4.28

[I got home today, rode a bike, took a shower, and fell asleep.
I just stopped doing. This is not to say I was done for the day; that's far from the truth. I could have done a million things and should have done a million more. I didn't read a book, wash the dog, or write a play like I wanted. I didn't grade papers or prep for tomorrow like I needed. Instead, I just fell asleep. Sometimes, I feel like this is my entire existence right now. Survive. It's my mantra.]

I crouched in the semi-dark and let my eyes unfocus. I attuned my vision to any motion in my peripherals and waited for even the softest flicker of light or dark, a tell-tale whisper of light that would reveal prey or predator.  The trees over me rustled softly against each other, but no breeze cut through the dense canopy to touch me, and I began to sweat. I still didn't move, even though salt water ran down into my eyes and collected on my nose. The density of the air trapped me like a slowly solidifying mud pack, gently easing my muscles into a hardened set fixture. I began to feel oppressed by the mounting weight of air setting on me. My mind curled around a new idea and it became distressing to breathe, my diaphragm now moving consciously, mind-controlled, a burden instead of a boon. I felt the air rush in and out like time-lapse molasses, a reminder of the stillness of earth and air that led to me sitting, attenuated to the microscopic motions of hairs on my arms and of leaves in the woods, my body an extending reality, the woods breathing with me, damp and exhausting. The trees were my skeleton, the water my blood, the whole world around me just as I was: still, pregnant with expectant strife, alert.
The reverberant echo of the gunshot nearly killed me. From all around, birds exploded from hiding places I didn't think possible just moments before. Every leaf hid a feather, every crook held a beak, and every bird burst into flight in the self-same moment, a hundred thousand wings beating the air downward and making an enormous rushing sound to match the now-thunderous burst of blood in my ears, the still forest leaves beaten down and trembling in the crush of noise and air. Every bird gave call in its voice, and I screamed with them, the fright and wonder of the echoing shot just as keen to each avian escapist as to the human trapped on the ground. The forest became unbearably heavy as the birds took off, the bone-bending sound of them pressing me to the ground and crushing out the air in my lungs, and just as suddenly: the atmosphere lightened as the forest did, the mass of a thousand thousand birds suddenly lifted from it, the weight of terror lifted from me.
I looked up, and the birds blocked out the sun itself, and I felt the darkness interior to match. I had lost the moment and still had my life.

4.25

I grabbed my bag and snapped off the lights in the room. I rolled down the hallway to Mr. Bills' classroom, my normal Wednesday haunt. I'm the nominal co-sponsor of a writing club that meets on Wednesdays, but this week I was not showing up except to beg off.

"I won't make it today. I'm going to go float a creek."

"Oh! Good. Have fun."

Bills gets it. Apparently, when he was in his early twenties, he bummed a ride to the bottom of the Pacific Crest Trail and took off northward. He met his wife on that trail. He knows what wanderlust can do to a mind. I turn on my heel and thrust myself through the doors of the middle school. It was 3:05, the earliest I had ever left the building. I was going, and nobody would stop me.

The real problem with canoeing is that the canoe doesn't just magically appear next to your car at the end of the trip, and I was running a small local river that gets maybe forty paddlers a year, so there wasn't an abundance of help for me. I had to get back to the truck all by my lonesome, and with a wet butt, and racing the sun. For me, the solution was obvious. Canoe atop, bike on rear, and I drove to the bridge I knew would make the best pull-out. I swear I could already hear my knees creak and groan as I lowered the steel framed monstrosity down the rockface and to the safe hiding place under the road. I admit it was a touch anticlimactic, driving away from my thousands of dollars of hidden hobby.

I put in at the Pinnacles Youth Park near my house: a spine of stone, a storehouse of memories, a favorite haunt of slightly outdoorsy college kids. The rock face is staggeringly high for such a flat part of the country, and Silver Fork below it is strictly seasonal. This year, the actual runnable days might number below two dozen. It's a humorous understatement to say it's not a big canoeing destination. Puffing like a freight train, I carried the canoe the quarter mile to the creek, clipped into my life vest, and pushed out into the creek. At that exact moment, three men riding in two canoes came flying downstream from my left.

