Crumbs

Individual Realities

"Things have been feeling different lately."
"I'm liking the new you, so don't change."

Innocent words, variations of which we overhear every day. Simple phrases and requests we may quickly let pass. And we experience a comfortable feeling if we aren't paying close attention to the comments that seem to pertain to us. It's the feeling of something overtaking and overlapping something else; it's the feeling of realities clashing against each other like the shifting colors of an anole. Humans are continually usurping each other in these small ways and it's important to be cautious of the language with which we are presented.

An interesting idea would be the concoction of an opinion so subtle that it moves from person to person until all people believe it. What would that say or mean in general and of the person who concocted the opinion? Does it ever stop at just that person?

Magnolia

Tsubasa

Magnolia

Dengue Fever

American Society

A strong hailstorm that looks like oxygen bubbles floating in reverse, downward from the surface of the ocean. Called a "catastrophe," people huddle - with refreshments - under "relief tents" as dents and windshields are repaired on their damaged, ever-depreciating, assets. No deaths occurred during the storm, just the rending of clothes and wails toward the sky because the vehicle was a recent purchase and the loan still accrued interest. Yes, it was a catastrophic time, as declared by those who had to financially cover it.

Odd Consideration

Not too long ago, humans kept reading material by their toilets. Those were the days of 100% fiber diets.

Those Who Die Alone

A Person collapses in the street and you hurry over and call an ambulance. Because the Person is alone, you travel with the ambulance to the hospital where a nurse asks if you are a relative. You say no; therefore, you have to wait outside. No relatives come because the Person has no living family. The System has dictated they must die alone. And so it goes.

Tsubasa

Tsubasa

The Note

The note read: "Chose the wrong species. Will try again."

The Mean

Most people will be frugal for a day, healthy for a week, and that’s about the gist of it. They are continually looking up averages and statistics, and forgetting them, because the averages don’t apply to those who aren’t average.

Wolf Children

Wolf's Rain

I'm seeing things I don't understand, and thinking about things I can't understand.

Brick

Desire to Become Digital

Current Mood:
Quiet

Are we different online, more interesting, and does our internet and physical presence change geographically? Perhaps Dallas holds too many memories, a mass that leaves no room and will to create; or Colorado holds too few, a void and longing needing to be filled by some outlet. The DFW character, during a contentious scene in The End of the Tour, stated, "If we had done this by the mail, if I had access to my library, if I could look stuff up... When I’m in a room by myself, alone, and have enough time, I can be really really smart." Maybe it's just that most people, myself included, aren't that interesting in person, even if we have much to say. There isn't a conclusive answer here, it's probably dependent person to person, but I definitely feel more coherent and intelligent and in my own rhythm when I post here. I often wish I could merge the two.

R.O.D.

There is so much on the internet, an inordinate number of moments and images that would take a lifetime to sift through. Somewhere, within the mass, there are moments and images applicable to each of us - perhaps others waiting to be found by like minds. How many will go or have gone undiscovered? Likely, there are some who went on to be discovered off the net, their digital image continuing its plea; and likely, there are digital images that have outlived their source and are discovered too late.

*****

Rather than wanting actual things, I want the experience of those things. I want the fluid endless possibilities that come from not having anything, because not having anything is not committing. This is why I like books, and blogs that gather and stream less-known images from over the internet. For the cost of a used book or a monthly subscription to the internet, one can have access to many lifestyles without particularly committing to it. The problem is you have just the timeless two-dimensional image, or the passage, and your imagination; you can be in it as long as your muscles of attention hold out. We can't yet fully immerse ourselves in it, short of showing up at the owner's doorstep and being invited in. And who wants a casual observer sitting at your breakfast table or in your den. Alternately, I'm sure there are people who would be interested in similar images of my lifestyle: a warm setting sun's light on my crumpled t-shirt draped over a wicker chair, or a few bones and leaves on one of my bookcase shelves. However, I'm more interested in perceiving and mentally being in other's lifestyles than in documenting my own (sorry!).

