End of Year Game

I don't really think I like this game. I don't know if it is actually fair. Maybe it is. Randomness of break followed by the suck of the month of Febuary that slowly builds up to the goodness of Summer and then all of the sudden my life explodes into traveling. Hmmm...

Go into your archive and copy the first sentence from each month of this past year. Skip pictures and memes. Only copy sentences which you actually wrote. This will give you a miniature review of your year:

January
A story by request. Among other things it includes: An East Coast Beach Resort, A Washed-Up Anchor Man, and something similar to water melon rinds.
February
What exactly am I quitting you ask?
March
Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.
April
So I spent most of yesterday in a sewer pipe.
May
(The first thing was a poem about dead some deer and a car and a smattering of pictures)
As much fun as scheduled events and parties and dances are...sometimes those spontaneous ones are just that much better.
June
So as a part of class today we were asked to write for a bit about something along the lines of Salt Marsh Elegy by Aldo Leapold.
July
-I should be sleeping but I cannot
August
My head crunchified then fireworked and now its pretty stellar.
September
I got to play miner today. Sort of.
October
It's good to be home.
November
Um. Life is nuts and I am moving around so much that my muse keeps getting lost.
December
But can I have puppies???

Mini-Pig

So anyways I got a llama for Christmas. Llama does not live with me and I don't get to name him/her though I am hoping they name it Elmo. I was under the impression that Elmo was going to live in Peru but after some research I think Elmo gets to chill in Bolivia. That is fine with me. Elmo can help herd the guinea pigs. While I am on the topic...would you consider eating a guinea pig. If I have a guinea pig roast in the future would you attend. I mean think about it. You could try several different flavors of roasted pig sauce. Think about it. Also think about the heifer project. They are a solid program that works at a grass roots level. They not only provide animals; they provide training in animal husbandry and veterinary care and also how to provide the best food for the animals. That sort of thing. They are also big on gender equality and they like to turn the programs over to the people as soon as possible so it isnt some overstuffed american college student telling Sancho how to raise his chickens. It is neighbor...and brother, Pedro. My favorite part is that they require people to pass on animals. They frequently give pregnant animals and the first offspring of a heifer animal is passed on to someone else in need who lives in the area. So really when you buy one llama...its more like you get two...or at least 1.5. And in all honesty who doesnt want a llama?

Forget Hippopotamusseses

I got a Llama for Christmas! I don't think I hate Christmas. These things a vaguely related in ways other than they both feature Christmas. More on that later...

Magnolia

There is so much but so very little. When your whole life has become one big exercise in procrastination the little bits of procrastination that used to be so relieving sort of drag on you. Hence the spate of unblogging. And you would thing that simply not posting is really something neutral except that I would think things to write, even start to write them…and walk away consigning them to never-never land. For words this is not a happy place of eternal childhood nor is it like limbo. It’s the slow eating deathof beyond apathy sadness. Poor words. I wish that I had cared more…kind of.

So I am coming and going and never quite slowing, the bodies starting to wear and clothing to tear and someday soon I will crawl home again. Or I will run out of places. This is more like it. My plans end after Christmas. Normally these black holes of future bother me but I’m so mellowed and road bumped by the past, oh, six months, that nothing just might be a 4 dimensional place where I can visit for a while and then continue passing through. I still want a puppy. Eventually I will learn how to sit still. Promise. Then I can get the puppy and teach him the same. I want a dog that can do the cool flip the bone off the nose and catch it trick. I tried it with Spanky but it never worked. Iguanas and hermit crabs are nice but they are a little too endothermic to take hiking with you. It will eventually need to be a dog.

So while I’ve been running helter skelter and inadvertently refusing to stay in my house for more time than I spend elsewhere I’ve settled in a little sea-side town in MA where I can cook amazing things and bake nothing. That’s not entirely true because I have baked masterpieces. The problem is that I have to hire out mercenaries to track down things like flour. There is no flour in this house. (Nor are their flowers in this house but that seems like less of a staple.) So baking takes place in stages in several places with borrowed equipment. I forgot how much I enjoyed cooking for me and not worrying about others tastes and letting experimentation rule in the kitchen. It doesn’t ever seem to work this way at home. I have a great idea. How about post-christmas when I am destinationless you invite me over. Fill your kitchen with pre-foodstuffs and I will cook for you. In a few days I will wander elsewhere to others with well stocked kitchens and in such a way I won’t really have to settle. I can car train my wee pooch as I go. Sounds amazing. Lets do it.


(eventually I will poem again. Stagnation is the rule right now)

But can I have puppies???

House Bouncing

Something more pathetic than most things: A declawed cat trying to sharpen its claws on the corner of the couch.

Where's Waldo

Um. Life is nuts and I am moving around so much that my muse keeps getting lost. In the past 23 days I have been in 13 states, some more than once. I think what happened is that (s)he fell off the truck in South Dakota because I seem to have picked it back up on the train in to Chicago. I am guessing it would take a muse about 2 weeks to make it from South Dakota to Chicago in fair weather. It is still a little bruised and shaken. Hopefully it follows me home from here and doesn't get lost on the way again because as far as I am concerned the states between here and there are something like a black hole on non-existance.

I did the Idaho thing, the grad school search thing, the leisurely drive home thing, the madly unpack and repack thing, the MA thing, and now I am doing the Chicago thing. In my travels I have I have committed to alpacas and guinea pigs, seen lopes loping, created an extensive list of reasons why Indiana is patently wrong, galavanted through cemetaries, delivered hermit crabs, and been snuck into the bowels of a building.

One hundred people moving to the sound of the train on the tracks
Far off stares, distant cares, not quite unhappily bored
There is work, there is worry, and hurry and hurry
To the train, and the rythmn that idle thoughts mask.
Doors will open, Mind the tracks, tickets ready, Click-clack,
The steady approach to the city thats calling
Each stop adds one more to the rythmn that goes
Children on foot, bags in hand, on the tracks on the tracks on the tracks

Waldo lives in coconut bark on Haskel Street...I think.

Sad Things

My car hurts. I don't want to talk about it.

I leave for ID tomorrow.

I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.






...I may not come back.

Good things...

So I got in a letter in the mail...

Chestnuts are falling

The Last Holyhock
Pears that never get ripe
Some Plums
An afternoon's foraging
It's good to be home.

-Jn

hehehe...

