Notes to Myself

To Have No Idea of Home

2011-08-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to do tomorrow. At least it's still today for another hour. I'll try and finish this quickly so I can get to sleep so that I might appease those who prefer the morning or their lives require it. I wonder how different my life would be were I the sort to go to bed early. I don't quite understand the idea of how life can be more fulfilling because you wake up earlier. I can understand for jobs. Need to be on time, but if you work the afternoon whats so bad about waking up at 10am? Noon is pushing it a bit I'll agree and I try not to wake up in the afternoon.

Things to do:

Call Goosehollow and see if I can find a place to live.

Go to Bank of America and talk to them about establishing a credit card.

Call Robin and see if Vicky and Birch are renting out any rooms.

I know I should just log off. I should either confine my writing to the physical or just try and sleep without emptying my head of the sort of thoughts that lead to anxiety induced dreams. I don't want to dream of dying anymore. I don't want to dream of those I love suffering. It's not fair that the ghosts and monsters in my head use those gone on ahead to express torment.

Do You Still Fear Sleep?

2011-08-22T02:13:00.000-07:00

It's been over two years since I've so much as looked at this website. I have a hard time putting my footprints back through the dusted halls. There are ghosts here. Is it they that make the air so thick and difficult to swallow? Is it my own attempts to think of what the hell has changed in the last two years? Where did the capacity to hiss out honey-flavored words go? When did I find such difficulty to express myself on a medium that I used to be so good at. How has the world gone screaming into the darkness of the night? On that one I can be honest and say it has. Two years passed, two more ghosts. So much of the world screams as they try and keep themselves fed. Riots in the UK, riots in the middle east, we might see Libya fall to rebels within the day or in perhaps a few. They've invaded Tripoli to my understanding.

All such thoughts are like smoke to me though. Indulgently sucked in on a stick that reeks of despair and then breathed out, regurgitated. I'm just helping spread the desperation. Tastes good or perhaps it just tastes right.

I crave a cigarette once in awhile when I'm not doing so hot. Mentally. Though as it turns out physically as well. Nearly died a few weeks ago. Kinda crazy, neh? I go in to a clinic to get a shot of 'man-the-hell-up' and I leave the hospital a few days later, with 3 pounds of water having been drawn from around my heart. Well, it wasn't water. It was bloody. I remember desperately wanting to be a good patient. I didn't want to complain as they pulled vial after vial out of me. I didn't want to yell at them when the 6-7th stick still didn't work for the IV. I cried once when they told me my options. I cried because I was a bit terrified but not for the right reasons. I'm not even really sure why I was scared. Because I didn't know what to expect? Maybe thats it. I didn't cry because I was afraid I was going to die. I was already at the hospital and they didn't seem to be rushing me anywhere so it was likely they caught me.

I don't like hospitals. I remember thinking about Amuma...she's gone now by the way. I thought of her last few days, the dry rattling cough. The last words she told me that make me happy and guilty all in the same breath. I'll keep that card close to the chest. I remember thinking of Amuma, Alesha, and Mom. I was in a hospital, all alone. I'm so very glad they didn't die alone. I think thats what scared me. I was facing down a possible death alone. I couldn't contact Pretty Pretty or any of my Portland friends. I desperately don't want to die alone. I've lived plenty of years alone. I'd have room mates that never spoke to me or were rarely there. But they didn't mean anything. I was living alone, making contact once or twice every few weeks. I've been reclusive. Funny, I'm afraid of dying alone and thats the fate I've been building for myself. I wonder if it's all supposed to tell me to rely on my friends more. Stop hiding so deep in my own head. Realize I have support networks that'll help me out some. I don't have to live alone.

It's a thought that doesn't taste good to me at all. The bright, optimistic...why are they bright? They taste like lies. It makes me think of soda. Tastes nice and sweet and then you get this weird aftertaste that you can't figure out where it comes from. I know the taste of unhappy thoughts. I know the taste of 2am standing by the bridge because I can't sleep yet again. I know the taste of letting out a gust of air as I lean back my head and shut my eyes. I'm tired. I know I am and yet I don't want to go to sleep. I don't want to face tomorrow. I don't even know what it brings, and yet I'm terrified of it. The power of not having much hope I suppose. Tomorrow doesn't bring the promise of a warm future. It's a blanket that doesn't quite cover your feet. Tomorrow is having to curl up to keep all of you warm for a few fretful hours of sleep, punctuated by dreams that seem so damn important but your mind lets them go after a few moments as you remember which one you woke up to.

I wonder about that. Wonder if I'll wake up tomorrow and this entire expanse of time. The deaths of my friends and family. The deep feelings of isolation, the fogginess, the knife-like moments where it'll all be ok only to bleed out when they aren't. I wonder if it'll all have been a dream, something to cast off after a few minutes of wakefulness. I remember one dream from the last few years. A lady named Demi, a pretty blonde, and she held my arm and told me she'd always be happy to dance with me. Which is damn funny. I don't like dancing but I wanted to to keep her smiling just for a little longer. I woke up smiling and then it fell away but I can still remember the warmth in her eyes.

I've not been myself the last few weeks. In the hospital, as I choked off the few little sobs so we could get on with decision making and being grown-ups, I covered myself with a cloth. Back to the dusted halls and the ghosts of furniture covered to keep the spread of time from getting in the cracks. Was I a piece of furniture then, to be poked and prodded. To not think self-destructive thoughts. To not think deeply because I damn near died and at some level for some reason I didn't want to die there. I hadn't told anyone how I'd like my funeral. Cast into the blowing winds from the top of a rock. Dad's the same way. Dad said the damn same thing I think. Let me travel just a little longer. He's actually traveled. I've gone a few places but I keep ending up here. I wonder if you can count the expanse of wastelands in my head as traveling. I said the wrong word on top of that rock but I meant what I said. The valley below Dad and I was a wasteland and it was the prettiest thing I've seen in so very long. It's the sort of thing that I can't even comprehend and frankly I don't want to try. It was too big and its what I was needing. I think for a while Dad and I got each other. I think we've gotten each other a bit better this summer. Pressed together just a bit more because I was nearly gone, could have been gone, if I'd pushed much harder I'd have dropped dead. Heart collapsed, toss down my cards and fold. Ladies and gentleman, I've run out of chips to play.

Have to play the hand you're given right? It bothers the hell out of me that a few weeks ago I was in a hospital and when I go back to Oregon, I won't have a roof to call my own. Terrified, excited. Either way the air tastes like cigarettes and that unique scent of nearly 3am, because I still can't sleep.

Blogging

2009-11-07T23:52:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, I think this will be the last post I put up via this blog in the foreseeable future. I have a few reasons for this which I will elaborate on further but first I feel that I need to present a disclaimer of some kind. I am for the free distribution of information. I think that if you have an opinion, you should be able to disseminate said opinion in any matter of your choosing. While I myself rarely feel the need to carry on in a way that is incourteous, I also feel that people should be allowed that option simply because society is a messy and impolite place. Fingers are going to get stepped on, and people are going to disagree. That's the organic component of discourse. Anyway, now I'll discuss the reasons why I don't believe in blogging.

Of my reasons, I think the strongest is the presence of the audience. The majority of what I write about is about my personal circumstance or what it is that I am doing up here in Portland. I am not giving my opinion on various subjects in a way that provides reference or commercial interest. I would perhaps feel better writing about those things (provided that I don't have to dig around a great deal for the references or follow the stringent code of MLA or APA or any academic citing style. I'll keep those in papers thank you) because the audience would not be of my immediate peers and relatives. It would be the faceless masses to which the majority I would not have any personal relationships with. Or perhaps the audience would be my editor or publisher in which once again their is professional distance. However, given the nature of my current blog I'm writing about things of a personal sort, and I admit I get very nervous about displaying some of that information to my family and my friends. Primarily because often times I view writing as a means to vent about the things that bother me (friends haven't wanted to hang out, worried about a class, there is a hole in the bottom of my shoe so my left sock is perpetually wet), so I primarily write things that are a tad unhappy. When my family sees primarily unhappy posts what does that say about how I'm doing? Am I doing alright? Does he need help? Thus having a public place to write really makes me think that I just worry people.

The second is simply lack of commitment. I can't carry my blog around with me. There is no physical weight to remind me that when something happens I should write about it so it doesn't stew in my head amidst the various words and phrases my mind gets stuck on on a daily basis. This is why I absolutely adore my little writing journals. They go in my pocket or with my notebook and text books. I can carry them and occupy my hands with them. They provide a very real comfort and something to be attached to that a digital place of writing simply doesn't have. There is something about pen to paper that requires more focus and more care. If I screw up a word, I have to scratch it out and that artifact stays there marring the page. If I get ahead of myself I have to scratch out a section because I'm not keeping up with my thoughts. With a digital piece, that care vanishes. I mistype a word, I hit backspace or the auto-fix thing supplied by most word processors and my preferred web browser. Plus, with writing in a physical medium, the distractions presented are much fewer. Either I write, I read what I write, or I stare at the blank lines as they MOCK me. That isn't the case digitally. I'm currently flipping between a conversation I'm having on facebook, poking through the soundtrack for Pan's Labyrinth on youtube, and watching my favorite webcomics to see when new material is posted. All on the side of writing this particular mess of my thoughts. I keep forgetting what I was writing about because I'm being bombarded by information on things that are not a part of the writing process. When I get in my writing zone in pen and paper, I pay more or less complete attention to what it is I'm writing, to the point my thoughts and my pen kind of sync. Which is interesting for me because normally my thoughts bounce around.

Thirdly, and lastly, I am a fairly reserved person. I like to play my cards close to the chest. Often times because I don't think I have anything useful to say, other times because I feel that someone with presence and charisma will probably say it better anyway. I process things internally. I have friends who do talk themselves through things and I think they have a stronger way with basic communication than I do. I can write fairly well, but it usually only comes as a result of a long period of time thinking and pondering and having phrases rise out of the muck that I can use.

So, dear readers, don't expect this blog to be updated. I haven't updated in months so I imagine most of you don't anyway, but I feel that I'll stick to actual journalling for well...journalling.

Stream of Conscious v. ?

2009-07-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

I've forgotten how many of these things I've done which is unfortunate but I'm not going to go back and count them because that's kind of OCD which I'm fairly certain I'm not but that's beside the point though I don't know what the point is except that I really needed to write because I haven't in forever and once in awhile I get struck with the sensation that I've been bottling too much up again which I've done for years and most of my family knows it (as mentioned when I was getting through the funeral prep for Alesha a tad too well though when we got to the flowers I just couldn't stuff anymore down) too but once again besides the point because I have things on my mind that have been bothering me lately so I apologize to the people who don't like it when I write this way but it makes it easier to ramble because it's the purest form of rambling because my mind rarely has a complete thought that ties it to the convention of writing with proper grammar besides I know how to write with proper grammar and having had it drilled into my head over the years it actually makes these waaay harder to write however I'm going to mess with the style abit because I've decided I don't like the refrain style Giovanni uses so I'm just going to stick to making each paragraph a rambley mess.

Sometimes I feel like I'm possibly the lousiest kid this family has had because here I am back in Elko back in the parents house when all of my sisters have moved out and have gotten on with their lives and I still haven't a clue as to what I'm doing with mine except that I'm going to get a degree in English with a writing minor but really you can only do so much with that and writing for a living while attractive is something I think I'm incapable of because I really don't have anything interesting to say and when I do I like to say it in as few words as possible because I'm not a huge fan of myself and that's how I've only seen my writing but to get back to the topic sentence I feel way behind the curve because I don't have my own place yet, I'm not in a relationship and I haven't been for years, and I my job was more or less given to me which makes it feel a tad cheap and I can't relate to Marie who has been working super hard on getting her job (haven't heard if you have yet should you be reading this) and it makes me feel like a lousy person because I'm a 20 year old guy who has only had to work to get one of the jobs I've gotten and while I like to think I do good work when I am working it still feels like I should be making more of myself by now and it makes me want to do crazy things like quit school and go do a really physical job just to prove that I'm not useless to myself and it'll all magically fall into place because working hard is the American dream but really I like going to school and I like learning and I like using my head and my slowly developing communication skills because I think the ability to influence thought and actions is severely underplayed in the American dream and I'd like to do something with both of those skill sets because even if I have to repeat it yearly it wouldn't be the exact same thing everyday and I would feel a little more tangible for it.

Which brings me to my next thought, I've been spending waaay too much time in my own head lately because of various things but mostly because my current job leaves me a lot of time to listen to music and drive as I find various houses which I've only gotten better at in most situations (curse you people who don't have visible numbers on your houses) because I can logic my way through most confusing streets and most of the driving is autopilot because I learned the few streets I didn't know last year so its just a matter of time and while it means for a pretty easy job in the long run I find that if I spend too much time driving and not enough time interacting with my co-workers or the customers I start to feel a little less there in a way which is very difficult to explain it just feels like I'm slowly becoming a faceless extra in my own life because all I get is the sensation of watching a movie because I'm not engaged and the more it happens the further I feel from my own life which prompts me to want to do crazy things just so I feel like I'm on top of things and not drifting away into this numb state of existence where I start losing track of days because each day is the same more or less and then next thing you know it's my day off even though I'm already half-way dressed for work because I thought I was supposed to go to the store like I do every other day and it's an odd sensation because I suddenly have time during the day that I normally don't have and I don't know what to do with it so I spend a bunch of time trying to figure out what to do and in the end nothing happens and it makes me miss college because I know each day is going to be different because we'll be on a different part of the lecture or we'll be doing something different or the professor will feel like screwing with how the lecture is done and then we'll have a group discussion or that one person in all classes will talk to much or the professor will pull up a powerpoint and lecture like that and it just helps keep me mentally here instead of wherever my mind goes when I'm not on top of things.

And as a final note (mostly for myself) I think I'm going to go to the library on Monday because Marie showed me this book thing (which is the name of it I think) that I want to put more books on.

Stream of Conciousness V2

2009-06-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

My classes are starting to wind down and I'm greatly relieved for that but for whatever reason they are all seeming to end with the subject of cultural studies which is pretty much just using close reading tools on common things such as movies, paintings, and other stuff that would make you a critic which is kind of handy since it is a style of writing I'm not very familiar with but it's not terribly hard since you don't really need to cite anything because they aren't hardcore research papers that have to have a ton of academic, peer-reviewed information to make it really look like you know what you're talking about even if you've never looked at the subject before the day before and you need to be an expert on it tomorrow but that kind of brings me to the point as to why I'm writing today though I write a little bit everyday in my writing book and that's because I watched the movie version of Death of a Salesman and truthfully as much as I wanted to analyze it academically so I can write my paper for it that will work in two classes which is awesome I couldn't do it because it's just a damn depressing story that is really good but it makes me miss Alesha and Mom and it's too bright and sunny to really be depressed today but I am just a bit despite that which isn't a bad thing I guess since we're all allowed to feel down about the people we miss from time to time but I don't particularly enjoy being down

and my mind continues to wander

to missing other things because I'm leaving Portland in a few weeks for the summer and I really do look forward to being in Elko for a few months mostly because the air doesn't make you feel sticky all day there like it does here even if today has been one of the cooler ones as of late because the thermometer in my room only says 78 instead of 83 but that might have to do with the sun not coming in my window like it does around 7 or 8pm which makes the thermometer read in the 90s and it's really lousy and I go find a place to hide for those hours where the room is unbearable but I'm going to miss Portland because I have plenty of friends here that I won't be able to see for awhile which kinda sucks but eh I'll live and there are other things I'll miss that aren't in Elko like my thinking/stopthinking place that makes me feel rather at peace when things get to be a tad too much to breathe and it's healthy to have such a place because it's my little refuge that I only go to when I really am distressed over something or another and after 10-15 minutes there looking at my little forest in the river I feel like I have a grasp on things and it's a great feeling to be able to go from panic to peace in such a short amount of time and I don't have one of those in Elko though I guess I could find one but really I don't think there is anything as cool as a forest in a river in the whole of Elko but I guess the forest in a river thing is more of a figment of my imagination since its just a trick of the light but it looks so real and safe to me that I don't really care if no one else can see it because it is there and its sacred

and my mind continues to wander

to the future, to the past, and things feel a tad surreal but not really because I've been doing really well with existential crises or rather I haven't been having any such things lately which is nice and I wonder if my glasses have something to do with that because things are a tad more focused now and the lack of blur when I look at things makes them look more realistic which is kind of funny to write down but it's true and I wonder if being able to see things clearly helps with the odd sensation of things not being quite real just because they aren't blurry and really I'm starting to not make sense to myself so I'm going to stop writing now so I hope the people who manage to get through the thought soup I just presented have a nice day.

