hiccup

While delays are certainly no stranger to this blog (and perhaps blogging in general) I would like to post that I recently got a full time position at a bike shop, which has happily been very challenging, but has also all but precluded self exploration.

I hope to be back in the pen's saddle.

Fearsome Wonder

Prescript

This really belongs in the previous post (but as a parallel to the ride) it was procrastinated to here. It is based on the lesson that was repeatedly brought home to me over the course of the journey: the only place anyone can start anything is from where they're at, and that requires taking a good look around.  As we started the ride, there were two important areas that we did not take a good look at: one was individual expectations and the other was perceived roles. Although it only became clearer as the trip went on that there were diverse (and wonderful!) reasons people had for taking the trip and a variety of roles they expected to fulfill towards themselves, other riders, and the people we met, those things (in my opinion) were never fleshed out to satisfaction. So while the other people's directions certainly affected my experience, guessing at them seems impractical. So I will just briefly review mine:

Expectations: I had heard/read stories of the bike tours during the surge in the 70's. My impression was that they really rode a divine wind, so to speak. The itineraries for those rides were loose and so instead of being focused on objectives (as we were), those riders' minds were open for adventure. The constant deadlines seemed to be invariably at the root of any dissatisfaction I had during the Trek. In fact, the same dissatisfaction caused one of my closest companions, Jack, to take his own route for much of the ride.

Role: I took on a sort of 'dad' persona which i will explore later. I think one of the main things I wanted to be was a member of a community of environmental discussion, which didn't happen partially due to self-imposed seclusion and partially because we were generally exhausted. I'm also not really sure how age actually played out, but I was one of the 'middle kids'.

Mind Meat

I think the two words of the title can even be taken separately as fear and wonder, very critically for at least the first part of the trip.

How far can we make it, after getting lost the first day?
What about joint pain? Cold weather? Hygiene?
If I get hit by a logging truck, will I still be able to ride my bike after I get out of the hospital?
Will the cooler holding a sleeping bag bungeed to the rack of a Gary Fisher pull through?
What happens if the B.O.B. trailer goes over 25 mi/hr?
Is anyone gonna hook up?

A lot of questions and I think we mostly agreed (at least in practice) that the answer was 'keep riding'. That remains a "for better and worse" case in my book. On the one hand riding seemed to shrink problems, either by distracting the mind from big issues or smoothing over the trivial ones. On the other hand, riding could really enhance enjoyable experience while also fitting adventures into a fabric of (not necessarily bad) monotony. I wouldn't go so far as to say cycling itself is a magic bullet for stress (it can certainly help), although I do think that traveling 5-6 hours a day under the steam of a human body for weeks at a time gives a lot of perspective which definitely helps with conflict. Slow release of frustration through riding was a recurring theme for me.
    I loved riding through Washington. This is mostly where the wonder came in for me. It was very sobering to ride through the Seattle, the Snohomish farm country, the former logging/mining towns, into the foothills, over the passes and rolling hills, the deserts of east, the days mostly getting warmer, all with a group of near-complete strangers and my dear friend Marty. It was intense, especially to climb through the mountains.
    For me each of the riders proved themselves to be astonishingly capable very early on. I rode the passes couched in my past trips on steeper hills in the surrounding area, and camping and hiking mountains in the same range. My whole experience was wrapped in an intimate knowledge of the environment and familiarity with the stages of a literal uphill struggle. Some of the others, however had never seen a mountain range like the cascades, and others were provided a crash course in shifting gears on day 1. By day 4 we had gone from sea level to over our first pass @ 5477 ft.
   
    Emotionally, this first week set a particular tone for me. In short, I assumed myself to be one the riders most experienced with biking, camping, and group facilitation and as a result made the mistake of going into what I term 'dad' mode. This is mostly based on my perspective of my own dad, which means that when confronted with a challenging situation, ensuring the physical safety (and comfort after that) of everyone while maintaining a unshakable stoicism is the order of the day. While both of those things are invaluable under certain circumstances, they are exhausting (to say the least) to maintain as a modus operandi, day in and day out. To complicate matters, I occasionally brought my personal disagreements with decisions made by the group or the leadership into this arena. This meant that I arrogantly perceived that my perspective was virtually unassailable, because I had:
A)  the most experience (which I too quickly assumed translated to the best judgement) in cases like these,
B) (at least nominally) the group safety and comfort at the top of my priorities, and
C) what I considered an objective state of mind (insubstantially argued to have come from my stoicism).

This whole mindset led to a sort of obsession with things that could go wrong, optimizing routes or experiences, and trying to anticipate what was going through people's heads without saying so much as a word to them. This mood, while it never entirely dominated my thoughts, was pervasive throughout the ride. This resulted in me failing to connect with others and myself as much as I . At points, my mind was so wrapped up in problem-solving or trying to figure out the "just right" way to act that I would ride for hours in busy silence, ironically driven by the simple desire just to sing or have a chat. It has generally only been through relating the stories of my ride that I realize some times were really great and interesting.

    Perhaps the saving grace of that whole thing is (not for the first time) realizing how important it is to just let go. I still get caught up in trying to author insane amounts of my own experiences. A much grander example was built by the guy who came up with The Trek to Reenergize America in the first place.He assumed (somewhat arbitrarily) the position of leadership and made it a strong point to stick to our daily itinerary and established routine. While such fidelity was appropriate in some situations, really astonishing amounts of tension rose in the group over issues ranging from swimming at a lunch break to taking a day or two detour. As far as I could tell, this generally meant that any improvisation or 'spirit' was dissent. Any freedom I won often turned out to be tainted at best. It was really frustrating, but a very, very powerful lesson in what happens when we don't let the things we love have a life of their own.

To wrap up, I want to acknowledge that there is a part of me that is ambivalent about disclosing all of that. But, in the end, I think it's important for anyone reading this (let alone me writing it) to realize that I'm just a person, a brain in a body that rode, that is writing this. I am biased and subjective, so I figured instead of burning a lot of rubber in pursuit of some white rabbit objectivity, I'm just going to say it how I think it is, and try to present a pretty good picture explaining where those thoughts came from.


