5.10

I'm way behind.

He stroked his chin. It crackled at him and dragged back on his fingers. He needed a shave. The dirt on his chin was wiped away by his fingers, which made his cheeks look unnatural. They, and everything else but his chin, were caked with red dirt.

He grunted and stood up, dust slowly shuffling off his shoulders. He picked up his helmet and beat it on a rock to clear the dirt from the inside. Strapping it on, he rubbed his premature beard one last time.

Maybe he'd find a razor tomorrow.

5.7

This is my 112 post. Sorry, the last one was onehundredandelventh.

(This is my eleventy-first birthday! Alas, it is too short a time to spend among such excellent and admirable hobbits. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.)

I can't think, but it's not because of drugs or nothin'. I wish it was, 'cuz then I'd have an excuse. Naw, my only explanation is lack of dental hygeine. And you don't have to try to puzzle that out; it doesn't make sense. I always think back to that day and wonder: what went so terribly wrong as to bring me to this lowly state? But it never helps, because I can't think, so I can't puzzle out what went wrong to make me unthinkable, and so I don't know what to fix so I can think again, and then my head hurts, and that's the end of that.

Suggestions?

(And Proudfoots.

PROUDFEET!)

5.6

Bad Soliloquy in a Bad Play I will never write: (and have never written)

What's so compelling about men, anyway? I read it in a book. We're compelling. The book said "A man really has to love a woman to spend as much time with her as she wants." Which is strange, because I don't spend as much time in my own head as she'd like to.

I know why I'm interested in me. I'm egotistical. I know why other men are interested in me. We like comparing ourselves to others: where do we exceed, where do we fail, in comparison to the other? I know why my daughter is interested in me. She listens to what I have to say or I make her go to timeout. But why my wife is interested in me is something I'll never know.

I give her no cause:

I take her love and give none back

I leave her with excess responsibilities

I poke fun at her accomplishments

I leave unexpectedly

I find anger much too soon

I don't laugh at her jokes

I belittle her friends

I fail as a father

I halt as a husband

I miscarry as a man

I start most of my sentences with "I." And yet she still says that she loves me when she rolls over in the night.

5.4

I will try to update periodically/every day. I have been burnt out for the last . . . a long time. Now, I'm getting back into the rhythm of things. 11.5 hours of sleep help, except:

I just had a dream.

Hang with me now, this one was weird.

Usually, I have dreams where the geography is weird. Either it's unpractical, or it's a place I know, but my head has changed great portions of it. Well, I was at my grade school, and the geography was exquisite. Nothing was out of place. The creek was even proportional, though there were people getting washed away in it. So, what I remember of the dream was that Autumn (a girl with whom I went to high school [interesting fact, I always want to capitalize high school. When I don't do that, I either conjoin it or hyphenate it]) and the nice guy from American Pie (which I watched pieces of on the telly, so I can't tell you which are the naughty bits, sorry) were getting married. To condense that sentence, Autumn and the nice guy from American pie were getting married. Sorry. I love ellipticals. CARRY ON. My uncle John was performing the ceremony for God knows what reason, because I'm not sure he's ever A: been to Missouri, or B: been in one of my dreams. BUT I just saw him, so it makes sense that he is my dreampreacher of choice.

They were getting married and the creek, without picking up, began to drown everyone but the guy from American Pie (because in my dream he was apparently expandable, and was able to keep his head above water when his bride and the preacher were drowning.) Someone was concerned, but I waived them off, because Stephanie was there, and she had a lifeguarding licence.

The Nazis showed up (I couldn't actually see them, but it's not like I was looking at them) and ordered us all back to our side of the creek (because we were trying to escape by standing in the middle and marrying ourselves? It made more sense in the dream.) Then I became a little girl (Candace Tyler, actually) and lost my neck transponder and saw some of the stupidest escape attempts I have ever seen in my life (such as a swing off of a kite? I don't know). I wanted to bury my neck transponder, but since Moberly is the only place in my entire dream world with accurate geography, the soybean field was gone, so I had to do fancy magical things to bury it. This is about the time when I saw a naruto headband and said to myself "OH I shall take this to Philip. He will enjoy it immensely!" And went back to my dream. I didn't quite realize the stupidity of that (Philip wasn't in my dream. He's rarely in my dreams), so I went blithely on, until I said to myself, and I quote, "I should check real-world time!" and I found out that I was 5 hours late to Haluska's class from the last dream.

META DREAM

I had a dream, in which I knew I was dreaming, but my reality had reset to be THE CLASS FROM THE LAST DREAM (which I was also late to, so double whammy.)

4.27b

I'm not going to punctuate these poems like I probably should. SEE here's the thing. Katy was in a poetry-writing class at Andrews, and they discussed things like punctuation and rhythm (which has one, non-standard vowel, bytheway) and meter and rhyme and such. One glorious poet in the class did not understand the [thitherto undiscussed] concept of cohesion, and wrote a wonderful poem in which various housepets appeared on unexplained lecterns for the sake of the rhyme. The poem was about winter, so why these elements made an appearance is beyond me.

