had a dream last night where marbles were back en vogue and everyone carried their marbles around in cute little pouches that they'd clip onto their backpacks or purse straps or belt loops so they'd always have their marbles on them and your marbles were deeply personal objects that showcased your individual personality and people would get really passionate and proud of them and playing for keeps was a deeply serious and honor-bound affair and i played a game with an old man while waiting for a bus and he told me how he met his wife while playing in a for-keeps tournament and in a miracle shot he knocked out her most precious marble a brilliant sparkling green one with an inside like a geode and when he looked up he found she was crying at its loss and so right there on the spot he proposed to her so that she could divorce him and take it back in the divorce "but in the end," he told me, "she kept me and the marble" and i awoke teary and resentful to be ripped from a fleeting world that had found for itself such a small and beautiful peace