Messages

So! I'm tired after teasing all of that out, so I'm gonna close with some quick thoughts I around with over the first week:

Excessengineering - Excess consumption isn't really a new thought, but I felt like I got a pretty unique perspective on it during the first week. I started to view consumption in terms of infrastructure as opposed to goods and services. My first subject was roads. We stayed a night at the Pacific Biodiversity Institute (in Winthrop), and one of projects they did was publishing a map of all of the USA roadways accessible by vehicles without 4 wheel drive. It turns out there is something like 7 million miles of roads in this country alone. The map they created as visual representation based on the data really speaks for itself. It caused me to seriously question the structure of a society that 'needs' even further transportation development. My next thoughts focused on dams. Massive, massive walls of concrete in the path of a river are often put in a positive light because they generate electricity without emissions. But they have wrought really astonishing destruction on the surrounding ecosystem. They were basically dropped down as quick as possible during the 1920's and 1930's, 40-50 years before modern environmental concerns. Basically, while I don't have any hard facts at hand (although I did a cursory project on river dams in WA ~2 years ago, if you're interested), I'm going to take a wild guess and say that plunking 31 million tons of concrete (the Grand Coullee Dam) into the middle of a river doesn't come without some pretty profound consequences.

Youth of the West - This is mostly retrospective, after having been through the older part of the country. Washington has young mountains, young forests due to clearcut, and young development, as one of the most recent places to be settled by English Americans (my ancestors). I slowly realized, as I rode across, how unrefined this area is, and how fragile and transient, on cultural and environmental levels. This isn't inherently good or bad, but it helped me understand on of the most interesting challenges facing this country: in ways that affect policy, we are very diverse. And I don't mean that in a Oregonians wear Birkenstocks to opera way, but more in a 'it's been a long time in my family since consecutive generations were born within 100 miles of their grandparents'. This is important because ecosystems are wildly complex, and there is no getting around the fact that understanding them takes vast amounts of time. On the East Coast, put coarsely, it seems that they have spent their time understanding the ecosystem in order to dominate it. Over here, I don't think there's really a lot to say because we're basically the same people, but in the ways that we aren't, our culture is too young to really draw conclusions. Yesterdays dams might be tomorrow's equivalent of mountain top removal.

Food - Something we played around with on the Trek was eating well (that is frugally, naturally, and healthfully). It was a challenge on the bike trip, but it also helped me realize that food is one of the few things that more or less needs to be regularly "wasteful". To name a few superficial causes human bodies are far from 100% energy efficient and there are some parts of animals or plants that we can't digest at all. So there will be byproduct. I guess it just makes me think hard about 'zero waste' systems. I'm sure the people practicing them are very good at it, but I don't think I have a good handle on what stuff trails behind me as waste. On the flip side, it really gave me some perspective on crafting things that last or are repairable. Plastic products are usually pretty frustrating when it comes to reuse or repair, while iron/steel seems to have a lot more potential for being 're-something'ed.

Also, at the end of each post (for the first half of the trip, at least), I'm going to include some day-by-days. 'High' is the best part and 'low' is the worst part.


Day-by-Day Entries:

Colville, WA
high: hacky sack
falafel

low: burnt fingers
destroyed fork

- - -

Republic, WA
high: seeing/listening to rad kids
getting a sponge

low: not checking out a Western clothing store

- - -

Riverside
high: playing MTG at lunch

low: getting dominated by the heat

- - -

Winthrop
high: sleeping in a house
eating a ton (ice cream)

low: loooong final 15 mi
just missed the homemade hand scooped ice cream

- - -

Diablo Dam
high: climbing on a locomotive engine
talking to a german dude playing hacky sack

low: failing at making a fire
not jumping in the river with JP

- - -

Concrete
high: awesome dinner
reading in the sun

low: suffocating in my bivvy

- - -

Arlington
high: Marty

low: not going to the goat farm

Trek intro

Recently, a lot of 'here and now' reflection has occured, in light of my 2 month cycling trip across the US. I've approached it from a variety of angles, and all of them have born fruit ranging from good conversation to modest internal enlightenment to a much broader perspective. But the vast majority of it has been a raw comparison of my perceptions now versus my perceptions 5-6 months ago. A lot of 'what', but not a whole lot of 'why' or 'how'.

I managed to do day-by-day high points and low points for just over half of the trip. Using those, my memories, and hopefully stories from fellow riders, I aim to piece together a memory with depth and perspective, one that benefits from exploration and heavy interpretation. Another goal is to further develop my thoughts on my membership to the earth. It seems that cyclists in general have more potential of gaining a basic awareness of causal relationships, simply by being more environmentally exposed. Memory of this trip seems much more contiguous than other trips perhaps because sensory information was constantly (maybe 'incessantly' is more appropriate) available. Pain, pleasure, numbness, heat, smell, light, taste, sound were all steadily preserving the experience and feeding the unconscious with input. On top of that, the purpose of the trip was to gather information from an environmental perspective and render solid thoughts on what to do in response to the stories we gathered. For me, at least, the goal of the Trek provided the root for a good framework to adopt the encounters I had with other humans, constructed environments, 'natural' environments, living  creatures, communities, and stories.

Finally, after mulling over the ride as a function and at the earth as a community, I would like to try to take a good hard look at myself as an individual and all of the lovely things that come with it, like bias, hindsight, growth, emotion, weakness, surprise. Mainly, I don't think anyone is done right by me to try to fit this blog into a role or two (written by Tim, the Cycle Activist and Male Human), pretending that I was all sustainability, all the time. I constantly shift and grow, my time on the Trek being no exception.

With that, I'll lay down some vitals for my ride:

~3500 miles (avg. 50 mi/day & 11 mi/hr, low 30-40 mi/day & 8 mi/hr, high 80-100 mi/day & 17 mi/hr)
10 weeks
9 riders for 5 weeks, 19 riders for the next week, 27 riders for the next two weeks, 35 riders for the final two weeks.
25 planned community visits
45-70 lbs of gear
6 people I still keep in decent touch with
~3.5 gal ice cream
0 flats (Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires)

and get on with it.

EDIT: I started writing these back in November, began gathering the ideas probably a month before that. In the intervening time, I have continued to have a number of shaping experiences that have distanced me even from the person I was a season ago. I remain in the midst of a lot of pain, a lot of pleasure, a lot of challenges, and a lot of leisure. All that to say my memories may be fuzzy, and my stories may wander.

EDIT: Also, I didn't take many pictures. The issue with me and pictures is one that hasn't been high on my list of things to explore for most of my life. Mostly you'll just have to settle for words. Sorry.

Reblooming

I suppose my person is thawing in spring. The fall and winter were not particularly pleasant, but they had their moments of triumph and warmth. Learning Dvorak, taking a computer security class, further integrating at the Castle, making fast friends, dreaming about bicycles and sailing trips...

But two things that I have noticed a great lack of are exercise and expression. I'm not entirely sure how I came off of my junior year, which was quite rich in the latter, and moderately rich in the former and lost it all in the the apparent stress of senior year. A mystery yet unsolved.