Stream of Conscious

2009-05-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

Today was mother's day and I hope all of the mother's out there had a lovely mother's day and I really wish I could wish Mom a happy mother's day but she's not around anymore and that makes me slightly bitter and sad but that's ok because at least it's not April 19th because April 19th is a lousy day but it's irritating because I really can't call the afterlife if there is such a thing and tell her that I love her even if I keep hearing that she can hear my prayers and I like that sometimes but at the same time I sound like I'm always asking for something and that's a lousy sort of relationship if you think about it because relationships are supposed to be give and take to my understanding and everyone is probably wondering why I haven't used a single piece of punctuation thus far and its because I'm emulating a writer I got to read this week and I think it's fascinating the sort of things that happen when you take out grammar and worrying about encapsulating each thought with a period and a capital letter even if I have to actively think about not putting in punctuation since I'm so used to putting it in but the writer went for four pages without using any but hers was poetic and mine really isn't but she did put in reprieves for the reader otherwise it'd be impossible to read

and my thoughts continue to flow

into such things such as the terrible dream I had last night where I was unable to breathe as I watched my major fears parade around and engulf me and I woke up struggling for air when I could breathe just fine and that's a terrible explanation of the dream so I suppose I'll do better but I kind of don't want to because it was a really lousy dream but basically I was suffocating somewhere and a person I knew got raped and we were both in a terribly crowded room to the point where I couldn't move and I couldn't help her or talk to her or anything but then someone noticed I was suffocating or choking or generally unable to breathe so I get whisked away to a hospital and then there is a doctor reading a clip board and says that it's time for the surgery and someone comes in and says that she is going to put me to sleep for the surgery and I'm sure at least one person out there is thinking that is only a very weird dream and not a nightmare at all except the whole being unable to breathe thing but those are basically my big fears of which include suffocation someone I know being raped claustrophobia being unable to help someone if I think I can doctors in general and being artificially put to sleep which might be kinda silly but they terrify me and to start the day with a dream where all of those were tossed at me was a little agitating

but my thoughts continue to flow

and I'm looking at pictures I've been taking which mostly are the same because I'm trying to figure out what all the different settings do but I think its funny that my favorite pictures are ones that aren't very well done because they are kinda blurry and the lights tend to be all over the place like some electric rave mess but I kind of love them because they are just so surreal that it's not capturing a memory its making a form of art with crazy neon colors that weren't there when I was looking at it with my eyes but with a camera they came to life and I think they are beautiful even if its lousy photography and my friends have been really great about letting me snap various shots though mostly because they don't notice me do it because I'm pretty good at getting them when they aren't paying attention mostly because no one is used to me having a camera and I really want to go out some night and just wander Portland and snap photos of the different lights and make them look blurry and surreal and messy because that feels way more expressive than a painting of fruit even if still life is impressive and looks nice on museum walls and maybe on my walls should I ever own a set to put things on but really what does a bowl of fruit actually mean to me besides making me kind of hungry but that might be to distract me because this song isn't right for whatever strange mood I'm in that rambles so much and it is irritating me but it's the fifteenth song I've tried listening to to get this written and really I just want to throw my hands up in exasperation and be done with this silliness

because my thoughts continue to flow.

And This World Will Burn

2009-05-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

The title of today's post comes from a caption I put on a photo I shot a few days ago with my shmancy new camera. I'm terrible with it as of yet, but that doesn't mean I'm unhappy with said shmancy new camera. Rather I love it and I hope that by the time exciting things start happening I'll be halfway proficient with it.

That said, the reason I find today's title so appropriate really has to do with my mood. I am somewhere between angry and annoyed at nothing in particular. I'm just boiling and I have absolutely no reason to feel as such. Sure, I woke up two hours before my alarm clock, my writing practice class is uninspiring, I've found that people are talking AT each other as opposed to with each other today, and my headache has come back after a few days where it wasn't really an issue. Maybe it's because my eyes feel tired today. I'm hoping my glasses help with that. Oh yeah. Guess what family who I don't periodically check up with (sorry bout that), I'm getting glasses. I'm nearsighted in one eye and because of that my eyes are fighting each other when I'm looking at things at a distance. In my larger classes, that distance happens to be right about where my seat is compared to the board. Squinting at a somewhat fuzzy board isn't fun and when the eye doc showed me what it'd be like having glasses the different is huge.

I've been thinking about belief today and I came up with my stance on how I think people should think. I don't care who, what, when, how, etc. you believe in. If you believe in God, if you believe in nothing, if you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I don't care. Every single person on this Earth is going to have slightly different opinions on things. In fact, we all only have one true thing in common and that is we're biologically alive. Two people can be experiencing the exact same moment and it'd be different because of past experience, line of sight, and a host of other things that can make something ever so slightly different. So why can't we accept that and just try and live with one another as best we can. Why is it that we have to be so quick to call the other person wrong, ourselves right, and upon reflection I'm doing that very thing I'm arguing against by saying its wrong to allow our differences to separate us. That makes me chuckle. I guess I was just trying to come up with a call for solidarity because we're all human.

People in cities seem so...distant from one another. We don't make eye contact, we fake phone calls so that we don't have to acknowledge other people (I saw that the other day. The person's phone rang when they were supposedly talking to someone else.), I feel lonely once in awhile up here. I keep pretty busy with school and friends which helps with that but once in awhile it hits with the force of a baseball to the head. Odd way to explain it, but I have taken a baseball to the head and consequently that's kind of how it felt. One minute I was ready for the week and whatever is coming my way and the next I'm flat of my back trying to remember how I got there. It's confusing and frustrating and it only adds to my annoyance because I'm having a hard time articulating it. I've felt like this since I woke up and as my status says on facebook, "I'm feeling particularly 'ARGH' today."

Epitaph

2009-04-19T00:52:00.000-07:00

Here we are again, April 19th. You, me, and some old scars that don't ever fully heal. Of course they don't. I won't ever stop loving Mom. It's funny how you knock holes in me. I'm the introspective type and I've been thinking about Mom when I realized what day it was. Thinking about how that day went, thinking about all of my triumphs and tribulations throughout my life that she didn't physically get to be a part of, thinking about my plans in life and wondering what she'd think of it all. I can ask my family for their imput and for advise, but I can't call Mom and say, "Hey, Mom. I've got a choice to make, what do you think?"

April 19th, for the longest time, I've hated you. Plain and simple. You meant painful memories and a desperate want to just be left alone until April 20th when I could be a functioning human being who didn't have a scar that got ripped open because those old good memories deserve to be looked at, even if it is painful. Now I'd like to add, April 19th, that just because I inferred that I used to hate you means that I still do. Please don't get me wrong, I'm sure you're a lovely day and from my understanding it is going to be a beautiful day. Despite that, I still find myself embittered because of what you stand for. I really do hate you. Because 12 years ago a little boy, a little girl, a husband, a mother, a brother, a nephew, and many many friends and family lost someone very special to them. You're not the same day. You could be the best day in the world, but you represent something to me. Please don't take it personally that despite my best efforts I've still had a tear or two slip out.

However, April 19th, I don't intend to drown in this. I'm going to get some sleep soon and go through my day. I have a book I want to read, so I'll probably do that. Maybe I'll go for a walk. It's been warm lately. I'm going to have the best day I can despite you. Perhaps in spite of you. I want my day to spit in your face. I don't want another day where I'd be a complete mess. Maybe just a little mess. If I have to force it a little, oh well. I denounce the effects of what you represent.

However, to Mom. I always talk to you fairly often on today. It used to be in person back when I lived in Elko. I'd go and chat with you. Though frankly it'd just make me cry back then. I recall leaving a flower last time. It was a gift from a friend of mine. Was it carnations you liked? I forget, it's been a long time. I'm sure I'll be writing to you in my little carry around journal. Maybe I'll find someplace pretty to write or stop at a coffee shop for a change. I can guarantee a chat later and there isn't really much point in writing my conversation here. This is for other people. I guess I just needed to acknowledge all this where other people can see it. Perhaps as a way of letting them know that yeah, I'm kinda sad today, but I'm fine. But, Mom, I love you and I miss you. We all do. We always will.

Hey Man, it Should be Raining but the Sun is Out.

2009-04-07T15:50:00.001-07:00

Every year the month of April and I stand face to face waiting for one of us to blink. I don't like the month of April because of losing Mom when I was a kid and it houses that one day which I can't but help feel a little sad. Some years its worth than others. Some years I get depressed well beforehand and some years it only lasts during that one day. It still requires that one day of introspection and memory though. From talking with people, Mom's biggest fear was being forgotten. Hah. It's been twelve years and I still think about her fairly often. Maybe its because we all lost her so long ago and she is a mystery to me. I don't really know about her likes, dislikes, mannerisms, or her thoughts on things. I'm a fairly introspective person. I spend a lot of time in my head thinking about things I see, hear, experience, or read about. Was she like that? Would we have gotten along were she to be alive today? Would she have been surprised at my interest in religion and pursuing it like I am?

This year has been a good one for me in regards to my standoff with April. I've been focused in my studies, not terribly easy to upset, and I haven't become reclusive by any means. I don't have a single night of the week where I'm not doing something whether it be with friends, classes, etc. As much as that should cheer me that I'm getting through this portion of the year so well, I find that I'm a little mad at myself. I'm getting through it too easily. I haven't forgotten but it sometimes feels like that. Yesterday was probably the first day where I felt slightly out of the normal. I was just generally annoyed all day. It was aimless and it just sat across my shoulders like a mantle. It was later in the evening when I had time to be introspective that I managed to shake it off by shutting my thoughts from the outside world and just focused on breathing for a time. It's amazing how relaxing how listening to music that you can't sing along to but is pretty anyway while just breathing can be. Unfortunately it took all of the energy that came as a part of the anger with it so I kind of deflated when I still had things to do that evening. I was rather detached and kind of spaced out but my active involvement wasn't so necessary. It worked out.

I suppose I shouldn't be jinxing myself. By writing that I'm getting through the month fine I'm completely opening myself up to things hitting the fan. I don't really know. Guess I really just mean my title.

Spring Break and Contemplations

2009-03-22T01:28:00.000-07:00

Hello audience who I don't write enough for. My bad. I was really busy at the end of this month with the projects, presentations, and as of a few days ago, finals. However, I'm done with them now so that's good. Sure, my next set of classes come up in a week, but I'm cool with that. So, it's Spring Break. I'm not planning on doing anything terribly interesting though I've had fun for the last few days. On the last day of classes several of my friends and I sat around and played cards to celebrate our new found freedom. It was pretty low key but it was a nice evening.

Saturday (which I still see as today but was in fact yesterday) was my friend Candyce's birthday. She turned 20 and a large group of her friends went out to Hillsboro and celebrated it. We played flag football, ate dinner, had cake, the full package. I got to meet several of my friend's high school friends, remet some since I'd met a few, etc. I don't really have plans for the rest of Spring Break, but I'm ok with that. I get the feeling it isn't going to be a terribly boring break. Probably more late nights than what is healthy, but that's something that doesn't really even phase me anymore. Not after this last term where my sleeping habits have gotten the worst they have ever been.

Sleep and I have our ups and downs. Some weeks I am in bed at around midnight and I get up at 8 and I get to shower and snag morning tea before class. Those are nice days for the most part. Some weeks...well there was one week where I skipped sleeping every other night just because I wasn't tired. I pushed it however and stayed up from a Sunday morning to Wednesday morning. I ended up getting terribly sick and consequently had to sleep a lot more the rest of the week to bring myself back. It was a pretty nasty head/chest cold and it took weeks to clear up. You'd figure I'd learn my lesson but it's nearly 4am and it's another one of those sleepless nights. I do fully intend on going to bed, it just means I won't move till noon. I've been giving it a lot of thought as to why I don't like going to bed some nights. I get panicky as I get closer and closer to bed. It's a silly, illogical fear. Somniphobia being the name for it. I have an idea as to why I don't like going to sleep, but I have no real answer just a theory or two. Ask me if you want to know what it is. I don't really want to give it thought since I do plan on going to bed after I'm done writing.

So, most of the fam knew I was in a relationship with a chick in high school and it ended on a pretty sour note. I haven't bothered trying my hand at relationships in college really. I didn't want to deal with it seeing as the first several terms of college were messy in terms of other things may it be family or spirituality related. So it comes as a shock to me that my thoughts of late have actually pertained to a girl I recently met. Nothing has come of it as of yet, and I doubt it will in the end. It's just very odd how these things work out. We met through a friend. A chat and a late night car ride adventure (how we managed to get lost a few blocks from my dorm is still a mystery to me) later and I find myself trying to break down what it is that makes it so easy to chat, joke, and flirt with this girl when such things don't even come to mind with most of the girls I've met up here. I find that I look forward to my Monday small group thing just a tad more because that's where she and I generally get to chat a bit. I like to approach things logically when possible but I find myself completely unable to with this situation. I act so...different than normal with this individual and it unnerves me to no end. She comes to mind because she was at Candyce, my friend's, birthday party today. That same disarm of my natural resistances to being too close to people happened and...yeah. I suppose this is really boring. To sum it up. I don't know how to handle people, a chick is messing with my natural patterns, and I'm not sure if I should be happy or running like a bat out of hell.

Exhaustion just hit. Goodnight. 4:11 time I finish. Hah, like my birthday!

Happy Birthday!

2009-03-06T00:17:00.001-08:00

Just wanted to say Happy Birthday Mom. You'd be 55 this year huh? Miss you.

Happy birthday Kait! Happy 3rd, may it be tons of fun (though with your mom I don't think it's possible to have an unfun birthday. It just might have a complex timetable.)

and Happy B-day Zach, slightly belated sorry kiddo.

March is just full of people being born isn't it?

I See You

2009-02-24T17:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. I still need to go back to my last post and actually write it but I don't have time just this moment. I came out of my busy weekend into a busy week! I'll get to it, I promise. I just figured I'd relate today's news.

I, Marcus, am near sighted in one eye. I discovered this today because of the rain and my hood covered my dominant eye. Everything went blurry. I lift my hood up to uncover my other eye everything is fine. Hood goes down, my vision goes blurry.

I'm kind of annoyed about this.

Thoughts on conference

2009-02-22T16:59:00.001-08:00

Reserved for later. I need a nap.

One heck of a nap since I went to that conference several weeks ago. Sorry for the delay, it's nearly finals and it's busy around here.

The first night we went to the conference we had a big meeting with everyone at the convention. We got some basic housekeeping stuff, listened to the live band and sang along, and the speaker did the welcome thanks for coming thing that speakers do. After that we broke into smaller groups and did a little discussion before bed time. My thoughts on the first day were pretty much nothing but panic because I got to see just how many people were at the conference on top of wondering why I was here again. The people around me were all excited and joyful to be able around others that believe in God and be put in a place where they could celebrate their faith openly. I was just nervous, feeling out of place, and kind of wanting to leave. Because people had to read through my speech before I made it, the staff already knew who I was and I got walked up to a few times that night and they thanked me for being willing to speak. That only made me panic more because there were strange people (who were in charge of stuff)walking up to me and talking to me when I really wanted to just go hide somewhere.