Lz sent this to me today. Reminicent of the death by cheese-grater days. Mmmm those were good days.
-Jn

Back

I don’t know that I realize it before I start but every time I come home from a while away I play the same game and I think something similar before I leave. And I always look for the same things first though they aren’t the same any more. When I spin into my driveway I am waiting for a spunky puppy to come tearing around from the back of the garage or when I am not met there at least a stiff old one to sheepishly haul her arthritic self off of the couch. But there is no dog. Instead there are puffball kittens and half cats and a lithe and lanky yellow eyed wee-beast waiting for me mowling. And I wander around back to check on the trees I know and the garden growing things. The pond is nearly empty and only has 3 frogs and no ducks. Strange. There are chickens. There are always chickens. Sometimes more sometimes less always different colors. Chickens. Check. And then I look to the last patch of sun on the back porch for the orange tripod that never really quite acted like a cat anyways. But of course he is not there. These two are buried side by side like they slept near the rock pile at the edge of the woods. If you were some how wondering, this is what I meant (It’s like coming home in the twilight when everyone else is gone.) though I suppose there were twinges of amber and orange. Let's call them ghosts. Welcome Home. -Jn

Caryatids are not Katydids

A Beast Called Sorrow (9/22/06 RRC)

Deceptions become repetitions
To perpetuate the hurt received.
Never finding peace
But searching all the while
In a style recognized by gangsters cowboys and the like.
It’s an open mic.
Tell me your fears and dreams and then
I’ll share mine
Just like every time.
Except I don’t expect a solution to the problem
I’ve come to love as me,
And what I do and what I see is
Tainted by the sorrow I claim only as my own.
It’s like coming home in the twilight
When everyone else is gone.
Slightly bruised pride purple splashed against the walls
And an echo in the halls,
But though you want to run,
It’s where you need to be.
Please don’t try to take from me
This beast that I have tamed
Even named
For sorrow is sweet,
purposed,
meet
When the leaves have fallen away
And on special gray days
When the flowers mourn
Because they’re not quite as bright
And on those nights when the hurts are remembered.
They’re dying embers,
But child still don’t touch.
Meddle in the fire too much and
You will be burned in the self-same way.
Maybe then we can share this pain.

-Jn

I forgot about her

A Daughter Of Eve
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:--
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.

Hehehe...

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Antigone

Coal Miner’s Daughter (9/12/06 - RRC)

Pondering what it means to be a coal miner’s daughter
I can’t help playing in the water
And I like to watch it as it goes
Coming down in rains and snows
And piling up in pools behind a beaver’s master piece
Filled with water-weeds for the geese
And I like to watch the trees turning red
Before they are forced to disrobe in the cold
It shows what you know
When you name them by feel
Makes them real
And I like their hidden rings
Because there’s beauty in seldom seen things
Like the dark bands round the earth
That fuel the lights of the night
Globe round and in your town
And the water shouldn’t turn rust-brown
But you find a better way
It’s not to say that I don’t care
I know what’s there
And what it means to take away
I know how red blood can be
When you fell a beast
But in the least I’m thankful
For the chance to understand
For these hands to know the textures of a life
And the colors to be seen beneath the skin
Maybe it’s a sin to dig to the earths black
But stand back and tell me
How you keep your hands clean
When you tell them they can’t cook
Or have lights to read
Because there is no steam
Have you ever thought it through?
And what do you do to make acid rain?
We’re all stained- guilty for living
And for passing around the blame
Really we all stand the same
Though you choose to look away
Or shake your fists at my father
But what do I know
I’m just a coal miner’s daughter

-Jn

You mean I don't live here?

Interesting....I like the Beverly house. I dont think I want to leave ever. It is prudent that I leave on Thursday as that is the day that my itty-bitty lease runs out. Maybe if I buy them some beer. Work is bouncing between overnights and days and split shifts which are just my gosh awful favorite. It's getting about time to go home. Pitty. I have lots of people to play with up here. I'm around for another week or so, then this homelessness business will end. I do miss PA. I just wish there was a more direct route from Boston to my end or that maybe it wasn't quite so far away. I should visit ALL the time. I should get a car that runs on H2O while I am at it. Silly financial instability. My Saturday went like...taking a nap after work then making blueberry pancakes and having uber stimulating discussion over breakfast with one NP moderated and mediated by Tybo then meeting up with MelKel to play in the tide pools at her "cute little beach." I got to ride on the shiny but yet unnamed bike and we found critters of all types. When we couldnt catch any lobsters the 8 year old kids got us some to play with. Those kids were awsome and this is not to say that Tybo is not awsome because he could not catch the gianormous lobster. He put in a damn good effort and he still earned himself a beer because he caught me a fish barehanded. The ride home was something like stimulating because we were in a slight hurry to beat impending death and large coastal thunder storms. We only got a wee bit wet. Then we went to Kitty's and met up with some other just-happened-to-be-in-town types and had a spectacular night. Sunday we made ammeretto french toast and hit up church then they let me watch football ALL day yesterday!!!! By they I mean the networks and the oldschool tv and the boys. This is not to say that the boys watched football with me all day as well, just that they didn't complain. I even get to watch my Steelers play on Monday because they are going to let me come back. Must make sure I am not working that night. That would be tragic. Hmmm....

Things you dont want to hear while I'm eating

I mean while you are eating.

Normally when your mucus makers kick into overdrive this is a bad thing. You spend your days woah-is-me-ing (woad-id-me id more what id souds like) and nose blowing. However, in my uniqueness, this seems to be my bodies way of telling me that I am quickly approaching better.

See evil guerilla germs infultrated my mucus factories in force in an attempt to change my personal autocratic government into a dictatorship bowing to the whims of the head germ leader. All factories were forced to close and production ceased, crippling the traffic infrastructure. The coup was nearly successful as the powers that be were too stuborn at first to call for help and unwilling to admit that Immune System First-Strike had been overwhelmed and colapsed instantly. But when militia armies of Chicken Soup and OJ made were ineffective and Na-Cl monoxygen-dihydride gargle-bombs were scoffed at, RN peace keeping troops were called in. After a mere 24 hours of constant battle the guerilla forces have been pushed back. A monitoring RN force is in place to ensure that the rebel forces are irradicated and there is no chance of a second attack while militia units are brining relief to the state forces. The mucus peasants are showing their support by redoubling their efforts in mucus production and outside critics are wondering if this was all staged by the government to receive support from other nations. What remains to be seen is how many other nations have been infiltrated by escaping rebels as the nations borders could not be sealed during the initial irradication.

(I worked ~20 hours and attended a recital while contagious...oops)

In other news I am moving away from the cat house and into a princess suite this evening. Whilst there I will be waited on, hand and foot, by 4 strapping young gentlemen....or something like that anyways. Who ever said it was bad to be homeless? -Jn

I didn't take pictures

I got to play miner today. Sort of. I was helping 105 dig a basement with a ragtag crew of some pretty random people. I like this idea of friends helping friends do things like build decks and basements and whatever. People should do these things and friends should help them. Free sweat, dirt, and well worked muscles with pizza, beer, and pop for lunch. Yes. This is why the Amish can do those cool barns and houses and quilts.

I learned fun things too. Like dirt comes in all colors, textures, and even smells. When you are all shoveling from different places into one big pile its beautiful really. Rocks are the same way even if all the rocks were granite. But regardless of all the myriad cool things about geology all rocks and dirt are heavy. And man is mortal. And my arms dont work anymore from betwixt the shoulderblades and decreasing in functionality down to the finger tips.

This is a good tired. Not like those other tireds I have been this week.

-Jn

(Tybo can come too)

HMoCZ and finches

I have been running around with crazy people all week. I saw Frog and then Tybo and Mel Kel and we went bookstoring and talking and breaking and entering and vintage shoping and eating a lot of eating. I also got to hang out with JJ for a bit. Oh and I got a pen. I think I mentioned it before. I mention it again. I got a pen.

