Second-hand.

His room's just little pieces of imagination strewn everywhere. Books, canvases with impressions of Impressionist art, music from the 90's, music from the 80's, music from the 17th century, music from Denny's basement, music from New York and Bellingham. Movies, mute movies, foreign films, post- modern plays. Every Sunday afternoon, we go over our.. list.

I have this habit of lying across the floor, the bare, cold, deliciously cold marble floor and looking at his half-painted ceiling and trying to fix the Rubik Cube. No painted, glow-in-the-dark stars there, nothing cheesy. He is trying to copy Manet's Olympia. It's really just a naked woman with a cat staring at you, though he hasn't painted the cat yet. The cat's weird, it would creep you out.

We're tired teenagers, is all we are.
We have big dreams and we want to be cultured. We want topics of conversation. Common interests. We're as original as a dead ant. But we get by. We drink from other people's goblets and pat ourselves on the back for "getting" it. For appreciating all this.. art. So vicarious. Sam Beam made a great record but who cares about Sam Beam. I'm the artist for having heard it and you're not because you don't even know such genius exists. Muscle flex.

We're just tired teenagers, is all we are.
He's sprawled over my sofa, his shirt's undone. " You know, dear, dear.. dear. You and I are worse than the rest. We KNOW we ape. Those kids don't know they ape. They're happy being sponges, at least something goes INSIDE and remains there, you know what I mean? You and I.. well. We're looking for education in all the wrong places."

I'm not really interested in this piece-of-crap, overplayed broken-record conversation. We have it everyday. But I play my part. " I'm not looking for education man. I'm just looking for.. an outlet. Don't wanna be a mouse with just one hole to escape from. Those stupid humans could shut down the hole, cover it up. Then I'd be a dead mouse in a covered hole. I'd rather just be a mouse. With reality and another "ism" to escape into."

He's sort of.. right though. This Sunday afternoon scavenger activity, looking for literature and poetry to wolf down, glut down is no education.

It's no second hole either.

It's just us 21st century, tried teenagers wanting to say a new word. And realizing that all the smart words have already been said. That there are no "isms" left to start.

He’s twirling a pen between his fingers and he’s drifting off to sleep. An old Cut Copy song’s playing.

“But we’re better than that cat I’m too afraid to paint, we’re better than mice... we are.. We have to be. ”