I'm grateful for the experience though, because it has taught me how easy it is to lose touch with myself, others, the environment I'm living in, my dreams, etc. So many things I am connected with, connections that need to be maintained. Losing those connections after feeling like they were so strong has taught me why young men can be so beautiful and terrifying. Hopefully it will become clear that I say this with little pride. Beauty and terror seem to imply power. I think that could be the case as long as self control is also present, another story entirely. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, perhaps. Sometimes I feel like pure blood, that there is very little holding me to the ground, that I have very limited substance or mass. Passionate and unpredictable, like fire. I don't find the statistic established sometime in the 19th cent, that married men have a better survival rate than unmarried men surprising at all. We can definitely some anchors, demanding, focusing relationships.

Of course, I think that should be balanced with the excellent sense of adventure and creativity I feel. As Richard Munroe so eloquently stated in his xkcd comic Grownups, "because we're grown-ups now, and it's our turn to decide what that means."

Shadow

I went to see Sigur Ros in October with a good art experiencer friend, Katie Crawford.

I remember that night I felt like a shadow.

It felt like while Sigur Ros had embraced themselves, and worked with the light shed by their own spirits to form a shape that is projected onto the watching world, I have done the opposite. What people see as my existence is just an outline of me that is cast as my appearance stands between (as opposed to within) the world and MySelf.

I don't think I'll ever forget that feeling because even if it was just a group of humans on some stage, pushing out honesty and sound into our hearts, for that night, I sat for two hours, breathing the same air as the living results of people who unapologetically walk and commune with their dreams.

For a week after, I did my best to simply follow my life, using their music as a guide. Eventually, leading to the present time (3 weeks later) I've mostly forgotten how to live (in any real way) motivated by more than gratification and fear. I'm still happy often and sad, frustrated and fulfilled, but ultimately, after days and weeks, I realize that I have abandoned (in scorn) the line that will lead me to Heaven.





The perfectionist in me would like to package the details of the last two months of my life in this same post or a series of five or whatever. Happily, that is not possible, as I've been influenced by too much to write about. And even if my life had been mundane enough to summarize, I've worked so hard sharing it with dear friends who weren't present that I don't think I'd have the energy or desire to see the project through. I will answer questions, though : )

For a pile of reasons, but mostly my own fault, this summer required a great deal of recovery. My primary project this semester has been slowly putting one block back on another, coaxing one more plant back out of the soil, re-strengthening my heart fiber by fiber. Re-awakening Me. As my good friend Anni said "changing a lifestyle [assumed: for the better] takes a fukin' lot of work and time."

I'm less up-and-down than I was, which is good. I've resolved to establish a healthy, productive balance in my life, which basically involves working hard most of the day, most of the week and then cutting loose in the nights and on the weekends. Kind of a no-brainer, but it beats my previous idea of suspending healthy living until "I'd gotten it all done" and then I'd sort it all out.

Response to Georgia

This is my gut response to Jason Ericson's last two "early October" posts. Based on a counter-movie of sorts called Zeitgeist. It's riddled with factual inconsistencies and sensationalist ideas, but there was one idea that rang with me, and it came from the Zodiac.

I don't know what you get when a shaky idea is butchered, but it's probably something like the following:

Approx. every 2150 years, the Sun appears to rise under a the next sign in the zodiac. That is each sign represents an age, and the age of Jesus Christ is the last 2000 years, since it's been Pisces.

So perhaps 'the end' won't mean of the entire world, just maybe the end of Christianity. If there even is a Rapture, maybe it's a dual purpose, saving the faithful and clearing out the world for a new worship. Not necessarily the end of God, Heaven, religion, morality, whatever.

Of course, in either case, it's I see it kind of like this: Christianity has been around for a little over 2 millenia. There was stuff before it, so while to people who only live ~100 years, it's all we'll ever know. Good reason to follow it. But still, view it as a semester of school; student: The body of Christ. Let's be vulgar and say the grade is people confessing that JC is their savior, whether they mean it or not.

Now with some barf-worthy webbrowsing of generous approximations and if we lump everyone that basically positively mentions Christ (yikes: Christians and Islamists?!) the numbers come out to 2.1 billion + 1.1 billion = 3.2 billion. Which is I mean, at least half of the world population, right? So that would be around 52%, which is.. well, it's an F. And let's toss in another billion just for good measure. awesome. 68%. D+. My favorite.

I think at this point, it would be best not to go into classroom behavior, because that might imply a Parent(s?)-Student-Teacher(!?) Conference and no one wants that.

So I guess what I'm saying is maybe the End will be a relief. I don't doubt that a period of transformation following such a domineering and adolescent system of belief won't be painful and devastating, but isn't that what conscious life is about?

ps. Hey. Yeah it's been awhile. But what is time, really?

Weird

Saturday:

I was asked to dinner by a Korean exchange student in return for helping him find the SOHO Salon in Bellevue where he had gone specifically to get his hair cut.

I had plum wine for dinner which is super sweet and pretty thick, for a wine. I liked it.

Holden Village

It was like I had been reading the story of my life upside down. It took so long for things to make the sort of sense that is acceptable to the human mind. I worked hard for my purpose, to find reasons to justify my existence and actions.

And then I got to the Village.

Now I don't know what to say. As one of the director's said (and my mom reminded me) "It's not Shangri-La." I'm torn up that I cannot see the place that the electricity for my appliances comes from, the hands that prepare my food, the workers who take care of my plulmbing infrastructure. All of the sudden, I feel like I'm living a sort of robot cubicle world, that I'm disconnected again.

Even this, I'm aware that I'm just sending electrical impulses that will be translated into more electrical impulses so that people 10, 20, 50, 500, 1000 miles away can view these ideas. I never want to ride in a plane again, to travel at 500-600 miles per hour, to miss the journey that is so often said to mean more than the destination.

I felt grounded there and I now I feel cut loose, like I have to fight for peace again, live in paradox and absurdity. I loved Vespers every night and Eucharist every Sunday, even just the rhythm as much as the day. I used to fear the Eucharist as a longer service than normal but by the time I left, I had a gentle longing for it by the time Sunday arrived.

Bottom line is I have a compulsion in me that will either be killed alongside part of my morality, or will have to obeyed, resulting in welcome, difficult, and revolutionary changes. I mean, But very quiet revolutions.

I think the one bridge, dangerous and frightening, between my existence then and my existence now is living life as though I were on the verge of death. I can remember distinctly playing 4-5 times a day as though I was going to die in the next 3 seconds. Everything over. It has many roots and my experience with it has been beautiful, but also difficult.

I may try to chronicle my experience, but no selection or grouping of words can do that experience justice.

Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison.

Christmas?

