Weather forecast at 28

“ I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end. ”
— Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

 [Drafted 10/11/17, edited December]

Weather forecast at 28:
 I seem to finally be growing into myself. My behavior has become in-line with my age; my financial situation has become in-line or somewhat above-average, though I foresee it skewing to below-average into my 30s; my syntax seems to still be keeping ahead of my age, according to others; my looks have overtaken my age, also according to others.

When people find out I moved to Colorado, they ask how I like it; this is the most common question I'm asked. Because many of the people asking have also come from out-of-state, I get the impression they're seeking confirmation that we're all having fun and have made the right choice in moving.

I hypothesize there are many forms of vampirism here, not all of which are directly related to Colorado. I do feel more worn down here than I did in Dallas, which is part of the reason I'm abandoning the geography. The atmospheric dryness is one form of vampirism, compounded by my work at the library - books can be very water greedy at times - though I find that to be a somewhat acceptable occasion to be sucked dry, as it were.

I think Tuesdays are my favorite in the work week. Often the office will empty or be mostly empty and I can complete my work and do what I want. It reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode about a man who does to an office-for-one each day to perform seemingly meaningless work for an unseen employer.
Thursdays are my least favorite day in the work week. People linger to meet with a VP who comes in town. It means having to order Jimmy John's. And I want nothing to do with that restaurant. The orders are always wrong. And the twenty-two year old assistant manager mewls from his office: "When will my free lunch get here? When will I have my Jimmy Chips?" And I close the door to his office on him. I can balance budgets, payment schedules, and work flows, but somehow I can't sort out lunch orders. Eventually I am in my car with my own homemade lunch, and it's Fall, and I watch falling leaves cover my windshield. At the end of the day I drive home, leaving a cloud of leaves behind me; the Spirit of Winter casting aside the remains of the living.

This has been a year of large personal growth in Colorado.
Things I have come to realize about myself:
1. I pay more attention to my face blindness; actually noticing my reliance on body structure, and the way people carry those bodies, to recall who they are. People look askance when I mention it.
2. I sometimes feel light-headed. I see things more often, that persist longer; lights, shadows, and random color vibrancy of objects. I have always payed attention to tricks of light, and distortions due to fatigue since I was young. I distinguish past-day examples from present-day occurrences.
3. Small internal battles are ongoing; the challenges to reality; and feeling like everything is chaos and targeting me, when it is within me projecting outwards (I have only noticed this happening once, and it stopped when I noticed it). ["Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - PKD]

This is a survey of themes that recurred throughout 2017. I'm looking forward to the coming changes of 2018 with mute excitement and hope. This is, perhaps, the most human I can be: to turn from the American Dream of a guaranteed comfortable cage and continuously pursue freedom, which carries with it its own special brand of contentedness. Lastly, I miss my books and look forward to being reunited with them.

The Universe

Medium: Sand, Black Construction Paper
Magnification: 100x

Cardcaptor Sakura

Tree Without Bark

Those who react quickly and calmly survive. Those who live very long, perhaps react slowly (viz. via a different time frame), and have other defenses that allow them to survive. Animals use their senses to avoid or overcome peril; trees develop tough skin to withstand dangers. I'm too slow for adequate logical reaction, and too frail for experiences that may wash over me.
A tree without bark.

The Ghost in the Shell

Humans can't help but think of themselves in animal terms, physically and behaviorally; e.g. having a cat-like appearance, or moving with cat-like grace. If they were to come back after death, the answer is invariably as some sort of living thing, often not another human experience. People naturally fall back on what is known and comfortable, which means looking backward. They don't consider machines as an acceptable next step and purposely stunt their evolution. Presumably, this is due to the fear of a loss of human sensations, which some might consider the loss of what it means to be human/alive.

The ecological definition of "keystone species" is one that can be used as a signal of environmental problems, or would lead to drastic changes if it were completely removed. In other words, a keystone species is an important link in the web making up a biome. I think an alternate definition is a species that can replicate the services of another integral species that migrates or dies off. As the cognitive apex species, humans have created problems as well as manifested solutions. But there is a limit to the number and types of gaps we can fill. However, as tool-makers, we are creating thoughtful artifacts that can solve many more problems more efficiently. Prediction: Robots and AI will be the next apex keystone species.

