kalvin dot life

The only dangerous thing in the world is eye contact. It can kill someone on the spot or simply set them to smolder until later, when and where, far apart in time and distance, the fire burns out a small piece of their life. This piece hurts to lose, but hurts more to carry.

I’m afraid to write anything forthright. Do I have what it takes ot keep these sparks contained? Do I want to contain them? Can there ever be a right time and place? Even the fate of this notebook may parallel. Every page consumed in burning, and then lit ablaze, its ashes of passion swept into the wind.

What do we wait for in the silent moments. What are we wishing for? Or hoping to never hear? There is an eternity in things. Glances, lips, moments held for longer than they last, fingertips and decisions that remain undecided until they fade. Even the pauses between these lines contain more of my life than a month of living. And the waiting is the best part. It contains everything that the world cannot contain. The imagined life is infinitely richer, but only the first the steps toward realization, the act of becoming, the exhumation and exhibition of one’s desires can give meaning to a dreamed reality. Tormented by nebulous desires.

“My feet were tied with a silken thread of my own hands weaving.”

I won’t fill this with too many petty aphorisms, but I couldn’t help this one. I have no questions to ask – only time to wait. Ease is the way of perfection, letting fall. I don’t want to turn these thoughts outward, only inward, deeper, to find words that can give substance to feeling, solace. Solace from what? Guilt? Contradiction? One must be comfortable with themselves before they can be comfortable with others. A truce must be declared between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future.

Fernando Pessoa wrote about three levels of pain: the intellectual, emotional, and physical. I think there is one more, the unconscious. Each anguish finds expression in the level below it. Intellectual knowledge of a loved one who is hurt far away makes you emotionally sad. And sadness makes you weep. A linear progression. However, unconscious anguish must also find an expression, and this may be melancholia. I feel the causes of unconscious anguish are always socio-cultural, interpersonal. Society both creates expectations and frustrates them, leaving us with needs we don’t really need, which are out of reach of intellectual resolution. This is why I feel so serene in the wilderness. I search for the feeling of forlornness. This word is the closest I have to describe the absence of need, or need for the lack of need, a positive emotion. Positive not due to fulfillment, but to the creation of the lack of needing to be fulfilled. It accompanies other emotions- solemnity, solitude. Loneliness is an artifact of misdirection. Turning the internal light outward where its purpose is to illuminate the personal truth we hold inside.

Finding truth with someone else is a terribly difficult task – to move beyond games of manipulation, power, control, seduction. Which all parties enjoy, however banal the results. The easier task is to turn away and seek a different truth, one that requires less effort but more will.

“I wandered all these years among a world of women, seeking you.”

What a development. I’ve begun to make plans with you in them; complex convoluted, uncertain, but they’re centered around you. Maybe it’s time to make sacrifices in life. Maybe it’s time to live for someone, and something, other than myself. And maybe, by some crafty slight of hand, I can make it all work. I’m not worried – only eagerly looking forward to what comes next. Who’s writing this novel?

The extent of our personalities, ourselves, our inner world, is defined by two things – what we know (from what we remember) and what we imagine. Both are nebulous, because the scope, criteria, extend of the concepts of knowledge, the limits of definitions and their applicability and context, are dependent upon our ability to imagine their potential. With a deep passion and vast imagination, coupled with optimistic outlook, a personality takes on a boundless depth and scope. And this is what I fall in love with. You become the world. You embody more of what potential life has to offer. And the more life one has within themselves, the less human they are and the more divine they become. We all strive for the perfection in divinity, even if it’s in the aesthetic rather than the religious. To fall in love is, of course, a burden.

To sacrifice freedom for romance is maybe the unspoken goal of those souls which recognize the need for truth which encompasses more than the blank mineral nothingness embodied by the natural world, even if this is where all axiomic truths must stem from.

What is the value of humanity? It lies in slowing down. To defer judgement, decisions, assumptions, and opinions allows you to understand a more nuanced version of the reality you share with those around you. And this is only important if you have ascribed to yourself the futile endeavor of seeking truth. With out this impossible goal to guide your decisions, you are free to lay waste to everybody and everything you encounter which stands in your way in seeking all the ephemeral pleasures life has to offer. And so life is contradiction- we set goals we can’t achieve, for reasons we cannot comprehend, seek them in ways we can’t justify, all in an attempt to understand ourselves, who don’t exist. But recognizing this and seeking a path forward anyway is better than blindly striving ahead. It imbues a body with a sublime sense of mystery and the satisfaction of the ubiquitous human curiosity which only can be satisfied through probing its own depths.