So let me do a little recap of xmas articles I've seen in the last few days:

1) Santa-on-a-cross

2) We wish you a minimalist Christmas

3) No use for Yule

Gotta say, overall I'm pretty happy.

In Tim news, in the midst of a discussion with my mom about why exactly I had spent 544.5$ on a Playstation 3 after I had failed two of my classes in part due to video games (not quite like it sounds, but definitely just as awkward/defensive) somehow we got to talking about what I was like as a child which yielded this story:

When I was about 4, because we were still living in Seattle my mom was telling me the story of the Israelites' Exodus from Egypt, specifically the bit about the Red Sea. I can remember thinking that it was all well and good that it was opened up for them or whatever. But then, apparently, she told me the part about God closing the sea on Pharoah's army. I guess I looked up at her and said, in all seriousness, "That naughty, naughty God".

Substitution

I've felt a lot of lonliness this semester, maybe this college career. It has resulted (predictably) in reflection on lonliness.


I love how angsty this gets.

There is this paradox. People have spoken of feeling alone when they are surrounded by people, at a party or workplace por ejemplo. And this experience is certainly not foreign to me. I think that feeling can be named 'alone'. What I've been experiencing is almost the exact opposite. When I'm completely alone, when walk up the stairs, returning to a cold room with not even the traces of company, it's in those moments that I become aware of this closeness to someone. When no one is around, that is when I believe, when it's true, when I feel more tangibly than anything the presence of someone I love. My imagination plays a role, of course. That's probably why this person is most often a woman. Which sheds light on another interesting side: waiting. Because after I've settled in my room and it's clear no one is actually here, I usually engage in this sort of active waiting, or preparation. I do work, mostly. But it is always this attitude that this whoever could come walking in at any moment. And there's two layers to it: the first is the obviously longterm one, that this presence I feel or expect to feel is just the deepseated desire for one other human being that, in the word's of a friend, I would "do passionately and often". And no mom, that most certainly would not be the extent of the relationship (but if I have anything to say about it, it'd be a factor for darn certain). The second kind of waiting is that although I'd be far from bored or disengaged, when that person arrived, you could bet cash money just about everything except for them would be the farthest thing from my mind. That's the second kind of waiting.



Of course, there is no physical presence. I mean that's the whole point of this message.

In place of sharing kisses and conversation with my lover, I heave a sigh to my God. And it feels good.

Rent-a-Rower: Uncommon Projects

Last weekend, I got to ride in an elevator just shy of 100 years old, built in 1908. It's the oldest elevator in Tacoma. At that time I was helping a church move their organ out of storage. So we moved all of those pieces, saw cotton/canvas insulated wired that powers the bellows and stops from the console. It took about 5 hours. The organ is going to take about a year and a half to construct, apparently.

3 months = 1 Sentence

My thoughts are like clounds: big, beautiful, and complex but more than anything, fleeting.

SEX

This post was originally removed. I've put it back in for various reasons, but mostly because the main reason I removed it was that I was told most girls who read this would be totally scared away from me. OK, fine. Well, then they ought to be scared because with it's on the outside or the inside, this is a part of me or at least part of my history.

So here it is:

There is a lot of sexual relief in homosexuality for me.

I'm terrible aware that I desire orgasm, especially shared orgasm.

But even more so in a child-like, confused way, I am aware that if my pink intersects with a female pink, I will drown in pleasure and we will fuse together. My mind tells me that if my heart is pure, the best (but not necessarily) result would be conception and a child.

While I just described a joyful event, for many people very much including myself, the reality is terrifying, implying some darkness, a crazy spiral.

I don't know what to do. I mean really, thanks whomever. Here I am, almost 21 and utterly frustrated. Where are the boundaries? NO ONE has ever told me what sex is. Everyone in my life has parted with advice about general lifestyle, beautiful wisdom like a flower parts with its petals. Not so with sex. It's scary.


I have been taught and there are inconceivably elegant books written about some of the most intimate details of something as majestic as the universe. I can express in staggeringly accurate terms some fundamentals of launching a mass into orbit 270 km above the earths surface. I know what some stars are made of. Heck, I just found out that the sun rotates about every month. Whats more, the area at the equator rotates faster than the poles. That is fundamental and extremely mysterious, but we drink in details.

Well I have the same thirst about sex. Surprise. And ya know, the best part is, I probably wouldn't be making such a big deal about it if so many people weren't so afraid of it. Funny right? When a lot of people get scared of something, no one talks about it and when someone does, everyone else gets more scared. Oh wait, am I a Christian? Is one of God's most oft repeated commandants (granted "born again's" it is in that nasty Old Testament) "Do not be afraid".

I mean, chuck theology out the window. Actually bring it back in, I want to make a quick comparison. So the way we have things set up is this: Philo-sophy and Theo-logy, that is the love of wisdom and the study of God. Granted, both of those are positive things. But, even though wisdom is portrayed as a person (a woman more specifically, but I won't get into that) God is actually something personal. I mean, going back to chucking theology out the window, if God is a spiritual or super spiritual being or some psychological construct, people find personal relief in the divine. WISDOM ISN'T PERSONAL, SO WHY WOULD WE LOVE IT AND STUDY THAT WHICH IS PERSONAL? Anyway, disregarding most of the nature of God, any divine being that commands/asks us not to fear has got something going on. I mean if anything asks anyone not to act out of fear, its a pretty safe bet that they are trustworthy.

So I dunno, right? I'm a little confused. Maybe we should be afraid of a person that didn't have a physical penis and now does have one. Like they are a threat. To us. Like we should fear them. Like Jesus tells us to.

I mean, if we're going to talk about changing our bodies, I would much rather sit on my soon-to-be-obese ass, using my imminently-atrophied muscles to change channels on a television, watching a majority of programming designed to lie to me just enough to spend my money on shit I've never need and would probably just contribute to my decline than get a vagina where I didn't have one before. Much better to be out of shape than to get a sex change right?

I'd apologize if I hadn't thought about this so much or wasn't so darn pissed off. Actually, more than anything, I might as well just claim responsibility for my own sexual ignorance and frustration right? Can't blame anyone but myself for a personal lack of exploration.

This is the message that had been in the place of this message.

"So I removed this because my mom asked me to and I respect her.

She said that it "reflected sex as an experience and not an expression". I agree with her that sex is not just something to do, that it is a piece of a healthy relationship.

If you want to read the original post, as it is a valid record of my thoughts and feelings at one point in time, feel free to email me at timjpost@gmail.com.

I may be re-posting it again, after I have re-read/modified the post, or maybe after I actually have sex. No guarnatees."