The second day started early. Had breakfast and went into these little seminars. There were a few different ones and I picked the quote unquote 'prayer' track. One of the things I'm not comfortable with is the type of prayer the group I'm a part of does (For reference, I'm going to call it Intervarsity because that is its name and much easier to type out). In the Catholic church prayer was kind of...structured. There were certain prayers you said and that was just how it goes. Sure, you could have an intention in mind when you said them but the words were set in stone. In Intervarsity, they basically do free form prayer. You say the exact cause the person, etc. It's kind of personal, but I'm not good at it. So I went to that listened to the staff talk about personal experiences with God, what they think it's like to have a relationship with God, and they gave us three different smaller groups we could go to depending on how far along we were in our development. There was a prayer room where we could go if we just wanted to reflect and pray, there was a prayer walk where people went out into the Portland area and tried to find people who needed to be prayed for (which was pretty interesting to hear their accounts), and lastly there was a bible study. I went to the prayer room thing because it was the smallest group, and I had a lot on my mind. I got to a good hour and a half of writing in about how I was feeling in the situation, I wrote one of those free formed prayers for myself, for some people I knew, and then I kind of just let myself day dream to see if I could get my nerves calmed. After the tracks we had lunch and then off to another big meeting.

Saturday night's big meeting was when I was to give my speech. It opened with music again followed by a song done for the deaf by people signing on the stage (it was pretty cool). The speaker gave another speech this time about calling people to not be comfortable with their faith but to strive to make it bigger and better. To go out and spread it and not to be afraid to do so. It was a pretty compelling speech and one of those ones where you don't want to follow it because it was really good. I was called up to the stage, and I gave my speech. I'd been taking notes on how the other presenter did it and tried to emulate it, as well as asking advise from other people (thanks Dad). My hand was shaking ever so slightly, I've never really been on a microphone before so I wasn't expecting the way it sounded, and when I first started my voice kept catching and not wanting to come out. After the first few lines I managed to steady myself and the speech came out fine. Better than fine seeing as I got a standing ovation (which I missed because I was desperately searching for my seat since my nerves really couldn't take being the focal point of so many eyes anymore). When I made it back to my group's section of the ball room (they gave us reserved seating up front, said it'd help calm my nerves by having emotional support up front), I was greeted by a bunch of people hugging me saying I did a great job and more than a few tears though I never asked why they were crying. After my speech a final speaker came up and started his speech with, "You know you have a rough job when you have to follow Auntie Lisa (the first speaker) and Marcus." which made me smile.

The third speaker closed up the night with continued calls to people to embrace their faith to strive to improve it or for those people who weren't really Christian but thinking about it to make a decision. It was a really powerful night emotionally. It's funny since all three of the speakers used the same elements without collaborating at any point. After much tears from everyone we were dismissed to have a few hours to ourselves to reflect and then the band was going to have a few hours to play where we could go and dance and sing and what not. Upon leaving the big meeting, I was an instant celebrity. I had people walking up to me to talk to me or thank me or hug me or get a picture with me. It was surreal. I wonder if real celebrities feel as awkward as I did when a girl in tears comes up to you and hugs you saying thank you over and over again. After the initial impact people did cool down when talking to me but still throughout the remainder of the conference I was still walked up to to be told thanks for speaking or how it was like their own story was being told or to congratulate me.

After that I went to the concert where people danced and sang. I kept to the back and sang along and watched the dancers because they were fun to watch. After the concert thing which went till midnight I went to bed. The third day had one last speech where we were told that it's easy to feel surrounded by the love of God in the setting we were in, but we had to hold onto that as we go about our normal lives. I'd been having similar thoughts and still am. It was such a strange occurrence in my life, and I don't know how to get back to that place. Sure, I'm not exactly looking to get back there but at the same time it was just such a strange weekend I want to get back in that frame of mind just so I can analyze it some more.

Transcript of my Speech

2009-02-22T16:58:00.001-08:00

Hello, my name is Marcus. I’ve been a member of Intervarsity for about two months now. I was invited by a friend of mine and decided that I wanted to see what it was all about. Coming into this community, I was not a Christian. I was raised to be one, but over the course of my life I had given up on my faith. It’s not a rare occurrence; I’m sure just about everyone questions from time to time, but I had completely given up on the idea of being a Christian. I had my reasons; we all do. I have lost members of my family; I’ve been used in relationships with other people; I’ve dealt with attempted suicides, both others and my own; and going through all of these experiences I felt like I was walking alone. It was hard, but somehow I was able to keep getting through everything.
Then, one day, I was invited to attend Intervarsity by my friend, Jessica. I decided why not. One time wouldn’t kill me, so I went. That was about two months ago, yet I’m still attending. Coming into this community, I immediately felt welcomed. Despite that, it has been a rough time for me. I’m coming face to face with a lot of questions that I really wasn’t prepared to answer. Why did I think the way I do? What was the point of going when I didn’t see myself as a Christian? Yet I continued to go. I felt compelled to go. Not just because of the good company, no, I felt like it was the right place to be.
Fast forward to this week. During the last meeting of Intervarsity, we were given some time to reflect by Marshae, the staff member leading the meeting. She asked us to think about our relationship with God. After our contemplative time, we would be given a group description, and if we felt we were a part of that group, we should stand up and everyone would pray for those people. Those people would then remain standing. The first group went, we prayed, and we were given enough time to think some more. The second group was called to stand, we prayed, and once again we paused. The third group contained those who do not see themselves as Christian, but would like to be. When this description was given I asked myself, “Is that me? Do I want to be a Christian again? Do I want to open myself up to this? Have I been wrong all of these years?”
To be a member of the faith requires giving in. Through my youth, I was a member of a church that wasn’t active. We’d go, we went through the motions, and then we left. This church never asked anything of us. It wasn’t personal, it wasn’t active, and it never made me want to believe in anything. I built up a dislike for being there. If this was faith, I didn’t want it. No good came from going once a week to listen to the preacher deliver his sermon. We were never asked to put aside our reservations and just jump into things. We were never required to have that leap of faith. No, we sat there and nodded.
The third group was called to stand up with the other two groups. My ego didn’t want me to stand up. I didn’t want to admit that maybe I had been wrong for so many years. My fear of being hurt didn’t want me to stand up because it was a risk. My disbelief didn’t want me to stand up because it wasn’t logical. It didn’t make sense. I could think up plenty of arguments why I couldn’t, wouldn’t be a Christian.
But then I stood up.
As soon as I stood up, the most beautiful feeling shot through my veins and it took my breath away a little. It was a warm and happy feeling. Just for a moment I forgot all of my reservations, all of my fears, and for that one beautiful moment it felt like I was home again. Home? Yeah, it was like coming home and someone was waiting for me.
We prayed for those of us who stood in the third group, and we all sat down. That feeling I had felt had cooled from a lightning strike to a warm little fire in my chest, and I cried. I had taken that leap of faith. I had put aside all of my fears and reservations and decided to believe in something.
I stand here before you now. Two months ago, I didn’t consider myself a Christian. If you had told me two months ago that I’d be standing at a conference, I would have laughed at you. But then I was invited to Intervarsity, I was invited to speak and be a part of this community, and I was invited to believe in something. I took that invitation and it has been a rewarding experience. I still am unsure of my path, but I don’t intend to stop walking. I still have a lot of leaps to make, but I’m not so afraid of them anymore.

Things Left Unsaid

2009-02-16T12:42:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. I haven't written anything interesting in a while. The last two were random things I took out of my observation journal and an assignment for class. Unfortunately, this post is also not going to be of much interest to my readers. I've been thinking about what I'd say to people I either no longer talk to or don't say enough to. So, I decided I'd write out some of the things I'd like to say to people. Granted, I do so anonymously. I can pretty much guarantee that none of the people who read this are included.

I've forgotten what you sound like. It made me smile.
I miss you.
We've stopped talking again, but that's alright. Distance has a tendency to weaken friendships.
Stop taking it personally that I don't call when I go back to Elko. I don't have your phone number anymore.
I have a crush on you and I really shouldn't.
This little group thing on Monday you invited me to is kind of my form of seeing a counselor; I'm afraid that I'm taking advantage of everyone's kindness.
I don't write in pretty words anymore, but that doesn't matter. We'll always have them.
What happened to getting out of there?
I was always proud that you felt you could talk about anything with me. Even when the topic was close to your heart.
I wonder about how you are doing. A lot.
I heard you had a kid. Congratulations, and thank you for...well lots of things.
You should sleep more, said the pot to the kettle.
Do you still have that chain?
We are a song with two voices.
I'll always be your Handsome Handsome.
I still think of us as brothers. Even after I left.
Do they wear name tags in heaven? I asked you that a long long time ago. I don't know if I believe in heaven anymore, but my God I wish I did.

Observations

2009-02-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

Declare! Supplication, libations
misery
Language is promiscuous
Contract, a promise or a disease?
Humans are Humans are humans.
Sea Kittens!
Friendships that will last forever, naive.
Ambiance, ephemeral, when we're together we're each others' Christmas presents
Recite, I'd like to show you this place someday.
We poets speak to the dead
you recidivist you.
A blue ribbon, a red scarf
Desperation, a swinging cross.
Love causes Chaos
War on drugs? What do we yell at the meth to get down on the floor?
Black toenails, not that I'd want to kill birds
Spirituality, raw raw raw!
Life story, sharing it, is it really that big a secret?
It's a matter of us and them
Lost without an ending, Keep on dreaming
this will have been enough.
Happy Accidents
You're going to carry that weight.
I like it because...I don't really understand it.

Pigeons

2009-02-03T01:36:00.000-08:00

Pigeons

The back of a woman’s hand
“Even Pigeons go to heaven.”
I stole it without asking
she left before I had spoken.

It was written, my tome of sacred words.
A tribute to the thought slithering through my mind,
I swore it was supposed to be doves
Who soared in that place most high.

I thought of sinners and saints,
was it only the good who go?
Maybe that idea was quaint
and all life could join the flow.

If the pigeon and the dove can both soar so high
Maybe even I can fly.

That was an assignment for my writing class. Woo, I wrote a sonnet. Go me.

Panic Attack

2009-02-01T04:13:00.000-08:00

I don't normally wake up feeling like I can't breathe. I don't normally know I've been crying in my sleep. Something is off. I feel sick and upset and I don't know whats wrong. I feel like a spring that's had too much tension set to it and I'm going to snap. Why am I feeling like this so early? I've only been asleep for a few hours. Being awake for a few minutes has gotten me calmed enough to where I can breathe.

I'm going to try and go back to sleep. I'm tired and still feeling a little edgy.

Midday Muses

2009-01-26T12:13:00.000-08:00

Class was amusing this morning. I have another in a few hours and I should be going over the reading one more time just so I'm prepared for class, but I felt like I should continue writing. I'm not sure what thought I was on when I had to cut myself off. I know I had been talking about religion, but I don't have a lot to say past what I had already said. My right shift key isn't working and it's starting to annoy me. Eh, whatever onto a subject!

Glancing over my mornings post I get the feeling that my writing has changed ever so slightly as of late. I really wish I could speak with half of the clarity I can write with. It'd make my life easier to not stumble over my words and sound like an utter idiot.

In regards to my writing, I'm taking a poetry class. I'm not a poet in my opinion but I've scratched out a few. They (the poems) tend to focus around words that I obsess with. The latest few words are ephemeral and evanesce. The auto fix function on my web browser says the second word isn't a word, but it is. I double checked the spelling on it just to be sure. Ephemeral means short-lived. Evanesce means to fade away. I might plop down the poem at some other time when I get some feedback from my class. I'll be getting that back on Tuesday. What I actually wanted to write about is my observation journal. For my poetry class I have to keep a small pocket-sized journal thing of things I see or hear that could be useful for writing. I've caught some really funny events or phrases and stuck them in there along with words that won't leave me alone. It forces me to focus a bit more so that I can catch things before I forget about them. It's brought up a few funny conversations among people I know when out of nowhere I whip out my little black observation thing and ask them if I can steal that. I've also used it to write down places I need to be and phone numbers I need to keep track of that I haven't put into my phone yet. It catches people off guard that I keep such a thing with me at all times along with a pen. I doodle in it from time to time. The teacher wants us to make it our own thing instead of just a requirement for the class.

I have in my possession a very fancy journal that I've had forever. It's hardly filled and I find it a little unapproachable. It's got hundreds of blank pages and it was a gift. It's not really...mine in a way. It was a gift from Rebecca (should give you a gauge on how long I've had it) for one of my birthdays. It's captured some pretty ugly thoughts and words. I threw it away today. I just couldn't stand having it anymore. It's like an accusation. It was a beautiful journal but it's a stain on who I am. A lot of the words, thoughts, and ideas in that journal don't represent who I am, and I don't want to tie myself to them anymore. I suppose it's kind of silly since the past helps define the present, but I've been known to run from the past. I need to find a new journal to write in now I guess but frankly I feel a little more free without it than I did with it. Now the task is to find something that I can actually approach and write in without it feeling like a burden. My little observation journal is like that. I enjoy carrying it around. The weight of it in my coat pocket is soothing because it lets me know that 'Hey, if I see something interesting I won't lose it.'. I suppose the blog could be considered a place to write and I know my family would like it to be so. The problem with that is that I have an audience and in knowing that I have to write a certain way because I do. The only audience a physical journal has is myself and then family after I'm gone (I went back and changed that word because of how the family dislikes it. I don't much care for it either but it's a habit of mine to use it). Maybe that's why I threw my last one away. If I were to die today, I didn't want those words to be my legacy.

I've thought a lot of legacy lately. If I were to pass away today at this last moment, what would I leave behind? Currently it'd be some words on the internet and a small collection of hot chocolate cups that currently adorn my desk. I've had a weakness for the stuff lately. It gets cold around here. But what else could I leave behind for those that cared? There are memories, and I suppose someone could make a quilt out of my clothes like we did Alesha's stuff. Such thoughts make me think I should write a will so that I know what I have and what I want people to remember me by. I'm legally able to write one now I think since I'm over the age of 18. That way I could say that under no circumstances am I to be parted with my cross but the rest of my adornments I don't mind so much. Or that if someone is going to end up with my laptop I'd appreciate it if the hard drive got reformatted and nobody messed with my files. I'm kind of particular about that. The only exception to that rule would be that if anyone wanted to go through my music to see what I actually listened to as opposed to what I just happened to have in my music library. I think that's interesting to see what I actually listen to. When I look at my top five played songs on iTunes, I note that the numbers of time they have played changes dramatically. The most played song has repeated 400 times while the fifth has only played 141 times. It's funny to note how my music interests have changed. The only 'metal' song in my top 25 is number 23. I suppose this is a depressing subject to most of my audience and that I shouldn't think about this stuff. I apologize, but I do think about these things. Life and death go hand in hand with religion and that is constantly on my mind these days.

Because this is my blog I get to choose what goes on here and as such I'm going to list the top 10 played songs in my iTunes just because I can. I'll make a note here that any song who I attribute to 'OC remix' is actually a song that originally came from a video game and has been taken in by various composers and redone in many different ways at a website I frequent. I do not watch Orange County or whatever that show is.

1. Do You Fear Sleep? (Recidivist mix) - Moscow Coup Attempt 400
2. Sprout and the Bean - Moscow Coup Attempt 361
3. The Shadowlands - Ryan Adams 180
4. Ascension to Cosmo Canyon - OC remix 154
5. Nantes - Beirut 142
6. Agony of Obscuration - OC remix 140
7. Forever Until Tomorrow - OC remix 127
8. Apologize - OneRepublic 113
9. Elephant Gun - Beirut 105
10. Quiet as a Mouse - Margot and the Nuclear So and So's 97

In closing, I'm going to pull a little thing I wrote in my observation journal one night.