Yesterday I saw everything and that is a lie. We went into bean town (well cambridge anyways) to the Harvard Natural History Museum. There was and amazing photograph exibit that what worth our student discounted admission all by its lonesome but then there was the museum of comparative zoology. We spent so much time running around in there that there was only about 15 minutes for the glass flowers exibit and they kicked us out before we ever got to the minerals and the history section (and they had a thing about anceint peruvian culture). Silly closing time. But we were never gonna leave otherwise. Then we went and found and idyllic concrete bench on the side of an asphalt path and munched on a rather late lunch. Is it dinner when you wait until after 5? Maybe. I started feeding this cute little finch some of my sandwich. Then there were like 4 more little finches so I was feeding them too. Then there were 100 finches and they ceased to be cute and comenced to be a little creepy and opressive. Mel Kel accused me of pushing buttons. She was right. She is frequently right. I told Tybo he would get $2 for a finch but he never caught one. We also talked about a million good things on the way too and from. Homesteading, farming in general, keeping all industry in village, travel, our honeymoon, books, people, and many many other things. And we made it home with no problems. That was exciting. Then Kt came over. We ate a lot of pizza and talked until I almost fell asleep. Life is good.

It is my day off and I am going in to work. Orientation. Freshmen. I love freshmen.

My favorite I think is that it is move in day and it rained all night and it is stlil raining on and off. Life is good.

I have pictures of yesterday but once again they are trapped in a camera...whose batteries are going dead. Hmm....

(it mentions fish!)

When I lost my computer 20 times a day I would stumble over the fact that I would show someone something (a picture a poem whatever) if I'd had it. The same is true about the camera. This time see I have the camera but no way to transfer the goodies that live inside of it to a more public media. I am told the way is coming via mail. My thought is that like the computer the immediate, essential uses for the camera will disapear when it isn't out of service. Had I a camera I would show you the pen. For now you have to wait on the USPS.

As an update, I am homeless again in a little over 2 weeks. No worries. School starts in days which equals friends with floors and an over abundance of meal points.

Also I do NOT like silverfish. This is promted by the silverfish crawling from out of no-where in the office and suicide jumping off of the desk onto my pants. I like house centipedes and they live in drains and have an unusual number of legs and strange appearance so its not that exactly. Silverfish are just...just...shudder. Thats all. Period.

-Jn

Nothing More (finished 8/22/06 RRC)

I’d mourn you if I thought you’d mourn me
More than lost fate and too little too late.
But then, I haven’t given up on us enough
To write you off as gone for good like I should
And learned how to grieve the twice deceased
And love almost had. Though it’s not quite too bad,
And I can live half-widowed before I’m promised wed
Or ever met in bed and I never have to know
That it wouldn’t have gone beyond a kiss or two
Under a moderately romantic moon before
You left me for whatever seemed better at the time.
But pity’s not my line. This is just the mess I guess
That could be in my head. Instead I sip here waiting,
Cold beer in hand, anticipating the day you’re on this shore.
Only this, and nothing more.

With Love and Squalor

One of my favorite shorts. I don't exactly know why. A few typos but I think that's what keeps it free.

yup, gate's still broken

I was going to post about my new dog but apparently I don't have a new dog and it was a dirty rotten lie the whole time.

For the record The Wall has been chosen and and while many have been sentenced no one has been sent...yet.

Pictures I promised sometime

I planned on leaving you with better pictures of my rainbowhead and adding some of camp but I left my camera cable at home so this is all you get for now. The hair pictures really only show how nuts it is not the actual colors...sorry.

The really cool bug.

The hands that killed Barney...or dyed my hair

A little more blue than it should be

A little too pink

-Jn

icteo-thesaurus your mom

abrupt, acid, acrid, acrimonious, awkward, bad-tempered, base, bearish, bellicose, bitchy, bleak, blue, blue funk, bluff, blunt, boorish, brief, broody, brusque, cantankerous, captious, caviling, chapfallen, cheerless, choleric, chuffy, churlish, cloddish, clodhopping, contentious, contrary, crabbed, crabby , cranky, crestfallen, cross, cross-grained, crotchety, crude, crusty, curmudgeonly, curt, cussed, cynical, dejected, depressed, desolate, despondent, difficult, disagreeable, disconsolate, discourteous, dismal, disobliging, dispirited, disputatious, dour, downcast, downhearted, dragged, dreary, eccentric, eristic, faultfinding, forbidding, forlorn, fractious, fretful, gloomy, glum, grim, grouchy, gruff, grumpy, hard, harsh, hasty, huffy, ill-humored, ill-mannered, ill-tempered, impatient, impolite, irascible, irritable, joyless, jumpy, loutish, lowbred, malicious, mean, melancholy, menacing, mirthless, miserable, misanthropic, miserly, moody, moping, mopish, morose, mournful, mumpish, nasty, nasty-tempered, oafish, obnoxious, obstreperous, odd, offensive, oppressed, ornery, peeved, peevish, perverse, pessimistic, pettish, petulant, prickly, put out, queer, querulous, quick-tempered, ratty, rude, rustic, sad, sarcastic, saturnine, scornful, severe, sharp, short, short-tempered, snappish, snappy, snarling, snippety, snippy, solemn, sour, splenetic, stringent, sulky, sullen, surly, tart, terse, testy, tetchy, touchy, tough, trying, twitty, ugly, uncivil, uncivilized, uncultured, unfriendly, unhappy, ungracious, unlikable, unmannerly, unpleasant, unpolished, unsociable, unusual, uptight, vexed, vulgar, waspish, waspy, weary, whiny, woebegone

Can I ask you a question?

To the guys I met at the gas station off 84 in NY at quater to 3 last friday night. Normally I am more talkative, I was just really tired. Lets get coffee or something.

Vacation

In a week I've:
Sucked at darts
Played with kittens who hate thing
Exagerated to the point of untruth (What is it about my family)
Marveled at the interconnections in a family tree
Played college counselor
Watched bats wake up and run
Swam in no degree water and disGUSting water
Watched a cat have kittens
Seen a bunch of friends
Found out about a bunch of impending weddings
Washed my fathers neck with WD40
Washed my car
Hung out in a hammock
Obeyed a speed limit of 9 1/2
And any number of other things

And for the record my family is pretty damn awsome. I will keep um. All of um. The sister snuck on to my blog unannounced and purchased for me some of the books on my list. Yesssssssssss.

Eclectic like hair color...

My head crunchified then fireworked and now its pretty stellar.

The gift that keeps on giving. I have an anklet of a different color. This instant colors it purple. I wonder what comes next?

I found a wicked sweet bug last night heaving his last breaths. He might survive the day and if he does we cheer for him. If not .:wipes a tear:. I think we stick a pin in his back and encapsulate him in a box for posterity. I like posters.

What the man didn't know was that I actually started vacation before my last shift was over. I'm not exactly sure when but it was sometime between waking up on a cold tile floor when the compressor kicked on and saving the love-birds from the beach mosquitoes. Moscos Cojoneses, Aye! The other man knew but there was nothing he could do about it but supply direct pressure and hope the bleeding exhuberance stopped. It did...when he went home.

Breakfast rabbit style in Glouchestershire. (A little south of Manster) Carrot cake pancakes with rabbity goodness baked right in. Unless I go for the uncrunchy granola aka oatmeal of amazingness. Shifts can be run on giddiness without caffiene or sleep. Breakfast choices require coffee and MelKel.