*****

One day:
When resources become too thin for the number of people, their bodies will be maintained with very basic elements, while their mind lives in the digital space. Where end products can be traced back through layer after layer of essential units, in the digital space, those essential units and end products are the same - an infinity of ones and zeros - everything can be endlessly had. It's just a matter of the quantity of information.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Wolf Children

Life on Mars

No Exit

R.O.D.

Sword Art Online

The Nomad

Modern man becomes a nomad, like his ancestors. Traveling with the herds of steaks and hot dogs across the continent, based on the season, back and forth like ocean waves under the tug and pull of the tide. Then came the learning of roots and forage, man becoming stationary tending vegetables. In some time, with stable employment at one of many multinational corporations, man himself becomes a vegetable at a desk, tending a garden of paperwork. Paperwork is converted to paper-leisure the end of each week; traded for some life experience or at one of the countless plastic gardens, plastic petals peeled to reveal rich sugars and fats. This is a time of plenty and stability. In little more time, man becomes interchangeable thanks to the machines which are also interchangeable. Employment becomes a stopover, a job; where one could suffice, man may now hold several over a lifetime. The herds of steaks and hot dogs replaced by the promises of money and meaning and a lower cost of living, man travels, and those who cannot travel or adapt slowly vanish. Thus man is again a nomad.

Personal Map

Today I found a short hair stuck to a sticker on my library book. It's interesting how people casually leave their DNA around, the coded map for all they are. We can't help but be a part of this world.

Which is scarier: what humans have done on the skin of this planet, or the way it was before what they did?

The View

Today at work, I was listening to beat tapes, which are generally instrumental (original or previously released) with a snip of interview or lyric thrown in, set to a repetitive beat. Apparently, the beat aspect was too loud and bothered my boss, who referred to it as a clock.

The interesting thing was his focus on the beat aspect of the music. I realized that I became accustomed to the beat because of it's repetition, and was mostly listening to the actual music and lyric choice of the beat producer. In this way, the image of a window came to me.

In the context of a beat tape, the beat is like the muntins and the view from the window is like the underlying music. Of course, there is the argument that the beat is an inherent part of the song not to be separated. Applied to other disciplines, say literature, perhaps the muntins are like reading the surface meaning of the words, or reading without actually perceiving; and the subtext is the view from the window. When we perceive things, are we unconsciously focused on the mundane, or are we going beyond?

Sword Art Online

Sword Art Online

Reality Layers

René Magritte - "The Victory"

VPI Harmony - Mood Rings album cover

R.O.D.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Wolf Children

In a Matter of Seconds

      He’s waiting in line to complete a task that would take ten seconds. He’s been waiting five minutes. The end of the day is a cloudless charcoal-blue, and the word on the street is that everyone will leave their offices in about ten minutes, at which point the drive home will seem near impossible. This doesn’t cause him any anxiety. He envisions it as a flow of water following the same paths after every rain; an ephemeral stream.

      He makes eye contact with the woman behind the counter. Probably around his age, she has short dark hair in the pixie style and an extended oval face her chin protruding slightly, like a jellybean, he thinks. She knows everyone in line, the regulars dropping off company-related packages. He would become one too in a matter of Fridays and Mondays. They make eye contact again.

      They meet for coffee after work and speak about the banalities of office life, about art and recent books read, about his favorite houseplants and her orange tabby. He neglects to mention that he doesn’t brake for cats, but takes in and gives milk to the homeless. They look at each other with that shimmering excitement that comes from barely scratching the surface of a first encounter. Mutual attraction, a purchase made after learning just a few of the facts.

      They take walks in some of the open spaces that litter the town. She smirks as he scratches the back of his head, the other hand on his hip, having led them to another exit. He makes a Woody Allen-like comment about the rules governing labyrinths. From a distance, they stand within the bending tallgrass, an Impressionist scene.