Three Homes

I am realizing that I'm growing up. Someway. I understand that I need to put effort into it, that I have to be some sort of self-propelling being. In any action, if it is traced far enough back, it ends at my self motivation.

Thats all I have to say about growing up except that sometimes I do propel myself and sometimes I don't. This is a difficult existence. I need God in me.

I had that thought as I considered my 3 homes and two families. I intended to write this back in August, so now it is more like I have one home for each family. Even so, the time and care I invested in the house I lived at made it a home certainly and I cared about it.

It is strange having three homes. I think mostly, we either have one home or everywhere and anywhere is a home. And I find so much in each one, I certainly don't need all of them, I find overlapping advantages everywhere. But each of them has or had their own certain trait, a mood or even just a level of order or purpose.

Very much, it makes me want to build my own, to be responsible and a master. Heck I'd like to simply be responsible.

Among Giants

The trip in the Olympics was amazing. That is simply it, I was found, in reality, in certain moments, I was found completely.

The time that stands out particularly in my mind, I actually got in trouble for. I had gone off by myself exploring just a little ways and I found a grove of trees up on a very small ridge, overlooking what was probably a pretty large valley. It was so cloudy I couldn't tell. I pushed through some of the very short pines, the seemed to be old men and women that moved very slowly, so slowly. I joined them, and found a spot to sit down. I could see out into the cloud. I could look down the ridge wall and see trees and rocks sticking out. It was like there was a clear bubble about 50 ft in diameter about me and then everything just disappeared into fog.

A few days before I had left, I saw a movie called The Fountain. It is beautiful, to say the absolute least. In one story, a monk carefully removes and eats the bark of a tree he loves and is trying to save. It was intimate. There are not combinations of words that come to mind that could possibly relate how incredible that relationship was, between that tree and that person. I had been looking the entire trip for a place to meditate, and I found it right there. The clouds were moving in front of me and I had reclined into the branches of a few trees. They formed a spingy, supportive cushion for my back and I just opened. I noticed how tight I had become, having to walk with hurting feet and only enough food for a couple days and enjoy it. I was still soft, but I was becoming carved. I asked the trees for them. I sat and sat and thought about God and death and life. I tried to understand the absolutely incredible amount of rocks that I had walked over or seen. Have you noticed? There are a lot of rocks in this world. Why?

I opened my eyes and slowly took the bark off of one of the trees, a small piece, about the thickness of bark and as long as my thumb. I put it in my mouth and chewed it and swallowed it. It was a symbol, a communion. It felt like the tree I took it from was female. But in retrospect, that is what I had/have/was taught to look for. Alone, with nothing but my father and brothers and rocks (which are good things to have, for sure). But maybe I thought I would be "wrong" if I wasn't desperate for some form of motherhood or a mate. Just a thought. Anyway, I felt much more a part of the environment, something certainly separate from these things, as I had human produced chemicals in my body and my clothes were made mostly out of plastics. Heck, even the fact that I had clothes mostly made me separate from my environment. But I felt like a citizen of this Earth. I still do.

I realized on that trip that the human experience is a travel of potential differences. For days we were up in the mountains, among peaks and ridges. For other days, we were down in the lowlands, hiking on trails through woodland. While I was up in the mountains I imagined those who had gone before me. I imagined them as ghosts, or legends, always walking in the snow, always sharing communion with the things around them. But eventually, occasionally they came down. The ones I imagined as the friendliest would take sojourns into the mountains for rejuvenation, but one cannot be rejuvenated forever, by the same thing. It doesn't make sense. I realized that my time here, in school, and my time in the mountains and the time I will hopefully be spending in the plains of America and God only knows where else are all life. They are all existence and they are perpetually changing. I am full, I feel good. I am hungry, I eat, it tastes good. I am weak, I exercise to become strong. I am lazy, I push my self to work hard. I work hard, I exercise, I rest. These are all good changes.

I learned what my dad meant when he said so long ago, in reference to school work, "Sometimes you just have to keep on hiking. It may be a quick, gratifying experience to glissade down a snowfield just off of the trail but ultimately you will have to climb back up and out there, you have to get yourself to your campsite." We had to make it places by nightfall. It got cold and dark, and usually it stayed that way, except for the brief flash of dinner. The second to last day, we had to go 16 miles and there was simply no way faster (perhaps no way at all) except to hike it. That was a very telling feeling. It was a tangible accomplishment. I sung a song.

Another distinct memory I had was just after lunch on that second to last day. We were walking across one of many bridges that spanned these creeks that had cut very steep, intense gullies into the ridge. At the middle of many of these bridges, looking down the gully, 100 ft away it was about 90-120 feet lower. The bridges themselves were usually about 40 feet long and maybe 50-60 feet high. As we walked across this particular bridge, I noticed a tree on the opposit side. Part of its trunk was growing straight out of a rock, before it twisted and the rest of the tree started growing towards the sky. It was like something people don't believe in nowadays, and those sorts of things were all around. Huge stumps, either dry rotten or charred by lightening. The place we camped was a huge bar on the Quinault River, called Wolf Bar (thats how I know it is a bar :D ). There was one main trail that wound through this amazing grove of pine trees, covered in moss and all about 10 feet apart. It was not thick forest. Beyond it, a beach of smooth rocks of all different sizes and sand stretched out ~150 ft to the river. A wind/breeze was constantly blowing down the river (I know because I tried for about 45 min to take a nap on a sandy patch. I got rest but I certainly didn't fall asleep). On the other side of the river, thick pine trees came right down to the bank. Again, our grove and the forest on the opposite side were both delightful, but also the contrast between the two.

It was much warmer, closer to the Earth.

The clarity I gained from that trip was exquisite. It was complemented or enabled by the fact that I didn't have internet (or a decent computer) at my home over the summer. A definite plus.

I have many stories. When I came back, I saw friends, and we talked about trips they had taken and it surprised me how many of my memories had to be "woken up" by their stories and that mostly, I could individually remember only one or twos stories from my 50 miler and Philmont. Of course, I actually thought about many of my trips and recalled more, but it is a little strange that I didn't really value those experiences or something. Honestly, (and if I have kids, they can quote me on this) I think it was so much virtual media, anything from computer games to music on demand to books to televisions. I mean, especially video games. Especially video games. There is just no substitute for real, confident thirsty experience. In the words of Richard Feynman "I have to understand the world, you see." This understanding is possible. You must see and think. You must get wrong answers and take ridiculous risks. Because really all we have is wrong answers, it just happens that some are less wrong and more useful than others. And thank God.

So anyway. There is nothing that cannot be done. There are a lot of derivatives (such as Solomon's "there is nothing that hasn't already been done." which I think is true). There are also a lot of qualifiers such as "you must possess an active uterus to have a child after having sexual intercourse with person with a penis". But those are trivial, almost backwards. It's the wrong way to think about things.