What comes next? The only wrong decision may be to not decide. What to sacrifice and for what cause? There is latent pleasure in waiting. Maybe even a pleasure greater than anything real, as it is infinite in its potential, and the less concrete its imagination, the more boundless its magnitude. Yet time will press down and the weight of it will force out of my vacillation the first steps in a hitherto unknown direction. And a year from now I’ll write identical words to these and ponder where the next chapter leads.

Left the farm for better things. There was no time to write, to think. Just farm. I feel quite bad. Who will pick the vegetables? But it’s time to catch up on the blog and catch up on life. They say you should either do something worth writing about or write about something worth doing. I’ve been focusing on the former recently and now maybe it’s time to focus on the latter.

Here is something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time, a scene from the movie The Square (2017). A recent-ish Swedish-ish film comedy-drama about modern art, modern society, modern dating, modernity, and whatever else, you can read the Letterboxd reviews. It stars Elizabeth Moss and Terry Notary, the motion capture guy from Planet of the Apes and Kong in Kong: Skull Island. There’s a pivotal scene where Terry Notary puts on an ape performance at a fancy dinner put on for rich art donors and it quickly gets out of hand. It may be my favorite scene ever and every person I show it to hates it. Here is a link to the scene starting at 1hour 44minutes 30seconds. The time doesn’t seem to work as a hyperlink so you’ll have to copy and paste.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11_ETpDWM7jz2Qs6TXrGX7YeRGLT4qL9o/view?t=1h44m30s

I’ve wanted to write this analysis for three years and my initial thoughts may have calcified a bit, their banality peaking through the surface, but I think the compacted sedimentary layers remain and there may be some gems to discover during the exhumation. On both the surface and in its depth it is a scene making fun of pretentiousness- of characters in the movie, of viewers of the movie, of the actors in the movie, and the movie itself. It is an ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail. I suggest you watch the 12 minute scene before continuing on, but either way, let’s examine the layers.

Level one. The donors come to watch a man act like a monkey. They want to see skill, a great ape motion capture artist, perform his talent. They are warned and take this warning as part of the bit. They do not see themselves in the performance because they are paying for something and within the system, you don’t pay someone else to let you do work to entertain yourself. That is unless you are a fool and their success and propriety have precluded foolishness.

Early in the performance there is a shift and the scene becomes real to the guests. This is level two. The guests start to feel uncomfortable and soon become scared for their safety. They signed up and purchased something they didn’t entirely understand. The lifestyle of the bourgeoisie comes with built-in protection, not only from productive work but from everything authentic, including danger. Nothing can be authentic if you do not work, because everything of value created by humanity was created through work, including the implementation of protection from the dangers inherent in nature. Now think about what was said at the beginning of the performance. ‘I’m asking for your utmost precaution during this performance. Welcome to the jungle. Soon you will be confronted by a wild animal. As you will know, the hunting instinct is triggered by weakness, if you show fear the animal will sense it. If you try to escape, the animal will hunt you down. But if you remain, perfectly still, without moving a muscle, the animal might not notice you. And you can hide in the herd, safe in the knowledge that someone else will be the prey.’ Maybe this layer has more nuance. Maybe the dinner guests paid for and got exactly what they expected. They wanted gladiator-style entertainment and to see one of their own sacrificed, simply betting on the chance it wouldn’t be them. Maybe we all do this every day, enjoying our little moments of schadenfreude.

The performance artist Oleg Kulik understood this. He was a Ukrainian-born Russian performance artist on which the scene was based on. From Wikipedia ‘He [once] performed in the gallery chained next to a sign reading “dangerous”. An international scandal occurred when he not only attacked members of the public who chose to ignore the sign, in one case biting a man, but also attacked other artworks within the exhibition, partially destroying some pieces made by other artists.’ Although Ruben Östlund, the movie’s director, can’t chase you out of your own home through his medium, he can achieve the second-best thing- making you reflect on it. He does this famously in Force Majeure. He drops in hints of this same idea throughout the film, even giving the character played by Elizabeth Moss a monkey as a roommate.