      He meets her cat, who immediately takes a liking to him. She goes to make tea the old-fashioned way. There are textiles everywhere, draped over the couch and pinned on the wall. When a breeze enters in a million pieces through the open screen door, everything flows, like the ephemeral stream he envisioned, like living in a tent. In her bedroom, copies of Alice in Wonderland and the Tao Te Ching are found within the tousled bed sheets, as if she slept with them. His turn comes to smirk.

      They walk to the grocery store to harvest the ingredients that would become a stay-in dinner. The newness is subsided and most of the stories have been told, and retold. They now have that comfort of proximity, without feeling trapped, for which most relationships hope. The day is a charcoal-blue; clouds wreathe the horizon as if they had tried to climb the dome of sky and slid back down.

      The line is gone. He completes his transaction in the estimated ten seconds, and is out the door, and on the road.

Pom Poko

The Machinist

Defense Mechanism

I'm overly sympathetic, which is a problem when I also tend to always say the wrong thing, often the intended meaning being something totally different. Thinking longer before speaking isn't the solution; the idea stagnates inside of me until I say it, or write it, at which point I can edit it. The right thing to say always comes later. I don't understand how concision always seems to come off rude or mean. Perhaps it's ambiguous having that little to work with. Perhaps when filling in the blanks, people insert negative meanings, which must mean they are internally negative. I know I often speak negatively, but I believe when I listen to people I insert wonder and sympathy in the blanks - or I try to.

It could be a defense mechanism that I speak [put out] one thing and think [feel] another. I often think this place isn't right for someone like me, or I'm not right for a place like this. It's tiring having that aching feeling in one's heart so often.


I'm always making plans and preparing for the worst. If I visualize something enough, I should be able to face it if it happens. There are only so many backups and eventually one has to be ready for the bottom, which I think is different for each person. Of course, I'm a fatalist. I always think I'll be fired after every mistake. Somehow my mistakes seem to elicit prolonged dissatisfaction from others, or maybe it just seems longer from the first person.

The problem with plans is they're place-sensitive; a plan may work in one place and not in another.

Closed Captions

Night Moves

Transitional Driving Revisited

Years ago I posted a poem I wrote with a song that matched its mood. I believe I wrote it during/after one of my all-day drives between Fort Collins and Dallas. Here is the link to the original post:

http://little-natty.blogspot.com/2012/01/transitional-driving.html

I like to find different mediums that complement each other, usually a song and an image. I wanted to present my writing with the song as I heard it in my head, so I have layered the two in video format.

 

Song credit: Blue Sky Black Death - Where the Sun Beats

Be Still, Undisturbed

The Daily Introduction

Today I met the maintenance man in the office building. He's portly with poofed, slicked back hair like Elvis or someone in the Italian mafia. He might be Elvis.

"Hey, I'm Norman. Stormin' Norman."

"I'm Nat - just Nat; you know, like Cher."

The World God Only Knows

Brick

"Not Hard to Realize" by Chelsea Martin

How I Escaped Texas, by Michitaka Yakimoto

At the beginning of a cloudy and starless night, I boarded a train having felt I had enough. After having found my seat, I set down my briefcase - the one with the hole cut in the top to allow my tree to come through. In haste I packed only my tree and books in the briefcase.

The evening was too young for sleep and I stood back up     deciding to visit the dining car for an evening drink     WOOOO-tak!     each door closed behind me     and I was in a red-carpeted nightclub of wood paneling and many glass bottles and all seats facing outward     A hot chocolate in my possession      I found a seat and gazed out a tall window that curved up the ceiling     reminding me that the sky was still above me     A shooting star passed above the clouds     WOOOO-tak!

Back in my seat, I found I had a neighbor, who turned to me.
"Well...     we are making good progress!"
"Really?"
"Really and truly!     That is a lovely tree     may I caress it?"
And so he did, his fingers avoiding all the hidden thorns.