That is what I learned, is that we exist and we have life and it is directed and we have to do things, it just takes time.

Who picks up the Trail of Clothes Beautiful People Leave when they go to Bed Together

This is one of my favorite thoughts or reflections over the summer. The feeling(which I will get to) has mostly atrophied in the face of school and crew and day-to-day, month-to-month responsibilities.

The idea is that all aspects of a person's life need to be taken care of. Someone has to do the work from pulling plants out of the ground for food to designing/building the pens and pencils used for signing business mergers.

I have always loved the image of a pair quickly taking off one another's clothes after a particularly wonderful evening or long separation. Walking as they kiss, a lot. There is an honesty there that can't be bought, a desperation, a giving up. It is an escape from all of the arbitrary signals and subtle plays of the modern world and a return to something we as a race or society or animal have enjoyed since our beginning, whatever that may be. I find it very comforting that more or less, we cannot continue without sex.

So anyway, they have an excellent night. What next? And its this contrast that I love so much more than the actual passion and heat. The difference between ravenous hunger and content fullness. The satisfied appetite that provides a human foundation for survival in the most transcendent definition of the word.

Afterwards, someone has to pick up their clothes. The contrast between the glamour of their lifestyles and the triviality of the tasks that inevitably surround all of us. In this vision, they pick up those clothes.

All of our glamour and complexity and discovery... Everything is supported by a million simple things. The food we eat, the clothes we wear. Our cars. The customs and oral histories, complex rituals. These are something like luxuries. Not so much in the sense that they are frivolous, but certainly in the sense that we could not have come by them without the creativity and devotion of others. And certainly not without our own ability to switch between embracing the complex and intense and the simple and calm.

The engineer must practice problems and engage real objects.

Nurses have to know human patients and standards of measurement and pharmaceutical theory.

Students absolutely must know the pieces of nature scholars discovered to create lessons. Students must know concretes and abstractions.

Writers must have lives and a strong grasp of language. Pastors must have strong and dynamic relationships and a solid, reliable understanding of God.

Everyone must embrace what they perceive and also embrace what they think about what they perceive.

We cannot get by on thoughts alone or feelings alone or spirituality alone. Or any other aspect of the human body. We cannot live by simply maintaining our physical health.

Part II: The Meander

Well it looks like this post idea has mostly spoiled, since I left it too long. i cannot put my mind back where it was two months ago.

Except that I was lonely.

The summer, in reflection was difficult in some ways. For the first month, my heart would cry out for people, demanding it of a body slightly out of shape and a mind that was all too bored.

I remember one night, I had just finished watching Will & Grace. Bad idea. I had made myself a reasonable dinner that night, so I was well fed, but people hungry.

I was incredulous, that (regardless of whether or not it was true) I didn't feel like I had anywhere to go, anyone to go to. My mainstays were the Rose, and occasionally I'd see some people from church, but really, in the intimate meaningful form of the word, I was alone. More or less surrounded by people and alone.

And I wanted a relationship.

I realized that, I went outside and prayed to God that I would get some indication of the person I was going to marry. Then I just waited in the backyard waiting for some young woman to walk around the corner and we would go inside and spend a lovely evening together and be happy for longer than we were on this Earth.

No one came and I gazed at the sky, trying to communicate my feelings with God. Trying to articulate me. Trying to find myself.

I went inside and fell asleep.

Not current July events

So due to the dual forces of spending time with actual other people and procrastinating this blog for god knows what reason mean that it doesn't come out nearly as regularly as I hope and you readers are left with what this will probably turn out to be: a digest of Tim's Current Events and probably an over-lengthy, meandering, pseudo-existential investigation.

At best, it seems difficult to fully articulate what has gone on. As far as I can tell, thats because it involves girls. After getting back from Colorado, I was hanging out with folks at the Rose and talking to them. On July 4th, I took a fairly long walk with Caitlyn. We mostly talked about Stephen and what he means in this world. But at one point, near the end, she asked me "Why are you and Terra so afraid of each other?". Terra Marotz is a dudette I met second semester freshman year. Totally cool. We were afraid of each other basically because of society. She was dating this guy and had been for like a year (at the time that Caitlyn and I talked) and we couldn't get close because it would be suspicious.

That was going to be longer than I intended. I can't remember the order of things that have happened since I got back, but here are some of them. I met for like 40 minutes of coffee with this girl thatI go to church with named Jessie. It was awkward becaus I was like 20 min late and she had to leave for a study group soon. Also, as we were talking, I asked her "how are you with God?" and she gave me this stare and said "I don't think we're on that level yet". Usually, I don't have a problem talking to people about God.

Went upto Seattle with Marty and met Monica we walked around Pike's Place Market and then to the Sculpture Park. Then we went to Monica's sister's birthday party (her sister's name is Stephanie. I knew of her in highschool b/c I knew Monica, but we never really talked) which was ultra cool. Stephanie was wearing a magenta dress, a tutu and small wings. Her hair is sort of a maroon color. When I knew her in highschool, she was very demure and withdrawn, so it was a very enjoyable shock. Also at one point in the party, I met a girl called Jessica Linnenkol. I know her from my 7th and 8th grade years and a Christian private school. I have never met someone from there by random chance. It took me about 15 minutes and trip to the bathroom to match the face I saw that day with the face I remembered from school. After that, Marty and I went home.

I cleaned my entire house one day, starting at 18:00 and staying up until about 03:00. I organized a ton of school papers, set out all of my receipts and pulled my bank statements from my bank website so I can put it all in my computer. That still hasn't happened.

I helped Marty put some ceiling and walls in the former playhouse named "Wild Garlic". From my perspective, it is a most astonishing project.

I have been working full-time. Apparently I have been in a "bad mood" for the last couple of days and my boss has been asking me why. I told him it is because the office is so negative. Deep down he took me seriously but on the outside he doesn't really know how to deal with it because emotions are coming out in the work place and thats something he only expects to deal with at home. With his wife. And his daughters. I've done a lot a lot of web-browsing at work and that just makes me feel awful. My mom recommended I read this book called "The College Student and ADD" or something like that and I have and I'm becoming convinced that my mind works differently. It's hard for me to shift out of lethargy. All of the other guys at work browse to, but at the "right times" when there isn't immediate work to do. It's more efficient and honest than what I do, but they're still getting paid for it. I feel like I'm being eroded. But when I am doing actual work, it's very enjoyable.

After being asked by Caitlyn why I was so afraid of Terra, I actually had a long conversation with Terra in which we came clear with each other. It felt very honest and healthy.

