chris and i are tooling our psyche of the bourgeois with the most expensive coffee in town and i am trying to explain to him how important a building can be. when one spends kindergarten through eighth grade in the same place, particularly the kind of intimate place that demands greeting the grandparents and neighbors of your classmates when you run into them at the grocery store, it means something. it adds up. he's used to my talking stupid wordy shit at him so he's getting very good at listening noncommittally .

"it represents the duality of man," he suggests.
"fuck you." we laugh. he finishes off his fancypants latte. i am caffeinated out of my brain.

the state of california is broke and that particular school district is even broker, so three years ago they shut the place down after assessing that the funding needed to keep the plumbing operable was out of the question. killing time back in the hometown last week, i noticed a gate was unlocked and so let myself in.

one could write: "everything was so much smaller" or "i suddenly was very aware of how much larger i had become" and of course that was the case but this was my School and my Childhood all rolled into one and completely abandoned. i kept meaning to go back with a camera and photograph the splashes of broken glass across the dusty classroom carpets, or the way the grass broke through the still-familiar expanse of blacktop. (the empty case of natty ice in the shared space between the back entrance to the stage and the front entrance to the kinder classroom. the abandoned spinet where i was in 6th grade.)

so of course i didn't.

however, last night was the first night since then that i haven't dreamed about going back and taking pictures. sometimes i'm by myself, or there is a drunkard roaming the hallways, or i bring a friend, or an italian model for a high-fashion shoot.

"huh," says chris.
useless fucktard.

i stop indulging myself and we shift the conversation to this year's concerto competition.