I found a forest in the river
the trees made of light
growing out of the water.
All it takes
is to stop, forget, and look
I'd like to show you this place
someday.

Morning Muses

2009-01-26T09:08:00.000-08:00

It's rare for me to be awake very long before my first class of the day. I usually get up about an hour beforehand so I can shower and get to class on time. It's a system that I suppose could be called indulgent but it has worked since I've gotten to college. Today, I opted to not stay up past bedtime (Yes, I have one. No, it's not at a particularly healthy time.) to finish reading for class, so I woke up early this morning to read about the plight of the native Americans during the 1700s in speeches that could have possibly been written by said native Americans.

I finished my reading and found that I had an extra hour to kill before I had to shuffle off to class and opted to sit down and attempt to write something. I'm aware my audience has been waiting for me to come back and actually write something (Not to sound conceited. I was told via phone call that I needed to update). This term has kept me pretty busy. While the homework load has been fairly light, the reading load has been astronomical. If I get behind just a little on the reading, I suddenly am half a book behind and struggling to play catchup. I've been doing well despite this (I work well under pressure when it comes to academics). Unlike the previous semesters where I was just sort of pushing to find something to study, I am taking classes that are an actual progression towards something. It's fulfilling to be able to say I am an English major and am progressing toward a degree in something. I keep an eye on the news about job cuts which makes me very apprehensive about what I'm going to do when I can no longer float on my savings and when I'm finally done with college and have to go get a career. Tio does have good advice on getting a degree for the purpose of getting a nice job, but I want to enjoy the experience of college and take what I'm genuinely interested in.

One of the major focal points of my winter term is the matter of faith. I am not a religious person nor am I spiritual. Yes, I believe they are different things. Religious people follow a ritualistic sort of spirituality. Spirituality itself is just the strong belief in a higher being. Back to the point, I've been surrounded in religious conversation, practice, and thought since the first week of the term. I'm getting the Christian experience by attending a weekly mass type thing and I've been invited to a smaller subgroup of the organization where the conversation is on a smaller scale and thus more...intimate? That will be today so I'm going to be thinking about whether to accept the invitation since it kind of puts me on the spot. I also have been getting an insight into the world of Islam in my Middle Eastern studies class. To better get the class acquainted with the material we had to research a subject in the Qur'an and write a paper about it, so I've read parts of the Qur'an. In my American Lit. class, we've been reading about the Puritans of colonial America and their perspectives on religion.

So I've gone from absolutely no religious practice or thought to a triad of inputs and experiences. My initial response to being so engulfed in the stuff was to feel somewhat silly and threatened all at the same time. I felt silly because how could I possibly feel so little when the people around me felt so strongly about the presence of God and believed in it so much. I felt threatened because I've felt this way for years and to so suddenly feel incorrect in my thinking made me doubt just about everything that sets me up as a human being. I had to pull back after the initial exposure to really pull myself together a bit and to think. I've been trying to wade in again but much slower. I feel like I don't belong despite the very personal approach many of the members have shown. I was pulled aside by the head of the organization (the preacher if you will) after the initial meeting that I attended and was told about the small group and how she felt that it'd be a very worthwhile experience for me. It was left at that but here I am, a completely new person in an established congregation and immediately they want to make me feel welcome. The second time I attended (I skipped a week to try and figure out how I was feeling about being up to my elbows in the stuff), I was greeted and welcomed back like the prodigal son. That meeting I kept thinking about why I didn't believe which brought my thoughts back to Mom and Alesha. I still very much miss them and given my utter confusion on what to think I got a little upset. It didn't help the song we were singing was somewhat melancholy and seemed to be affecting more than just me. After the meeting, my friend, who seems to feel its her responsibility to make me feel like a part of the group and to help me with matters of faith given my current standing, and I talked about it for quite some time. I opened up a bit on my past (I generally don't, even to my friends) and the reasons why I think the way I do. After I spilled out my heart to her, she pulled aside some of the other members of the group and they prayed for me. That was a vaguely awkward situation having three people sitting with me praying to God for me to have strength and to feel more at ease. It was both awkward and surreal, but it was welcoming I guess.

I'd like to continue to write, but I need to head to class in a few minutes so I'll cut off here. If I get a chance later today I'll try to write some more.

I'll Be Home for Christmas, If Only in my Dreams

2008-12-22T00:17:00.000-08:00

I was supposed to be flying out of Portland on Saturday to Boise. The day started on a bright note. I got to the MAX without any incident despite the snow that was coming down and had been for a few hours. The machine that gives you the ticket to leave the fareless area was working and only took two tries to get my ticket. Everyone going out to the airport looked happy and cheerful. I listened to a few people talk about their holiday plans and everything was cheerful. I got to the airport and while I was waiting in the massive line for Southwest the people at the desks made the announcement, "All flights today have been canceled." I was heartbroken and decided to wait in line to see about getting another flight. When I got to the desk I was informed that my flight was supposed to actually take off just really late and I was checked and sent through security. Things were once again on a good note and I had lunch cheerful that I'd be going home.

Well, I'm headed back to my gate after lunch and once again the flight has been canceled. To my dismay, I once again spoke to a person at the desk and the next flight to Boise was on Monday evening. I took it like any sane person would and, I got back on the train to go back into town to my dorm. The crowd on the train were all frustrated and upset. A girl nearby was crying to her parents on her cell phone. It had been her first year of college, and she had moved far away and been really excited to go home. I was disgruntled, I decided to go back to the dorm and just wait it out. Well, then the train stopped. We waited 10 minutes, nothing. Half an hour, nothing. It's been an hour and the driver finally lets us know what's going on. The switches that move trains onto different tracks have been frozen. We can't go forward because there is another train in front of us that is supposed to be going to the airport. A maintenance crew is headed out to unfreeze the switch. So by now I've been talking with people helping get the girl who was crying to stop by telling jokes, and doing what I could to keep my own spirits up.

I think it was about the second hour when we started moving again. It took another hour to get back into town though because the trains were moving slow because of the conditions. It's been snowing all day and had gradually picked up. I say goodbye to my various acquaintances and step out into the blizzard and catch the streetcar that goes north and south to get close to my dorm. Close however is a relative term because it's still quite a ways from the closest stop to the building. I ended up trudging uphill in a blizzard carrying my luggage because the snow on the sidewalks made it impossible to wheel my suitcase. By this point I felt horrible. I've been standing stationary for several hours, I had just pushed through a blizzard with presents and clothes in tow uphill, and I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to get home.

Shortly after getting home and checking to see that all of my luggage was intact (you know, presents and what not) I lay down on my bed intending to relax my back and shoulder which were both yelling at me. It only took a moment or two before I felt dizzy and I fell asleep. I woke up once or twice during the night but I didn't move til about noon yesterday. My muscles still didn't really appreciate me, I still felt a bit dizzy, and my stomach was doing some nasty things. I spent most of the day in my dorm because it's warm and I'm still a little drained. I did make a few trips out to buy food and stumbled upon some interesting things.

1) The only shoveled sidewalk belonged to the firehouse behind my dorm.
2) There is enough snow in some places that staircases have become slopes.
3) The Red Line that actually goes to the airport is only running part of the way. I'll have to catch a bus from one of the stops to the actual airport.
4) Portland doesn't believe in plows. None of the streets have been cleaned up at all.
5) To drive, your car has to have chains. Fun stuff.

Well I'm going to attempt to get a few hours of sleep. I'm really stressed by all of this so I don't know how well that's going to go. Wish me luck on the traveling thing today.

He Who Saw Green

2008-12-01T04:30:00.000-08:00

The normally white ceiling of my bedroom was nondescript. It was made of planks of wood painted white. My house was old I had been told when I bought it. These things were not going through my head when I woke up though. Instead of the normal white planks of wood to greet me this morning, I was faced with pale green planks of wood. That was odd; the planks had been white yesterday.
I sat up in the queen sized bed I shared with my wife. Everything was light green. The ceiling, the walls, the end of my bed, the dresser in the left corner of the room. I turned to Carol, my wife. “Carol, wake up!”
Carol grunted incoherently and rolled away from my pestering.
“I’m serious. Something is wrong!”
“Five more minutes.”
I huff a bit at her unwillingness and get out of bed. I walk into the bathroom that joins to our room. I turn on the facet to throw some water in my face. Maybe I haven’t woken up yet and there was still some dust or grime in my eyes. The cold water cuts through my sleep deadened nerves. I look up at the mirror to see if my vision has corrected itself. To my dismay, my own green tinted complexion stares back at me. I walk out of our bathroom and say to Carol, “I don’t think I’m going to work today.”
“Why?”
I find my wife sat up in bed with her hair sticking up in various places. It’s hard not to smile at her when she’s like that. I’ve always found her bed head to be endearing. No one got to see it but me, and it made him feel special to see her without makeup on.
“I think something is wrong with my eyes.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
I glance around the room. The green-tinted furniture stared back at me, “I’m seeing green.”
“Green?” Carol paused and continued, “Have you been watching movies with weird diseases in them again?”
“What?”
“Jason, oh look at the time. We need to get moving. I’m sure it’s nothing, dear.”
I frowned, “Do you think I should call a doctor? I feel fine besides my vision acting weird.”
“Why don’t you try and get through the day. If it doesn’t get better we’ll call the doctor’s office tomorrow morning.”
I nodded grimly and got ready for the day. I showered, got dressed, took my medicine, and attempted to drink one cup of coffee before I walked to work. These things were familiar; I did them every day. It didn’t feel right with my vision acting as it was though. Showering didn’t really change except that the walls were now teal instead of the normal light blue. The water felt the same, the smell of my shampoo was the same, and the towel I used to dry my hair got damp in the same way. I tossed on my favorite shirt and some slacks for work. The purple little pill slipped down the back of my throat in the same way it always did. I couldn’t stand to drink my coffee that morning. Instead of the light brown drink that normally greeted me in the morning I was met with a disgusting greenish-brown. A greenish-brown drink should never be invented I’ve decided. It reminded me far too much of changing my nephew’s diaper. I opted to skip my morning cup of coffee.

- - -
Instead of rushing to work as I should have, I strolled along at an unhurried pace. I was going to be late for work, but my morning commute looked so different. I had to slow down and take in the sights. I had passed this way for years, but I hadn’t stopped to really look at it since I had learned the way. Perhaps I had taken the everyday occurrences for granted. The buildings I passed were the same ones that I always passed, but now they were tinted green. The people on the street looked a little sickly with their greenish faces. I watched the people around me as they walked by. What would they do if their vision suddenly changed on them? That thought bothered me. Why was I acting so calm? Wouldn’t most people be freaking out? Maybe it was my medicine. I think the doctor mentioned it had a chemical that acted as an anti-anxiety medicine in it. Did he? I don’t remember, but I’ll tell myself that. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
I eventually made it to work. I worked in a five story building made of tan stone. It was a nondescript building in all honesty. It was in an older part of the city so they all had a similar architectural feel and coloration to them. There was no flashy sign to announce what the building was either. On the glass door was the name of the partners who started the accounting firm and the business hours.
I glanced at my watch; I was already 10 minutes late. I made my through the door and took a left at the first hall. The second door on the left went to the stairs, and I made my way up the stairs to the third floor where my office was. I hadn’t been late in awhile; my boss would probably make an appearance to do the standard ‘why are you late, do not do so again’ speech. If I would just leave fifteen minutes earlier, I wouldn’t ever be late, and I wouldn’t have to hear her constantly nag me for being late. I didn’t want to have to be at work for fifteen extra minutes. Despite the job paying well, I certainly didn’t want to be here anymore than I had to be. I pushed these thoughts aside for the moment however. I had work to do, and the lecture would only waste more time if I wasn’t productive.
It wasn’t until after lunch when my boss showed up in my office. I was in the middle of working on a client’s taxes when I heard her head my way. My boss was named Nicole Barret. She was a short woman with shoulder length brown hair that she kept in a tight bun. She certainly kept the firm running smoothly with her no-nonsense attitude, but it earned her very few friends at work. Her arrival was always announced several moments before she actually arrived because of the staccato taps of her two inch heels on the wooden floor. She stepped through the doorframe of my office and my jaw nearly dropped. While most people I had passed today had a greenish tint to their complexions and clothes, Nicole was a darker green and it was essentially impossible to figure out what color her clothes were. Somewhere in the back of my head, I had the image of her yelling, “Nicole smash!” and going on the warpath in my somewhat cluttered office.
“You were late again. You’ve been on time for nearly two weeks. I was starting to like this trend. Why were you late?”
She stared down at me down her nose waiting for my reply. It was odd how I could be the one sitting at a desk, and it made no difference in dealing with her. She was queen of the building and there was no shield powerful enough to protect her victim from her infamous stare. “Ms. Barret, I apologize for being a bit late. I got a bit sidetracked this morning.”
“You got sidetracked? What could be so distracting that you would be ten minutes late?”
I tried to think of something plausible that could hold my attention for a length of time that I would notice on the way to work. I couldn’t just tell her that it felt like someone had wrapped a thin piece of green cellophane over my eyes…but something with my vision could work. It’d also explain if I had to go to the doctor tomorrow, “My eyes were bothering me. I think I need to see an optometrist. Maybe I need glasses. I’ll stay ten minutes past to make up the time if you’d like.”
“Don’t bother, everyone knows productivity goes down about an hour before we close. We had a meeting on getting that number up; I believe you were late to it. I expect you to be on time tomorrow.”
Nicole walked out of my office, and I let my shoulders sink in relief. It’s never fun having to deal with her. I returned my eyes to the paperwork in front of me; why had she been so much darker than everyone else? I know I hadn’t been exposed to people much after getting to work, but could something have developed while I was busy? I hadn’t felt any different since I woke up but something had changed about my condition. The unfinished work on my desk stared up blankly waiting to be completed. I didn’t feel like doing the work, but I also didn’t want to be behind, especially if I was going to the doctor tomorrow.
- - -
At the end of the day, I left the office and started the walk home. I repeated what I did this morning; I took my time and watched people as the bustled on their way. The standard work day was over, so why was everyone still in such a hurry? We lived in a nice city, but there was nobody strolling along at a relaxed pace just enjoying the sights. My vision had certainly changed since I had gotten into work. Instead of being tinted the same color, everyone was a slightly different color of green. It took a few minutes of looking at people before I managed to make out a pattern. The people dressed in business suits that probably cost more than my monthly rent were the same color as Nicole. People who were someone I might work with or meet as a client were also a darker green. In essence, the more casual and relaxed the person looked, the less dark they were. The only thing unchanged was the buildings and flowers. They were the same light green they had been this morning. My system of elite and casual people fell apart because of the inanimate objects. I tried to categorize them a few more times, but I couldn’t make a system that worked in all situations. I stopped in front of a window to look at my own reflection. A dark green face stared back at me. I wasn’t Hulk-green like Nicole was, but I certainly wasn’t light green like I had been this morning.
“Whatcha looking at, boss?”
The voice interrupted my thoughts and I turned around to face the man who had addressed me. The guy who had spoken was a miserable looking guy. He was dressed in raggedy, mismatched clothes with wildly different colors. His hair was stringy and unwashed as well. He looked like a bum in pretty much every way that I could think of. The only thing that wasn’t stereotypical was that he didn’t smell like he hadn’t bathed in months. Now that I thought about it, he didn’t smell like anything. I couldn’t smell him at all. I did a double-take of the bum; he also wasn’t green either. His skin was tanned, wrinkly, and had been exposed to the elements for a long time, but there was not a single trace of green to be found. The bum was waiting patiently for me to say something; he had a smile on his face, and his eyes were very much focused on me.
“You’re…different. You’re not green.”
“Green, boss? That’s a strange way to answer the question.”
“Oh, never mind. It’s just been an unusual day. Is there something you needed? I don’t have any change.”
“Ouch, boss. I ain’t no beggar. No need to insult my pride. You just looked confused is all. What’d you mean your days been unusual? What does it have to do with green?”
I felt like I could trust him. It almost made sense. I was talking to an angelic bum who would suddenly have the answer to what was going on with my vision and everything would be neat and tidy like a novel that you could pick up, read, and then never think about again. My day certainly had felt like the plot of a bad grocery store novel. Ah, what the hell, I’ll tell him. “Hah, you might think I’m crazy, but ever since I woke up this morning everything has been green. Buildings, people, et cetera. It’s all been green. Oh, it gets better too. After I left work people are now a different bunch of greens, and I can’t figure out why they were green in the first place, much less why they are different colors of green now.”
“That is pretty strange. You’re right; I kinda do think you’re crazy now.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I’m just saying, pal. Maybe you’re taking some kind of medication that’s messing with your head?”
I looked at the window and regarded my own reflection, “I take medicine, but it’s not supposed to mess with my vision. Any other ideas, I’m fresh out.”
“Have you gotten your eyes checked lately?”
“No, I was going to a doctor about that tomorrow.”
“You know, you seem alright except for the whole vision thing. Whatcha need the medicine for?”
I turned back to the angel bum as I have dubbed him in my head before I replied, “Not that it is any of your business, but I take them for clinical depression.”
“Aw, that’s a shame. You know, I personally don’t believe in them. You ever think it’s just all in your head? The whole depression and green vision thing. Maybe you’re really ok and no matter how much you rationalize it or try to make it make sense, you won’t be able to until you can actually think and feel like you’re supposed to.”
I was a bit surprised by the amount of thought he’d put in to it. I turned back to look at my expression and made a face at myself just to prove it was me. I don’t know why I did, but it felt like the right thing to do. “I don’t see how depression and green vision connect, buddy.”
“Mommy, why is that man talking to himself?”
The new voice caught me off guard, and I turned around sharply. Instead of my angel bum, there was a little boy and his mother staring back at me. She made a shushing noise at her kid and pulled him in the direction that they were going. She didn’t want to be too close to the insane guy who was talking to himself, I guess. I looked around the block, but I couldn’t find my mysterious angel bum.
- - -
I walked into the house and the smell of dinner wafted its way from the kitchen. It smelled like we were having tacos. I smiled; I loved tacos. I shut the door before I followed the smell into the kitchen. Carol was busy poking at the meat so that it’d cook on all sides when I saw her. I snuck up behind her and slipped an arm around her waist and pressed a kiss to the back of her head. “I’m home.”
“Mm, you’re late. Has your vision gotten back to normal?”
“That’s kind of how my entire day has been, and no, it hasn’t.”
“Late to work again?”
“Yeah, Ms. Barret said to not be late to work tomorrow.”
“Did you mention about maybe visiting the doctor tomorrow?
“I mentioned it briefly.”
“We’ll call the doctor’s office in the morning. Has anything else changed?”
“No, dear. I feel fine otherwise. Today was a nice day actually. The weather was nice today. I took my time walking back.”
The two of them had dinner, and talked about their days. I left out the part about people turning different colors of green so she wouldn’t worry. I didn’t take the second antidepressant that I was supposed to take after dinner either. The angel bum’s little speech had been playing in the back of my mind on the remainder of the trip home. I’ve been on those pills for a long time now; I wasn’t sure what it felt like without them anymore. Maybe going a few days without them would help clear things up.
We eventually climbed into bed after watching some movie on TV. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. It was hard to see the greenish tint on it with no lights on in our room. Carol was fluffing up her pillow beside me. I shut my eyes, “Carol, sweetie. Do you think that the whole green vision thing could possibly just be in my head?”
She pulled her attention away from her pillow, “I don’t know, hun. It seems kind of farfetched don’t you think? You’d have to believe it pretty strongly to perceive it. That sort of thing would have to be believed on a subconscious level I think. I think you’re overthinking it. We’ll call the doctor tomorrow and this will all get taken care of, ok? Get some sleep.”
She lay down and it only took a few minutes before her breathing slowed down. I looked at the ceiling and thought about it just a little more. Was I just stressed from work? Could it be a complication from my medicine? Could it all just be in my head? I drifted off as I thought about it.
The first thing I saw the next day was white. A plain white ceiling. For some reason, I knew it’d be a good day.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T02:43:00.000-08:00

