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People are strange creatures.  They talk a lot.  Not just to exchange information, though they do.  Not just to posture and jockey for regard or status, though they do.  Not just to craft a persona or witness a crafting, though they do.  Nor just to form a connection, to entertain and be surprised with laughter or pique, to learn about another's limits or the histories they traverse, nor just to elicit a reaction, to make the empty air something human, to make or tell a story.

Wednesday Monica had spent the day with her young campers in the mossy brooks, and I'd spent mine prospecting in the internet for memes and analogies and arguments and rhetorical constructions about government privatization, and Iuri had turned mice marrow green for tracking proteins through the brain/blood barrier, and Sarka had dwelt on her new unemployment and her children away off on another continent.  We gathered at the Dog Watch Cafe and we talked.  We talked through the beers and bouillabaisse at the restaurant, and  dockside we talked through more beers as the sun set like molten gold behind the still masts of Stonington Harbor.  We talked under the stars and satellites, and around the kitchen island that Sarka cluttered with foods and sauces from the refrigerator.  We talked until it was the next day and it was too late to go home, what with another workday stalking up, and so they went up to their bed and we went below to the guest bed and we all stopped talking for a few quiet hours.

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