He made it past the second lamp this time and that has to go on the record before anything else because three separate times hes vanished at the first one, swallowed, gone, and tonight the phone was already up and he kept walking into the second lamps light instead of out of it, which should have given me more, more frame, more of him, and it didnt, it gave me the same four steps and a coat and that rolling toe off hes always rolled, like the extra ten feet of lit sidewalk doesnt count for anything if the walk underneath it never changes. Im not saying this is the cane man. Im not saying it isnt either. gait is different, this one rolls the whole way through and the cane one lands flat with that swinging tip that never once touches, I checked both frames side by side tonight which took longer than Id like to admit and the answer is still different men, has to be, I keep saying that because the second somebody stops believing me on it the whole log collapses into one guy and it is not one guy. bulb's older on that second lamp, yellower, only noticed because he stood under it long enough this time for the color to register at all, same yellow my mothers porch bulb used to burn before she switched to the ones that last. anyway. the second lamp. thats the whole gain tonight, a color.

Thats four now if Im counting men the way I said I would stop counting them. the cane one, the toe one, the twenty meter one, and whatever this is. four. I know I said three a page back and I know that doesnt add up clean, numbers drift when youre retyping a mental list at midnight instead of pasting off the actual file, four is the number tonight, four is what Im putting down. the vent is still bothering me more than it should, went back to the louvered vent under that same first lamp again this afternoon, daylight only, Im not doing that block alone after dark, and the slats are forced open the exact same amount they were three weeks ago. not more. not less. which means either nobody is using it or somebody is using it on a schedule precise enough that the slats never need resetting, and I genuinely do not know which of those I want to be true.

None of them turn around. not for the leash going tight, not for a horn, not for me standing dead still under a dead streetlight with a phone already up, and the twenty meter one never did either, seven logged and seven times nothing turned, and I am aware thats the whole pattern, Im aware saying it again doesnt make it new information, Im saying it again anyway because somebody reading this cold needs to hear it before the count gets to five. going back thursday. maybe wednesday. the lamps dont care which.