Staring is more of a hobby than a habit. I found solace in it. In tracing random faces with random stories. Random paths that all lead to the same end. Death. But then there's the journey. Journeys. And details. Different faces for different people with different pasts and different futures. We take the high road while others take the low one. We vary then meet. And what's the point of it all? I don't know. But I know we are here. With stories to tell and new ones to experience. So I stare. And I narrate. I look at them and I know them. And I know everything they are. Everything they keep. The stories are real; aren't they?

This morning I stood by my window again, looking for candidates. Like that Stan over there. I know he's a Stan because he looks like a Stan to me. His eyes are puffy. I wonder if he stayed up all night beating the shit out of his wife. Because Stan is abusive. Just like his aunt. Just like my aunt.

That blonde over there. She looks like a Sarah. No. A Katy. Katy looks sad. And maybe pregnant. I believe she just found out about her pregnancy. And now she's all over the place. I wonder if it's her or her partner who opposes the idea of a child. Is it a financial issue? Because who would hate a baby if he/she could afford him/her a decent living.

Ben looks six. The cast on his left arm wasn't because he fell off his bike like he claimed to his mom. Indeed, he broke his arm in a fight, when he chased the kids who stole Maggie's candies and got in a fight with them. Maggie is his first love, and he will propose to her when they're twenty. He even went to his father's grave yesterday and told him so.

And then there's that man who must be a Dan. He keeps looking behind him like he might be followed. And although it's snowing, he seems sweaty and uncomfortable. He's suspicious by all means. I decided he killed his brother after catching him cheat on his wife. The wife he's madly in love with. The wife who he never wanted for but happiness and peace. He loathed himself for loving his brother's wife. And he promised to forget her and get over his sickening feelings but since when do we tame love. It has always been the other way around, but he never knew that. Until now. Until his hands were covered in blood. His brother's blood. And even though both his and his brother's lives have been terminated, he only thinks of her. And how her heart would be broken at the thought of not being enough. Or when she finds out that she just got widowed.

In so many ways I relate to Dan. I am not sure why. Maybe because he killed? Or maybe because he loved whom he killed? But I am pretty sure it's the guilt that attracts me the most. His eyes are all muddy and heavy with utter pain. He chose a life of agony because he was too cowardly to take it away. And guilt and cowardice make the most torturing duet. Based on experience.

I became obsessed with the name Dan now. Because Dan is the friend who knows me better. "Feels me" would be more accurate. Dan became a concept rather than a person. He became a definition of suffocation and buried crimes. Crimes out of mere humanity. Out of being. Existing. He's a portrait of myself. A friend. A reflection. So I named this Journal Dan.