We hope you enjoyed your stay!

  I was on the balcony (such an interesting word, baahlconknee) smoking a cigarette, scaring myself by leaning a bit too far off of it. Thinking about letting myself fall off, maybe deciding to. Blue blue sky again, clouds must be on vacation. Birds flying, one wasn’t. I wondered why, maybe it was watching over the nest under the AC directly across from me. I was there for a while, it never flew off. As my cigarette was just about done I saw this older black gentleman, perfectly bald. I was 4 stories up, so I had a real birds eye view of his super smooth head. He went to the recycling bins, opened one up, then a second. He started shifting some cardboard from one bin to the other. I was confused, I watched him for a bit, by the time he was done, there was now an equal amount of space in both recycling bins. I even recognized one of the flattened cardboard boxes he’d switched to the other bin. As he walked back into the yard, I called out. 

“excuse me” 

he looked around.

“up here” 

he finally saw me.

“why did you care enough to move the boxes into the other bin?” 

he looked a bit confused. 

I repeated the question about three more times, he may have been hard of hearing. 

Once he understood, he said 

“I had some information on my trash, so I wanted to move it to the bottom. It’s old old information, but you have to be careful these days, people are real crafty!” 

or something like that. 

I smiled with my heart for the first time in a few days, this was very funny to me. He was very proud of himself for being so clever and crafty, you could tell! I SWEAR! 

The whole time, I thought I was simply witnessing a human being do something “good” when no one was looking. I thought the boxes were in the wrong bin, yknow one for glass, one for cardboard, one for metals etc.  and he was moving the boxes into the correct one. A very small and trivial matter, considering how inconsequential recycling really is at the end of the day, but I was impressed nonetheless. 

WRONG! He was acting in self interest. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s not an indictment, I’m not judging him or coloring him as “bad” or shrewd. I wouldn’t have even bothered to do half of what he did. Hell I don’t even recycle really. 

It was just funny to me, I still think in such childish, idealistic ways. I looked at someone doing something and interpreted it as a beautiful act of altruism or care or whatever. That’s good! I like that about myself. I think. 

It leads to a lot of disappointment though. 

I’ll mention them one last time. 

I started reading this manga, “Goodnight, Pun pun.” Have you read it? 

So check this out. When I first saw my last partner on Hinge, (the dating app) they had their name set as “Aiko”. When we started talking off the app they told me their real name. I was confused as to why they’d be using a fake name, I think I asked about it once, I think I made up some explanation for myself about it. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I was intoxicated with their presence. They had mentioned this manga before, but I did my best to avoid reading it the last few years, because I could tell it was really dark, and traumatic. I called it trauma porn I think, the author themselves referred to it as such later on in the story. Until yesterday. I knew it would be painful to read, but I wanted to hurt myself in that way.

In the story, the main character, Punpun is his name, has a childhood sweetheart named Aiko, because of difficult circumstances in his life, he had to disappoint her a few times and they split apart. 

Punpun grows up, and well into his adult life, he still thinks about and yearns for Aiko whether he’s initially aware of it or not. One day while on the train, as they’re adults, he sees her again,in the crowd of the station as the doors close. He gets off at the next stop and chases after her, but doesn’t manage to find her. 

There’s a page after this where he says :

“Hey Aiko, maybe you cursed me. As long as you’re not a dream or a hallucination, I don’t think I can really love anyone again.”

Isn’t that funny? isn’t that a wild coincidence? is it a coincidence? is the universe winking at me again? 

I’ll do my best to make that the last time I mention her. Even I’m sick of hearing myself cry about it. 

Anyway, that’s all. Thank you all for everything.