# your first special friend as dan croll's from nowhere now plays in the lab background there was nothing at all in the desperate hours before to suggest their memory ghost would be invading today's lonely campus dreamspace yet out of deep soul blue you saw them standing in the corner of a crap party hosted by strangers in town it was all so credible they were here live in the quivering flesh for the first new time in oh so many solitary years they smiled at you across the gathered crowds their hair done up so wonderfully showing off their slender neck their legs were long and lean and they were wearing a stunning red satin dress hand in hand you went into another room where it was quiet and private you embraced them with every fibre of your idiot being and you both broke down crying so happy and relieved saying we're so glad to see you again it's been so long you start to make love and it's infinitely more than sax more like you've been missing exactly half your existence to live and breathe as if for the first time again time passes well outside of time but then something happens to interrupt you now cannot find them in a rapidly increasing blind existential panic you frantically search through the darkening house after what feel like hours you finally find them at another distant party deep in the suburbs to your dismay they're busy snorting dumb smartups off the table wasty arts looking mothers hang out nearby all greasy hair and synthetic attitude you feel like randomly kicking them around the room with focused laid back internal chinese martial intent gently lifting their sweaty head up from table your one true love turns to casually glance at you a cold distant and dismissive look of casual indifference puffing on a cheap hex cigarette with total disinterest and studied negligence you think oh man researcher they've changed so much we don't even recognize this person anymore we don't know or even like who we're seeing right now soon after you awake to find you've hardly slept at all during night your stupid face still wet with rapidly cooling tears still thoroughly depressed and lead sunk without them guess you must still miss their smile and their friendly touch their air of hopeful beauty and existential freshness you'd give anything to know they're doing well and are happy in which what are called dreams are nothing more or less than another type of reality that your love exists in a reality called dream just not in the dream called reality two types of dream two types of reality and all seemingly separate in the dream world you're infinitely elated at their mere presence yet your soul is crushed at fact they always end up disappearing something vague always happens in the dream world so you never stay together for good they always ends up leaving you hating you or they vanish entirely you can't find them or even worse you can see them but they're forever out of one's emotional physical social or imaginative touch some events in life are so over with so ended the only way you sense they can exist now is as an irregular midnight reminder of the crushing finality of a situation or age of dead states of alienated social being a fatal chance encounter entire lifetimes ago like all these unhappy events happened to a stranger with your face sometimes at night staring into deep past still realtime reading over one's own shoulder so to speak long dead now sadly faded and solid gone an abandoned polaroid on the grassy fringes of a pre post post apocalyptic concrete mega highway to nowhere your travelling west at a hundred per in a rented junker holding it tenderly and trying to remember it suddenly slipped out of your hand forever and the faded memory right out of your silly lonesome life // [[republic of bob contents | imaginary pastime republic of bob]]