Anyhow, I plan to be like that poet when I grow up.

I used to know several old men

who balancéd plates on their shins.

These shin-balance men

did giggle and grin

whenever they balancéd ten.

And I know that the rhyme scheme is aabba, but I like this too.

4.27a

The raptor did sit

at the edge of the pit

eating his pudding and pie

"This pudding and pie

doth belong in my eye,"

said the raptor, all covered in spit

His pudding and pie

he did stick in his eye

admiring it then from afar

He looked up to the star

and wished super hard

with a wistful and woebegone sigh

that the pudding and pie

(now creamed in his eye)

could be there until he did die.

4.26

I'm trying to not expend any extra energy.

BUT I'm falling behind super rapidly.

I'll tell you this story to make up for it.

I always sit next to water when wooing a woman. I don't know if there's something primal in it: a reminder of inexorable forward motion.

4.24b

This morning, I wrote an epic poem about socks/loss. I fell into rhyme without trying to. Here are a few of the better rhymes that I thought were worth texting to my sister (and thus are saved).

The sky took offence

and did strike him but twice

--no small matter--

with softballs of ice.

. . .

He never finished his task

so the sky struck them both.

"Both?" You might ask.

"From whence did the second man come?"

Well, sit still, stop your fidgeting.

I'll tell you, my son.

4.24a

HAVE YOU BEEN OUTSIDE?

This night is amazing: wind, rain, and awesome. If anyone knows a geographical location with those three elements 365 days a year, tell me so I can move there.

This night is so awesome that I lost my hat (my favorite hat) to the river and I'm kind of not caring yet. (Give it a week or so.)

ALSO:

You can't get something for nothing.

4.22b

I'm currently loading film into the camera. It's hard, because I have to pull out some film and wind it down into the camera just right, or it won't catch and I'll have to start all over again. Once I finally get it, I'll take pictures.

It's hard to take pictures, because I have no idea how they'll turn out. I can't take a picture again if it's out of focus, or underexposed, or weird. I have to just point and shoot, pray and hope. Some of the pictures are ruined by people getting in the way. Some of them are ruined by the subject blinking. Some of them are ruined by a shaky camera hand.

But maybe, just maybe, one of them is good.

So I keep shooting.

People make fun of me sometimes, for not using a digital camera. "It's easier! You don't have to wait to see your pictures. It's way more fun, too!" I'm unconvinced, but I can't prove my case. I can't just pull out all the film on the spool and say "Here, look! I have great pictures! Life is peachy!" because all the film is still light-sensitive, and it would ruin everything if I did.

I have to be careful.

I have to plan my shots.

I have to be patient and wait to see them.

The worst part of film is handing it to someone else, asking them to finish the process. What if they say no? What if they botch it all up? What if they lose the negatives?

The best part of film is pulling all the pictures out of the paper envelope and going through them all, seeing all the mistakes and underexposures and weird faces. And pictures are never as good without waiting first.

And that's why I wait.

4.22a

My film is at Wal-Mart today.

I love film because you know what pictures you take, but you slowly forget. Maybe I remember two or three of the pictures, but that's it. No more.

Opening the packet and rifling through a set of exposures is always a pleasure, even when they don't turn out. Sometimes, especially when they don't turn out. I like those because it's hard to figure out what the heck I was trying to take a picture of. (of what the heck I was trying to take a picture.)

I don't have anything deep for this yet; I'm late for class. Look for a film metaphor sometime today.

4.21b

True story:

Last night, the fog spoke to me, so I took my accordion and played outside. It was awesome, so minor keys and improvisation for me it was.

This evening, a girl friends me. She's in choir, so I figure why not? Her status update:

Sometimes I do very weird things. It's nice to know that they do have an impact. Most people just look at me funny and go on with their lives. I would like to be remembered. I would like to seem weird. I am weird. I am weird.

4.21a

I'm not keeping up well. The breath comes in ragged gasps. My hands pump twice as fast as my feet. All I can see is the runner in front of me. I put on an extra burst of speed, passing the only person in view and losing sight completely.

Fourty seconds later, I wake up wearing a victor's medal, surrounded by crowds.

[fact: I have passed out while running before]

[fact: I did not enjoy it]

[fact: I will not be doing it again]

[fact: I was in the best physical condition of my life and I ran up heartattack hill at camp and passed out forty feet from my goal, and woke up when I felt the light pole between my hands. It was the most weird, surreal experience of my life. It's like my brain shut off all unnecessary functions.]

4.19b

This is not a creative post.

This is an instructive post.

I'm terrified of messing up.

I'm also afraid that this is common in men.

4.19a

"I had a friend once who ate a lightbulb."

"What?"

"Yeah, he ate a whole lightbulb."

--No joke, I heard this conversation.