My neighbor asleep, I moved to the seat across from him next to a window. Our sense of speed and urgency was diminished by the long, slow curvature of the train moving around a body of water lit by the glow of the moon which had just come out. Thin steam and ash drifted from the front of the train like the steady breath of a sleeper. I realized I would awaken outside of Texas, and that I could breathe. In a strange land, without old roots, I could redefine myself.


(in the style of Inagaki Taruho)

"It's a myth to believe that mysteries only take place at night. Even when the sun is blazing, the same kind of thing happens, but it's harder to notice because of daytime sounds and distractions."

Seneca B - Flowers

"I finally feel like this is the right life I'm actually... I'm on it now. I was a bit off track for a while, here and there, not exactly knowing who I was; now I think I know."

"Umm... I've always... known things about myself, I've just chosen to not recognize them and act on them. Like I've always been aware of my faults. I didn't crave to wanna feel great; because I hadn't--I haven't felt the way I've... been feeling recently and feel now in a very long time. Like I feel... I feel whole again."

The Perk

"I look at people holding hands in the hallways, and I try to think about how it all works. At the school dances, I sit in the background, and I tap my toe, and I wonder how many couples will dance to 'their song.' In the hallways, I see the girls wearing the guys’ jackets, and I think about the idea of property. And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are."

 

Really great acting from Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, and good screenwriting. Based off the movie Death Takes a Holiday, which is paid homage to in one of Pitt's one-liners. The dialogue seems very simple in its ambiguity; a more difficult thing to pull off, I think. Just a very neat, linear, and well-paced movie, despite being three hours long.

Cross-section, Colorado

I was able to go to the DMV in Golden this week, purportedly a less busy and more well-off town. In fitting with the criteria of a DMV, a technical glitch was ongoing, therefore no processes could be started until they were running again.

The interesting thing about a DMV is that everyone must gather there at their determined time. Like death, the DMV seems to be a great equalizer; everyone had the same thing in common - we were in the same man-made State. I feel that makes it an unbiased sampling of the Colorado population. Not to mention it's a place where you can see all these different people wearing the same expression of frustration and anger.

I met one woman who called herself "Jessica of Illinois" who also had recently moved from out-of-state. She had another appointment to keep and I agreed to text her if things cleared up.

An elderly couple who were at least in their eighties sat across from me. The woman needed a photo ID despite her claim that she didn't drive anymore. Her head continually shook, whether from age or everlasting discontent, I couldn't tell. "I've been here since January," I exclaimed. "I didn't have a beard when I first entered!" She didn't laugh.

I was on the verge of hallucination and unconsciousness from having not eaten enough breakfast when Jessica of Illinois returned. She offered to buy a sandwich for me and I agreed to a bag of chips. Having lived in Fort Collins, a college town, I figure most of the people there were from other states. My short experience in Denver so far causes me to wonder if the majority of nice people in Colorado are transplants. Everywhere I go there is at least one disgruntled person who looks like they have always been here, and they are angry with services rendered by some employee or just at the general atmosphere. The switch has been flipped from reasoning to reptilian fight or flight (mostly fight, it seems).

One interesting person I observed was a teenager with a large body and baggy clothes, and a very small head that made his baby features seem squeezed like a lizard's physiognomy. His hair was like a samurai's, shaved with a folded bun on top. His expression looked so simple it was frightening.
***************
His mouth sprayed a mist of saliva when he opened it towards his food, anticipating. It was as if his body had no time for digestion, let alone the first bite.

R.O.D.

Life on the Move

R.O.D.

Light Ceiling Completed

Just showing this off; the last apartment had an entire wall draped with these icicle lights. The new apartment has no ceiling light or fan, so I decided to go for a star theme; though, it ended up like an outdoor festival. The neat thing is how evenly it coats the room in soft light.

“Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights, of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say ‘Well, that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream which isn’t under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it’s gonna be.’ And you would dig that and come out of that and say ‘Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?’. And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.” 
Alan Watts

First Movie in CO

Lost in Translation

The apartment is coming together after a new lamp here and a new storage bin there. There are some minor maintenance things I need to do, like grease door hinges and seal a gap in a screen door frame, but otherwise it's just unpacking books and rearranging things. My parents have been very helpful in this move, and the funny thing is others at work who made similar moves also had their parent's help, at all different ages and life stages. I would have had to leave some things behind and the packing and unpacking would have been much slower without their help.

