no road that is right entirely

my room was annoyingly warm and I was letting the summer torpor take over my senses when I hear someone knockin at my door. the evening had been exceptionally noisy, live right next to the freeway, so keep hearing sirens of all kinds all the time and today it was as if everyone in the city had conspired not to lemme doze off. find mike at the door wanting to know if I'd like some pizza and then before I could say anythin he hits me with the news. no, actually, he assumes I already know it.
the bridge two blocks from our house had collapsed taking about 50 cars along with itself into the mississippi. the very first thing I thought of was that I could've been on that bridge had it not been for the annoying warmth that's supposed to mean summer out here in the twin cities. and this thought was followed by a dozen very very selfish thoughts: if I really were on the bridge and something did happen to me, how in the world were people back home gonna find out? it was a long long time before I bothered to find out anythin about deaths and injuries.
two minutes later we were all sitting in dan-the-new-guy-upstairs's room eating his cold pizza wishing whatever obscure music he was playing could drown the noise from outside. there were half-hearted attempts at conversation and awfully sweet kool-aid by jan.

should we bike over and see if we can help?
naah, we'd only get in their way.
you're with CivE, did you hear anything about this earlier?
naah, I do roads from Albertsville.
is your phone dead too?
a collective dejected yeah.
does anyone wanna watch the boondock saints?
what, in the blinking world, is the boondock saints?
can I get help for my dynamics homework?
lying blatantly: oh. dynamics isn't really my thing.
don't you just miss your family terribly sometimes?

yes, my friend, more than you can even imagine.

especially when I'd been as silly as is humanly possible when I last spoke to the love of my life and if something did happen to me, that stupid conversation would be the last thing I'd leave him with. it's tragic enough having to go through my daily routine all alone, only letting him know what I can and choose to put into words. the last thing this relationship needs is a disaster. the worst thing i can think of is everyone who cares for me back home waking up to some kinda bad news and then realizing that they've slept through the event and then that they're completely helpless. yes, I do realize I'm obsessed with something very improbable.
what are the chances of me being on a bridge minutes away from my home when it finally chooses to collapse?
oh, very high.
but we don't ever imagine that anything so huge could really touch our lives significantly enough. don't we all make decisions about our careers, lives, and if you're us, children's names like we've conquered death? and don't we truly regret years misspent and this need to plan for the future, all the time, when we realize how delicate the present is? hell, a little less laziness and I'dve been on my way to the library and later found myself in the HCMC.
think there's a telugu word for this post. or wait, was it sanskrit? smasana vairagyam?

just wish I was in a different place and I had the sense to choose the roads that lead there.

the customary poem,

Entirely
By Louis MacNeice

If we could get the hang of it entirely
It would take too long;
All we know is the splash of words in passing
And falling twigs of song,
And when we try to eavesdrop on the great
Presences it is rarely
That by a stroke of luck we can appropriate
Even a phrase entirely.

If we could find our happiness entirely
In somebody else’s arms
We should not fear the spears of the spring nor the city’s
Yammering fire alarms
But, as it is, the spears each year go through
Our flesh and almost hourly
Bell or siren banishes the blue
Eyes of Love entirely.

And if the world were black or white entirely
And all the charts were plain
Instead of a mad weir of tigerish waters,
A prism of delight and pain,
We might be surer where we wished to go
Or again we might be merely
Bored but in the brute reality there is no
Road that is right entirely.