You can't imagine my shock.
I can honestly say I have never seen anybody running this river but me and the few people I drag along with me. I've heard stories, but I always felt like a Sasquatch when I put into water here. To see a paddler--no, three--put me all out of sorts. I asked a few gormless questions, got a lecture from a man who probably assumed I was an amateur, ("Are you going downstream?" "Yes, sir." "And how far?" "Just to Old Number Seven." "Well, be careful down that way. There are some dozen trees down in the stream bed where a farmer let the bank fall in." "Oh?" "Yeah, I would be careful." "Looks like I might have to do some walking." "Just be careful.") and then I just left without actually asking his name, or giving him mine. I'm bad at meeting people, maybe.

When us kids were young, Dad had a way with people he'd just met. This was during a time in the nineties when America was just coming down from its yuppie high and beards didn't have the je ne sas quoi that they enjoy today. Dad's bushy beard communicated something his words didn't. He just screamed "I'm wearing this suit and tie, but I would rather be planting walnut trees in the rain." And to be honest, that's his preferred activity.

Sometime during a trip to southern Missouri for a float trip, we stopped at a little country store for some sandwich ingredients. Dad left Philip and I in the car and went inside, apparently forever. We watched him through the windows and made up dialogue.

"How's your day?"

"Eh?"

"I said how's it going today?"

"Slow."
"I remember when I worked in a gas station. [Editor's note: Dad has worked in every conceivable occupation] The slow days were the worst. I started yearning for someone to come in and shoplift something."
"You ain't stealin' nothing, is you?"

"Just a bit of your time." Big cheesy grin. "Do you know how far it is to the Current River?"

"Oh, you're goin' for a float? Let me tell you, the river is top-notch this year."

Ten minutes later, our gregarious father finally rolled out to the car and got underway again. Apparently, I did not inherit the same gift of gab, even if he somehow carved a paddle in my heart. That's why I was out this Wednesday afternoon: the wanderlust was upon me, and only a canoe would satisfy it. I splashed my way out of the park and on down the river. I only saw one other human in my four mile gallivant: a man who had walked down from his truck to the river, just to see the water go by I guess. Otherwise, I was alone with the birds and the trees.

I rolled through a couple big bends of the river, shot some small riffles, scraped against at least one rock. I'm only half-decent at handling a watercraft. I passed the low-water crossing that runs parallel to Silver Fork, the last reasonable rescue point where I might call for help and a pickup. My hands twitched. I mean, I was sure I could make it back to my bike, cycle to the Pinnacles, get the truck, pick up the canoe, and head home--all before dark. I was positive. But I am also notoriously overzealous with time estimates. I slowed, backpaddled. I needed to make up my mind, and quickly. The river was pulling me towards a chute. I would have to carry the canoe back up if I wanted to get out of the river early.

I sat back in my seat. This was why I was here, after all.

Then, exactly what I wanted happened. I was floating along, and I looked up. There, through the trees and looking down the little farm road, I saw a rich amber light cutting at a slant through a soft, verdant scene. I stood up.
I know I was in a canoe; I stood up.

I stared at it. I sat down and pulled hard to throw the nose over into the mud. The back end whipped around in the current, and I tossed my legs over and ran up the bank.

Down from the right, the bluff fell away into a farm field. The little double track wended its way through a rich springtime grass and down into the field. The trees on the right and left leaned over and made a leafy tunnel through which I could see a lone tree off in the field, shot full of golden light filtered through the wet after-rain air. I think I sat and drank in that scene for five minutes or more. I didn't find much joy in talking to the down-to-earth men in their aluminum canoes. I'm a good listener, but I just can't find myself launching into new friendships as easily as I want. I feel disconnected from humanity, but I'm in love with the Earth. Every few days, a scene like this will just catch me up and pull me to a halt. It's been happening more and more recently over the last year, like I just suddenly opened my eyes to the beauty in small things, like I just suddenly became sentimental, like I just out of nowhere gained the ability to sigh. Do you know what I wish? I wish I could see people the same as the golden atmosphere falling through trees that guard the roadside. Maybe someday.