Did I mention I was engaged?...I thought not.

Hopefully the happy intellects forget this building as condemned as it should be has internal-air cooling, external-air heating, electric meter propulsion devices. Half-couch sleep is better than so many other things, for instance negative-sleep driving and full-floor sleeping.

I prefer to drive when it is well dark. The more insane people are sleeping and more sane deer are awake and in the middle of the highway where they can be properly illuminated. Catsby prefers live deer as they have the option of moving out of the way. Dead deer not so much. I take her advice on most things (like potential boyfriends) though her definition of full and mine are rather different. I can't tell her to suck it up wuss...but I can put and apple sticker on her forhead.

Pictures of important brightly colored objects should follow upon my return to uncivilization sometime tomorrow around no oclock.

Twice used disposable cup

In other news I am allergic to everything because of artificial lemon scent. I bought more than a handful of new books but I am taking a break from reading to allow proper digestion of already read material as plots started to intermingle in my sleep. I am homeless for another few days coming up then voyaging back to PA.

Viddy-O-Screen (7/29/06 Magnolia)

What do you want from me
To watch the TV?
I watch the news and reel
The sublime-surreality
They don't show death on the big screen
Which logic would say means
There is no life
Since this breath can't go away
So the knife in the back alley
The bullets overhead
Whizz-bang Whizz-bang
Pop
There is no death
No pity follows suit
I'm just as bad as you
Which is to say not at all
There is bread and there is water
Husbands for daughters and
Laugher sounds the same
As tears in every tongue
And there is no one who isn't like me
They don't show death on the TV
And I don't need this red
Seeping from holes and cuts
There's enough
There's enough
There's always enough
Why stop it up
When the color is more real
Than I can pretend to be
And the pain brings clarity
To the whenwherehow
This is now-alive
And I can die
Just this once and be
Reincarnate for you
A white sheet on the oh-six-thirty news
In this not quite death of your TV screen

-Jn

Thoughts on Couches

Been thinking a lot about Couch Surfing lately. I mean this is pretty much the way I am spending my summer after all. I sent out a shameless email (The subject line even said shameless request) to all of my friends in the area saying hey I am homeless can you help out? Gathered up the responses and organized in calendar form and Bang! just like that I am homeless-but-house until the end of August. I am now wondering how long I can extend this bit of goodness into September. When the housing runs out I tell my boss sorry and I drive back to PA for a while. No biggie. But a few more weeks up here couldn't hurt right?

In reality I have been being groomed for this my whole life. In high school I bump in to my mom at lunch and mention that a posse of friends is coming over for dinner and maybe the spending night and then it happens. There is always enough food, always enough space. Even the day the ball game got canceled and there was a tornado warning and we all came back to my house where there was no power... everyone got dinner. Take in all strays, honor all persons. There is always a place if you are hungry or tired or just need a break from where ever you are right?

Wrong. I found out in college that the world does not actually run on the hospitality principle I had bashed into my head all my life. Roommates sometimes have problems with inviting random people over for endless days. Silly humans. Shrug. I do what I can.

So the other night I get whapped over the head with this concept by a shuffles at no o'clock in the morning while I am at work. I mean imagine, hundreds upon hundreds of people around the world offering up a place to crash for the night in return for... a place to crash for the night and maybe some stories besides. I will make you a cup of Honduran cafe and we can flip through my Peru pictures while I tell you about the day the brakes broke in Haiti if you lend me a corner of your floor for a few days and show me your work from that summer you spent in Nepal painting landscapes and learning how to make curry. And I will wash dishes if you cook tonight. But these people don't just use the system, they take care of the system and each other. I guess a few weeks before I joined there was this crazy crash of everything and so world travelers traveled and met together to fix things and worked round and round the clock. Those that couldn't program baked bread those that were unable to join sent encouragement and housed weary travelers on there way to or from Couch Surf Central. So it exists again or still or yet...2.0! At my fingertips I have a searchable database of new friends and people who think like me. Lets see the world and meet people and do things and then have folks over so we can share stories. I like stories.

The two things that bug me most about being a vagabond are the unreliability of cooking opportunities and tools and the inability to host. I can half do both now as I am house sitting and that is better than not at all I suppose. I don't know. When I get back to PA I am going to look up a fellow to meet for a cup of coffee and if I make it out to Idaho I will find someone for breakfast (since there are about 10 coffee shops for every .5 people I figure its more original). I will see if I can stop off for a few days in Ceiba to enjoy the night life before I head on to Trujillo. When I make it over to Europe I will give you a call. Can you pick me up at the train station at 9p? Stellar. And as long as I have a bed or a couch or a patch of floor to lend...let me know what you need.

-Jn

About Books

"I see you have books under your arm, brother. It is indeed a rare pleasure these days to come across somebody that still reads, brother." (...)
"Yes,"” I said. "“It would interest me greatly, brother, if you would kindly allow me to see what books those are that you have under your arm. I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother." (...)
I started to rip up the book I'd got, and the others did the same with the ones they had. (...) This crystal book I had was very tough-bound and hard to razrez to bits, being real starry and made in days when things were made to last like, but I managed to rip the pages up and chuck them in handfuls of like snowflakes, though big, all over this creeching old veck, and then the others did the same with theirs, old Dim just dancing about like the clown he was.

The 'I' would be Alex of A Clockwork Orange and the day after I read about him I received a book that might well have been carried by the poor Chelloveck that was robbed. All of the books I have read in the past year seem to be knotted up like string bits in very odd ways. This is my post-graduation book list:

Imbibed:
A Walk in the Woods -Bill Bryson
1984 (e-book, x2) -George Orwell
Travels with Charlie -John Steinbeck
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange (with ALL chapters) -Anthony Burgess
Into the Heart of Darkness -Jonathan Conrad
(I am missing at least one here. It is packed and I just can't remember)

On Tap:
Catch 22 -Joseph Heller
Don Quixote (in English) -Miguel de Cervantes

Deeply Desired:
A Brave New World -Aldous Huxley
V for Vendetta -Alan Moore, David Loyd
A Void -Georges Perec (in English)
One Day in the life of Ivan Denisocitch -Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Slaughterhouse-five -Kurt Vonnegut
Catcher in the Rye -J. D. Salinger
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek -Annie Dillard
Erewhon -Samuel Butler, Peter Mudford
Watership Down -Richard Adams
The hunting of the Snark -Lewis Carroll

Favorites*:
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Alice Through the Looking Glass -Lewis Carroll
Sand County Almanac -Aldo Leopold

This is of course the abbreviated list and I am open to recommendations. Just make sure you let me know why you think I should read a book... or any other piece of literature really. Whatever. My compy is broken so I have how many more hours in my day to spend with books? So many. But thats ok. I really like books.

-Jn


*At this point these books are so well thumbed through that I just read bits and pieces when no other book seems palatable but I still have a craving for words.

