? Are yours? Did you reader, give up on your dreams or do you still struggle? What would you do if all your dreams came true? Would you dream again? Would you be content to with your gift?

What would you do if you could live your life again knowing what you do now? Let's say your sixteen again, what would you do differently? Sometimes I think what would I do if I could do it all again. I don't like the answer. Instead of being content to correct by own faults, I would use my knowledge of the future to become, rich, famous, and powerful. Thankfully, I can't go back in time. I stuck living with my mistakes, but who knows stranger things have happened. Perhaps one day I'll wake up and be sixteen again, then beware.

So you're reading my words right now. They've come to you electronically and now hang suspended on your monitor. They exist and yet they don't. Now you're confused. Is this my entry or not. You try to remember a book that you once read with a similar format. Was it Calvino? You can't remember so you return to the words with both exist and do not exist. You're growing bored now. This format gives you no insight into the author. You're ready to go to the next day, perhaps there will be sensible entry. Why are you still reading? Go!

Places I've been. France, Germany, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Mexico, forty three of the fifty states, a car parked in the desert sun, on top of a mountain, in a cold river, alone on a beach, lost in the woods, a girls dorm, an ancient library, surrounded by jack rabbits, amid the ruins of a forgotten people, trapped in an office, locked in a stairwell, hidden in a closet, in the middle of a lake, in the arms of a beautiful woman. Places that I have been.

I had something written for today. It's was just another rant about my job, then I noticed that it was day thirteen, and I thought about the concept of trixadecaphobia and threw out my notes. Why do people fear numbers? Is it the shape? The sound? Was it all of those awful Friday the 13th movies? Where were you when you were thirteen? Was it a good year? Were you beset by tragedy? What about the multiples of thirteen? Is 26 ok? How about 39? Don't even get me started on 52. Numbers ruining our lives. I can see it.

Words, just words. They spill from me like forgotten comic books from the psycho pirate's eyes. Charming arbor ranch forest curious cinnamon canon electronic tooth butter display life owner side original go nice mail week pair family soft insure benefit assistant disc inside manager lost invoice sheep period service bitch amount boss thank services user career schedule flavored corn procedures laws civil office running despair freedom ride bicycle sunshine wind closed locked mountain tree road photograph speaker bedroom private trail public fan rolling college group second dictionary guide dog cross edition. Do you see a pattern? Do you need to?

It's one of those I want to quit my job days. I want to be a poet. Did you ever see that episode of the Simpsons where Lisa goes to college? She meets Robert Pinsky and he reads Impossible to Tell. The guy's a genius. It makes more aware of my own failings. I'm not a poet. I am not a writer. I am not a photographer. Just a guy in a dead end job on the sixth floor of an innocuous office building between two expressways filled with thousands of people. Yet here I am struggling to write, why?

Riding the bike to and from work. It is a mixture of joy, pain, and pure terror. Cars whiz by me at three times the speed limit. The hills oy the hills. Do they ever end? They are going to kill me one day. I keep one eye on the mirror looking out for my doom. Spinning faster and faster climbing slowly up until I reach the summit and start down again. I never see other people on bikes, so it's just me and the cars and the hills. As they go past I wonder why won't they join me.

Really I am desperately lonely. It is by in large my own fault. I am not very good with people. I can't hold a conversation with a woman without flirting. I simply find it impossible to talk to men. I am too abrasive. I am too judgmental. If you are content to work in a place like this I dismiss you. People must have dreams. So I'm lonely. How wonderful it would be to have a friend, someone to talk with about writing, books, movies. Instead I am alone, waiting for people to change rather than change who I am.

She left without kissing goodbye. It was a small thing really. It was just another sign of indifference building up over the years. He would have gone after her but he was cooking and didn't want to ruin the perfect glaze on the pork chops. So she left, out the door and on her way, while he stood over the stove. Looking at his pork chops he wondered about the nature of love, but then decided that these things cannot be known. He picked up the phone and made the call. As always she was glad to hear from him.

The moon is a jewel that floats among a sea of jewels. We never think about the moon, never marvel at its beauty, never bathe in its cold white light. Would we appreciate the moon more if it were green? Or Red? What if the moon was covered with fur or forests? Instead the moon is a dusty rock, that floats above us, winking, rocking, smiling, frowning. O man on the moon, are you a king or a jester? Is the queen of the moon beautiful or terrible? If I were walking on the moon would I take giant steps?

Went to see Lost in Translation tonight. My life playing before me on the silver screen. I know you don't believe me but it's true. After the movie we fought, she didn't understand. Over the course of a long marriage you go through periods of isolation. So when S. takes me out to lunch and brushes the hair from my brow, is it any wonder my heart strays? Or when M. smiles, or A. laughs, these are the things that I want from her but she doesn't understand. Instead we are alone, one person or are we two.