4.22

[Edit 5.26: I don't like that I wrote this. It could do without the last paragraph entirely. It could do without the last two mainly. It could do without all five on principle. But I wrote it and I must own it because here it is, unavoidable, on the Internet. I'm not wiser now, and I've not grown in any way. I'm just not proud of it. I was angry at something I couldn't put my finger on and I . . .
Well, I guess that's just the point. I'm not racist--or am I? Do the voiceless get to apply labels to me, or I to myself? Some may point out the irony in that.]

I listened to a podcast today from Radiolab called Debatable. A young black gay man joined a debate club and quickly learned that the Kansas City all-black debate club aesthetic isn't the national norm, and that most clubs are all-white and coincidentally elitist snobs. Soon, he adopted the University of Louisville method of turning the debate on its head and asking whether or not the system of debate is broken and exclusive of black participants. He and his partner won the national competition a few years ago because of this tactic, despite what I think was a really deft rebuttal by the opposition.

They were discussing alternative forms of energy.

I've never lived his life. I've never been the only [label] in the room. Actually, I'm the only vegetarian at Moberly Middle School. I get misunderstood all the time and I have to explain myself and people judge me and think I'm weird or broken, but it's not the same as being black, which is obvious and unavoidable, in a room full of white kids (some of whom are bound to be racist). So I've never had his experience, and I can't speak to it, and neither can most of his opponents.
So what he's done is take a debate which has few rules apart from 1 there are two sides 2 there is one winner and he has taken a side his opponents didn't prepare for, but he did. He took a side that has the popular moral high ground (racism is bad) and forced his opponent to take the other side (thems the rules). He took a side that is heavily based on his own experience, which his opponents cannot speak to. He changed the debate. In fact, he hijacked it to serve his own purpose. I'm excited about what he's saying, because I would love to see more marginalized groups start to feel a part of things, and I'm even more excited to see what their suggestions are for fixing the things they love that still have problems. However. But. Sadly. What he's done isn't purely that. In a perfect world, it wouldn't matter, but the second rule of the debate is that one side has to lose, and he has attempted his best to frame it so that he has a chance of winning each debate because his opponents are unable to answer him (partially because there's no way they prepared for this argument and partially because it's so easy to slip when you're trying to argue the negative to a statement, especially about something so emotionally explosive as racism).

There's no altruism in his actions. That's the slime under the shine that makes me feel really bad. I want to root for the underdog, but I can't feel good about it because it's so self serving. Maybe that's me being privileged, but I don't think so. This is the whining rant of a sixth grader who hasn't figured out how to get what she wants without being incredibly selfish.
Anyhow, I hope I'm not racist. I don't feel racist and I don't want to do racist things. But if being racist is somehow controlled by what other people decide and not based on my motivations and thoughts and ideals, then I and the poor opponents in this debate are screwed from the start. If all I have to do to be a racist is get on the wrong side of a PoC diatribe, then I'm never joining a debate club, I guess.
I don't care about winning, really. I just don't want to be racist for doing it.