I left last saturday to go up to Snohomish so I could catch the Edmonds ferry the next day across to Kingston in response to an invitation I recieved from Monica's dad, Stephen that I could visit him as long as I a) had something to talk about and b) would eat his food. Finally (after cancelling twice) I made it. In Snohomish I stayed with Grace and stayed up late talking with her. I went to (Catholic) church with her the next day and then went over to Kingston. I made it to the Barrett's (Stephen) house and had a very illuminating few hours of conversation with him. I also got to speak a bit with Monica as we biked down to Albertson's to pick up some stuff for dinner and dessert. Stephen cooked an immensely tender flank steak and Monica made impressive chocolate souffle w/ caramel sauce for desert. After that, I caught the ferry back to Seattle where I met Stephanie and we went to Compline at St. Marks Cathedral. After that we talked long enough for me to miss the late bus back to Tacoma, so I stayed with her until the next morning when I caught a bus back at around 06:30.

(More or less ironically, some guys at my work have been asking me about my romantic situation. I haven't even tried to start explaining. Actually I have. And it ends up in a sort of massive, unfocused confusion).

I ate twice at Farelli's, the new pizza place on Garfield Street and it's really good.

Terra got back from Montana on Monday and we had a long talk that night.

Out of much, she said two things to me that struck home that night. The first was that I was laying out girls like steaks on a grill, eyeing each one to see when it would be done and which one would turn out the best. My response was that I never plan to sacrifice love to romance. But that doesn't change the fact that I am working to know very well many seperate girls that are isolated from each other. The second was that she asked if knowing me was going to be like a rollercoaster. Like a rollercoaster in the sense of emotional volatility, not like its exciting. Both of those made me question myself a lot. In fact, I am still questioning.

(I wish I could bring together all the people in my life, easily. Cook food for them and give them a week in a beautiful house, free of the internet, of television, of electricity. I wish they could each have their own few days of sunlight and forests and then all be introduced to each other, to talk about what they thought of each other, what one had heard from me about another. I want this because I love all of you and I want to see you grow and I know that can't happen without being nurtured by good friends.)

I helped move an old WWII two tugboat which, Marty informed me, can pull anything that floats. It had two V12's that could fill my bedroom and were just generators for a huge electric motor. On that trip, I also met the man who owns and engineers the 4th largest steam engine in the world, weighing in at 1 million pounds and the philosophy and ethics professor who was named the United State Army's Most Valuable Employee in 2000.

I just resolved to allocate some actual thoughts and reflections to a second part.

West Side of the Rockies

The sort of daily:

I got home from work and I've been thinking almost obsessively about my internal character. I've mentioned this before but consistency in my habits and actions seems insufferably simple and simultaneously quite elusive. It's almost as though my mind is just a great bay where ideas dock to, unloading and trading ideas that analog almost directly to thoughts and actions, and leave just as they came. They trade with each other. It's very difficult for me to find a sort of focus that lets me relax, but at the same time does justice to those ideas. If the Bible says "He who ignores the cries of the poor will also not be heard when he cries out," I can't just set that aside. When I'm late for work, or when I feel a pang of guilt (or desperation) for having banished another important relationship to my very nebulous mode of thought I am describing, I feel like a liar if I simply push those things out of my mind to focus on solving a single one at a time. Not to say that I don't have entire structures of lies that I depend upon, daily.

Yesterday (Monday) and maybe the day before that, I had moments of clarity. Yesterday (admittedly, after watching "Will and Grace".. while I was supposed to be cleaning the house) I felt an incredibly strong and singular desire to meet the one person I can spend the rest of my life with and love. It was simple, and it was longing. If love is forever a compromise, I think I might just abandon the whole thing and live my life serving the poor. Compromising is what happens to spaceships when they are boarded by hostile aliens, or governmental parties when they are both wrong, but neither are willing to admit it. I want to look into eyes and know I will be content for my entire life. If I have to wait until I look into the eyes of God for that assurance, so be it. My mind is dark and confusing and distilled enough as it is. I want to immediately esteem what that woman says over anyone else, aside from God, and I that allows for "I don't know" because Marty's dad said people don't admit what they don't know often enough (people named Tim Postlewaite, for example).

So really, I have no good ideas about the whole thing. I just know that sometimes my heart aches and I'm concious that nothing from friendly companionship, dating, one night stands (not a cup of tea I'm going to try, but I see why people would), fellowship, a relationship with God.

And one final thing. When (if? man, I hope its when) I meet that woman and starting having a relationship, I want to enjoy her. I know that sounds like a no brainer, but unless there is something I am just majorly missing, it seems like most couples don't. I want our enjoyment of each other to be a bigger deal than how much we limit ourselves from enjoying each other. To clarify, there is woman from CS Lewis' The Great Divorce who, as she loves and is loved, causes others to love their own respective spouses more. But that woman still had her husband and they loved each other. I don't want our faithfulness to be measured in how much we restrict our feelings for others, but more how appropriately those feelings are expressed, especially towards each other. I know this is sort of turning into a Christmas list, but I want to play. I have so much hope for that time, building card houses together, playing word games, hiking, watching chick flicks, feeling like a 'found' person, dressing up to go out, having dinners. I know it takes effort and a good attitude to maintain all of this, but I'm convinced that it is far from impossible. Also, I know (and am thankful that) there is more to relationships than all of this. But if anyone thinks they have to be less, then they are a damn fool. Love is expressly designed to be enjoyable and healthy, by God. Pardon my frustration :)



So thats where I'm at right now, but I'm going to write about where I was at a week ago, when we took a trip to Vail, Colorado (the word Colorado, by they way, is an Americanization of "colo roja" which is loosely Spanish for "color red" referring to the river. I have no idea how the "j" was replaced with a "d" and why the "o" and the "a" were switched but hey, thats America for you. We pronounce things better wrong). All said and done, it was a beautiful, fantastic adventure, wedding, and vacation. Outdoors-wise, we took a fairly tame river rafting trip, went on one of my father's (in)famously longer-than-implied hikes, explored some seriously cool caverns (around which probably the best "adventure park" in the world is set).

This is now about a month after the fact and a lot has happened in the interim. It is good to see family and I am sorry that it doesn't happen more often. There were huge houses in the mountains in Vail and what that means is a lot of money. I got along well with my cousins. I missed Jonathan, the one who was getting married. I also didn't spend nearly enough time with Jeff, one of the most beautiful people I know.