Favorite dreams: Waltzing in a cosmic ballroom, above us galaxies spin and below us the earth suspended in space. Buddha king of the world, my superpowers make me invulnerable, armies crumble before me, and I sit on a golden throne. Flying, just flying nothing else above the earth and into the sky. The Fight, a remnant of my past, I fight hordes of enemies but I refuse to fall. The sage, in a monks robes I walk the halls of a forgotten monastery. The thief, in the night in Baghdad I rob the sultan's palace. The God, above all I.

No internet at work today, so why am I even here? I try to write but there's no inspiration. Flipping randomly through the dictionary. Mercer: a dealer in textiles. Hog-tie: to tie the four feet or the hands and feet of. Rhino: rhinoceros. Garget: an inflammation of the udders of cows. I put these words together as a poem.

The mercer looked at his work
A hog-tied rhino
Scratching his chest
Was it garget
Was it

It is a bad poem, I'm no Pinsky, no Basho. Basho they all cry Basho. Just a man stuck at work with no internet.

Rode home in a driving rain yesterday afternoon. Pedaling along getting soaked, not fun. There was water every where. It came up from my tires, from passing cars, falling from the sky. When I lowered my head in ran off of my helmet and down my nose. So I just kept pedaling and I remembered once long ago, hiking alone in the woods when it began to rain. I stood for an instant taking in the sensory overload, seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting. Then as if possessed, I stripped off my clothes, sat naked on a rock and meditated, on rain.

Wednesday, Woden's day. A gift from the Danes I would guess. In German it's mittwoch which means mid week. Woden, made the heaven and the earth from the body of a dead giant. Nice handy work there Woden. Next time please consider using something that won't rot and smell. Woden the God of thunder, no that was Thor. Remember the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese commercial where the kid stands up and says "my name is Thor!" Who the hell names their kid Thor? Maybe Woden was his father. I'll have to check bullfinch for Thor's views on mac and cheese.

Gentle reader, do you have faith? In anything? Do you believe in God? Jesus? Jebus? Buddy Christ? Vishnu? Abraxas? Satan? Earth Spirits? I have faith, in an unseen world, in love, in the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth. I have no proof, that there is more to life than meets the eye, that love is a force of nature, that my soul has been reborn time and time again. But I have faith that these things are true. Why? Simply because it makes me feel better to believe and sometimes that is enough. It has to be enough.

Friday thank god, I have survived another work week. We punch out leave our desks and make our way home. Some sit in traffic that slithers over the ground like a great metallic serpent. I get home via the power of my legs. Spinning slowly feeling my age. Wondering what happened to all the energy I had as a kid. But I keep going slowly up hills, into the wind, slowly pushing myself toward home. I pass the suckers in their metal cages stuck on the expressway. They don't know what they're missing. Living their life in a metal box.

Fall at last arrived. The cool autumn breeze sweeps away the Mayfair gentleman and leaves the mountain man in his place. No more Bertie Wooster for me, now it's Jeremiah Johnson. Ties and neatly pressed shirts are replaced by flannel and REI gear. I don't shave today which make me look even more rugged. When the weather changes like this it makes me glad to be alive. White puffy clouds hang in the cool air, and I fight the urge to chop mass quantities of wood. Even as I relish this change, but Indian Summer will be upon us soon.

Another perfect day ruined only by the fact that I have to return to work tomorrow. But that's tomorrow and this is today. Try to write but nothing is working. I go for a walk. The worst thing about living in the city is that its noise is everywhere. I walk in the park by the river but still in the distance I can hear the rumbling of the expressway. Wouldn't it be nice if for just one day, everyone left their cars at home, and walked to wherever they were going? So that we could all enjoy the silence.

Some people have no dreams other than to have a decent job and make a decent living. How I despise them. Why don't they want to change the world? Why don't they want to make a difference? But it's not really about them, it's about me. My inability to be happy. My inability to get a fulfilling job. Instead of acknowledging my situation I degrade others. Not Buddha like huh? In my stories no one ever works at their dream job, but things always work out in the end. So what do you want to do when you grow up?

Another thirty days another three thousand words. A lot of it is crap, but at least I stuck it out this month. Work on the novel moves at a snails pace. Half finished stories lie everywhere, but hey I finished a month of words on one hundred words dot net. It is just padding now. Like a runner who is spent or a cyclist who has bonked, there is nothing left. The well is dry. The bucket is empty. The words have stopped coming. And buddha failed writer, angry young man, and all around jerk still keeps typing. The end.