4.24.13

Forsooth-
A day of feasting and of games doth await. King Henry VIII hosts a joust, the likes of which has not been seen. Have you not heard of Sir Allyn, the most skillful and duplicitous of all knights? He rains terror upon his opponents and will not sheathe his sword until it has tasted of the blood of his most unfortunate foe. He is come to drive violence 'gainst Sir Heathcliffe, whose noble heart and righteous bearing impress us all.
The two shall game for points and prizes until Sir Allyn's dastardly ways show forfeiture to his victory. The rat, in his cheating, flies at Sir Heathcliffe and unhorses him. A fight breaks out! Blood falls warm upon the ground and seeps from the valiant Heathcliffe's veins. Shall this injustice go unnoticed? Nay--a duel to the death--to joust until fatal victory.
The dark Allyn and fair Heathcliffe clash upon another like the surf in a storm. Neither knight falls though lances shatter and horses froth. Until! Fortuitous strike drives terrible Sir Allyn to the ground. Unsatisfied with loss, Allyn takes axe and bootheel and drives Heathcliffe to his knees. The gasping onlookers cry at every resounding strike. But mighty HEathcliffe rises again! Allyn, the wretch, has a flaming weapon, the barest touch of which will sear our fair hero's courage as a brand. Skill comes to the champion of right, and he tears the madman's sword away with a whip. Again and again his strikes fall fast upon the wretched liar until like a beast, he is vanquished.
And yet--Sir Allyn rises to show us his bloody aspect. This cannot be, unless our knights be actors at the most glorious Georgia Renaissance Festival.
[I wrote this three years ago for the Photography final. I won the dot contest and got 150 of 150 points. There were some photo essays which were technically better than mine, but none were as interesting. Thank you, Ren Faire.]

4.15

Warning: Potentially impossible conditions exist. A non-exhaustive list of impediments includes theft, urination, hunger, dehydration, incarceration, infection, invasion (alien and otherwise), abduction (also alien and otherwise), ineligibility, ruined food, allergies, illegality, mars, and other.
Before the onset of hunger, travel in space but not excessively in time to a grocer's or other general store in which human food items are kept. Any functional means of conveyance which guarantees your immediate and future safety and reproductive capacity will do. Plan to arrive within the store's or grocer's operating hours. If this information is unclear or uncertain, ask as many people as necessary until the hour is ascertained. Follow all native and social laws. Necessary supplies include sufficient banknotes for the country in which the purchase its to be made to ensure the purchase of no more than an ocean-liner but no less than a sandwich. Also dress in clothes (well fitted and in good repair) sufficient to ensure comfort and safety in the weather and social conditions prevailing at every point between yourself and your eventual goal. Take as many juice boxes as you require for hydration and sustenance.
Upon arrival at the store, establish the identity and safety of the institution. If any alaurum has been raised, abandon and try again on a different business day. Enter the store through the commercial entrance and establish your bearings.
Many types of bread are commonly located together on a shelf in stores of this type. In a language which you both share, ask a store employee where this shelf is located, and follow their directions unless dangerous to your sanity or person. In the event of your failure, yell the words "bread, pan, brot" and various other translations until another employee or helpful human gives you directions which lead you to the bread. Select a loaf or other unit of bread which is easy to access, larger than both your hands, but small enough and light enough to carry comfortably with one hand. If at all possible, locate a loaf which has been machine-sliced. Pick up the loaf, bag, or other container and carry it with you, being careful to maintain its integrity.
Now that you have found bread (be it rye, pumpernickel, french, wheat, white, or stale), it is time to acquire a container of jelly, jam, or preserves. Relocate the previously helpful employee by calling for help in every language you know and/or ISL. If that employee is irretrievable, continue searching until any human directs you safely and reliably to the shelf which contains jam, jelly, or preserves. Mark its location in your memory and ask for directions to the peanut butter or other nut-based spreadable. They might even be within close proximity to the jelly, jam, or preserves. While at the j, j, or p shelf, select a jar, tube, or other permanent container which is easily openable. Find a flavor which pleases you. Pick up this container and determine if it can be comfortably carried in the hand while holding the bread. If not, resituate items until possible or select a different container. When both both j, j, or p, and bread are comfortable in one hand and easily held for a lengthy time, go to the peanut butter or other nut-based spreadable shelf. Pick up Jif extra crunchy. If you choose not to do this or are unable to do so, throw your fragile, empty body upon the rocks, as your life has no meaning.