This year, I will be going to my friend's house for Thanksgiving. I'm grateful for the chance to be with a family during a family oriented holiday. I would have been fine eating a frozen dinner and drinking a bottle of apple cider over the course of the weekend, but this alternative was offered, and I accepted.

I will admit, I'm more than just a little nervous. I'll be spending four days completely out of my comfort zone. I will admit that I am not the most social of people even in a close family setting. During most of our family gatherings, I tend to keep an eye on the kids. I don't feel like I'm old enough to sit around and make conversation with the adults unless they are asking me about school, but I'm not young enough to keep up with the limitless energy of the kids. So I stick to a slightly odd middle ground. The setup this year will be awkward for me because this isn't MY family that I'm spending it with. I'm sure they are wonderful people, but I don't really know what type of people they are.

Alesha has been on my mind a lot. I'm terrified of the holiday season because of that gap in our family. I'm scared of Christmas and New Years. I don't like crying...and I'm fairly certain there will be more than a few tears to end the year with. It brings to mind the night I first got home after going back to college. Seeing her picture did me in, and I just stood there and cried. I don't know if that effect will happen again since I have a picture of Alesha and I sitting above my computer so I see it multiple times a day. I don't know what I'll do if I get upset during Thanksgiving because of the home atmosphere. I think I'm mostly afraid of being a stranger looking in at something beautiful but unable to get through the three feet of glass between us.

The holidays always make me think of the other great loss in my life. It will be 12 years in April. I guess it doesn't sting as much anymore, but during the holidays is when I think about my Mom the most (with the exception of the week leading up to April 19th...never a good week for me). I try and bring up an image of her, but it's gotten really hard over the years.

I remember her hair...or rather the wig that looked like what her hair used to be. I recall she had fair skin, but that could have been a result of the therapy. It's shocking, but I remember the day she died more than I remember her. I haven't listened to the tape she made me in years so her voice has faded from memory as well. I do remember she sang my childhood lullabies on the tape and it always broke my heart. I've seen glimpses of her handwriting, and I always thought she had beautiful handwriting. I remember she used to like playing video games with Marie and I. Michelle wrote about how she saw Mom in a dream lately. I feel evil and selfish for the sheer envy it invoked in me...because I don't remember my mother very well. I couldn't construct a definitive image of her from memory until I got to see a picture of her again.

I have a wonderful family. I care for everyone in it. Still, sometimes I lay in bed and wonder how would things be different if Mom never got sick. What would Thanksgiving be like? What would Christmas be like? What would have my life been like if she had never died?

I remember that last morning. I remember Mom and Dad going off to the hospital because Momma wasn't feeling well. It was like 5am. The last time I saw her she was near the door to the garage. I remember coming back from Katie's softball game and everyone is there. I remember how Dad broke it to us. "She went to go see God."

Mom, if some part of you is out there...I hope you're happy. I hope you're free.

To Write Love on Her Arms

2008-11-12T02:19:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, is the second anniversary of 'To Write Love on Her Arms'. I participated in it discreetly last year since I was wearing a long sleeve shirt. However, the gist of the event is to help spread awareness of suicide and depression. The actual organization donates to treatment programs and recovery programs. The event is that followers simply write the word 'Love' on an arm. It's a show of support and self-awareness that these are real problems and real issues that need to be examined, discussed, and not shoved away by taboo. I'll provide a link to the non-profit organization that started this at the bottom.

January 9th 2007. A night that I won't forget. It was 11:11 when I finished taking the pills that I fully intended to kill me. I took them in groups of five with small amounts of water. For once in my life, they went down really easy. I was wearing my bath robe and pajamas because it was cold downstairs. When the task was done, I went and laid down in my nice warm bed. I had been laying in it making the decision. It took a while but my stomach started to hurt. It was quickly followed by a feverish feeling that crept up my spine and my head felt really light. It was an absolutely horrid feeling, and I squeezed my eyes shut as I felt the nausea start to kick in. It remained like this for quite some time before my body felt like it shut off, and I plunged into unconsciousness.

January 10th 2007. The sound of my alarm clock is a mixed blessing. A realization that I was still alive, I wasn't sure if I was happy or upset about that. Also, a realization that I was really really sick and needed to get to the bathroom NOW. Got sick and then took a shower. Go upstairs, drink some red crystal light go to school. Proceed to get sick twice during the day and it's obvious my friends are concerned. I tell one of them, and she starts crying in the middle of class. Nobody notices, not even the teacher. I drive home and have the sudden epiphany that I'm alive. A completely pure understanding that I could have died. Something simple and earth shattering and true. I could have stopped living.

That was nearly two years ago. Two years of ups, downs, joy, and pain. New friends, new places, new circumstances. I have a very personal reason for wanting to support this event. Even if its by doing nothing more than writing 'LOVE' on my arm.

These are real problems. Depression and suicide have been MY problems. I still deal with depression. I have days where its all I can do just to pull myself out of bed and go to class. Sometimes I don't make it to my morning one. It's suffocating and terrible. You just want to curl up in a ball and cry, but I don't like to cry. So I lay in bed and stare out the window and watch people outside and feel disconnected from the world. Sometimes I can break it and my day will turn out ok. Sometimes it sits on my shoulders and nothing I do can pull me out of it. 'Brevity' was one of those days.

Seeking help is the hardest part of this. There are mixed responses on the subject. "Change your life. Choose to not be unhappy" is the most common from my experience. Unfortunately, most of the time there are either triggers from every day occurrences or it's completely random and based off the flow of chemicals in your brain. I can assure everyone that I don't enjoy feeling utterly paralyzed by intense feelings of loneliness, sadness, or apathy. Apathy is my least favorite because it makes the distant feeling all the more acute. I start to lose focus and sometimes I have a hard time being sure that things are even real. It's a disconnect from the world and it's the roughest of the three.

Another method is chemical therapy. Anti-depressants. I was on them. Some people swear by them. I hated them. I was angry or apathetic when I was taking them. There were no other emotions. I went cold turkey after the 3rd or 4th type of medicine the doctor tried to treat me with. I don't want to go that route again. They didn't help.

Counseling is something I did last year. I liked it, but it was tiring. It was an hour long of looking a person eye to eye and talking. About school, relationships, families, memories, ambitions, insecurities, and a dozen other things. It was rather common that I'd go in, end up tearing up or full on crying, be laughing 10 minutes later, and then go back to the dorm and feel strangely exhausted. Have any of you ever kept eye contact with a person for an hour outside of blinking? There was nowhere else to look really. I went in with the mentality that if I was going to do it, I'd be completely honest, answer all the questions I had answers to, and essentially cut the crap. Unfortunately, the school is for short term situations and I believe we really only get 12 sessions. I forget if that's per term or per year. My counselor broke that rule last year since I spoke to her for 6 months on a weekly basis.

I imagine this post will upset some of my readers. Some people don't know about that event. A lot of people will be disgusted with me for attempting to commit suicide. I might get looked down upon, but that's exactly what To Write Love on Her Arms is about. It's about changing opinions and looking at this as a real problem as opposed to a weakness in a person. I will tell you that no one can feel more disgusted with me than myself. I feel selfish and pathetic every time the word 'suicide' is tossed around or how someone says 'I'm going to have to go kill myself now' in jest. It's a constant reminder that I screwed up in the past and now I get to deal with the psychological scars from that. Maybe I am weak for what I did two years age. Maybe I'm a bad person. It doesn't matter what I think, or anyone else thinks. If in writing this, I help change one person's opinion, one person's preconceived notions, one person's life, then I've changed the world because of my weakness. Maybe in putting this up it'll create a ripple that makes the world a better place, just a little.

So, I ask anyone willing to do something simple for what I feel is a good cause and one that affects every single one of you. On Thursday, November 13, 2008. Write 'LOVE' on your arms.

To Write Love on Her Arms

Technology

2008-11-11T12:56:00.001-08:00

Technology is a wonderful thing. It provides the ability to socialize with people around the world, buy and sell products that are otherwise unavailable, an easy way to present ideas, and such mundane things as do homework. It's a wonderful glorious thing.

Except when it doesn't work.

So I'm playing one of my various games last night and suddenly the power to my computer vanishes. I find this is odd because my lamp is still working. No big deal, I pull out the plug, re plug, try again, try a different outlet, figure it just overheated so I go to bed, try to replug in the morning...nothing. My computer has 2 hours of battery time in which I suddenly have to find an AC adapter because mine has stopped working for no reason that I can think of.

So I search and find a dell store at the mall. Cool, I haven't been there lately maybe I'll grab a bite to eat after I get my adapter. Turns out the listing is about 7 months old and the store is no longer there. I check a radioshack and no one in the city has what I need. They'd order it for me but it was way more expensive than what little research I'd managed to do on the product was ball-parking these at. So I figure I'll use what little power I had left on this rig of mine to buy the cheaper thing and just go without a computer for a few days.

So, I'm walking back to my dorm slightly dejected when I see another radioshack along the way. They aren't supposed to have it, but eh what the heck I'll check anyway. The very friendly sales associate looked in the back and found exactly one of what I was looking for. He scanned it and said, "Wow, you must be Irish or lucky or both. It's actually on sale." So I get my new ac adapter for about $20 cheaper than what I'd found on the net and its working great. It's also much more compact which makes me happy because the last chord was a behemoth and was kind of a pain to bring with me when I'd take my laptop with me when I knew there would be a power outlet at my destination.

So that was my adventure for the day. About 2-3 hours of trying to find my adapter, and finding it completely be random when it shouldn't have been at the store.

Marcus

Brevity

2008-11-06T02:05:00.000-08:00

Brevity: shortness of time or duration; briefness; the quality of expressing much in few words; terseness.

Today made me feel flayed. I feel raw and tired. Why? I don't know. That's really the easiest way of expressing how I feel. What am I doing here? What will the future be like? Is it worth it? What is it do I want? What is my purpose? Will this feeling ever go away? What is my deal today? Why do I feel this discouraged and disillusioned?

Three words can answer every question.

I'm going to lay in bed and listen to some music until I get tired enough to get some sleep. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Notes

2008-10-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

While reading for my Classical Greek Civ class tomorrow...today, I stumbled across a small piece of paper lodged about halfway through the book with a little note. It wasn't to anyone in particular. It was just a little blurb about a how pale people are here except this one guy who uses those spray on tans. The person (I'm assuming female from the handwriting) wanted to laugh in his face...which was orange.

I've left small notes in books that I've read and sold back to the university. Sometimes I'd write something like, "I hope whoever is reading this is having a good day." or something based on the story, "If you've managed to read this far without giving up and resorting to spark notes, I salute you."

I suppose some people might not enjoy getting a note from a complete stranger who leaves no method of reply. Maybe you don't want to know that someone has actually read this particular copy of the book. I, however, love getting these little things. I've replaced the note to the page it was at when it surprised me, and I plan on adding my own note somewhere near the back of the book. I haven't decided what to say yet. Maybe something random like the story given to me. Maybe something more meaningful to me that I can pass to someone else.

Maybe something like, "Don't look behind you!"

Kidding on that last one...though I wonder what kind of response that would create. I'd never find out, but it still gives me the chuckles.

But I don't want to Sleep

2008-10-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

20 Years Ago:
1. Recently conceived, prolly had just found out about me.
2. Wasn't really a person yet. Yay developmental stages
3. Living with Mom, Dad, Marie, most likely in Elko
10 Years Ago:
1. 9 years old
2. Played a lot of video games, did well in school. Not very social.
3. Lived with Dad and Marie in our yellow house.

5 Years Ago:
1. 14 years of age
2. Was either in middle school or making a break for high school
3. Lived with Dad, Kay, Marie, Ashley and Alesha.