Digitally-encrypted Tears

My computer died. It has been sick for a while, coughing, forgetting things, stuttering. Sigh. I had a list of problems saved up for this week when I planned to take him to the doctor (vet?). I just didn't expect the hard-drive to go. That wasn't on the to-break list. I have a 3 year resurrection plan which has me somewhat hopeful. I will have a franken-compy with all the new parts I have to get (hard-drive, fan, battery, etc.) but it should be able to go for a few more years. But the hard-drive. The hard-drive. They are going to try to save the poor fevered brain and all the memories. They said it costs money. I said to myself 4 years of my life is buried in that beast in pictures and work and words. I know a good deal of it is backed up but not the recent bits. Not the short story pieces, not the new poems, not the research for that short story/novella for which inspiration trickles in at random intervals. I did an inventory earlier this week, cleaned organized and ordered in preparation for the back up that was supposed to take place all day today. I know what was (is?) there. In 30 seconds they put a price on 4 years of my work. They undersold me. So I left Barachio Bastardo and all of the memories he contains in the hands of someone I trust very little, signed a contract saying that I trust him very little but it still isn't his fault, and spent the rest of the day wallowing in misery over choices I made in May. I wish I had not decided I could do without a notebook for the few short weeks of summer, that I had kept paper copies of my summer bits like I normally do. But in the interest of mobility I made my library digitized and nonflammable... and it caught on fire anyway.

0730 Smoke Alarm Test

Right now: Wikipedia, Shoe polish, Couch Surfing, A Clockwork Orange, Water, Ice, Unexpected weekends, Negatively statussed, Alarms, The color green, The word bastahd, Teva's, Louis Pasteur, Black berry tea, Glazed stares, organic shade grown dark mint chocolate, Purple clover,Wild pink roses, Fire arms, Smoldering cars.

Late Nights

Drink (07/16/06)

Sometimes I get to muttering when I start to think
Because it’s cold outside
And I’m old inside.
I can get warm with a drink
But you know it’s not the same.
I’m callin’ out your name at night
With some other guy by my side
Because I’ve had too much booze
And not enough you.

Sometimes I get to staggerin’ when I’m on the brink
‘Cause it’s a long way down the bottom
Of a tipped up cup,
When it’s not worth the price of think.
It’s her you seem to need.
Guess that’s the way it should be.
These aren’t my tears to cry
‘Cause I’ve never worn your ring,
And you never said or promised nothin’.

Sometimes I get to shudderin’ when I take a drink
‘Cause I mix um better
As I getting worse,
‘Cause it gets fuzzed up past the brink.
‘Cause really, I’m alone
And ‘cause when you say you’re coming home
It means her taste, her place,
The smile on her god-damn face.
‘Cause you never meant to me.

And sometimes I just am now and stumblin’
Shivrin’ hard and falling, mumblin’
“I swears to God I’m sober up with every fuggin’ drink!”
- Jn

Good Lost Thoughts

Travelers

A country.
What country?
I don’t know which
But a map
Yes a map
But I can’t read a map in English
And this is in French
Kreyol
Or maybe Kreyol
But not Spanish
No I can read that
But not a map
No not a map
Maybe a cab
What?
Call a cab
Yes, a taxi, only,
Here they are all bikes
What to pay with?
Oh that’s right
What currency are we in?
And a lingua franca
That would be nice
And a bottle of wine
A bottle of beer
To each
His own
Taxi!



-Jn

The nature of things

Dispatcher-
1. The official who signals the beginning of a race or competition
2. Employee of a transportation company who controls the departures of vehicles according to weather conditions and in the interest of efficient service
3. Computer Science A routine that controls the order in which input and output devices obtain access to the processing system. (See also Slave)

Slave-
1. One bound in servitude as the property of a person or household.
2. One who is abjectly subservient to a specified person or influence
3. One who works extremely hard.
4. A machine or component controlled by another machine or component.
5. Referenced in Involuntary servitude

Involuntary servitude
1. A United States legal and constitutional term for a person laboring against that person's will to benefit another, under some form of coercion. While laboring to benefit another occurs in the condition of slavery, involuntary servitude does not connote the complete lack of freedom experienced in chattel slavery: involuntary servitude may also refer to other forms of unfree labor. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution makes involuntary servitude illegal under any US jurisdiction whether at the hands of the US government or in the private sphere, except as punishment for a crime: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction".



Oh, God…what great crime have I committed?

Things I know today:

Sitting still too long makes body parts go numb, muscles atrophy, and limbs to turn green and come off. Staying in the same geo too long makes the soul go numb and the mind atrophy. (As these are concepts not objects they cannot turn green and fall off in anything other than a metaphorical sense. I suggest you don’t try to picture this.) If you have not left your county in a while you might ask yourself if there is anything still circulating.

There is nothing wrong with being homeless even though everyone seems so worried about it.

I have trouble ending letters because there is always more to say. Eventually they get big enough to need extra postage. If you haven’t gotten a something, wait a year or so.

The hardest time is between 0330 and 0500. This marks the halfway point of a shift, the end of the night, and the pre-waking hours for most of the normal populace. Even with friends it seems the loneliest part of the night.

A lance is something like a spear used through people or fish. It is also the action of throughing. A lancet is a small dissecting style knife and a common surgical instrument. A lancelet is not quite a fish proper and smaller than a lancet. A Lancelot is a sir and a legend. You could lance a Lancelot with a lance or a lancet but only lance a lancelet with a lancet if you caught it. Got it?

People have devised all sorts of ways to trade goods and services via la red without the involvement of a standard form of currency. Couch space and paperbacks are special enough to get their own worshiping communities.

Smart ducks cross the road before rush hour and on weekends. Smarter ducks nest where there are not roads to be crossed. (A Roger and the Receptionist update. I didn’t catch them early enough to get a head count but the receptionist definitely led a large troop o ducklings across the road this morning and I watched via camera) It leads me to wondering. I always see larger duck families in the suburbs. Are these infant patos the neoduckyuppies of tomorrow? Will they have larger families because they possess the resources necessary and leave their unlucky cityduck brethren to grow malnourished on carbohydrate handouts in shelters as their souls waste in the squalor of city sewage? Will both classes discuss the nobleducksavages with irrational, romanticized, and idealist language while the frontier few perish in the maw of fox and falcon? Who will cry out against their class, race, and variety differences? Should not all ducks be united as one fowl and interspecific competition rooted out through a majority ratified socialistic constitution? Alas they have chosen evolution over politics and concern for the greater good. May Darwin and the Good Lord help them.

Talks about communes always create conversations dealing with much smaller issues like peace, poverty, currency, language, isolation, homogenization, parenting, educational systems, politics, altruism, and communes. This makes it hard to stay focused on the Commune Manifesto and Purpose Proposal. Honestly, what should be a 10 minute discussion and name signing session becomes a several hour ordeal. Then you realize you forgot your membership roster notebook by your bed and you find enough new converts on the way to your room that you have to redraft twice more. It makes sense that each member be required to know at least two languages but do they both really need to be mandated by the community. I feel that as long as there is a translation link between two members we will be fine and it will unduly tax current members and limit prospectives who don’t know Portuguese. Silly Gordon students making things more complicated all the time. This also makes it hard to go to sleep.

Sometimes you worry a lot about people but are unable to convey this, or to help, or to really function in any other way than conversation, sometimes not even that, and it’s confusing and frustrating.

I try hard not to give up on people and I will fight for people but I will not fight over people.