With a loaf, bag, or other container in one hand with j, j, or p, and Jif extra crunchy in the other, walk safely and carefully through the store or grocer's until you find a cashier, owner, or other employee willing and able to process your items in return for currency. Carefully place all items near the person, or if they indicate their readiness in their hands. When they ask for a specific amount of money, give them enough to cover the bill. If the employee asks "paper or plastic," glare at the person and mutter something incomprehensible about the environment. Then ask for double-bagged plastic. Take your money and bagged ingredients in your hands in a manner which will guarantee against dropping them when the employee indicates that you are allowed and abandon the store with haste by the commercial exit.
When outside the store, re-establish relative levels of warmth, hunger, thirst, self-esteem, and brotherly love. Maintain acceptable levels of these as you return by the same conveyance and route as your journey to the store. If the route has changed or become non-negotiable, find a new, safer route. Don't forget any of your belongings or juice boxes at the store or anywhere along the route; bring these with you. Be vigitant to follow governmental and societal laws, as you are almost to be sandwiched.
When you have arrived at the safety and comfort of your own home, double check that it is, indeed your home. Leave your ingredients in the main carriage of your conveyance. Unlock the door, but if you cannot, feel free to throw a rock or other large object (your sister will work nicely) through a window and climb in without allowing any of your body to come in contact with any of the glass. Move the glass, if need be, by pinching the original flat edges of the new pieces with your index and thumb and without letting any other part of your hand come in contact with glass. Carefully place the glass pieces in your neighbor's hedge. Enter your house through  whatever door, window, or hole blown in the building, without cutting or otherwise harming yourself. Take ingredients with you. Maintain their integrity. You are so close.
Enter the house with senses on full alert. If you detect a threat or other danger, throw the ingredients directly at it and run like a wounded wombat. Youtube this now if you are unsure of the methodology involved. If, however, everything seems safe (barring the obvious destruction of your own means of entrance), enter the kitchen or other room with likely food-related utensils and turn on the light. If the light fails to turn on (perhaps due to the structural damage due to your entrance), abort, as the house is likely far more unsafe than you, cretin, gave it credit. Ghosts live in the dark. Remove all packaging, bagging, toxins, razor blades, or any other danger and hindrance from your ingredients and place them within reachable distance in separate piles, puddles, or globs on a table, counter, floor, or other stable, solid, permanent, non-porous surface. Locate and acquire a knife, spatula, or spoon of any non-toxic, dishwasher-safe substance. So close! If  none are readily available, give up after five minutes of searching and instead use your hand for the purpose. If the bread is not sliced, make sure nothing but bread is under the knife, and cut or roughly break the loaf perpendicularly to the stable surface into slices the width of a finger and the height of the bread itself. Using utensil or appendage,  scoop no more than a handful of j, j, or p onto one planar face of bread, taking care to not choose a face which once was crust. lay bread down on the stable surface in a new pile with j, j, or p face up. Repeat scooping action with gif, but on top of the j, j, or p. Place a new, different slice of bread with a roughly congruent planar face so that the j, j, or p and Jif are between it and the other slice, orienting both slices in such a way so as to make them parallel, or as close as can be allowed. If at any point in the assemblage you are foxed by a quandry, attempt to reverse, outwit, or remove the source of your problems. If impossible, retrieve your sister from her prone place in the windowframe, and have her do it. Sandwich!