3 Years Ago:
1. 16 years elapsed
2. Driving, whoa.
3. Lived with Dad, Kay, Ashley, and Alesha. (Think Marie was off at college)

1 Year Ago:
1. 18
2. I'm now a college student. Now to figure out what it is I'm doing...
3. Lived with my very loud room mate in the Ondine.

So Far This Year:
1. School, grieving, working, figuring out what I'm doing...still.
2. Been working on the whole opening up bit.
3. Living in Portland with my room mate Andrew, who is literally more quiet than I am.

Yesterday:
1. Slept a lot.
2. Studied for midterm that is today.
3. Ate a salad? My weekends are boring.

Today:
1. Done this quiz thingy.
2. More studying.
3. Have decided to go to bed. 2am is quite late.

Tomorrow:
1. Midterm in business! Aaack!
2. Have half of the Oresteia read.
3. Take a deep breath because midterms are done.

Write Frame of Mind

2008-10-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

I have midterms coming up this week. 2, Monday and Tuesday. I suppose I should be a smidge more stressed out about this, but frankly, I'm not. It's not because I'm completely prepared for the test (Looking through the study guide I don't seem to recall reading or hearing anything about some of these things...will be hitting the books this evening to cover the gaps).

My professors for these classes are both quite knowledgeable about the subject material and they can give a great deal of insight into the respective fields...which leads to the problem I have with the classes. It's spent mostly listening to anecdotes from the professor's past. I'm not against this as an effective method of showing importance for certain concepts. However, often times the concept he goes on a shpeal about is not related to the material we are covering or being tested on that day. This portion of class gets rather dull because we aren't going to be tested on this so it'd be a waste to fill my notes with accounts of my professors misadventures. As a result, I've taken to writing to myself in my notes on whatever is crossing my mind. To make this more time consuming, I've been doing it right handed.

Now, first and foremost, I'm left handed. This is why doing this right handed is such a big deal. When I first started, it was rather illegible. Holding a pen in my right hand is uncomfortable and I really don't know how to properly hold it to begin with. Spending some time in class looking at how most people held their pens and tilted their paper helped with this abit, but I still have to make a point to tell myself, "This is how it is done." From there I'd just write trying to keep it readable. This is a time consuming venture simply because I'm essentially teaching my muscles how to move to create certain letters. I've gotten to where it's legible, but it takes at least four times as long as writing with my left.

For more practice, I've started to alternate note-taking hands. I don't let myself fall behind in the lecture or anything like that. However, if I have time, I'll switch hands and write it right handed. Why am I doing this? I have no idea. Time filler, a skill that might be handy if I break my left hand, etc. Mostly because it lets me make corny puns like my title.

I'm a sucker for a good pun.

Intermission

2008-10-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

I apologize that I haven't updated lately. I've been super busy with school and just haven't had the time to really write anything. Besides that, I don't have any news to give so I lack material to put up. Sure, I've had writing prompts and two other writing exercises, but I'm waiting to hear back from my professor on how I can improve them before presenting them to the family, if I do. However, I just finished the paper I was working on and its awfully late, so I am going to go to bed now. Hope everyone is doing ok. I am doing fine up here. Just busy busy busy.

Exercise 2: Place

2008-10-08T01:56:00.001-07:00

So, I wrote this piece originally during the day before a class and got it done. Yay, no homework tonight. Well, during class it sat in the back of my mind. When I was eating dinner, it was still bothering me. I lay down to go to bed, its annoying the crap out of me. I read it over decided it was crap, and began to write a second version. By now, it's 11:30pm. I hm and haw over it before deciding, dangit, I have to go to the place just to remember it clearly so I could write about it and do it justice. So, its midnight and I'm standing at my little spot just trying to capture the moment. I make my way back home sit down and write the dang thing and I feel much much better...but I don't know if the computer lab is still open so I can't go print it. Yay for getting up early to print my paper for class. Anyway, here is the paper. It needs touching up but it'll do for a rough read.

It was midnight when I got there. My forever busy mind was causing havoc on my ability to sleep, and I figured a walk would help clear it. I have just such a place where I go when I need to escape from myself. I can be miles, hours, years away there. In a seemingly insignificant patch of concrete, I had found a lapse in space, time, reason. It was a door to someplace where I wasn’t me, and no one else really existed. Perhaps it helps that midnight was often the time I found myself trekking to this cold little spot of the world. No one was ever around.
The first thing that comes to my attention is the cold. It’s chilly tonight. I let a breath out and am surprised to see that my breath is visible. I realize belatedly that my cheeks sting ever so slightly from the cold wind and my hands feel just a tad numb at the fingertips. I bury my digits in my pockets as I arrive trying to bring some of the warmth back into them. I rest my weight on the concrete pillar with the number ‘364’ inset on the bottom and shut my eyes for a moment, a vain attempt to warm my eyes against the gentle, yet biting wind.
A loud blaring noise somewhere in the distance causes me to jump and open my eyes again. A second burst somewhere to the east breaks the silence and I recognize it to be a train. It’s a lonely sound but it gently fades away. I listen for it again but no more noise comes except for the cars on a nearby bridge. I hadn’t noticed that before. I must be more preoccupied than I thought.
I make a glance around at the encroaching shadows to make sure that I truly am alone in my miniature paradise. Yeah, nothing but shadows and the bright white light of a nearby streetlamp. I sighed again to be greeted by the wisp of my own breath dissipating into the cosmos. I turned away from the trivial image of the shadowed land out towards the water. This was the reason I came after all. Nothing in this world seemed to be able to enchant me like the water at this particular spot. I draw my semi-warmed hands to the black rail before me and lean my weight against it. The cold metal is unyielding, and I want to hiss at the sudden dissipation of heat as my warmth seeps out into the frigid metal.
As my vision sweets out across the river, it takes drinks up the image before me. The water is a hazy looking blue black. Flashing across it are lights from the closest bridge and the reflection of the cloudy sky. I glance at the sky and scowl at the orange lining on the clouds that I still find to be mildly disturbing. I was raised in a place where the sky didn’t have so much light pollution. I turn my attention back to the lit up river and force my eyes to relax like I’m looking at one of those ‘secret image’ books. Slowly, ever so slowly, I lose the texture of the small waves in the water. The light that previously capped them now stands alone in my mind. It begins to separate itself until I see nothing more than thousands of glowing swirls dancing across the black surface below them. I think for a moment that this is really just a trick of my mind, but I push it to the side and content myself with watching the swirls.
They all burn one of four brilliant colors as they dance across the waves. There are the bright bronze color ones that outnumber the rest and stand out the most. Less plentiful, but still easily as vibrant are the silver lights that appear in patches between the bronze. Further out into the water, lights the color of rubies and gold swirl. For the most part they remain in their own separate bands, but occasionally a few tentative strokes reach out and grace one another.
It’s a beautiful glowing mix of light, and I find myself let go of the words swimming constantly in the back of my head and I find myself feeling just a little empty. It’s a strange emptiness. Instead of it making me feel numb and alone, I find myself feeling like I can actually be filled and not burst from the input. I sigh again and push away to begin the trek home. It’s cold and late and all I needed was a moment to set things right again.

An Examination of Exhaustion

2008-10-06T00:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I've hard strange dreams lately. First off, I only dream when I'm sleeping lightly. When I sleep soundly, dreams don't occur. I've had dreams that have made me sad, horrified, confused, or just wanting nothing more than to get out of bed and pretend I hadn't slept at all.

The first dream that has bothered me left me feeling physically ill in the morning. It was an angry dream and it managed to capture all of my senses. In the dream, I killed a person. It was a very physical and painful death...there was blood everywhere. I was ripping flesh from the person. I wasn't content in the death of that person...I wanted to destroy him. The ripping reminded me of a warm ball of wax being ripped into pieces. There was resistance and there was warmth and the very sensation of separation echoed in the dream. It smelled coppery and all around me was the darkest red I've ever seen in my life. It covered my hands, my arms, the rest of my body. Warm and sticky and horrible. Red was a major motif in the dream. It was everywhere. It was how I felt. It was passionate, powerful, horrible, and demanded something. It was fury, fire, struggle, burning, consuming. That's the word. Consuming. It enveloped me. This horrible craving to wreak havoc and destruction. I woke up and was very close to making a break for the bathroom because of the way my stomach was rolling. I managed to calm down and get myself reacquainted with my surroundings. "It was only a dream" running through my head for most of the morning. I washed my hands a lot until the dream gradually eased itself away.

The next dream was one where I sat and witnessed my own funeral. I looked like how I see myself. I hadn't aged; I wasn't younger. It was just me, in a suit, in a coffin. It was a very lonely dream because I couldn't see the faces of the audience. The lack of senses was kind of noticeable. There was no sound. It was completely silent. Taking a step made no sound. It was a pure silence. It was so quiet it was unnatural. There was no smell. I couldn't move to touch anything. I just sort of was stuck watching this unnatural progression of faceless people in a church I didn't recognize. I woke up feeling very lonely. I think that was the day I wrote about last where the day was unpleasant.

I've been getting to bed early-ish because I'm tired from what sleep I've been getting. I've then proceeded to wake up an hour before my alarm clock even goes off. I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. My days are pleasant and my mind never comes to my dreams. I'm putting off sleep just because I don't feel like another rough night. I know I'm tired. My vision likes to unfocus when I'm tired. It gives everything an ethereal look. Otherworldly...yeah. Maybe I'll see something I wouldn't when I'm tired. Hallucinations are bad I've heard. I don't think I'll get that tired...its time for bed after all.

High Clouds and a Chance of Rain

2008-10-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

Today seems to be going out of its way to either annoy me, upset me, frustrate me, or otherwise just make me want to just go back to bed and cut myself off until tomorrow. It's only 10am and I really just want to climb back into bed.

I woke up this morning and I could just tell I hadn't slept well. Normally I can blink for a moment and be ready to get out of bed and spring into my day. Today, I just lay there staring at the ceiling and the grey clouds that had the city covered. It was already raining. I finally dragged myself out of bed and got ready. I spent five minutes looking for my wallet which was under a piece of paper on my desk. I'm running late now and the elevators stop on 5 floors between my floor and the ground floor. I go to my coffee shop (I needed some liquid encouragement) but it was packed and I'm running late already so I skipped it and went straight to class.

First thing this morning I have my fictional writing class. I adore this class generally, but today it was mildly upsetting. One of my peers wrote about a grandmother who (I'm guessing but the symptoms sound right) had cancer and died. It struck a chord with me and I opted not to say anything when we were commenting on it. We then had a classmate read his thing on his comfort object while he was being abused by his mother. It's a horrible situation...but I felt like such an awful person because I thought the story and his word choice was trite and pretentious. Yes, that was a terrible experience, but I just couldn't get over the literary mush. I think that's unfair of me.

The walk back was a damp one. It's still raining. When I'm feeling tired, I tend to feel like I'm in a vacuum. People sound like they are far far away even if I'm walking right next to them. My vision blurs after a point and anything beyond ten feet of my person becomes soft and just a tiny bit harder to see. It scares me, because I'm half afraid that things are going to fade away and I'll find out my reality is falling apart. I make a mantra in my head that I'm just tired, I should take a nap, everything is fine. It helps a little, but I don't feel safe until I'm back in my room and the world isn't trying to withdraw from my grasp.

A song called, "Memories of Green" is playing in the back of my head today. It gives my perspective a very...haunted feel. I doubt any of you have heard the song (it's from an old video game I played as a kid) but having a rough day like this and having that playing in my mind really makes me just want to go back to bed.

Prompt: Emily Dickenson's #501

2008-10-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

Prompt: "Narcotics cannot still the tooth that nibbles at the soul."

One, two, three, four, hold it, two, three, four, exhale. Yeah, that's good. A rough tap on the cigarette knocked the burned away remains of the paper and tabacco. Lift the bottle to your lips. Let it cut through the dryness at your throat. One, two, three, four. Swallow, drink some more. One, two, three, four. Shudder, breathe in and out. In the back of your mind try and remember why you are doing this. Yeah, still there. Cigarette again. It's burning low, can you smoke the filter? One, two, three, four. Cough and let it out. Shudder, wait that's out of time. Panic, which beat were you on? Try and calm down. Bottle, lips, one, two, three, gag and sputter. Room spins and colors blend. Floor falls up and darkness moves in. It's still there sitting in your mind. Guess you'll have to try again.

I was going to write something prose for that prompt...but it didn't quite work out that way. I didn't type it in a standard poem structure just because that is how it was written in my journal.

Exercise 1: Childhood Object

2008-09-30T21:30:00.001-07:00

The following is what I came up with for my first writing assignment for my fictional writing class. The instruction: Recall an object from your childhood home. Write a page describing the object, the memories associated with it, and what it symbolized for you.

Most children have a special object in their young lives that brings them comfort and safety. For some children, it is a blanket or a stuffed animal. My comfort object was a stuffed bear. I was rarely seen far from my stuffed comrade and impossible to comfort when he went missing.
My bear was affectionately named Teddy. My grandmother had made him for me when I was a baby. He wasn’t a soft, fuzzy bear like so many children have when they are younger. He lacked texture to speak of outside of the smile that had been stitched into his face. He had mismatched buttons for eyes and had been cut from a brown cloth. Because of wear and tear, Teddy quickly got quite ripped up. New stitching appeared to mend his battle wounds and the larger injuries were covered with a patch. He quickly became a work of modern art. Different colors of thread appeared in an ever spreading campaign to make him the most original bear seen to man. The patches would make the original brown stand out because they were never quite the same color as the original material.
Teddy was more to me than a simple soft and cuddly object to sleep with in my youth. He was a companion in a never ending adventure that never went farther than the neighbor’s house and was in bed at 8pm. He was there to protect me when the neighbor’s mean dog came into our yard, and would whisper that it was ok to be scared, because he was scared too. He’s gone now; he went the way of the garbage when getting ready to move because he fell apart. However, whenever I look back at my childhood, I can’t but help think fondly of my cotton-stuffed friend.

Contact, You Haunt Me So.

2008-09-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated lately, I've started school, and I'm 800 miles away.

I apologize for not blogging much since I got sick. I'm healthy once more. More people came back, I got busy, and I've taken to writing in ink just to get the rhythm of it back. Most of my classes prefer notes to be taken via pen and paper so I needed to get in practice again. Marie bought me a quill which I've played with as well. It looks funny to write with, is difficult to write with, and would never be a legitimate writing utensil. I still try just for fun.

Today was the first day of class. I had my intro to fictional writing this morning followed by my intro to sociology. Both look like they will be good classes. I need to buy books tomorrow for them. Tomorrow I have intro to business administration and classic Greek civ. Tomorrow looks like it'll be the more difficult of days simply because the business class is a longer class, and the classic Greek civ is going to involve some pretty hefty reading...which I knew it would.

My fictional writing class looks like its going to be the easiest course I take this term. It's mostly participation points and showing up each day. The professor told us she refuses to crush anyone's desire to write by grading the content of what we write so long as we fill the requirements she asks for. Those requirements include things like length and topic. Beyond that its rather wide open and I'm quite excited about that. An acquaintance of mine is in that class and it excites me to see a familiar face in one of my classes. I'm interested to see how such a diverse group of people intermingle. It'll also be interesting to see where we all fall in our writing skill.

Sociology looks like it won't be a terribly difficult class either. The teacher is funny, explains things well (thus far), and it's an interesting field of subject. For those not in the know, Sociology (as explained by my professor) is the study of people in groups with a bunch of other sub fields. It's a large class so there won't be any face to face teaching, but it also means it won't be too intensive by nature of the professor not wanting to grade 100 papers each week. Yeah, there are 100 people in the class.