One should not ever take a piss, it should always be left. Also Pissing contests rarely have any lasting effects accept division as everyone’s piss will always manage to be better than anyone else’s by some standard measure, and no one will ever really care enough about anyone else’s piss to examine the evidence. As especially yellow as yours might be, alchemists never turn it in to gold and as mentioned before, even the most valuable piss should in fact be left.

It is silly to take pictures of skyscapes. Even the best camera will translate a panoramic dome into two dimensional space. This neuters the enormity of the heavens and kills outright all other senses. You can be awed by 5x7’s but this is still a 2 dimentional awe and not worth more than a cup of rice on the awe commodity market. And while you take pictures to wow your friends and share a bit of the joy, their two dimensional wow, however genuinely expressed and felt, will cheapen your remembered wow and the shared joy will be reduced, not enhanced. You will resent your companions or your portable skies or you will be deceived.

Spiders frequent the cameras and a veces it is possible to have all 10 cameras showing at least one arachnid. You do have to be speedy about it because eventually the cameras revert to preset. It is rarely worth it but occasionally attempted. It is also less than rare to have some other exoskeletoned beast appear betwixt the lens and the outside world. A nest of Vespula is something of a novelty.

El Fin
-Jn

Happy

because sometimes

Apart (7/5/06 RRC)

It’s funny when it finally becomes apart.
You both know from the start
But you give it a go anyway as if to say
“See me not caring and not feeling pain?
What’s to remain except a few scars?”
And the memories come hard, even the good
Like you know you shouldn’t dwell when it’s obvious like that
And there won’t be another call is all
And you won’t go back again
‘Cause ‘friends’ is stranger still
But you couldn’t really know it until that last go round
It wasn’t will broken down, there were no lies
Just a vapid, shallow goodbye
Echoing in the hollow night
Wisps of lonely, devoid of moonlight

-Jn

Things I know:

-I should be sleeping but I cannot
-The AC is broken in RRC but not here
-I am mostly homeless
-When I get a set of words in my head I should write them down immediately or they will be gone forever (I have lost at least 2 poems and one story to "I will write when I get to..." in the past 3 days)
-I have never wished for a truck until this weekend
-Church today was very confusing
-I like to read (maybe too much)
-I have amazing friends
-Catsby gets cranky when she is full of stuff
-I need to go to grad school before I run around the world because I will never come back

Voices in my Head

I live in a little box. It is cold in here. I patter around barefoot or sockfoot but I can’t leave. They won’t let me. The voices won’t. I hear voices. They talk to me in the middle of the night when no one is around. When I am in my little cold box they talk to me. They tell me what to do sometimes. I like the voices. Because they tell me what to do. You don’t have to think when the voices tell you what to do. Unless you think you don’t want to do it. But that would make you contrary. I don’t want to be contrary. I do what the voices tell me. Sometimes I write it down. I write down what they tell me. Sometimes I just push buttons. I like buttons. They make sense. You push a button and something happens. A door opens, a noise stops, a light turns on. Buttons make sense. I like them. I don’t see them. The voices. I see the buttons. I see them to press them. The buttons. But the voices I don’t see. They don’t have faces. They don’t have names. They have numbers instead. I like numbers. They don’t make sense. Numbers don’t. Voices make sense. Like buttons. The voices are all different. They talk to each other and they let me listen. They call each other numbers. They are nice voices. Sometimes they call me numbers too. I like numbers. They don’t make sense. I like voices too. Sometimes the voices switch numbers. Then they don’t make sense. The voices don’t. The numbers do. Then I am confused. When they switch. It is usually voices that I like to talk to that switch numbers. I think they switch so that they can talk not to me. But they are silly voices because I can still hear them. When you only know a voice by the voice the number doesn’t matter. Voices are silly. They don’t make sense. Maybe the voices are just being contrary. I don’t talk to them when they switch numbers. I don’t like contrary voices. I don’t like my box either. It is cold in here. But the voices won’t let me leave. Contrary voices. I don’t like voices.

-Jn
Pienso que me vuelvo loco despacio.

A summer book...

The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into the speakwrite which was of course impossible for his present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote:

April 4th, 1984. (...)

For some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper. The telescreen had changed over to strident military music. It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say. For weeks past he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years. At this moment, however, even the monologue had dried up. Moreover his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably. He dared not scratch it, because if he did so it always became inflamed. The seconds were ticking by. He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.

George Orwell, 1984

Live dizzy

Sick and Dizzy (06/22/06 RRC in the morning)

maybe love is what love does but
love never is what it once was
and the spirals curl harder
and drop deeper faster
dizzying disaster
and down
down
d..
.

Peace Kept

I have an important job more or less. If there is an emergency I need to be prepared, alert, attentive, detail oriented, observant, clear-headed and all sorts of other words that you put on a resume. All of the important campus alarms travel through unknown wires and end up within an arms reach of my desk. However, sometimes important events bypass alarm channels and sneak in through the scanner, hence the need to be prepared, alert and all those other things. May I also add that one should be paying FULL attention at all times. Yeah that one is tricky on less than 4 hours of sleep, with not all of the hours sequentially oriented.

If you are curious, overnights get lonesome and boring, so I have often wondered (at least once I’m sure) how to get a group of police officers together for a party and games. Tonight just seemed like a stellar night for some cacophonous and red-and-blue-lit fun. Apparently it was. In fact, it was so nice a night that 8 friendly, neighborhood departments came to play. They even brought a pretty (very happy) pooch. I would love to spill juicy details but come on; we all know that what happens at a party stays at the party. But just in case you were planning on hosting an event of this magnitude here is what you need in your own back yard, some stolen things, some vandalized things, some drunken things, some run over things and pretty flashing lights. Also mad props to those who found the stolen car before it was ‘stolen’ cough104coughcough.

By the way the Earth Fault has been “disabled”. I am going to go out on a limb here and say I don’t think disabling a fault is the same as fixing it. This might mean that the world is still over. I wouldn’t unpack yet. On the up side though, the world has finally stopped beeping..................-Jn

(Also, to the man who just called in and tried to make me feel incompetent, it didn’t work and you can go kick yourself in the face.)

Keeping Peace

I have an important job more or less. If there is an emergency I need to be prepared, alert, attentive, detail oriented, observant, clear-headed and all sorts of other words that you put on a resume. (Perhaps we should underline the ‘if’...there now it looks better.) All of the important campus alarms travel through unknown wires and end up within an arms reach of my desk. I suppose that sounds funny a noise being in arms reach. What I mean is that the alarms come from speakers attached to computers with view screens and buttons and that these are all accessible with a swivel of a chair and a slight stretch. A lot of important alarms come in with pomp and ceremony, vim and vigor. I swivel, I read, I acknowledge, I dispatch, I save the world. Fire alarms are a good example. When someone burns their popcorn I make sure the fire trucks know where to go.

A lot of slightly less important alarms also come in with pomp and ceremony, vim and vigor. Earth Faults are a good example. Now an earth fault sounds pretty memorable. I mean if your earth just stopped working you would want to take note, right? You would perhaps assign it to come in on two separate panels incase one was not working properly due to the impending end of the world and you would give it a magical ability to clear itself since you trust that the world might right itself before the appropriate authorities arrived and you wouldn’t want too many people to get into a tizzy when the world is taking care of itself. And you would think, wouldn’t you, that the earth wouldn’t commit suicide very often either. You would be wrong.

