A tendril of smoke rises from a chimney. It's getting cold, the air smells of dead dinosaurs and trees. When I'm gone, will my body provide enough fuel to keep someone warm for a night?

I started wearing long-sleeve shirts a few weeks ago. I started scraping frost off the window of my car at about the same time. My car takes longer to warm up, the windows fog up and I'm driving on feeling and memory for the first few minutes. If I haven't been doing this for the last seven years, I might be worried. But it's regular. It's life. And I deal and move on, trying not to hit that woman who is always scrambling across San Mateo at the same time I'm turning onto it.

I don't like my choices. I want more variety. I want more roads to choose from. The road less traveled is a four lane highway, so what kind of alternative is that?

I'm going to vote in a week and a half. I'm going to take about two minutes to do it. I'll vote for all the bond initiatives unless it's about seat belts or drug enforcement. I'll vote for the Democrats unless I like the name of the Green. But these people do not represent me. I am not in the subclass of people who get representation--I am one of the hidden masses who follows the rules he wants to and dismisses those that make no sense. I pay my sin taxes when they come up. I tip well. I get by. Who gets elected will not change this.

Organization is all in the mind. If you know where everything is, it doesn't matter if it's in a filing cabinet or in a massive stack of paper and plastic. The point of organization, of course, is that everyone can find what they're looking for. But no one actually thinks in alphabetical order. If anything, people think chronologically. So I organize by personal experiences crossed with themes. Cleaning up a dead man's room is like combing through burned out brain cells. Will someone be told not to sit on my bed as they gather up what's left of my memories?

About a week from today is the first anniversary of the death of a friend. Is anniversary a good word to use here? These thoughts turn days from sunny to cloudy. When it starts to rain, I remember the film we shot about a year before he left. Puddles of rain, drops falling from the roof. White cloud sky behind black telephone polls. Rise and shine, baby. Rise and shine. I keep wondering if you never listened or if we never said anything. And if there is a difference between the two.

When I was in Kindergarten, I did a science project about shells. A research project, really. I didn't find out anything new to astound the scientific community, but my printing was pretty good for a Kindergartner. I got a trophy for that project in the local science fair. I never got another trophy. I guess I got less impressive as time went on. I could probably do a better science project about shells today, but do you think it would get me another trophy?

Today all of my rewards are monetary or emotional. With the money, it's only temporarily mine. It passes on to many in my circle of spending. Eventually it has been divided and divided into pennies and percentages of pennies. The woman who checked me out at Wal-Mart got one percent of one percent of my purchases on her paycheck. She thanked me for shopping anyway. The emotional rewards have no permanence except in memory. And the memory is tricky because it makes you believe things mean more than they really do. Or that nothing means anything at all. It took me years to put that trophy away in some drawer, but I can't remember the names of any of the girls I talked to at all tomorrow's parties.

The World Series ends tonight no matter what. By the time you read this, you'll know the outcome. Baseball will be over once again, and I will have no excuse to have the TV glowing for hours as countless CDs play a soundtrack to replace the idiotic sports commentary. If I didn't watch movies, this might be the year the TV gets thrown out the window. Would losing your TV be like losing your best friend?

Again I stand at the crossroads. Five different directions to go in, all with a plethora of chain restaurants, casinos, strip joints and shopping outlets, discontented counter people, drunken wrecks reeking of Bukowski, easy women, tough bitches, assholes, pricks and cunts. Everyone behind me is pissed off because I can't make up my mind. My car's engine is getting hot, and the horns are blaring. I reach around to my backseat and pull up a two by four and a brick. I keep my right foot on the break, open my car door, push the wood and brick into position with one foot out the door. Someone is calling me an asshole. Another guy is telling me that he's got my license number, and he's calling it in on his cell phone. I shift my weight and as the car pulls away from me, I break away and close the door in one fluid motion.

I don't see where my car decides to go. I take the path of a crow and start running. Someday I'll figure out where I'm going. Someday I'll get there.

Matt Worley remembers talking to you but not what he said.