None of the above has anything to do with the title. That word has been sitting in the back of my head since I got back and for the better part of the summer. I've done my best to avoid thinking about it, because it draws heavily from last school year. A trait the counselor and I addressed was my relationships with people around me. In fact, once the stress and grieving had worked itself out it became the focal point of most of our sessions. My friendships here are superficial, somewhat shallow, and if I asked my friends about me, they'd lack a lot of knowledge of my life previous to going to school. That in of itself isn't so terrible, but I still continue to not really let them in. As the year was coming to a close, I distanced myself more and more in hopes of making the goodbyes not be so painful. It also served to make the time spent away from my friends from being too lonely by weening myself off of their company. That relationship dynamic was a source of conversation with the counselor quite a bit. She compared my visits to it. I knew that there was going to be an end to the sessions and would I begin to stop talking.

In Elko, during the summer, I did what I could to try and improve my ties with the family. I'll admit that I still spent too much time lost in my computer, but I still tried to be more social when people were around. I'd have lunch with my sisters or chat with Kay when I could. Dad was a bit more difficult to make face to face contact with because of our conflicting work schedules, but I've been working on that relationship ever since I went to college for the first time. I still have a lot of work to do, but the process is difficult for me.

I'm back in Portland again and I've fallen back into my old habits. I'm still reclusive. The upper halls of the dorm are much more quiet than the freshman halls and it makes it harder to really socialize. I still hang out with my friends. I go on walks, hang out with them, go out and get dinner, and I've gone to the movies at least once. There is some distance between myself and my friends that wasn't there before, and I wonder if its really just all in my head. I'm still invited to everything, and I go on almost every occasion. Despite that, I feel lonely a lot. It'll be at completely random times and even sometimes when I'm actually with my friends. I just get a stab of being absolutely alone. Sometimes I'm ok with it and sometimes it really unnerves me.

I think I keep my distance from people because I'm afraid of losing people. I've had people pass away who I cared for very deeply. I've had really invested friendships that have fallen apart in the blink of an eye simply because I'm no longer a resource that friend needs anymore. It's happened more than a few times and I think it makes me hesitant to really put my heart into getting close to people. However, it's impossible to live in isolation and it leaves me in this strange place between wanting to reach out and take a person's hand and wanting to run screaming into the night.

Contact. That feeling of being wanted, loved, and quite vulnerable is both something I crave and fear. Contact is like a fire. If you don't get close enough to it you become cold and feel lifeless. If you get to close, it can burn you or be unhealthy.

I'm struggling to find myself that place where I'm warm.

Sickness

2008-09-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

So, I developed a stomach bug yesterday which pretty much took me out of commission for the entire day. I'm feeling much better today but I'm still taking it easy. I think getting sick away from home is a requirement of college. It means rolling out of bed getting your own medicine, getting your own liquids, etc. I managed to do just that and spent most of the day sleeping outside of a short stint so I'd actually sleep at night. I think its interesting that my room mate turned tail and ran home after he got sick one night. I haven't seen him since, I kinda wonder when he'll be back.

Having a room to myself is nice though.

Marcus

Glass Walls

2008-09-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think that the people of Portland just try too hard to be strange. They've taken this 'weird' stereotype and run with it, but I'm not sure if some of them are new to it or just like the attention of being over the top.

Today I was out walking to get something to eat (my meal plan do-hickey hasn't cleared yet so I can't eat in the cafeteria)when I come across a strange fellow also walking down the street. He was garbed in black from head to toe. Heavy black boots, a black trench coat, some band t-shirt plastered to his chest, and his hair done in a stereotypical 'emo' fashion. He was strutting (no, not walking, there was clearly a jaunt in his step) down the sidewalk trying to laugh insanely and spouting something about 'the man is in the box'. Most people just kind of looked at him for a moment and then went about their day. Stranger things have happened around here after all. He caught sight of me looking at him and strutted up to me laughing all the way and repeated his line about the man in the box.

I turned to him and looked him straight in the eye before saying, "Of course, we all are in boxes." I told him this with a very sincere tone. He looked at me funny after that and when that flicker of 'huh' crossed his face I put on a dejected face and tried to sound as sad as I could before saying, "Oh, you can't see them either. Nevermind." I then walked away.

Glancing at a window however showed me that he was kind of staring at me as I walked away looking quite confused.

It made me laugh once I turned the corner.

Transference

2008-09-22T10:11:00.001-07:00

Hello those of you who find yourself sitting upon the recently renovated blog that belongs to one M. Hess. I now write this from the 11th floor of the Ondine dormitory. It is always surprising to see the changes a life can take in only a few days. It's only been a few days since I was living in the basement of Elko, Nevada. I now reside in Portland and way up.

I suppose I should start this log on my doings after Dad left. He helped me move my things up and made sure my bed was made at least once...a quick glance over my shoulder tells me that I neglected to do so today. In my defense, I certainly wasn't thinking about making my bed when I rolled out of bed at nine. He left after that and the open-ended-ness of being on my own rolled in and I just sat at my desk for a moment thinking, "Holy crap, my day is wide open. What do I do now?"

I'm a fairly practical person, so I finished unpacking and set my half of the room up. While I was doing that my room mate showed up. He's a nice guy, but if possible he's quieter than I am. He left with his family and I finished unpacking. When that was done I decided to get myself cleaned up. I went and got myself a haircut, cut back the beard, and generally made myself presentable. I went for a walk to get myself reacquainted with the city. A few projects have been worked on and are nearing completion. The new student rec center has gone from being one floor to 5 floors and is utterly massive.

I wandered around the city and eventually came back to the dorms. I met up with a friend of mine and I hung out with her for awhile. She's an RA this year so her residents popped in and I met a few. I helped answer some questions and took to asking them about themselves. We led a small pack of the freshman to the local Safeway and there we ran into my buddy Lucius. Lucius and I ended up heading to a local place and getting some food before wandering around the city some more talking about whatever comes to mind. We spent a good hour on politics and religion and those things that are entertaining to talk about in my opinion. I got home around 2ish in the morning...yeah we wandered for quite some time.

I woke up early yesterday and went wandering some more. Yesterday was kind of a lonely day. I didn't find anymore friends to spend time with so some of it was inspired by wanderlust and the rest was spent relaxing in my dorm. I ended up buying a new jacket (funny, I'm putting a lot more attention on my image since I got back. Go figure eh?). It's come to my attention that my room mate goes to bed way way WAY earlier than I do so I was in bed a lot earlier as well. I felt guilty because me typing away at the computer is bound to make enough noise to wake him up so I succumb to bed much earlier.

Today, I woke up at nine am and I haven't done anything since. I'm getting hungry and should eat something soon. I'm catching a glimpse of an idea to ponder on and pondering is best done on the move in this city. A word is swimming around my head and it demands attention. Care to learn what word is currently haunting the wandering mind? Contact.

Thoughts of the Insomnious

2008-09-17T02:53:00.000-07:00

Have you ever stopped and thought on the principle ideal of what a life is? That one song from RENT tries its best to explain it. Is life nothing more than a collection of events strung out in a line that begins in birth and ends in death? What of the afterlife? Which story of paradise or perdition is correct? I've never been able to force myself to believe in any particular faith or dogma. It's amusing, but I wear a cross. It was a present and it's quite lovely really. However, I don't really want to talk about religion. It's unfair to attempt to understand anyone's view of a faith in general terms. General terms can't catch the complexities and we end up losing the small details which make it so much more than a collection of words and ideas.

When my younger sister passed away, I lost my perception of this world. Life and death became embodied for a short time. One wore my sister's face, the other flickered with a strange cacophony of people that I knew. I would look out the window of a class or my own room and just watch people. I looked at all of the life around me and found myself distinctly separated from it. I began to question if what was around me was real. How could I feel so pulled away and continue to be alive? A psychologist would most likely just say it was a part of the grieving process. My grieving was quiet and lonely. In that separation between myself and the entire world I often pondered my own death. Am I slowly marching towards a simple loss of existence? In a biological sense, I am. We all are. That is the fate that was decided for us when we were born mortal.

Yet, I sit and wonder upon the concept of self. I am not the same me that you see. You're life isn't what I know it to be. It comes back to generalities. We use them to understand and connect with others. If a person perceives a person to be alive, is that person then still alive? Alive in what sense? Was I alive when I was cut off from the world in the way I was? Alive is a general word meaning a certain state of being. There is the old thought that some people escape death by putting their thoughts and words out in such a way that people continue to know them long after death. Shakespeare wrote something about immortality and how he had achieved it. Is that really immortality? Is knowing a name and the words they bothered to put down truly all it takes to keep the self intact? It falls into the problem of living languages, generalities, and the steady march of death that is human existence. The words (quite a few ones that he made up) take on different meanings. Some become praise some, punishment. The words are generalities in of themselves. It's like trying to force a square through a circular hole. If the hole is big enough, it'll go through, but it won't fill in all the space. Finally, eventually this species is doomed to die. We'll either kill ourselves, a natural disaster will wipe us out, or millions of years in the future the sun will go supernova and blow away the planet. Sure, if we manage to colonize other planets the eventual demise of our race could be far flung, but some scientists believe the universe is cooling and starting to shrink to eventually become the nothing that it was before the 'Big Bang'. Yet what of the mind when biological death takes place? I'm not talking about your brain mind you. That's a biological thing and when biological death occurs it dies, but what of the consciousness that animates the body?

I am fond of the idea of reincarnation. It allows for my thoughts on the consciousness to expand outside of biology and into the realms of metaphysics. The body dies but the consciousness returns to whatever pool that it originally came from and intermingles with the rest. At that moment, this barrier that separates me from you and everyone from those around them collapses and the consciousness becomes a colony like mind. We lose our distinction and self and as birth comes about this essence separates itself and the barrier comes up and a new self is born. In the time (if we can speak of time in a place that ascends above the physical plane) as part of the collective the old memories are stripped away. I do not think those memories are destroyed. I think they become the things of dreams. Snippets leave with the new selves and they become the matter that flashes before our mind's eye when the mind and body are so lightly connected. Some are so strong people claim they have memories of a past life, because that is exactly what it would be. However, because the memories are not the memories of this self, they lose some of their distinction because we perceive the world in generalities. Perhaps that is why some dreams are so strange. We're seeing the world through some other person's perspective even if in a way it is our own. I can assure you, that I'm keeping all of this in mind should I ever decide this would make a fascinating read. I call dibs on publication rights.

I wonder if I'd be able to follow this train of thought or even have it before Alesha died and my world...changed. It may all be just an effect of staying up far too late...again. There is a reason I've titled it Thoughts of the Insomnious.

I know it's unhealthy to stay up this late. I also know its indulgent to sleep until 11am or noon. I used to be far far worse when it came to sleep however. Shortly after the funeral I was so frazzled from trying to keep everything in and already having my nerves shocked I found I couldn't sleep. My mind would take off and I'd roll over to see that two hours had passed and I was no closer to falling asleep. It didn't help my mental state at all as the counselor I saw weekly for six months can attest to. Nights where I had trouble sleeping (thinking about what I'd say the next day) my emotional state was all over the board. I would be able to walk in, tell her about classes, get caught on a thought, be in tears for ten minutes, and then crack a joke and suddenly I was having a hard time not laughing. I still have trouble sleeping. I still often roll over in bed and check the time to find it almost to the point that Dad has either started to move around or will be shortly. I'll have laid there for hours and its frustrating for me.

I suppose this blog has changed huh? I broke the idea of just posting things off of words and vague ideas. I still plan on doing that, but I suppose its about time I start opening up communication with family. I'm notoriously bad at that. I still don't guarantee constant updates. Especially not ones like this. Double spaced, I just typed out a four page paper on my thoughts. Half of it was nothing more than my mind wandering. Though I'm proud that it managed to stick to a few general themes. Themes based on single little words.

I still managed to write something off one word prompts...I just did it backwards. I figured out the prompts after I was done.

Bitter

2008-07-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

Once in awhile, he liked to stop in at a nearby coffee shop and be that guy who can be found bent over some writing medium hastily scratching out something into the paper. Today was one such day. He took a sip of the coffee nearby as he scrawled out another word before deciding he preferred another in its place.

After finishing up whatever drabble he had come up with before he took another sip of the black brew that made him a paying customer and as such was now among the privileged to remain inside the shop. He contemplated it for a moment before turning to a clean page and starting to write about the drink. The most distinctive feature of it was the heat and was quickly followed by a dry bitterness and finally a somewhat numbing aftertaste. Why was it that the masses enjoyed the beverage? It didn't really taste that good. It was acquired and most people had to load it with syrups and sugars to get it down. Was it the caffeine's stimulating affect? That seemed likely. He knew people that didn't function until at least their second cup. What about an idea of an image? Wasn't that why he was here? No, he just wanted a different location to write in. Sometimes it was nice to not live with the things being written. However, to return back to the image of carrying around a cup of coffee. What did it say about a person? Did it imply they were of a certain social level because they could afford it? Did it imply that person had to be awake and was willing to make the sacrifice of getting more rest for their objective and by proxy make them appear more willing to achieve? He shrugged sipping at the dark, bitter drink wondering when he had started to drink it black. Did he actually like the drink? Was it an image, a pleasure, an idea, what mysterious call did coffee have both over him and the rest of the world?

Sipping at it as he scratched out his strange thoughts, he really couldn't say.

Stars

2008-06-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

It was late. I'd escaped the house for the evening. I had been happy being with old friends and possible new ones. I never much enjoyed social settings. I am too shy to really function well in them; at least, that is what I tell myself. I was back home from college. I'll admit, I didn't want to come back. My little sister died not too long ago, and I knew it would be hard to be in the house that she was gone from. I sighed reminding myself that I was lucky. I had gotten to run away for nearly half a year. College and what not. The rest of my family that still had to live there had been through so much more. It had been difficult even though I had gotten to run away. I knew I wasn't really running, but all the same, it felt that way.

I drove into my parking place back at the house. Another sigh slipped out as my music cut off and I got out of the car. It was a beautiful night. I decided that instead of going in right away I'd stay out for just a moment. It was one of those calms before the storm. I sat on the patio and looked out at the limited view of the world I held from my perch. It gets darker here at night. There isn't so much light pollution to turn the sky a strange orange-grey all night. I realized the moon was out...I hadn't seen it in a long time. There were also stars out. I had missed the celestial bodies. You can't see them where I go to college. It had taken some getting used to. After all, I had been raised in a land where the sky was a brilliant blue and the nights would be pitch if not for the moon.

I sat there thinking on the skies for a while. When I was younger, I had believed in heaven and when asked where it was, I'd always point up. When my mother had passed, I remember looking at the stars whenever I happened to be outside and be filled with an intense feeling of sadness because Mom was up there in heaven, dancing among the stars. I even recall once that I had thought that the stars were her eyes keeping tabs on my sister and I. Sitting there, I wondered if my little sister was a star now too. I know I had seen a piece of a paper in my Dad's room where a star had been named after her. I suppose its funny; she really was a star.

I stood and went to go inside, but I stopped and looked back just in time to see a shooting star. That same old feeling of sorrow filled me and I nodded wondering if my little sister knew how much I missed her and was trying to tell me something. I sighed and went inside, letting those tears run down my face. No one was around to see them anyway.

11 Years

2008-04-19T02:56:00.001-07:00

I'm going to break my code on not writing about my life on this blog for just a small moment.

It's been 11 years, Mom. I miss you. I love you.

Hangover

2008-04-13T07:52:00.001-07:00

The first ray of sun pierced his eyes like a fiery spear. Never before had the sun been quite so bright as that particular morning his poor bruised mind told him. His stomach agreed on the ideal immediately and tried to roll out of bed on its own. He pulled the blinds shut and swore he'd never drink again.

(No, this is not me this morning, though it is really really bright. I just thought it'd be amusing to write.)