Let’s pause and play a little math game for a moment. There are a lot of minutes in an hour. Let’s say that the average hour has 60 of them. For an 8 hour shift that makes 480 minutes. There are 3, 8-hour shifts a day for a total of 1440 minutes more or less. Now everyone knows that I have a propensity towards exaggeration (this is my good Kerry blood.) However, since 1818 of the day before yesterday the earth has faulted albeit irregularly an average of once a minute. A veces, there are less than 30 seconds between faulty earths but there is never more than 5 minutes. This fact can be scientifically and officially backed by 104. At the end of my shift 2262 minutes will have transpired since 1818 (~920 figuring into my paycheck). But wait, there’s more. Each time the earth slits it’s wrists it quickly applies a band-aid and the system clears itself in usually less than 3 seconds. However, both alarms still require me to push a button to shut them up. If you are keeping score that would be 4524 button presses (1840 for yours truly). At this point in the evening (morning for you less time challenged folk) I don’t swivel, I don’t read, I don’t dispatch, I don’t even recognize that I reach for the F4 button when I hear the whine start up anymore. This morning when I stumbled in late at 1240 I was assured that the problem was examined sometime after my shift and I assume reasoned unfixable or unfindable because it is still in existence. The approximate time for the grand finale is still unknown but it is only a matter of time.

The Earth has Faulted. Earth=Over thanks to Gordon College and nothing can be done. I hope your bags are packed.

Oh and by the way, 104, I quit…but not because of the alarms.

bienvenidos a la mañana

Pienso que yo debería escribir pero no sé que palabras usar.

Hay tiempos cuando quiero ir a las montañas; en otros tiempos quiero ir a la playa y el mar. Pero no hay muchas veces cuando soy feliz. Para la semana pasada, soñado con cosas tropicales. El Río de las Piedras, la Bahía de Trujillo, y la selva tropical. Ah, los árboles. Árboles mucho más grandes que las casas. Los árboles que son casas. Casas de ranas, casas de aves, casas de lagartos y murciélagos, casas de mi corazón y alma. Tengo que volver.

Mi madre me conoce y comprado un libro sobre América Central. Pero El Hombre, que sólo se preocupa por el dinero y trabajo, lo arrebató. Ahora, estoy en el trabajo y grito y sueño. Por la mañana... habrá un libro por la mañana.

"weekend" statistics

6/14/06
0000-0800 work
0830-1630 pack/clean
1630-2230 sleep
2330-0930 Drive
6/15/06
0930-1030 Breakfast
1045-1230 Hike, Climb (Mill)
1300-1400 QSL
1430-1700 Sleep
1700-1730 Sarah Ruth
1800-1900 Dinner
1900-2100 Fire Arms/ random family
2130-0000 NNG, Dessert, Black n Tan
6/16/06
0000-0100 Cribbage
0130-0930 Sleep
1000-1030 Breakfast
1030-1230 Pack
1230-2230 Drive
2300-2330 Sleep
6/17/06
0000-... Work

Hours on the road 20
Hours at home 27
Hours of sleep in the past +3 days 16
Miles on the car ~1250
Shotgun cartriges shot ~50
Clay pidgeons hit 2
Groundhogs hit 0
Kittens tormented 5
4-leafed clovers found 2
Calories consumed 32489079826734
Presents received with thank-you notes forgotten 1 (shoot)
Other items forgotten >5

Time is spelled with 4 letters

So about that time I got busy and creativity started to stop. And I wrote bits and pieces but that was all and all I could find from everyone else. And I was going tonight to write and to complain about how creativity creates and without someone else's words to read there is no sense in writing or it becomes hard...I think I'm rambling. Lets try again.

The topic of the night was set to be how creativity breeds creativity. It would have been colored with my sadness in regards to the fact that most of my contemporary and more current sources of reading material had also dried up and I had had but little time to read much of anything extraneous over the past month. I was going to call on friends and neighbors to at least scribble once and a while. Also now that I have oodles of time to read* the fear is that I will lack the life experiences needed to spice the words in new ways.

The problem is this. Yunz all (or at least a collection of you) put down some words...some mighty good words and I was left tripping over mine and complaining about how now I would have to write and my very topic had been snatched from me. So I wrote anyways. And it felt good. And I think I will write some more.

As an update that I feel is needed...The HHH has fragmented and my classmates have gone separate ways, to there families and their jobs and evenings not spent studying taxonomy. We learned a lot and it was hard and challenging and everything it is supposed to be according to the brochure and living together was no different. I think we might be better at the class than living together but we tried real hard so we at least get effort points. We had talks about all sorts of things ranging from alcohol to pissing contests to multidimensional words. These are good things. Today* I will be heading in a homewards direction to move a quantity of my stuff back in. Seems when one has moved out and stocked a house and then has to move in to a small 'room for rent' there is a lot of extra stuff that one does not need...like a ping pong table. If you hadn't gathered, I am moving from my HHH on the marsh to a bright yellow room with two windows and a well seasoned woman who lives downstairs. One of my officers actually lived there for a few years before he got married so I feel it was a good selection. It is much closer to the school with translates into more time spent on more valuable things like sleeping and folding socks...or that I can bike to work in the morning*. I can also stay indefinitely on the outside chance that I get a job in the area and as a bonus several of my friends live nearby. Again- Good things.

And finally the reason for all the *s... As JJ put it when he woke me up yesterday night* "Jesus, right now you are Fcked up 6 different ways" I am working overnights full time for the summer. I have been working on translating my sleep schedule and my body has adjusted fine. 2230 hrs is a splendid time to wake up. The problem is that my days get very confused. For instance, two days (Calendar dates) ago JJ woke me up and I came in to work, I worked yesterday in the morning, both the technical smack-your-smart-ass-kid-in-the-face morning and my morning, then I went home did some chores and was bored until JJ woke up. This was his morning but my late afternoon/evening. We ran some errands and he ate lunch. Had I eaten anything it would have been like an after dinner snack but I couldn't convince myself that I was hungry. I rolled in to bed between 1500 hrs and 1600 hrs and it was a late night for me. At that point JJ took a shower and went to work as it was late afternoon for him. I woke up at 2230 hrs in the morning and started getting ready for my day. JJ came home around 2300 hrs and started winding down to go to bed. So when I say I am leaving for home today...it is a calendar today and not my today. I will sleep before I leave so as far as I am concerned I am leaving tomorrow as soon as I wake up. All of this works fine on paper and seems relatively logical but when you try having a conversation using the relative time words like today, tomorrow, morning, night, and bed time, it all pretty much falls to pieces and my Kt becomes worried that I am not sleeping at all. Maybe those words aren't actually relative...maybe that is my whole problem. ::Shrug:: Enough of this.


When my words have gone away (RRC 6/14/06)

Sometime between now and then
The prose dried up
And the poetry trickled
And the soul became dry without words
The tears couldn’t fall
And shaking was all
There was to make of the
Whatever was wrong
Not even song seemed to touch
Or maybe it was that time
Had been snatched away by busy
Or perchance space with stuff
And alone with friends
All good things can turn in the end
And there were still no words
Dry sobs heard on humid nights
And they wonder why I’ve started to tick
Why I jump and bite and scream
It’s just that I have these feelings
It’s just that I have bad dreams
And with no words to wrap them
They stand to threaten
Ugly and naked and harsh
When I close my eyes
And when it gets dark
Because my words have gone away

-Jn

Which begs the question,

Which is better...

