What Would Life Be Worth

if you didn't die a little every day?

Life's Tricks

Surreal as it was, he knew he had to go. Waking up on a stranger's couch is something that either reminds you of the night before, or of your own mortality. It really depends on what you drank before finding yourself there. But he found his keys, found the bathroom, then found his car. Work. At 10. That's why he left this house at 8, waving to the stranger at the top of the stairs as he left. On his way home, he realized that, not knowing when he fell asleep, he might still be too affected to drive. But it didn't feel like it. He'd be fine. He thought he should feel tired, as he usually did, but he was alert, if not refreshed. From there, his day transformed into what could be considered normal, although, once in a while, he would look down at himself and realize that he was never really there.

Premature Exit

As he stood with a look of nonchalance carved into his face, they began to realize he was serious. Some members of the audience began to smile; some began to despair. Most stood up and left, until less than a dozen remained to see the spectacle. He knew they would love it, but perhaps everyone would have, if only they had opened themselves up to it. As I left the building, I heard him calling out to them one by one to come up onto the stage. I suppose my cab driver was no better then he could have been.

He Will Play Chess.

His ringtone was the Imperial March, and it will forever play in my head, even now that he is so far away in the land of his home, where he learned the alphabet and how to climb and how to fall. This stuff made him happy and he wanted to do these many things at once, but it is only so much that one mind can handle, and one body is less capable still. Please forgive his mortality.

Well, it's Tomato!

For seventeen long years his salads had been filled with tomatoes, and yet when he saw them his heart felt a longing the likes of which he had never felt before, and it stretched from his knees to his elbows because he is symmetric like that, and the redness of the fruit caused him pains of the throat, but his death came swiftly and with no regret.

Stars and Trucks

Looking up from the bed of the pickup, he could see Cassiopeia. Even in his drunken state, she shone brightly in the sky. He tried to tell his fellow truck bed passengers but they would have none of it. He was smashed up against the cab, finding out with every bump that he wasn't as limber as he used to be. Suddenly, in a flash of sobriety, he realized what he was doing. He felt exposed and vulnerable. His friend said that he could see people watching them as they rode by. These people didn't care, but what if they did? They could be arrested, couldn't they? Riding through downtown crouched in the bed of a pickup must have consequences. But then they arrived at home, free and clear, with only the memory.

It started at the end.

There was once a rare genius, with one severe physical defect: a lack of appendages. This was the worst in a long line of abnormalities present in his ancestors. The savant decided to have children despite the risk of them having deficiencies. The prodigy admittedly exacerbated the phylogeny of his progeny.

Awakedness

It was his thirst that first drew him upright in his bed, leading him to the kitchen. But once awake, his body no longer could accept the warm hug of slumber and instead lay motionless and alert above his blankets. He couldn't recall ever feeling this way before. He had only first gone to bed a few short hours ago, but here he was, in pitch dark, unable to return to that stress free land of fantasy that he could always count on before. He gazed about his obscured room, wishing he could at least admire the pictures on the wall, but it was in vain. He instead imagined them where they ought to be, since he had once stared at them for so many eternities as to memorize every detail they thought couldn't be seen.

His mind was like that, when alert. He had a heightened sense of the things around him, and he liked to think that it was a rare and important trait. Sometimes he memorized numbers for fun. Sometimes if he heard a phone number he would just store it away, even if he knew he would never use it. He could imagine that everything around him was not there, that it was all a number in his own mind, telling him what it should be, but what it really wasn't.

The pictures gradually came into view along his walls as the sun slowly kindled through his closed blinds. He imagined it like driving toward a castle; as you pass over one hill you can see the tallest tower, and then each hill you cross as you approach lets you see more and more of its walls, its buttresses, its gardens, its moat. Finally you reach the tourist parking lot and you are at the base of a castle, looking up, and are unable to see but what is directly in front of you.

This is how he looked at the pictures. Now that the sun was bright enough for him to confirm the details that he knew he remembered perfectly, he was reminded that he was awake. He once again rose from his bed into the lukewarm morning and set off for the water closet.