I also get to use the 'firsts' tag again. My parents found a particular Great Harvest Bread Co. and got to know the owner. I went with them today.
You know you're in Colorado when you make an appointment with your baker to buy a loaf of bread.
It's a gouda bread made with stout beer instead of water. I'm looking forward to it, this Tuesday at 5PM. Maybe I'll get a postcard in the mail reminding me to make my next appointment, like with doctor's offices.

Cogs

Old idea, previously from Facebook:

"Eventually, society advances primarily because of improved efficiency; efficiency improves by becoming great at a specific task through repetition; insanity is performing the same action over and over and expecting a different result."

I should really keep unpacking

R.O.D.

Tomorrow, I move to Colorado.

Let's go to the store; my teeth don't fit anymore

Growing up, a human will replace clothing many times, frequently; internally, a human only replaces teeth once.

 

Does this mean there is a time when teeth seem too big for the body?

Colder Now Than Last Year

R.O.D.

Fragment

but i had this dream

i was rowing on a small river being followed by another rowboat with soldiers

there were guys with me rowing and i guess we were convicts

Report · 21:33

and

Report · 21:33

midway through the stream there was a small island in the center

i grabbed onto an outlying branch and spun the boat around the side so wed be behind the other boat instead of in front

but they were following us around so we headed for bank and started climbing the terraces

it was one of those hard climbs where normal steps grow taller and harder to climb

i was afraid id be caught even though i was in front of everyone else. i think one of the guys was killed in the boat or while climbing

and i stumbled down the other side of the hill into the idyllic neighborhood i always dream about where things are fine-lined and it seems like everything is one solid color instead of many hues

and i went into one nice house and ran into my wife with her kid and she said i had to voluntarily go through the reprogramming to clean and reset my personality

Report · 21:39

nat

whoa

Report · 21:39

it turned out that the other guys and i were avoiding it because it was a harsher reset but if you volunteer and do it without soldiers its easier on you

Report · 21:39

my dreams are never THAT clear

Report · 21:39

well i take melatonin

but yeah i got the reset and a guy or two found me and wanted my help but i was already reset

and i woke up

...

Ja Ja Juice; A Return

A banana-dressed human walking on a sidewalk, who reaches a determined point - far from any street corner - and begins to dance.

 

 I've decided to begin posting again. Facebook became my main posting spot, but the quality of content I have been seeing has declined; I can no longer tell spam from genuine posts.

I'd like to have a place to post just images and music videos, like Instagram without the required smartphone. After a feint at setting up a Tumblr, I figured I might like to continue this diary side as well, so why not combine the two?

The last posting was during 2012 and, while I think I'll read my past at some point, for now I will just move forward. I did graduate CSU and ended up with an additional Associate's in accounting from Brookhaven a year or so ago. Jessica and I moved to Dallas mid 2015, and lived together in an apartment in 2016, despite breaking up end of 2015. At the time, I worked as a license plate reader for a subcontractor of the North Dallas tollway company. It was an evening-shift job, which was surreal and felt like the world was ending. I never missed a sunset, though.

The beginning of 2016, I began working an entry-level accounting position for a construction company, and I'm still there today. It is educational and I feel I've matured a lot in that environment, though I still make social mistakes often. They offered to transfer me to Colorado to help start a Denver-area office. I think that's really why I've decided now is the time to transition away from Facebook. I'll post here a bit before advertising any change, as I'm not sure how the image and video posts will work.

Your friend,
Natty

Break, Up in the Mountains

I thought I may as well post my intentions to take a break from this blog as I prepare to finish my last year of school in the mountains. It's served its purpose, being whatever I needed in the past. Things feel like they're going pretty well now and I've felt like I have less and less to put in here.