Attack Kittens


-OR-

Attack Chickens?


Think fast. Poor Pedro's life depends on it.

Live from MBI

So as a part of class today we were asked to write for a bit about something along the lines of Salt Marsh Elegy by Aldo Leapold. Then we each read our little bits. It was more than a little bit deep. Yeah...This little bit is mine. If everyone else is game I will provide bits from my colleagues in a bit but as we just did this...you're just gonna have to wait.

These people, they are beautiful and with their empty longing eyes. They only want for their children and their children’s children, and so they cut the trees. Not because they do not care or do not understand but because they can do nothing else when they hear a hungry child’s cries And they plant what they can and tend and care with all the time and emotion they can afford to invest- still saving time for their children, the children with the hungry eyes. And so they gather their sweat and blood in time and they sell to the man who comes with the truck. The prices are low but will another man come? Who is to say and the children are hungry tonight. And so they burn what is left trying to preserve what goodness the soil still holds in any way possible, but the ghosts of the ancient forest trees can only help the soil for so long after they are gone and smoldering piles amount to little or nothing at all. And the children are hungry so the land is sold, the price is low but what can be done. And the home is moved ever inward, chasing the great giant trees and mourning their passing with plows and funeral pyres. Smoke rising to the heavens as if in solemn prayer, acrid and stinging smoke an excuse for tears, God we do not want it this way, these ugly dark scars on your earth, but our children are hungry…

We are become

Aquanauts

 

Pseudocamping

So we had a camp out type dealy overnight yesterday. Mind you we were all up most of the night before we had been up working on lab reports and our prospectus presentation so loopy was a good adjective. We got crazy amounts of food for the all of us and drove all over Gods good creation trying to find the place because we were too lazy to stop the car and pop the trunk to get the directions. It's ok we had time to kill. We had crazy good food and like 10 lb of steak and I swear to you that it was done to perfection. I ate a LOT of steak. We didn't have utensils or proper plates either so it was mostly the gnaw on what is in your hand as you stand around the fire all primitive like with blood dripping down the elbows...well the kids that like their steaks bloody anyways. There was a pieiron too!!! (Dr. Story is my hero) We played some cribbage and tossed some frisbee/football and played in the fire and once it was good and dark we ran about 300 ft of extention chord from the bathouse and watched Life Aquatic in surround sound with jiffy pop popcorn. Did I mention we were staying in this strange place where they used to keep depth charges. Surreal is another good adjective.

Things you may here around a campfire dominated by chemists and biolgy majors:
Too bad we couldn't bring any -OH groups
Can I throw the adipose tissue in the fire
Sometimes it is ok to eat high on the food chain
It's ok its just a little extra carbon
Ah yes the Beeris canus... would that make guiness the sub speices?
Look at all the parasites in that juicy steak

Pecado no toque

Interesting things happen when I am left to my own devices...

We get 3 day weekends during MBI. I spent mine bouncing.
States I spent time in: ME, CT, MA, NH.
Miles Castby and I drove: over 600 I think...basically enough to drive home
Hours I slept: less than 10.

In addition I talked to old friends, made new friends, consumed quite a quantity of -OH groups, ate some pretty stellar food, got a quasi-internship opportunity, got lost a few times, changed my oil, saw a new house, met a new gf, played cribbage, and wrote a little tiny bit. I did not go to church or get a great quantity of work done which are very important things. I wouldn't trade it for anything but lets just say I don't want to do it again next weekend. I R tired.

Someday you will get pictures of good things.

-Jn

I suppose

They tell me I am supposed to blog because it has been a while and graduation is important and one must document one's life for one's self and posterity. I tell myself that there have always been lots of important things that just never got done. Like that project and that paper and my lab hours. ::Shrug::

They tell me that I graduated last weekend. They proved it by dressing me in all black with a complimentary doofy hat and walking me across a stage in front of 100s of people and handing me an empty blue plastic case in which to place a diploma if they deem me worthy enough to receive one after reviewing my grades. I tell myself I won't believe it until I know I passed Intro. Though, I do believe in the stage- I felt it with my bare feet.

They tell me it rained for a week. They proved this with a lot of rain, sandbags, closed roads, flooded houses, a sump pump in the basement, closed stores, mud, and the complete lack of sun. I am willing to believe this one- I was there.

They tell me that I am enrolled in a class with 5 other people. They prove it by holding me in a building when the sun shines and thrusting me out when it rains and talking at me constantly between the hours of 9 and 5. I have words and pictures in a notebook, bacteria cultures in the cooker, my boots are muddy and I have blisters on my ankles. I think these things are related.

They tell me I am living in a house with 5 other people. They prove it by cooking me meals, mixing me drinks, finding furniture, moving it around the house, and requesting that I please do the dishes and find beds. I respond by forgetting the dishes and wandering around the house with a glass in hand like a lost puppy and not sleeping as much as I think I may need to.

They tell me I am a poet. They prove it by publishing one of my scripted memories in a small book so that I can ship it off to friends. Some things I do not need to be told...sometimes its nice to hear them anyways.


Definition (05/19/06 - Back Porch)

Curious, Spurious
And unfaithful
But only in the spirit of the word
I stick to the law
And illegitimacy is a comfort
Sometimes

Definitions trite
And a horrible way to live life
As if life were meant for living
In the threads of being and meaning
And a good end assured

By the way, have you heard?
They teach lessons in demure
To reach that ever-pleasant end
Mental acrobatics
Logarithmic, mathematic
And worth less than
What it costs to win a man
In some more vulgar way
Maybe you should try
It’s just not the sort of bank
I would through my nickel in

I prefer a gambling game
Walking the thin line above
This pit of death and something-like-love
Biding my time
Bidding my hunches
Placing hopes on hollow air
When the bet ‘just feels right’
They tell me patience comes
To those who wait
Sometimes

No.
I dance on the damn wire
Because nothing gets you higher
Than tempting fate and the drop
And I’m all-in
Always
‘Cause upended and falling
Seems better than the wait
Or showing up too late

And this is not the first time
I’ve put gravity on trial
I always claw back up again
Because
And sometime you’ll see
Someone will catch me
And teach me to tread lightly
On the fingers of the wind
Almost like flying
Besides,
I’m used to the sudden stop at the end

-Jn

It is still raining

The Rains That Came (Mac 109, 5/16/06)

Sing me a song
Of the faded old fisherman
Down by the docks
He wades by the rocks
And he casts
And he casts
And he casts
Every day, everything the same
He walks these shores
And he used to pray
Until the day God spoke.
The rains came
His family, his home
All washed away…

And the daffodils grow this year
Yellow like life, green like new
He hears nothing but the gulls
No children laughing, no one to love
No colors but gray and white and the sea
Like his beard, and the gulls
And the rains that came

-Jn


We went out in the field anyways...Oh and by the way we eat good and the house still leaks and we are about half moved in and I write you from class...oops...more later