The mirror shocked him. His eye was much worse than he thought it would be. Eyelid, rather. Pink, swollen, inflamed, painful, ugly, dramatic, unexplainable, useless, watery, and somehow mongoloid. These are some of the more descriptive words that ran through his mind as he stared at it from every available angle. He never imagined it would get this bad. He would have to see a doctor. Maybe. First he would talk to his mother, because although she never had any medical training, she was more reliable than any doctor he had been to, especially since she knew when she was out of her league. She had seen it all in her many years as a socially participating human being, and had the experience to know what was an allergy and what was a spider bite.

But he could put that off until later. For now, there are papers to be written. He left the water closet and turned back into his room, illuminating it further with artificial light as he entered. He turned on his computer. It should have just been asleep, but apparently it had decided to take a different route in its path to unuse last night, and had shut itself down. He sat, silently cursing as it started from nothing. A thousand worlds could be created and blinked out of existence in the time it took for his machine to get from A to B.

He looked at his bulletin board and was reminded that his frozen yogurt coupon would soon expire. Why did he keep things like that? He would never use it, he knew. How embarrassing to go to a frozen yogurt shop alone and order two servings, just because the second one is free. Imagine the looks he would receive! He could already hear other customers whispering to each other as they sit with their dates, mutually enjoying their single serving fudge peanut butter swirl. He could feel his neck burn red as the man behind the counter overtly sneered. So vivid was the image in his mind that tears started to build in his left eye. He jerked his head away from the coupon, forcing himself to think about happier times.

The computer prompted for a password, but he knew he wasn't going to write now. How could he, with so much grief in the world? How could he complete another meaningless assignment put forth by the institute of higher learning, meant to form his mind in a way that they feel will benefit society? Who are they to know what is right for society, and more importantly, what is right for him? He wished his thoughts were revolutionary, but their haphazard argument is simply a patchwork of what other people have said and published. He is a collection of other minds. For all his effort in trying to be himself, he gains nothing. "Himself" changes with his proximity to different people. He wonders if it's the same for everyone.

Sitting in his chair in front of a blank screen six hours into the day is not how most of his mornings started. Today could be different; it could be the first day of the rest of his life. Or the differences could end when he gets in the shower. He looks down at his nearly nude body and wonders if he'll ever start the exercise plan he had laid out for himself. It was the beginning of summer, and he wanted to wake up every morning and ride his bicycle for at least an hour, burning away yesterday so he could start fresh every time the sun rose. Today wasn't the day, and after today was the weekend, so maybe he could get started next week. He knew he would never run out of excuses.

He spun his chair around. When did it lose the effect of making him the happiest child on earth? Maybe it was when people stopped spinning the chair for him. But maybe it was because this chair didn't have arms to hold on to. In any case, his dreary mood was not alleviated. He turned around, typed in his password, and began the rest of his day.

Three Flavors, Together but with Identity.

My roommate has soft serve hair. It comes in chocolate, vanilla, or swirl. Each flavor has its own curl from whence it pours, flowing like so much soft soft tasty treat of softy goodness and happy flavor, in its own type of beauty which is closer to standard than that of its frosty relative.

Ugh

The difficulties of this vida cannot cause me to succumb, for throughout, there will always be one light, and sometimes many, for my film is sensitive and detects the faintest happiness, the slimmest chance, the dying torch, causing me always to look forward instead of back, to know the future instead of remembering the past, and to feel the love instead of knowing the hate which has burned so deep, hidden so far down within that it cannot come up again without provocation; so far down that even my film cannot detect its light without being first admonished by the present.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive.

Q: "LOL!

This is so bizarre, and slightly disturbing. Where do you come up with these ideas? Jasson says you must be smoking something."

A: Well, I don't know, I just sit for a second and start with a word that's usually a preposition. By the time the word is typed onto the page, that sentence is already written in air, I just have to grab it and throw it onto the page. And then it's like I'm reading a story, just predicting the next line each time, and I'm usually right. Once in a while I have to backspace, but I really don't like to do that. In that fashion, a bizarre and slightly disturbing idea is come up with.

Once in a while I get an idea when I'm away from the computer. At that point, I run slash bike to a computer quickly so that my airy ideas can become pixelated and spread themselves onto your air.