In any case, my pocket idea book is finally decomposing after five years so it's time to retire it before it falls apart. This means I'm switching to my new one and if I keep writing in here, there's less to place in there. I'll come back to this if there's something long to explain and remember, or if my life becomes troublesome and requires an outlet.
I'll still be on here to check out the Logcabineer, though.

Forgetful Yesterday

A poem I wrote as the final assignment of Pingree:

The dandelions of my youth have long blown away

Given rise to the pines of yesterday

The cement has surrounded and impounded

Me, thinking of the pines of yesterday

The drive that pushes on and on,

Tomorrow and the next and on

Yesterday left far behind

And with it so the pines

The dandelions of my youth have long blown away

Given rise to the pines of yesterday

To Build a House

Almost halfway through the second week of Pingree here. Because of the High Park fire, the third largest in Colorado history, Pingree was reformatted for the CSU campus. We're still waiting to see if we can go up soon to finish the class at Pingree. 

I'm very tired. It's reported that Pingree is the best thing about being in Warner College, and I'm not sure why. Even if we were able to be doing our lessons up there, we really wouldn't have time to do anything but the classes and study. It's just so fast-paced, as if the teachers think they're the only ones we're responsible for; much worse in a compressed situation like this. To be fair, the plant sections of the class are the only reasonable ones, giving us study guides and word banks and things fitting of a section that is only supposed to be a fifth of the class. Wildlife is the worst, in fact I would say that section is 50% of what there is to do.

Until we move up to Pingree, I'm staying at Bryce's apartment, on the couch. It's more of an extreme situation than when I had my own apartment, but in these situations I get the urge to build and take care of a place of my own, that is fully my own. I found a book by Pollan called A Place of My Own, which is about man's midlife where he feels the urge to design and hammer together a place to work within. I think it's interesting that at a point late in life someone would decide it time to nail a foundation for themselves to the land. If I'm feeling this way so early, while most of the people I meet still live like college students, maybe I can get my foundation earlier and have more time to develop it.

I'm just tired of these nine hour class times and want to travel and get to some sturdy place.

New Mixtape

Summer, She Comes

http://8tracks.com/walking_daydream/summer-she-comes

01 Vega 4 - You And Me

02 M. Ward - Never Had Nobody Like You

03 City and Colour - The Girl

04 James Taylor - You've Got A Friend

05 Danielle Ate the Sandwich - Where I'll Be

06 Allo Darlin' - What Will Be Will Be

07 Vangelis - Love Theme

08 Frank Sinatra - I've Got A Crush On You

09 Kate Havnevik - Nowhere Warm

10 Ivy - Edge Of The Ocean

11 Allo Darlin' - Let's Go Swimming

12 Mathemagic - Always Will Be II

13 The Sea and the Cake - Two Dolphins

14 We Are Trees - Colorado

15 She & Him - Home

16 Paul McCartney - Maybe I'm Amazed

17 Mathemagic - Beechwood

18 Velvet Underground - I Found A Reason

A Conflict of Dreams

I had a strange dream, set in a sort of camp; I remember running back to a picnic bench with people around it.

I think I noticed a pack of wolves, giant ones, hanging at a distance, playing with each other, and one came over to me. I was sitting on the bench and it jumped up next to me and rested its head on my lap as a domestic dog would do. Then I saw a giant red fox, maybe six feet long, and the wolf ran after it and they started fighting. I asked one of the people if the wolf would be okay, and they said, "sure, dogs always beat cats."

 

HOWEVER,

that's the story that makes sense in words (that follow dream chronology), but the images I remember from the dream tell a different, fragmented story.

I remember seeing the six-foot-long red fox at a distance and I went over to it. After picking it up, I ran back to the bench and then noticed the wolves, one of which was watching me. On the bench, I let the huge fox curl in my lap. The wolf came over and sat sort of like a domestic dog, and that's how the scene was for a while. I believe I didn't move at all because I was afraid of any sudden  violence the wolf might do.

