The stage is set; soon enough, I will discover how pivotal the past few days have been.

The game today is to listen only to music that was released before I was born. This is surprisingly easy.

I wish I could say that the city of Milwaukee was a creative, magical place, like something out of a Marquez novel; but sometimes seems like a surreal, almost desperately schizophrenic place, like something out of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I wonder if there are emotional stages that one goes through while unemployed. I get the feeling that they would parallel the stages of grievance for the death of a dysfunctional family member.

The moon in twelve days old today, yet I have accomplished pretty much nothing. Haven't even smoked a cigarette, but apparently that's supposed to be a good thing, since I am quitting smoking. Oh, and I spent more than seventy dollars at local bookstore.

That, and still no job. Yet for some reason, I feel happy. Maybe it's the nicotine gum, but I have that slightly-gut wrenching butterfly feeling, and my knees feel a bit more gelatinous than usual. Like I just graduated high school or something.

Number of days since last employed: 21. Number of days since last cigarette: 7. Number of dollars spent since last cigarette, on items purchased specifically as gifts to self for not smoking: 261. Number of pounds gained while quitting smoking: 5. Number of times in the past 24 hours that I have rethought my reason for being: 8. Number of times I have regretted quitting my job: 0. Number of times I have reworked the wording of this entry, since I commenced typing: 5. Number of times I have shaken my fist at the innate unfairness of the world in say, the last week: 3. Number of e-mails I currently need to read and respond to: 2. Number of people in all of the world of whom I can say I am jealous without immediately feeling petty: 3. Number of crushes I have had on girls who I know only from what they publish about themselves on their personal Web sites: 1. Number of times in my life that I was sure, without a doubt, that nothing was going to work out and that I was going to live with my parents until they died: 1.

But no, this young star had some tricks up his sleeve, tucked somewhere next to the freckled pale skin of his forearm. As we watched him disappear in the 1980's, what we did not realize was that he was in fact working, that he had a plan. He would no longer limit himself to that personal graveyard, the ashtray that was becoming his acting career. He would produce! He would write! He would direct! the real power was, after all, behind the camera, was it not? Thanks to this shift in creative and professional focus, we now have Parenthood. We have Gung Ho, Cucoon, and we have the cross-species romance, Splash.

Then I see this hair. I just glanced and caught it. Some kid was talking, had his hand on his forehead, showing off some sort of intensity. I saw the hair, curled, truly unkempt, blackdyedorange, or rather I saw her, through the triangle that his arm made while he did this.

Pothole!

Dick smiles at me again, but I'm too far away. He harasses a nearby undergraduate trying to study differential equations.

Focus. Balance. Seven pages, then it's the end of the chapter. The bottom of the hill. I can stop then. Coast and stop and be okay.

Dammit. She looked at me. Made eye contact. I think. Or maybe someone she knew just walked in. I should ask her. I should have asked her.

"Were you looking at me just there?"

"Yes. I was just wondering..."

She's definitely the one. The one to go home with. The one with whom I have some unspoken bond. It will start with the change encounter, then move on to something bigger. Something more meaningful. Something that has made all of this lack of clarity worthwhile. First we will travel. I have money. Then settle down somewhere. In the country, or somewhere more exotic? I hear Tasmania is fascinating. And romantic, in a very intellectual sort of way...

Eye contact. Smile. Shit. Drunk driver! Disoriented, flipping through the air, maybe a full 1.5 twirls before I hit pavement, the bike following, a pedal to the kidney shortly after the crash. Then the dogs come in, and it's over.