Smoking is not involved :)

Lactic Acid

Since her arm was weaker than his, she let him hold the door open for more than mere minutes, extending his willing chivalry on into the night; and such a special night it was, for there was about to be a ceremony to crown the new president of the group of students (who refused to call themselves a club) that like to create and learn, adding to and expounding upon the cultures that already existed in their domain; and yes, his arm would weaken and ache, but he would not flinch in his duty, even if it was an arbitrary one, for that is the law of propriety.

Rocks are Ouch

From his breast the badger flew, raving with the madness of a thousand wizards, the screams of a thousand kittens, and the valor of a thousand mighty ducks. Upon the badger's landing, the man saw that this is what he had produced in his desperate efforts for love and knew that it could not be continued, for what would he produce next? A lamprey of the spirit? A dragon that consumes souls? Even a devil that digests the very planets in his path? No. This would stop now, with the badger. And the man picked himself up off the rocks and ran toward it, loving it harder and harder with each step. Still dazed, the badger frantically ran in circles, learning to exist when it never had before. It was just beginning to leap from a rock when the man impaled himself upon its sharp skull. The badger's gullible body would have been crushed were it not for the love that absorbed it. Alas, the rock beneath it was not chaste, and had been hardened by years of unloving life. It pierced the man's heart, where the badger now once again lived and died. That day was the first of many such events, and also the greatest of them. For no man would ever again produce such a creature; and no creature would ever again produce such a man.

i am so young

i just went to shave

and i looked at my face

my hair is mussed from sleeping and not showering

and i saw myself in my face

just as i have always been

and i missed me

i wished i was who i am

but that i can never be.

only time will tell

i want to be famous

and have a famous girlfriend

and a famous marriage

and famous bebbies.

i don't know how to be famous
but i do want to be an actor
and a writer
and a director
and a producer
and a mathematician
and a physicist.

i would make movies about things i discovered in space
and about my life as a mathematician, alone only with my pencils and equations
and about the new theories and things that prove they are true
and maybe i would create a camera that could see the theories that are so small.

the world has much things

but it is so small in the universe
but it still is big for us and it has many careers
and toys
and methods
and widgets
and girls
and boys
and lives.

i want to scream
and laugh
and cry
and run
and sit still
and finish my coffee
but i'm pretty sure it causes these thoughts
which is on second thought why i should finish it.

there is too much to learn
and i dont know what to do when
so i follow the current path
and hope it will all get done one day.

Alliteration of the 23rd Variety

Whiskey's wrath wraps around writhing wretches, warring with wild wheat and whittling women with wicked wisdom.

Meat is Murder. Tasty, Tasty Murder.

A white boy wearing blue jeans with a pink shirt, on a yellow bike. Or a pink boy with yellow skin and green and brown eyes on a black road.

Both describe me today. They aren't contradictory. They aren't even contrary. It depends who you ask.

Until Next Time

The last thing I remember is my last words to him, "see ya," ringing in my ears. Such words are used often, taken for nothing more than granted. They are always true, but what if they weren't? This time. What if it was like this time?

In my state of constant, pure remembrance, I will always know my folly. "See ya" was not to be fulfilled. I was such a ridiculous joker! For that blind corner is not a bicyclist's dream, with its sign free existence, but it may be his eternal nightmare. Coming toward it, you feel the relief of not having to slow down, knowing that someone else will. Except that they won't. They see nothing of your slender mode of locomotion, until it is scratching their paint and cracking their windshield.

I can't remember it, but it must have happened. I am here in the dark, and "see ya" still lives in my ears, pounding each time deeper into my brain, trying to force its way back onto my tongue so that I may once again taste my own idiocy. If I had a mouth I would concede. Until I find myself again, until I learn prudence, see ya.

Crazinski

And he said unto the people below him, "Go toward the light, and become one with it, for in that way you may become closer to me, and we shall forever know the light that is knowledge."