Then the fox ran off and the wolf chased it and fought with it. I asked the same person if the fox would be okay and they said they didn't know because it was a wolf fighting a fox.

 

It's like I had two versions of the same dream but can only remember the chronology of one and the images of the other.

Dreams on Repeat

I had a good dream last night, in the depth of sleep. The details of the dream aren't important and are hard to remember; however, the transition to waking was interesting. Ali was up early running around making noise so I woke up slightly, but knew I wanted to reenter the dream. The problem was that I had woken too much, and the best I could do was submerge into a shallow form of sleep similar to meditation; like bobbing in a pool, I would surface and submerge continually. I found that this level of wakefulness couldn't get me back into the dream, it only put me in the last few seconds of the dream, on repeat. It was similar to a record at the end of its set, the needle hitting the paper and popping back a little only to move toward the paper again.

Conventional

It's strange how some things can become conventional. You don't even see it coming, really, or at least it just seems to have changed all the sudden. For instance, I used to do wild things at anime conventions with my Texas friends and now we don't really go, the convention is enormous and had to be relocated, and my friends are finishing school or working jobs. Okay, that example seems like more of a slow creeping change, but it's the same general idea with a different time dilation.

I guess the point is that I hope to hold my views (despite whatever friction that causes with my parents or society) and not wake up someday, realizing I'm just another fuse on some world-scale fuse box. It's scary when people suddenly reveal themselves to be that way.

Composite Man

And I've come to realize my goal in life is to,

look and live like this man:

tell stories like this man:

and think and experiment like this man:

and yet to continue living my own life, with someone willing to put up with me and share the experiences; to live without extravagance and peel back the layers of the world and watch.

Difficult Times

I know I haven't been updating this lately. It's been really busy, this last week many of my teacher have added, changed, or moved assignments, which is kind of rude. So this easygoing week became a race to finish things as I was given them. Even with this effort, I still slacked off in some regards.
Last night I participated in a rabbit count, where we spotlighted either side of a trail/road and recorded the type of rabbit, distance, and other details. We left school at 7pm and began at sunset, finishing a 22 mile stretch by midnight. It was fun and I spotted the farthest away rabbit. I also got to take home a bunch of the leftover treats, which refilled my nutter butter supply.
However, by the time I got home around 1am (and couldn't fall asleep for another hour), it wasn't long before I had to get up at 6am to eat and get to class by 7 for a field trip to a sheep dairy on the border of Nebraska. Everyone was dead on the way and back; the trip and tour was about five hours. By the time I got home from that, I had to walk to the nearby park for a tree ID walk.
Following that, I had a group meeting for the restoration class and I was so tired the talk seemed to go in circles. Everyone is strong-minded and I pointed out things to consider in everything brought up, but it probably just sounded like arguing. One team person pointed out I was being wishy-washy. I just wanted to curl up in a bed.
At least tomorrow is another picnic at Andrew's, who I haven't seen since I refused to go on an alcohol run. He said it wasn't a big deal, but he isn't contacting me with his usual frequency. There's also a lot for me to do to make tomorrow an easy-going day, but this weekend is another hard-hitting homework deal. After next week I should be done with a couple of my presentations, papers, and tests. I like that time seems to keep moving steadily forward, but there's always something else ahead of me, standing in my way of getting out of this semester.

Another Strange Dream

Currently listening to:
1,000 People
Blackfield

This is the first time I've had a dream that took place so far in the future. I was a very old man and Jessica was also old but dying. I was at her bedside and I asked if she really didn't want to live anymore, as if her dying was just her giving up on living, like the desire to live could keep someone going forever. I crawled into the bed and just hugged and cuddled her and started crying. We had just met as far as I was concerned, and hadn't had enough time together. So it felt too soon to be dying, but I was also sad because I knew I wanted to keep living as long as I could and so I would, alone. Then someone else was in the room taking pictures of us. My dad took pictures of my grandpa when he was dying, so it must be from that. Just a strange short dream.