before i thought about the other thing, i was going to write about fiction and nonfiction. i was going to write about how are they opposites? if i write something here and label it fiction, is everyone going to think that i took some piece of nonfiction, some truth from my life and wrote it backwards to be false? are they going to believe that, because of something i wrote and said was made-up, that i do NOT, that i am NOT?

also i was wondering do you think that someone who cleans airport restrooms for a living feels strange when she has to use the toilet she just cleaned herself? i thought about this sunday night in the ladies’ at lambert – st. louis international, when under the stall divider i saw the sensible shoes and polyester cuffs of the woman who’d just been pushing the janitorial cart outside by the sink.

and then i was thinking about how i’d love to write a story about an airport custodian. it’d be set inside a stall in the ladies’ room, and would involve an airport custodian having to use the toilet she just cleaned herself. that’s as far as i got, of course, as i have no real grasp of how to write fiction, or even how to think about it as anything other than the opposite of not fiction.

or the not oppsite of not not not not fiction.

but all that’s gone away now that i’m in rural ohio with some extended and unfamiliar family. now i’m just thinking about how maybe there are two kinds of caring. maybe there’s active caring and passive caring, and if there is, i’d rather be alone than a victim of the latter.