Not my best piece

From his satchel he pulled a large object, awkward enough to look like it could never have fit in such a small bag, and he placed it upon the pedestal near the queen's feet, where all gifts were customarily bestowed to either her or the king. She lowered her upturned nose just enough to notice the object, then thrust her snoot upward once more, even higher toward the heavens which she so longed to smell, so that she could think about what she had seen. The king had not moved throughout this theatrical glance. The boy kept his head down, for he did not want to be without it when she spoke. After all, his ears are on his head...

Murphy's Law

I was watching a bunch of Atheist vs. Creationist videos today on YouTube (very reputable, no?), and I think that got my mind spinning in a religious direction, because when I was washing the dishes just now I thought up this idea for this blog. Oh and I just realized that it's Easter, so it's even more topical!

Ok, I believe in Murphy's Law, which, for those who don't know it, states quite generally "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong" (Wikipedia). For example, if your band has been practicing a song for weeks and you finally get it right a few days before your first show, you expect that the show will go smoothly. Unfortunately when the day of that show arrives, your van gets a flat tire, and you were already late because of the lead guitarist running out of hair gel, and by the time you get there, other acts have gone in your place so they push you to the end of the show, but before you get a chance, one of the other bands gets sick of the crowd booing them and throws his guitar at a heckler who dodges it, and the guitar crashes into a main amp, exploding into a fiery spark show which causes much confusion and sadness. The rest of the show is unfortunately canceled, and you have missed your moment.

So then I applied Murphy's Law to Christian religion and I figured that the Rapture should probably be coming very very soon. This is because I am now more atheist than I have ever been, and if it turns out that the Christian God does exists and takes all His people back to Heaven with Him, then I will be quite stuck here on earth. Since right now (or I guess anytime in my future) would be a bad time for me, it is likely that this is when the Rapture will occur. Of course this is a most selfish way of looking at it. As if I had anything to do with God's decision. Of course, that second coming of Jesus probably doesn't rest solely upon when I decide to believe whatever I believe, but...I mean...maybe it does?

Vague Hymns

Alas, his coat did not contain the warmth necessary to walk the distance. He was too tall and wiry to hold any heat himself; indeed, his mother always had accused him of being colder than the rooms in their abode as a young man. Not as a child, for he did remain quite plump until adolescence. It was on his thirteenth birthday that his grandmother realized how much he was beginning to look like his father. They had brought out the albums, showing him and telling stories about the man he had never known. The Great War had taken him, along with his brothers and led them to meet their maker, but everyone agreed that it was for the best. They did have to work harder, but this boy would grow up tall and maybe become a professional and never have to fight in a dreadful war like that.


But if he was to continue to make it to his classes, he would need a warmer coat. Perhaps something with down; that had always created the necessary effect when he slept through the cold nights of his youth. The comforter that he received on that birthday was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen: all white of course, for it was the finest cloth they could afford (the prices of dyes from Arabia really were quite outlandish) and it must have been half a dozen inches tall, stuffed with the soft feathers from uncountable geese, created as the absolute perfect complement to his thin bony frame which lost heat like the cabin they lived in.

Imagination < Life < Acting

Reality's scorn can be created from the simplest of annotations, with its sad imperfections leading the way to dusty death and its uplifting moments creating refreshment stands along the path to righteousness, and either one can be the correct choice, for the life in which we portray ourselves is less than acting and more than imagination. Accept this offer of subordination and allow me to create within your body a wormhole into something grander, not that there can be anything grander than the universe in which we live, which is almost my point. We live here unknowingly, not looking from outside because our eyes are too close to our brains and our brains are too close to earth, therefore leading our souls to be attached to both and therefore all three. Please pretend that nothing is real. Please feel that you are the only thing that exists, and even so it's only your mind that exists, and then you will realize, if you can jump to that plane of thought, that whatever you do is more than imagination because it has unexpected results, and it is less than acting because you don't have to memorize anything, you can just let it flow. Like what you are reading now is just a thing that isn't really here, but it does exist, even in its sporadic process of coming to a point.

I have been wanting a steak...

There should be 4 boxes in this comic strip. If you can't see all four, just click on it and you will see the whole thing.


