I do, I did.

I am still, be it said, getting hang of the four defenses against libel.

   those being:
   truth (this shouldn't be shaky)
   consent (waiting for that one to come up)
   fair comment (all the damn time--look it up)
   privilege (?)

If you think I haven't, by the end of typing this, proofread it sufficiently, you would be wrong.

Then, however, you also wouldn't be you.

So.

On cowardice, of those who know my name, Adom Jeffers alone was thus far cognizant that midway--I think it was midway, maybe somewhat more far--

through a cross-country race, I quit.

Walked. Walked for maybe a whole minute!

marking the slant, obv.

(To mon ami: sorry. He helped me out: 'comment ça va' or something like it, he asked)

And I started again so late--even at that level of competition, five second's rest is much.

Charitable, very, to call nothing else blunt. I once thought (I do still think, but in early age thought) very literally, cross-country The Race.

Across the country: was there any more race? No! Ocean, only! Splash! Choking on salt and tuggy undertow! Though even in first grade I rationalized: surely it was only a distance equivalent to the breadth of Canada, run (by the CC runners, so I'd fabricated) over the course of a year. Olympian, worth the singular article and capital R. But doable.

Why in god's name--?

But I certainly did, mon ami.

My two best long-distance races (oh, I am definitely a long-distance runner, even if one who made bad mistakes) ended in me throwing up.

actually, my very best, my medal-winner, did not (good for me, I brought home my lunch and a medal to boot)

but the other two...

Most unpleasant successes. Or, to borrow from First Year, [they] brought the inside out

   (gross; uncalled for)

that is, unravelled, as evolution; or, the down- and up-side of natural selection

(so uncalled for. But I did win that medal).

Just so: embarrassing, that first editorial. But, dear God, how I'm ready to slather my brain, or heartblood, across a page, provided it's the right one (it hasn't). And on the other side--bread (why not!) in the sandwich (?! I ask) with my poor head as meat--one leaden, firing straight as fuck.

I do not want to be forward
I do not want to be straightforward I don't
want--sometimes, and too often--
I don't want to be.

   'nite.

--

But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they