"More than anything else, I realized, it had to be boring to be crazy, to think the same sequence of thoughts and come up with the same set of bizarre conclusions, to voice those conclusions using the same words, several times an hour, day in and day out. It was hard to get people off their tracks." ~The Reptile Garden, Erdrich

Aaron works now at the ER in downtown Falls. The Falls is a third world country. Buildings and roads bombed out, the stink of landfills always pressing down on your face there, rooming houses are the residences and there you'll find the highest density of sex offenders on the planet - the township is paid to take them, and the garbage, and the money is pocketed by who knows who. Every woman under 30 and over 13 there is pregnant and a heroin addict. Even my friends from there, Sunshine whom I had dinner with last night, they're given opiates for nearly every ailment from an early age at urgent cares and ERs, God only knows why, 10 pill packets for free from Medicaid; their babies born addicted to one thing or another is just expected; their having to repeatedly lose jobs and lives then stop taking prescriptions long enough to feel what hurts and think straight again, that's just phases of life along with the other phases, turning 40 or getting divorced whatever. It is all the same, as Sun rightly put it, just hard then better then hard again, but the hard is a little harder the poorer you are.  Yesterday Aaron and I went shopping before she came over, wine and whatnot to serve her, and we bought powerball tickets. We argued about what we would do with the money then we decided to split it, not agreeing. He would figure out how to provide free medical care in the Falls. I said, just about everyone there is a Piece of Shit. He reminded me I have friends there. I said, yeah but they want out and antibiotics doesn't get you out of anywhere. What does? I dunno...books. For me, books. (I'd help Ears start a small press for graphic novels in the back of a bookstore I would open for all 3 kids to run, full of excellent reading choices and hippie soaps whatever that The Girl would make.) (I'm not a particularly good person.) He is there now. The ER is full of homeless people escaping the cold who were made homeless last week when someone burned their rooming house down for being full of pederasts and 1000 ft from an elementary school. They came in first for smoke inhalation, now they just have nowhere else to be they say, so they complain of made up ailments. Why don't they go to the mission?, I ask. They would have to empty their pockets and shit, and not be high. I think about this, and struggle not to think 'Pieces of Shit'. I think, if I were Louise Erdrich my minds eye would perceive characters rather than charactitures in what he is looking at. So I'm reading Erdrich all day.