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Science of Loneliness

Twelve twelve twelve. 12 is a number. Twelve is a word. 12 is a dozen. Dozen's a word. Dozens of words. Words are 5 letters. Dozen is too. Dozen is 1 word. 1 word of 5 letters of 12 things. Dozens are 6, but are many, yet still 1. 1 is the loneliest number. 12 is twelve of 1. 12 is twelve lonely number 1s working synergistically to create 1 single dozen of non-lonely participants. This 1 dozen is, in itself, alone for there is only 1, until there come dozens. 5 can be lonely, 6 is less likely to be.

The Talent Lives in Her Hands

So, Kelley drew this picture and put it in her blog! I am so amazed by it :D

A drawing of me.

Leave her great comments! She deserves them!

He Said "Rebuttals!"

As spinning planets will tell you, my face tends to be more rational on a Tuesday quite nearly following election day, for that is the main reason of gravitational and rotational inertia, as is seen in the sad, sad atmosphere of Venus, with its clouds of sulfuric acid and anti-democratic embolisms. Please do not hold your responses in comparison to this, for none can be afforded which can even justify the reasons that this has been said, and as such are a waste of all resources that are required, including the finger energy, temporal allocations, and oxygenation to the phalangical and cognitive musculature necessary to create provocative and well-analyzed rebuttals.

Not all the Time, Just Forever.

When forever occurs, I'll be there. Through my life I'll be always striving, never reaching forever. But one day when I grow old, I'll come closer, and then at the moment of my death, everything will slow down, until time is passing at an infinitely slow rate. It will be like what happens to light as it enters a black hole. Forever fading but never reaching complete darkness. That way I'll never be dead, never be gone. At least that is what it will seem like, since a person's parallax is relative. I will never realize my own death, therefore I will always think I am alive. Other people will see me, grieve, and move on, but I cannot grieve for myself. I know I will meet forever.

Power Hour: Try It Once

With the music ringing in my ears, I have no hope of hearing the televisions which are strewn about the bar. As friends exhibit their determination to be heard, voices elevate until no one can hold a conversation. Yet people are still on cell phones. People sit at tables and chat. The bartenders still hear drink orders and can concentrate enough to produce correct change.

This is not my cup of tea. I am touched by many, but felt by none. Fellow students push their way toward the bathroom, or toward the exit. Ambidextrous girls somehow manage to carry four mixed drinks at a time to their friends, spilling very little along the way. A hand on my shoulder tells me to move forward, please.

Somehow I expected this place to smell like cigarettes, the unwelcome scent still lingering from years ago when people could still kill themselves slowly, with two methods at once. When the talented older men could puff a cigar in one corner of their mouth while sipping Jack with the other.

The strawberry lemonade, although girly, is good. I can't always taste the vodka, which is a plus. And making it taste even sweeter is the cost. Fifty cents for a mixed drink. I try a friend's drink, and it's also good. I like it better than mine, but I'm still satisfied.

No one is dancing. It's way too crowded here for that. But it doesn't matter to me, I'm not a dancer anyway. I never figured out how to get the right movements, when to lift my arms, when to bow and sway. There are no rules to modern dancing. Give me salsa, tango, something with a set pattern of steps. The lack of dancing does not contribute to stillness in this bar, the viscous masses of people constantly writhing, changing, trading positions, not giving your eyes enough time to focus.

Thank you power hour.

Her hair fell to her shoulders.

Her legs crossed with much propriety, she sits alone. Her face betrays not her conscious mind, but what is below it: a deep somber fear of the days ahead. Now she ponders her decision, but that is past, and unchanging. Her truth has not yet been revealed. She stands up, and is gone.

Left You Hanging

As I helped him with the simple math problems, I felt my status lowering. I knew she would see it, and wouldn't ignore the situation, and I'm not so naive as to think that popularity is proportional to intelligence. Soon enough she would talk to me, and it wouldn't be to invite me to a party, or out for coffee. It would be for help. Not that I mind helping; I love to help people, especially if they smell good. I didn't notice if she smelled good though, probably a bad sign.

But yes, my status was lowering. In their eyes I was becoming smarter and smarter. (If I dive further into this metaphor, God must be the ultimately unpopular kid, which is probably why so few young people go to church.) Soon their words would be laced with poison as they complain about their inability to understand things. They will resent me. They will feel like I am smug and snobbish, even if that's not the case.