If all else fails, combine all ingredients in a bag, box, or container. Close the container. Shake mildly. If evolutionists are to be believed, a proto-sandwichoid will appear within several billion years. Consumption is your own problem. Enjoy!

4.13

[I am open to the idea that some things cannot be improved on. I am party to the plea that some things should not be improved on. I just deleted ten minutes' work on an expansion of 1.27, something I want very badly to do. I wrote things, beautiful things, about the weight of the light and the state of the room, but as soon as I touched on her--I faltered.
I wrote the original. I own it, as far as intellectual productions can be owned. I speak for its origins and I alone can attest to my state of mind at its creation. But you must know that I am incapable of expanding upon the point. The story cannot be more than a brief aside in my expanding oeuvre. There is no growth to the story other than to say "so sorry! I've ruined everything by trying to bring this character and this moment back. I have destroyed the mystery and wonder of the original by hacking away at the task with a zeal reserved for killing things.

In any case, I've failed.
Congratulations.]

Birds don't eat worms because they want to. Those twit-based lifeforms eat the lowest of our detritus because it's all they have. They've never done anything different. Am I the bird, or the worm?

4.11

Possible Uses of a Paperclip. Hinge. Needle. Weak spring. Tie clip. Replacement button. Link in chain. Body piercing. Drill. Strainer. Murder weapon. Shoelace. Chip clip. Battery connection. Light source (with enough amperage). Glasses repair. Sabotage instrument. Ring. Trail marking. Art. A way to mark a cup at a party. Element of a model. Tiny manacles. Tiny sword. Pistol grip. Knife sharpener. Escape instrument. Stitch. Element for electrolysis. Oral fixation. Toothpick. Tool for keeping mouth wet in desert. Watch hand. Unit of measure. Currency. Paintbrush (poor). Sandwich spear. Icicle seed. Zipper pull. Pen. BSDM sex toy. Tuning fork. Vise grips. Mounting pin. Clothing pin. Diaper pin. Instrument of self harm. Prosthetic finger. Burglar deterrent. Tool for prank. Pushpin. Torture device. Q-tip replacement. Ice pick. Cheese knife. Enamel remover. Fingernail/toenail cleaner. Nail. Staple remover. Science experiment. Pigment. Hair tie. Wire scrub brush. Symbol of a secret society. Coat pin. Splint. Orthodontic wire. Tooth spacer. Floss. Plot device in a story. Conversation starter. Example of a noun. Metaphor. Example of invention. Chopsticks. Souvenir. Lockpick. Picture hangar. Livestock brand. Symbol. Antenna. Letter in an alphabet. Holiday decoration. Subject of a word problem. Counting tool in a math class. Subject of a documentary. Clue in an investigation. Bookmark. Eraser. Compass (cartographic/geometric). Anthropomorphized document help. Fishing hook. Morse code clapper. Tiny snowshoes. Subject of a running joke. Gastric suture. Stake checker. Paperweight. Fetishistic obsession. Squeegee. Shish-kebab/fondue stick/hors d'oeuvres server. iPhone sim card remover. Router resetter. Lever. Fulcrum. Toast announcer. Butter scraper. Extra finger for tying ribbons. Ribbon curler. Keyring. Subject of a trivia quiz. Glass etch. Coil in an electric motor. Screwdriver. Grade school decoration hanger. Tooth in a comb. String pull. Item in a survival kit. Tool to level a table. Grenade pin. Target of a boycott. Paper holder.

4.10

Sunstrike glances shoot out from dark curls, silvering the air between with suspended immotile heartbeats. My whole frame shakes with each thunderous clap of ventricle and valve as my body counts the moments until you shift to look at me again: a miracle of chance with no obvious course of capitalization. I want you. I want these argent looks to only always be for me. My only thought is silence. Still, my heart blows me back into my seat with thudding importunity. Don't go. Don't speak. Don't look. Don't seek her eyes, filtered through hair that falls manifold and luxurious, a cultivated unrestraint that speaks to waterfalls and high winds drawn on ancient maps, a curlicue circus of black that serves to frame a fair face. I'm stuck dancing between staring and shuddering, hoping for you to put my name on your lips even as a whisper unbreathed. I would fall, no bounds of constraint, headlong for you.
Whose fingertips filter ecstasy by sliding sinuous along your nape, silver skin soft, hair fallen in their face, a thousand wisps feathered on their lips, sensuous to bursting with the smell of you? If no one, then: I beseech you. Why not me?

4.8

Have you ever had your limb go numb while you're sleeping--maybe you're laying on it funny and it just goes absolutely dead? I have gone to sleep on my stomach and woken with both arms like they were some corpse's, and Dr. Frankenstein had sewed these useless replacements to where my old limbs had been. I have woken on my back in a state of total sleep paralysis, a fear induced by a spiderbite in a dream, a complete inability for brain to excite even spastic movement in a finger or toe. Frustration is not the paralysis. It is the terror that every neuron is bent to this one task, to move a finger, and your entire machinery has commanded your brain, your central control, your very self: no. I will not move. You are left with only the fear that you will never again have control over even the very basic functions of life and that everything you do will be countermanded by your body. That fear and loathing is what frustration feels like. That's what it feels like when the whole world bears its terrible weight down on your will and snaps it like antique glass--not at all, then all at once and terrible and completely.