Asphalt

Left off with the trip from God. Originally I didn't write that it was from God, feeling wary that my friends who aren't Christian or more liberal would think I was too religious and maybe that my friends who are religious or more conservative would think that this was just beautiful, nice blessing. It was blessing, and it was beautiful at times, but it was also kind of worrisome and not entirely relaxing, until I actually let go of common sense and went into the Ocean.

Aslan isn't a tame lion. To all my church friends, love mother-in-laws, people with issues (me, and don't forget that. And I'm saying that I have issuses because a lot of the time, I try to put myself off as perfect, or at least amazing, when really I'm not.), gay people, crazy people, feminazi's, buddhists, anti-war advocates, environmentalists, devil-worshipers. Look, it's in the Bible, love sinners. I apologize if that sounds harsh or one-sided, but I am seriously worn out from going to church expecting to find at least the trappings of unconditional love, getting home to be with friends who are upset with the church as whole but turn out to be exceptionally sensitive and relaxed. And not-church-friends, I'm not making a judgement either way to whether you are good or bad, I hope.

Okay, nevermind. That was a bad hole. I love all of you. Of all the people I have met, there is not one that did not deserve my love. In fact, really, its an honor to be allowed to honor something as brilliant and fascinating as you human beings.

Anyway, back to the whowhatwherewhen. My memory of the content of this next post is patchy, but I remember it being important.

It begins mainly with my brother Greg's graduation. It was a very purely good to see him graduate, keeping in mind the things he has accomplished this past year. Eagle Scout, Emergency Search and Rescue certified, completing his senior project. Of the three of us, Greg far and away impresses me with his consistency. In our younger days I can remember myself (and perhaps John) more or less resenting him for his middle-child resistance to conflict. But underneath that, there was always a pang of being wrong. That pang has grown into a respect for my that will probably soon be impossible to deny. Which isn't to say that John doesn't also continually astonish and impress me. Okay, actually, for my entire family, I don't think I can really write words that express how intensely faithful and beautiful they are. Hopefully, you probably just have to see my face as I talk about them.

Hm. Don't think I meant to take that tangent. But it was worth it. Despite how enjoyable they are, I don't think of them often enough. It's strange, thinking about a wife and marriage and "my own" family... Although I long for a woman to spend the rest of my life with, I cannot imagine an existence other than pain and darkness in which I wasn't able to see my brothers and parents often.

Anywhoo, other than honoring my brother (which was very good) the graduation was... highschool. If songs are allowed to be called "good" for purely sentimental reasons, I think it's fair to say that this ceremenoy was, for sentimental reasons, pretty poor. One teacher gave a pretty engaging speech about, in my interpretation, that despite the virtual aristocracy of the Plateau the students impressed him with their surviving passion and intelligence. Of course, in a school where, the sports teams (and only a few of those) gets a king's ransom of funding, leaving the visual, performing and musical arts essentially to die (if the funding was in fact a king's ransom, the king being held hostage is probably creative energy) it's fairly obvious that there is not going to be overwhelming amounts of creation or ingenuity. At least not that I felt. Again, it was good to see Greg and honor him.

It is actually the things surrounding the graduation, on either side that I was concerned with. On the before end, I rode the bus into Seattle. It never ceases to fill me with anticipation, coming up I-5 past Boeing Field and viewing those first few massive, orange pier cranes. And then dropping into the city, being let off in a sort of nether region, 4th and Jackson, between the sort of industrial sprawl which meanders around Qwest and Safeco field, and the dense, focused vitality of downtown. And all of it connected, like skin holds the body together, by asphalt. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade a forest for anything, but I love walking the streets, bicyclng down the hills, nestled in automobile that might kill me but hasn't yet, past shops and hundreds or thousands of lives every day. There is a character there that can be interactive. Some love it, some hate Seattle with a passion. There is a personality that is not nearly as developed, diverse, or accessible in suburban areas. I felt all of this in a very explicit contrast and harmony with the intensities of nature, having returned from the coast only recently. In the end, I felt very warm and at home in both places.

On the other end of the graduation of 2007, there was an almost impromptu series of people from my class or older that I hadn't seen for anywhen from a few weeks to a year or two. It was mighty curious. As it turned out, Ashleigh Gage was willing to open her house for a few hours after for three of my high school companions of varying degree, Alex, Krystyna, and Aubrey. We were temporarily accompanied by Ashleigh's twelve or thirteen year old (?) cousin. I think children, or at least girls grow up too quickly. In fact, I often feel compelled to be silly to make up for all of the seriousness I thought was required of me as soon as possible. I like making bouquets and leaving them to be found.

We talked all the way back to Sammamish, bought some food, mango and Pirate's Booty, if I remember correctly. Alex and I both had some tart which was delicious and had begun to lightly mold. If there is one thing I have learned from Marty, it is this: if food is moldy, cut off the mold. Then look at it again as if there had been no mold. Then decided whether or not to eat it. As far as I can tell, I haven't gotten sick to date :D and I've enjoyed some pretty excellent stuff.

Most of what I remember of talking is that it was extremely odd. Some highschool habits had stuck while others showed no trace in us. I noticed myself doing or saying thigs that I never do anymore, feeling things that I generally don't feel. It was troubling because most of it felt like props that had to be put up and I have no idea why. That's all pretty vague, but I remembered it left me in an ultimately strange place and that I was very thankful to be friends with Alex Graves. Not for any one particularly strong reason. Later Alex, Aubrey, Krystyna and I went to Alex's house to talk for a while. The girls left within about 15-20 minutes of each other and then Alex went to bed and I blanketed up on the couch after beginning and dozing/watching Life Aquatic. THen around 5 something in the morning, Aubrey picked me up to take me to the bus station so that I could get down to work in time, which I did.


I am trying to remember what I felt after all that, because it was fundamental. I think that week, I felt increasingly lonliness and apathy, but all sort of spiced with a desperation to see people yet the isolation was perpetuated by tiredness from weeks working days and and empty house. It culminated thursday, I think, whn I went to see people with Marty. That might have been the week before leaving for Colorado.

I was reading His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, which is a very strange series. One of the strongest themes that always hits me is the adolexcent love between the two protagonists, and it only just appears perhaps two thirds or a three quarters towards the end of the final volume. It is innocent and passionate and intense all at once, and it feels like something I've either not had yet or missed completely. It is portrayed as though all of their actions, from spending time away from all others, to showing affection, to kissing, to simply being aware of each other is unabashed and unapologetic. and I that idea is both astonishing and very resonant with me.

I have written a lot tonight, and I plan to write more tomorrow. Of course, I planned to clean the house tonight, and I ended up writing, so we'll see if I plan to write and end up cleaning the house.

I wish all of you who have actually mananged to make it through these posts are well and that you wish all those that I know and those that I don't the same health and blessings.