Christmas eve- 18°, the snow of winter absent- spent the day with family talking, eating, exchanging gifts.

Mom's boyfriend brought tequila he was given as a Christmas gift from a coworker- agave, smooth taste, clear look-

Oldest sister brought over a cheap bottle of white Zinfandel and some bottles of hard lemonade she had sitting around her house, no one in my family really drinks but me.

Before I left, after my family had dispersed went their separate ways back to their separate lives- I drank two shots, two glasses of wine and a hard lemonade feeling content with how peaceful it was for once when we were all together but there was an itch telling me I had to be elsewhere- I knew my friend was working at Denny's and the flow told me that is where I was meant to be.

I left to walk the 4 miles there I was wearing my pajama's underneath my pants, a sweater, an undershirt, and my coat, headphones of mp3 player placed in ears and my green wool hat covering my head and the new gloves I got from my one younger sister keeping my hands from feeling numb and cold. Carrying a yellow plastic encased flashlight.

Walking now, mood jovial, started singing lines here and there from the songs playing, voice off key and loud to the stars of the night sky and to the world that encompasses my existence.

The flow said hitchhike, so I listened and stuck out my thumb and shown the flashlight off downward away from the road with each car that passed me by, one then none then two then one then three then one, slowly cars came and went by none of which stopped- seems no one really offers or gives rides- two miles down the road and still listening to the flow and trying to get a ride a old beat up pick up truck stops, turns around and pulls up beside me.

The driver and I get to talking as is likely to happen when to strangers are thrust into the path of each other. I found out he was dating the younger sister of an old friend of my second oldest sister and was on his way back home up to Burlington Flats from seeing her family and her. I told him good karma was following him on his way there. The flow was in charge as it always is and that Karma, Dharma, the way were all in the works, peace an entity that travels in the tram of the flow.

He drops me off in front of Denny's where I see my friend Chuck and one of the waiter's, Freddie, walking back towards the front from being out back on a smoke break. We talked while I smoked a quick cigarette with them. My bag when placed on the ground by the bench made a clink of glass and I mentioned how I had some hard lemonades and a bottle of wine. Steve, one of the overnight supervisors and a comic book artist who also works for Spring brook helping out the residents there when he is not at Denny's.

I head inside, Freddie and Chuck head into the back to get some work done, Freddie comes back out to get my pack, walks back then comes back later with Chuck, he poured himself a tall glass of lemonade and Chuck mixed cheap wine with straight raspberry iced tea and brings me a cup of wine. With Styrofoam coffee cupped drinks we conversed and passed the time that they had to contour to.

Sitting there at the counter with my small notepad out, jotting out my notes of the events thus far since I left the house, while the three of us joke about the items in a mail order catalog and about the models they use to sell the products.

Chuck was stuck working a double because the dishwasher that was meant to be there overnight called in. Freddie was there until it got dead. Steve was there till the morning crew came in- no extra time there for him. Rafa, the night cook came in, said Hello to him before he went out back to start doing his own work.

First customers of the night that came in were two country set people, the bigger one shouted out an obscenity against Arabs and blacks in the same phrase. “Why not spread peace tonight, it's Christmas.”

Interspersing my time between when Chuck came up to talk, while Steve began to sketch more panels into a work he was doing, by filling up my cup when I felt the need to by ducking in the bathroom with my backpack, draining some wine from the bottle and then sitting back down at the counter. Buzzing, joking with Steve while he's drawing about how parts are missing, think I might have agitated him cause he moved off to the side of the restaurant for more seclusion and some quiet. Time drifted by me, drinking when bored, thirsty, or less buzzing, I sat there with my notepad, sketching out the ideas when they came otherwise just sitting and listening to the radio play crappy music and listening as well to the night.

Around 2:30 it started to become a buzz with customers, one group obviously drunk, three guys, one with a Santa hat. They sit down at a booth, order coffee, Steve leaves to go check on some orders in the kitchen. Between shouting Awhooo's, laughing, and talking, one of them ask for more creamer to no one in particular so I go grab it and bring it back- This same guy when he came in almost went into the ladies room instead of the men's but I guess because I was talking to him as he was walking by me he noticed his error at the last second and went into the right door. I give them the creamer bottle, tell them I don't work here so make sure to give Steve a good tip, they thank me, few minutes later more shouts of Awhooo, I join in.

Maybe nine to sixteen people are in the restaurant around three, not really keeping track at this point, buzzed and listening to the night, a girl I haven't seen since the summer comes in, drunk as well, with some people her and I get to talking about how we both been, she gets into how a mutual friend of ours is dating a guy whose a jackass because he's schizophrenic. She gives me a story of how a year ago the two of them fell asleep on the couch only to be woken up by him when he came home because he was thinking they were hooking up. She goes to eat.

I make Steve a pot of coffee figuring he might need another one.

Around three a couple sits at the counter, Steve being busy I offer them some coffee while they're waiting. Talking to them, I ask the guy if he's in a reggae band because I get the vibe he's a musician. Turns out he was a musician.

Later on, out back with Chuck, about five, he's washing up the dishes from the night and we get into a talk of desire, fate, etc...

The talk comes and goes until after we've left, later on, around 7:30, walking on paths in Neawha park start talking about the cosmic egg and our differing views on it. I held the view it must be both positive and negative, energy and not energy, everything in a state of neutrality because it is from a desire that everything thus is given it's place in the world. He was holding the view everything is energy. Not sure I ever actually disagreed with him but was trying to use a perspective that I felt at the time was the right one. I mention that once desire is forgotten, we attain enlightenment and then from that enlightenment we have to choose to disappear back from the absence of which we must have started from, continue to exist on our own so we can further our wisdom or we go back to share with others what we have attained.

He tells me he desires nothing, doesn't want anything, that he just wants to know absolution, what it is, to be surrounded by it. I tell him not all desires are known and even to think or feel that you would want something even if it is an absence of want is in itself want since both must exist for the separate pieces to be what they are. I describe to him how I live my life in desire to gain more insight into what knowledge is.

Even if the idea of the cosmic egg is wrong and life has some other unwritten purpose or whatever it all is, or even it is all just nothing and we just keep on going until we end we should always strive to attain more depth of essence of living.

Walking along side the train tracks sometime around eight parallel to river street, I continue going on these ideas about the cosmic egg and desire; I toss in Stephen King's Dark Tower series and the idea of how at the end we end up back at the beginning not knowing we've already been to the end only knowing we are worn out from traveling so long and repeating our path again because it is our fate, in the book it is because the character let go of some part of his past, in life it might just be we did forget something important we were meant to not forget or may haps meant to forget in order that we can keep repeating down the same path.

With never really reaching an end to the conversation, maybe there is no end to it, we part ways and I start my five mile walk back home. Cold now and exhausted I burrow down in my coat and walk at a steady quick pace. Maybe halfway back or four sevenths of the way back the sun begins to shine from the right in front of me, warming me slowly and giving me enough drive to make it back to sleep.

Did I gain insight during all the events of this night? Was anything really accomplished or was it once again another day and another way to pass the time. In the flow of things there is no time, we are either here and something or not here and nothing. The flow is the things unknown governing us and all around us. I will keep trying to listen and gain. For now it must be rest I seek out.