4.6

People talk about life flashing before them, and I'm envious. I tend to have a very different reaction.
I remember the first time I fell off my new bike. I was just getting back into riding after having taken a fifteen year hiatus, having given up biking after turning ten partially from outgrowing the bike and partially from outgrowing the "cool" factor of pedaling places. Now twenty five, I was re-entering the infancy of my biking skill.
My parents own a fifteen acre farm with a little set of hills rolling down to a creek, along which they have planted a forest of saplings. The driveway is loose gravel and leads down to the road at the steepest incline on the property, and the house is up on the hill overlooking it all. Now, I had chosen the furthest ring around as my route: down the driveway--cut right and along the road--swing up the creek and wind through the forest of small trees--along the fencerow and over the hills--down the driveway again. All told, the route is a fifth of a mile. I could do the entire loop in less than two minutes.
I was very careful on the gravel that scoots out from under the tires. I was very careful running around the trees that reach out and cut my face. But along the road there's a long, low straightaway that begs to be barreled down at top speed. At the turn, I was not very careful. Evening, dew, and madness combined in the failing light to put me in a manic leaning turn that suddenly gave way from under me. The bike continued straight for a heartbeat, leaning even further to the ground, until the pedal dug straight into the dirt, halting the machine entirely. My knee hit the ground first, rolling me over the bike, onto it, and past, my left leg working its way under the falling frame as I went.
My life did not flash before me. I did not see everything in slow motion. I did not have a long moment of self-realization as I approached maximum pain. I just blacked out. One moment, I was flying along, the next, my leg was twisted up with the front shifter and the bike was underneath me. I freaked. I laid my head down again and thought "well, this is the end." That scared me, actually. More than falling off the bike, I was scared that my first fall would be my last, that I might give up on my favorite part of biking (the thirty-mile-an-hour fall down a steep hill with the wind at your back, pedaling madly to gain precious momentum to fly up the next hill and do the whole thing again) just because I was terrified of this moment.
I lept up.
I dragged the bike under me and jammed down on the pedal, but the bike didn't move. In fact, the pedal didn't want to turn under my foot, but I was pinwheeling madly trying to go forward. The back wheel had come away from its bracket and was floating loosely held only by the chain. I feel like this moment is a metaphor for my entire life. Do everything right, run an A+ operation, but when you get knocked down once the whole machinery falls into pieces. Of course, I was able to reattach the wheel and tighten it down again, but I couldn't help but think about my utter conviction while on the ground that I must get up and bike again immediately or I would lose the will to do so--and the bike said no.

4.4

Sometimes, he snorks in the night. I roll over and look at the little dog bed on the floor and watch his feet do a slow windmill or two. He heaves a huge sigh and there's the smallest whine in it; he sounds like he's having trouble breathing. Poor pooch. He's allergic to household dust and dust mites. I can't vacuum enough or take good enough care of the house to really fight that. I'm moving. In fact, I'm afraid he's getting worse. Every time I move a piece of furniture, I vacuum underneath it. Every time, there's a huge billow of smoky dust in the suction chamber.
The specialist vet, when she pulled up the paper to show what he was allergic to, pointed out his extreme allergy to dust, dust mites, Johnson grass, and moths. She was trying to save me from knowing. She was trying to save me from this fact: household dust isn't just dirt that drifted in from outside and settled on my bookshelves and fan blades and range hood. There's not that much dirt from the air. The dust in my house is me--my skin. Watson is allergic to me.
He still lays down on my feet. He still licks my hands. He still snuffles my hair when I'm tying my shoes. I don't know if he's made the connection yet--that I'm the one making him so sick--but if he has, he hasn't let on. He chooses me.

Happy birthday, Watsbutt. Congrats on surviving to two years old.