Still I want to see them do well, and I want to do well, so I do the best that I can do.

I raised 2 to the -2 power. 0.25. The teacher says "Perfect!" in her all too excited voice. Too many simple feats are deemed Perfect by her, and it makes it seem like everything here is trivial. If she is so excited about this simple math, how much more excited could she get when it comes to the really interesting core of the course? This should be blasé, as it is for me.

I should be in a different group. Or I should be in this one. She wants me in this one, she sorted us by GPA. Some crazy psychoanalytical experiment she is performing on us while we are forced to perform menial tasks which aren't so menial to so many others.

I have been trying to get to a point, to some logical conclusion with a moral and a hint of understanding, but I can't find it.

Virginia Woolf

Hi. I didn't write this, Virginia Woolf did. But I read it in class today and it was quite amazing, and it reminds me of how I write, so I thought you all would enjoy it. I hope to write as well as her someday. :)

THE DEATH OF THE MOTH

Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy–blossom which the commonest yellow–underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay–coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare–backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window–pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far–off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig–zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of the window–pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay–coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.

If You're in Missouri...

You just might want to drop by the hotel with the big lights. You know the one I'm talking about, it's right near the coast of the river and you can't miss it if you're on your way to see the big fireworks show, just like the ones you used to go see with your daddy when he was around, before he found that harlot and gave her all your time, before he sold out and joined the rest of the world of broken homes and dysfunction, back when you knew he loved you without him having to say anything. The fireworks always made you remember how tall he was, because you could get on his shoulders and see above everyone else, like the show was just for you. Yeah, those were the days. But then you snap out of it and realize that the heat can sometimes do some crazy things to you, especially when it jumps around from 63 one day to 9 the next.

Well, now that you know what I'm talking about I can tell you why. Go there and dig like your heart never saw dirt, dig like you knew there was something good. In fact, there is something good. There is a message. A message buried at that hotel on the coast under the big lights near the explosions of glory. And the message is this: Go forth, my child, and dig.

Ah, L'Amour

Oui, je suis en le universitat. No sé más francés. I will English you. I have become a new person today. Well, it's not really as bad as all that I suppose. I have moved to Chico. I have a place here in which I shall reside. My roommate likes to roller disco. I have a big screen TV at the foot of my bed, constantly hooked up to the Wii. My computer monitor is currently at 1050x1680, tall, and it displays an image of Samus Aran fanart. It was created by =transfuse, on DeviantArt.

I hope to one day own the poster.

My clothes are in a...bureau? cabinet? something with doors and a drawer, inside the closet. That was my ingenious idea. My keyboard is behind me. (But how do you type, good Sir Doug?) It is a musical keyboard. Black and white. My bed is not yet sheeted. soon, my bebbies, soon. I will now go explore what might be my backyard, using a flashlight!

Donate Your Clothes

Today while I was driving I realized the magnitude of the amount of things that pass through my vision without me seeing them. I am sure it is the same for most humans. There are literally thousands of things that I could see if I wanted to, but none of them are important enough to register.

While moving at sixty-five miles per hour down the main thoroughfare, dozens of yellow reflectors pass through my range of vision every second. I don't notice any of them, but they are the most important things on the road. Their presence is known, even if not acknowledged. I feel the yellow line. It is an invisible barrier - not because I can't see it, but because I choose not to.

We recognize the collection of yellow, forming a line hundreds of miles long, but we do not distinguish individual reflectors. They are like soldiers in a stalemate, each one only important as a member of a team, never winning or losing, never going home, only existing for the sake of existence. Occupation. Authority.

If we paid attention, we would see their patterns, these self-sacrificing dots of trafficky malevolence. Sometimes they come at us one at a time. Sometimes two at a time. Often it's one, two, one, two. Each pattern with its own meaning. If you're on the 880, north of San Jose, you might be lucky enough to see some dots off on the shoulder, forming their own faction. Three, two, one, blank, blank, three, two, one. They march to a different beat. Maybe they are the Salvation Army? They are an example we should all follow, even if their purpose is unknown to us.