Flower

2008-03-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

It was one of the smallest pleasures he had ever known in his life. He had always loved flowers. They brought color and vibrant life wherever they bloomed. Sure, he held that secret fascination locked in the depths of his hear, because it was deemed unmasculine. The nature of man he had long decided was vicious and power hungry. The desire of mankind was to perpetually consume all around it to become more powerful. So he to was like them. He allowed his heart to grow cold and to put silly desires over the betterment of those who understood beauty and were free because they realized that power held only so much use.

That secret little love of flowers stayed with him his entire life though. He had gag ties with floral print, had a small garden in his backyard that he tended to as often as he could, and gave to projects that made parks and gardens in the city. He found a sense of peace being able to grasp that small piece of nature to his heart in a world so far removed from the world of animals and plants. There was more joy in the simple care of watering his garden than any fancy party he had to attend for business. He'd spend what hours he could in his little garden. It was peaceful to just sit in a chair and relax knowing he had created some corner of the world that he could call his paradise. He would read and write in the garden and some days he'd even try to sketch his favorite plants.

The man grew older and the chill of age was starting to settle in his bones. It was becoming ever more difficult to take care of his flowers. He refused to get a gardener. This garden was his Eden and he would not have anyone else's toil spilling in while he was its guardian. So he struggled to keep the flowers weeded and watered. The garden remained beautiful even as he had a harder and harder time taking care of it.

The man outlived many people he knew. He had close friends that knew of his secret corner of the world though they never said a word of it. As time pressed on, fewer and fewer friends were there to be called upon and talk to. Loneliness settled on the man's shoulders and the parade of funerals that he attended grew so tiring and sad. He spoke a few times when he knew a friend would want him to. He consoled the families of those he knew. He had never had a family of his own, but he was deemed "Uncle" by many of the children of his peers and even some of their grandchildren. In a way, he had a family. They could see the devastation in the man's eyes. The smile seemed a little more weary everyday and they knew his burdens were so very great. The only time he would really be at ease was in his garden.

One day, he stopped answering calls. He knew it would be the day. He spent it preparing Eden as best he could before he settled into a chair he had brought out to the garden to sit in and read when he was a younger man. The sun was starting to set on the day, and Eden was bathed in gold as if the Divine himself looked upon the garden with joy and brilliance. The man smiled, the first real smile he had shown in years and passed away quietly surrounded in his flowers.

He was found that way, the same smile on his face, and the garden still as glorious as the first spring that had come upon it.

His funeral was beautiful. He had many friends speaking of their memories with him. His casket was surrounded in flowers, his favorites, though not from Eden. No one dared touch that mythical little place that he had created.

Photographs

2008-03-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

He looked at the photos on his desk one evening. He had noticed that they were dusty and had absently taken a sweatshirt sleeve to the images.Its funny he thought, how much each picture held a fragment of a memory. They helped solidify the past in a very concrete way. It was an image to remind him that he done that thing or gone to this place with that person. It made him feel nostalgic. Some of the pictures had been with friends he may very well never see again. Some of the places would never be visited again. Yet they made up a huge part of one experience he had on this planet.

He set the photo back down on its rightful place by his lamp. It was the most predominately placed one he had. All he had to do was look up, and he could look at it. Was it anymore special than the others? Two more pictures in the room came from the same event, but they didn't hold such a place of honor. It was special to him he decided. In the picture was the man and two of his friends. It had been taken in front of a restaurant that had served them dinner one evening. They had all been getting close to a period in their lives where they would have to go their separate ways in life. That notion was a little saddening to the man. They had been such good friends back then, but time had marched steadily on. He got a call once in awhile, and he called one of them once in a blue moon. The problem with the city though, the moon was hard to find when the clouds never seemed to move, and the lights dimmed the sky. He had lost contact with the other, and it had been more upsetting to realize it didn't bother him that much that to realize she was yet another friend lost to distance and disinterest.

The man sighed and turned back to his work. He had much to do, and he never had enough time to stop to think about the past. Think about the past for a moment, and the present shoots right by, and the future becomes just that much more of a mess. There wasn't enough time in the world to really miss all of those lost loved ones. The ones really gone and those who were to far away to really keep in touch with.

It took ten minutes of casting a glance up at the photo to realize he couldn't focus on the work he had to do. There was a hole in his heart that was crying out for those old friends that he left behind. He checked the time and figured it wasn't too late for the one friend who he could still call. Maybe she'd be home and able to chat for a few minutes. He missed her among others. He turned away from his computer and stacks of paper and dialed her up.

It was a nice chat about nothing, but when got back to work he felt just a little happier with his life.

Rain

2008-03-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

Rain is nothing more than drops of water falling from the sky I tell myself. Its not poetic, its not romantic, its nothing more than water collecting in the atmosphere until they become heavy enough to fall. Silly childish memories of how raindrops are like man rush to through my mind and I push them away forcefully. The word 'redemption' floating in and out of my thoughts. How could it be redemption? Its just a natural phenomenon there is no hidden beauty. No, theres beauty in how it works and what it does, but its nothing more than water.

I'm walking in the rain, again. It rains a lot in this place. The further away from home I get, the worse the storm gets. It's a distant roar of thunder in the distance and the screams of wind whipping through the buildings. I'm not even really sure where I'm going, the rain is cruel and unrelenting. I know there are places to hide from the fury of the storm, but I'm defiant. Its a battle both around me and in my head. Trying to force the nature of an artist down, is just as useless as rushing headfirst into a storm. The symbols and elegant words dancing in my head despite my feelings of how unpractical they are. What good will those words do me? Why can't I just see things for what they are instead of imposing a different unconnected meaning to them? How can a man be like a raindrop? Why is the word redemption in the rain? There are flickers of light in this inner storm. Understanding and truth cracking the plane of my opposition like the distant lightning splitting open the cloud filled sky.

I use the logic I've developed to try and fight off that romanticizing nature. Dictionary meanings and examples of science fighting to gain a grip. A man can make a good living using science and logic, but I don't want that way of life. I want to look at things and find stories in all the hidden places. I want to write about the thunderclaps of inspiration and creation. Its not an easy life I keep telling myself. What will I have to show for a life like that where I try to create? I'm no God. I can't create. I snarl, angry at myself because I realize I'm making no change in my heart. I don't want to be a man of science. I want to LIVE. I've been a coward because I think by having a few more skills will make life easier. Life is hell I remind myself. Its a war that can never be won, but there is glory to be found.

The wind screams around me, drowning out the outside world as my own inner battle seems to work itself into the fury of the storm. I'm soaked to the bone and my fingers have long gone numb. A new word finds itself into my mind. A fresh look at this driving rain that I find myself in. Passion. Its a wild ravenous beast swirling in my head and I cast out the notion that rain is nothing more than water. Its a thousand different things. It's a giver of creation and death. Its a quiet contemplation or an explosive berserker sweeping all things aside.

I chuckle to myself as I pull myself under an awning. It wouldn't do me much good at this point. I'm wet, cold, but the shaking isn't from the cold. No, its a vigor I haven't felt in years. I realized something in that violent euphoria as it sought to drown me in its demands. I am a lot like the rain. I can be calm and quiet. I can be explosive and passionate. I refuse to be a simple definition. I can be a thousand things, and I think that suits me fine.

Carnival

2008-02-29T15:17:00.000-08:00

The sun overhead is really overbearing. I should expect that, seeing as the carnival is on blacktop instead of the dirt they used to be held on. I don't know why they moved it, but I preferred where they used to be.

Its funny to be at the carnival these days. Gone are the days of youth where I wanted to endlessly hop on the rides myself and eventually get sick. Instead, I prefer to take my nephews and nieces along and watch them have fun. They enjoy hamming it up on the kiddy rides. Its like they become lost in their own little worlds shooting down other airmen or looking at the scenery as they travel in circles on their moving bugs. I stop and wonder to see if I can recall if I did those things myself, but I don't ever remember riding on the kiddy rides as a little one.

I pause wondering why I'm acting like I'm so much older than I really am. I'm still not that old that I shouldn't be having fun myself. To prove this to myself, I take the eldest of my family's spawn and truck over to my favorite ride. Its a great big boat decorated with ridiculously attired pirates striking exaggerated poses for all eternity. Its a simple ride, but the feeling of weightlessness as it swings back and forth has always been my favorite. I often would let myself be lifted off the seat and hang on by linking my feet underneath the seat in front of me. I didn't allow myself to get excited like I used to, but rather I kept tabs on my charge. He seemed a little nervous but once the ride was going he lightened up a little. The boy was a little too withdrawn for his age in my opinion, but I had never seen him at school so I wasn't sure if that was true or not. Either way, he was a good kid.

After we stepped off the ride, the younger ones swarmed us wanting to come along, and I agreed to go one more time with a few of the older ones. It didn't go quite as smoothly as the first ride since the younger ones got a little afraid at how high we were going, but I smiled and was happy anyway. I was getting to share a little piece of my life with them and who knows. Maybe someday this will become one of their favorite rides when the carnival comes to town.

Memory

2008-02-29T13:53:00.000-08:00

Photo albums were really the best way to go about remembering things. Though, they could be misleading and tell a story of their own. They were a preservation of history and a way to remember loved ones.

She sighed looking over the pictures of Christmas. It was such a happy time. Everyone had been happy, completely stuffed with food, and the kids were having a blast. It was one of the few times the family actually felt like a family. By the end of pictures, it was easy to tell everyone wanted to get off the stairs and go back to conversations or running around in the children's case. But the pictures were good natured and everyone would appreciate them.

The hardest part of looking or making a photo album were the people who were now missing. In this case, one of the younger ones would no longer grace any future pictures. It was hard to even look at the pictures just yet. It had been so sudden and so tragic. It had brought the family back together again, but the cause wasn't for a happy one. She sighed and put the pictures down feeling her eyes beginning to burn with unshed tears. Perhaps it was time to take a break. Things were going to be hard no matter how long this took, but the photo album would get done soon enough.

A thousand miles away a brother with ink stained hands set down his pen in frustration again. He'd been told to write something to help express the loss, but even thinking about it made it so hard to focus. His mind would wander and get lost in those happy moments and then he'd be reminded that memories were all he had. He was doing his best to write something, anything, just so he knew that the memories wouldn't fade away in time. This was his way of immortalizing his lost loved one. There were already blotched words where a tear hit the page, and he'd had to stop because he couldn't read his own scratchy handwriting anymore. It was hard to think about. It was hard to look back at those happy memories and try to hold them together. He knew he'd get through it, the sun always rises and all that.

But to both of them, this strange new world felt just a little more empty than the one they knew.

Green

2008-02-27T21:55:00.000-08:00

In the desert, green was an elusive thing. It'd appear for brief patches of the year before the sun turned everything brown. Green, in the desert, was something to cherish. It was a sign of life and vitality. When the landscape normally composed of browns and tans, the sharp contrast of green made it all the more appealing.

There are places that are always green. It could be the coldest month of the year and the trees are still green. The grass never changes any other color. These places were so full of life that nothing ever changed. There were no changes where the sun was too hot that the grass would become dry and brittle. There was no frost that sealed the water away and wrecked that devastation. The variation in highs and lows was so insignificant, time itself seemed to stand still. How could someplace be so absolutely bursting with life, the desert dweller had to ask. How could there not be full seasons where the land lay scorched or frozen? The dweller would walk in the winter wearing a light coat and still see green leaves in the trees and the ground a muddy green mess. It made no sense and the sheer power of green seemed weakened because there was no change.

Eventually the desert dweller returned to the desert and saw the great expanses of brown and tan. There was no green and there was a comforting presence in that contrast. Time seemed to flow in the seasons and the desert dweller was glad for that ability to cherish green all the more because it knew that eventually it would fade and winter or summer would come again.

Prompts Placeholders

2008-02-26T16:31:00.000-08:00

This post is simply so I can write down a few of the prompts I've received through conversation that I don't have time to write just yet.

sister
tango
crazy
satellite
~~memory~~
Family
Brother
mud
~~rain~~
good-bye
starshine
~~carnival~~

Thats all thus far. I imagine more will come up or I'll pick them up on my own.

Snow

2008-02-26T10:18:00.000-08:00

*thud*

A sharp, biting cold announced the snowball fight. It was cold enough that the initial impact was the only sensation at first, but as soon as the snow fell into the back of his coat against his warm skin, he had to retaliate.

He whipped around to take in his attacker and paled slightly. Standing before him, were his two nephews and his niece. He was home for the holidays, and it would seem the trio were getting their revenge on him for going so far away. There was a short stand off where he stared at his relatives and they stared back at him impishly. He could already hear his sister yelling at him for letting her children get cold and wet. Nevermind that the three terrors were going to pound him senselessly until he eventually submitted.

The younger of the brothers launched the next ball at me. It was a good throw, he had joined a baseball team if I recall correctly. I ducked under it and scooped up a handful of my own and threw a wild pitch while running for cover. I didn't expect my throw to mean anything...and it didn't. It landed nowhere near the three menaces and they descended on me like wolves. I had managed to put a tree between myself and them and it took a few hits in place of me, but the children ran quickly to get in positions to get at me from different angles, while they too found cover. Since when had they gotten so good at this?

There was one throw from one of the kids that hit another by sheer luck. They weren't old enough yet to understand friendly fire and the battle went from a three on one to a free for all. I hadn't seen that coming, but it worked out in my favor. It didn't take long before we were all completely drenched and cold. I finally had to pull our the authoritative uncle voice to get them to stop and to get them headed inside their house, which I had come to visit.

My sister and her husband were watching tv on the couch when the freezing warriors stampeded into the house followed shortly by myself. My sister sighed and sent her children upstairs to get dry clothes on. I was handed a towel to dry off and I sat in front of their fireplace for a bit, listening to the kids plan their next ambush loudly upstairs.

Cursive

2008-02-25T19:08:00.000-08:00

Ink is a troublesome thing he thought to himself. If it was touched before it was dry, it'd smudge. However, it was simply impossible to get that same look in any other medium.

He smiled as he finished the last character on the page and rested back in his chair. It was kind of silly to look at the piece of paper as one would look at a piece of art. Words weren't pictures after all. They were words. A thought. One that would last as long as the page and ink were intact.

The scribe put his weary hand to his chin and pondered the page for awhile. Why shouldn't a person look at a piece of literature like it was a piece of art? Literally, literature was a form of art. It was a way of expression and one that could last just as long as any painting or sculpture. It had just as many subtle hints of form as any piece of artwork he had surely ever seen. It was said that a man or woman could be analyzed and exposed just with a little bit of looking at a piece of his writing. It could be written in so many different ways and mediums.

He looked at his own writing and wondered what exactly people would be able to see hinted in the smooth lines of his penmanship. Was the fact that he crossed his t's high a sign of something? Were the thin loops of his lower case Ls symbolic of some hidden meaning? If they were, he wasn't aware of it. He was content to just look at the swirling and dancing lines and enjoy them for simply what they were. It may be his profession to analyze and record. It may be his duty to search the meanings hidden between the lines and the histories contained in the thick leather-bound tomes. But deep down, he knew that he could always just stop for a moment and lose himself in the gentle swirl of lines that had a beauty all their own.

Prompts and Muses

2008-02-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

Hm, a new place to write. This would be my fourth...no...fifth online place where I can write out my thoughts. This will not be a testament of my life. I have far better places to do that. No, I'd like this blog to be a place where I can attempt to capture glimpses of creativity and make something again. Its been a long time since I've slipped into the world of fiction when it comes to my own writing. Its been my immediate thoughts, and the writing I'm required to do. Neither of which inspire creation. I want to make something again. Even if its just simply a single moment. I think those were my favorite pieces to write. Why capture a year when I can show the importance of a single moment?

What I really need now though, are prompts. I know no one even knows that this exists yet, but a single word is enough to start a story going. I've read a lot of little drabble pieces in the past year and they seem rather fun.

I guess, when or if anyone finds this, I'd just like to ask if any of you could give a prompt to write about.