Earth is becoming cognizant. In the pursuits of efficient information sharing, consumption, and leisurely distraction, humans are laying the needed infrastructure of tubes, lines, and satellites. The planet is receiving an artificial nervous system on top of the natural nervous system. Like ants manipulating fungi, assisting the creation of networks, who knows at what point a global consciousness would arise, and what it would look like.

Reality, As We Know It

Sleeping In

Weekend Plans

Atey Ghailan

Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain

Seen at a Thanksgiving Table

A long ovular table comfortably surrounded by chairs. Family is seated to dinner: old and young, immediate and extended. The typical dinnertime conversations of those who don't get together often: where one is and what one does. Occasional pseudo-intellectual topics proffered over the glowing screen of a smartphone. At the table, I feel like I've seen this before, and I have. The family/friend reunion meal shown in innumerable movies and TV shows, inspired by, or modeled after, us. Only this time I'm in the movie, although too perturbed to participate in the acting. I look over my shoulder and see myself standing in a doorway, seeing the scene from the appropriate perspective of a camera - watching me watch myself.

Images of Love

Compression (Fragment)

My body is actively compressing itself into a single point in space. The bridge of my mouth closes in and teeth jumble together. The body naturally falls into a sitting position, followed by slouching, and continued crumpling and folding. The body shrinks with age, making the mathematically perfect form of a point the oldest thing in existence. Upon closer inspection, what appears to be a point gains depth and texture. Like approaching and entering a perfectly circular hole in the ground, the sides of the passage develop higher resolution in passing. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that, with careful observation, I can feel my body converging and I am becoming infinite.

Toradora

Toradora

Yozakura Quartet OVA

Inverse Camus

'In the midst of summer, I found there was, within me, an invincible winter.' -inverse Camus

Sex

Sex is an activity that is referred to as a possession. In conversation, people say they have sex instead of doing sex. "Doing" is straightforward, but I don't understand what it means to "have" it. Therefore, it eludes me and I cannot have it.

Images of Love

Dust

Hour ten. I-70.

The beginning of the transition to numbness, the liminal moment of a road trip where you are too far to turn back and too close to stop for the day. You got up early, ate a filling breakfast, and have been stopping only to fill the tank. You aren't yet at the point of hallucinatory fatigue.

The drive is smooth and straight, and the landscape is a rolling gray-green, a red barn or silo every so often. The drive is an extended classical ambience, like the instrumentals in Moby's When It's Cold I'd Like to Die. Cars drift close behind, break slightly as they shift lanes, and very slowly drift ahead. If you weren't moving they would essentially be passing at one miles per hour.

A compact SUV passes in front of you at a distance. The driver's window lowers and a white cloud emerges and begins dissipating. In a few seconds, you drive through the transparent veil of dust. Thousands or tens of thousands of particles enter the front grill of your car, a large percentage immediately wiping out on the metal innards. The remainder enter the air intake for the interior fan and bounce through the plastic tubes until they emerge from an interior vent. Another large amount wipe out on the interior, and your clothes, and your skin. The remainder wind up in your nose, bouncing through the fleshy tubes, into the blood stream to the brain.

The back of your head prickles with gooseflesh; your hearing sounds like listening through cotton; your pupils pulse. You become aware of the various materials of the car stretching and sighing. Clouds appear to form and burst. The sunlight trickles through them causing shadow waves, like on the bottom of a riverbed. Your car passes into an extended shadow wave, the shade immediately perceptible to all senses. You shiver.

You aren't in a hurry, but you are on the run. The objective is to stay one step ahead. Sometimes you feel like a giant fleeing a human; the slowness of a single step is all that's needed to stay out of reach. The time between steps can seem long and become comfortable until the pursuer is spotted at a distance. Death approaches patiently, unperturbed. You can feel the proximity and know the time has come to move again. Time to take the next step.

Enemy

The Thirteenth Floor

In for the Night

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

"The snow was as my mother's tablecloth, carefully ironed each night." - Henry Thoreau
 

Cleared for Takeoff by Sammy Slabbinck

Waves

Sallie Harrison