I ran out of wishes last night. there were simply too many falling stars to keep up with. i prefer to say they are falling rather than shooting because shooting is too violent and meteor shower is ravaging, too scientific. i like the romance of falling stars. tripping over each other in their rush to circle the sky. like the caucus-race in Alice in Wonderland.
i lied though, about running out of wishes. i've never believed in wishing on falling stars. i've never believed in wishes, really, because i don't think any of the wishes i've wished have come true. not to the specificity with which i submit them. but i wish anyway. 
i found out about the meteor shower from facebook, naturally. the status update of a former romantic interest whose status updates stick out from the rest only because he's seen me naked. it was a cattle-call, i guess, a summons: who wanted to stay up all night and freeze to death to watch the meteor shower? he called it that. he's an environmental science major. i don't know where he went to see the stars fall, or who he went with, or how late he stayed up to watch them. i dont know why i care.
i drove to the florida/georgia border, with my cruise control at 45 and the lights on my dash turned down to almost nothing. then i turned around and drove to sunset landing and shuckers oyster bar on lake jackson. i went there once with garrett when we were still in love. its a nice little dump. i sat in my car and counted falling stars and imagined being murdered on the shores of a lake in northern florida by weird northern florida hillbillies or gangsters or a seemingly harmless old woman who is actually a sociopath. i sat there for a while counting, then stopped counting when i started seeing my breath in my car and went home.
the cigarette butt bucket on my stoop was frozen solid, butts and dirt, grime and empty packs of Camels all suspended in last week's milder weather.
ive been reading The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. its boring compared to The Historian. ive waited 350 pages for it to catch up. it is still only luke warm. i suppose thats what i get for expecting a book about the French Impressionists to be exciting. Dracula, now THATS excitement. at least blood is involved. other than a character getting her period, there hasnt been a single drop. i could write a better review about this book, but i dont feel like it. its slow-going. but i will finish. then i will read Lev Grossman's The Magicians. or Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs. or Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. or Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, probably this one because im itching to read Freedom.