the quarter life affair

My purse was stolen while I was laying on a beach in Barcelona, Spain. By a sketch, dark skinned man in a hat smoking a cigarette. I had accidentally fallen asleep, and I woke up with a start because I felt something was wrong.

The police station was between two giant fountains in the middle of a large square, where just yesterday we'd seen men from various north African countries literally run through the street with their 'purse business' bundled up in a bag. In the middle of a clear beautiful hot Sunday afternoon, the kind that so often blanket my life as of late, I listed off the items that were in my bag. A canon camera $200, the purse 25 pounds, my atm card, my bracelet $20, 4 euros....and then he asked "pounds?" and I replied "Yes, I was in London" and that was when I realized just how lucky I have been.

He then said I'd forgotten to list the most important item....my passport...the whole reason why I was making a police report. Isn't that bizarre? I couldn't sleep the night before. I laid in my bed, thinking about living my entire life on this endless string, never going anywhere, never succeeding as a writer. And in the middle of the night I wrote all these thoughts down on an envelope I had in my purse containing some postcards of miniature bathroom fixtures I'd bought. And then I knew, everything that was stolen was replaceable, the thing I'm really sad about were the stamps I had accumulated in my passport over the past few years. That's the one thing I would ask for back. But either way, I think maybe my shit was jacked because I was going through a mood, one of my moods where the world is almost too bleak to bear.

So here, I can't say thank you, but I could never take any of those items to my grave anyway. And I hope he gets kicked in the balls, but then I hope, I hope something happens, something good, so maybe he doesn't have to do this anymore. It probably won't, but hey, if anything at all.