The third level beings to take shape when you begin to feel uncomfortable. By the end, the scene has achieved this expertly. By the end, you feel out of control. You think within the performance there was a mistake made somewhere and maybe outside the performance the director has gone too far in displaying our carnal nature. Maybe the performance has been pushed past its proper limit. But actually, the mistake in yourself and the creation of limits. It’s in the society you live in and the mental structures that it built within your mind, making you prefer the pretense of nature to nature itself. A version of Nassim Taleb’s Platonicity, our tendency to focus on our Platonic representations (here the performance nature), “at the cost of ignoring those objects of seemingly messier and less tractable structures.” (nature itself) or, in other words, to “mistake the map for the territory.” A harmless and much more comedic version of this was performed by the comedy troop Nick Offerman performed with during his Chicago theater days. A living room scene is built on stage. A man sits in front of a telephone reading a newspaper and the telephone begins to ring. It rings and rings and rings and rings and rings, possibly for 20 minutes. Maybe until all the audience has left and the show must be repeated another night. But sometimes, someone in the audience stands up, walks onto the stage, picks up the phone. Hello? Instantly the man drops the newspaper and rushes off the stage. The rest of the cast whisks the props away and the audience member is left holding a silent receiver as the curtains drop. The audience becomes the bit and we are reminded of the role we play in the entertainment created for us.

With this in mind, move one layer up, layer four, and perceive yourself outside interaction of the events in the film. You, in your bedroom with your foreign-built laptop purchased on a promise of work subsidized by two world wars and 3 billion underpaid laborers, are watching entertainment. You are the dinner guest the scene was made for, the one the dinner was thrown for. Do you hear the silence in the phone held up to your ear? Can you feel the bite of the dog?

When approaching the movie thoughtfully, most everything I’ve written in this essay is apparent from the scene and it can be internalized and digested while simply watching the events unfold. The credit for this goes to the skill of the director, actors, and the rest of the studio crew. I definitely suggest reading this Vulture article on the making of this scene, which lends it so much more credence and authenticity, plus providing way more detail than I’m comfortable with plagiarizing here (like there being actual, real-life billionaire donors as part of the extras during the scene [layer five?]). But putting the experience into words lends an opportunity for self-critique and a moment for reflection, of which I often forget to perform on myself because I too am more comfortable in the safety of society. Most of the time.

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Check further below if you’re curious about the first part of this rambling story.

So, I’d made it to Bozeman. And who knew I’d move there a few years later? I had one friend going to college there who I was close with in high school. We’d lost touch a bit when he took a gap year as a ranch hand in Australia, but he graciously offered to pick me up and host me for a few days, and that he did.

Once I got settled in and cleaned up, I thought over my situation. I had about three grand in the bank and a summer internship starting in a couple of weeks. I figured I could stretch the budget and get a new bike to finish the trip. There was one motorcycle for sale on the Bozeman Craigslist and I bought it. A 1981 Yamaha 850, comfortably larger and faster, and under two grand. I walked the five miles to the seller’s home and drove back through the rain like a madman- helmetless, coatless, but back in the saddle.

After collecting myself for a couple of days, I continued west on interstate 94. One of my destinations was Astoria, Oregon. The coast of that city was home to the absolute classic 1980s coming of age film The Goonies. It might be an odd goal, but I couldn’t miss the chance at seeing the three rock islands which were part of the key to the map to One-Eyed Willy’s hideout used in the film.

I crossed the Continental Divide overland for the first time in my life and got to experience a real mountain pass when making my way through Idaho. I saw the sights in Coeur d’Alene and soon entered the drylands of eastern Oregon. Oregon is a state where you don’t pump your own gas, which isn’t that odd when driving a car, but really weird on a motorcycle. You get the chance to stand straight, legs straddling 600lbs of sizzling metal while staring deep into the eyes of the gas station attendant holding the nozzle just above your crotch and make small talk as you’ve never forced out of your mouth before. Luckily this attendant was hilarious and told me about a motorcycle he once had. He filled it up, lit a cigarette, started to drive away, and the bike went up like a torch with him on it when a bit of ash fell on the spilled gasoline on the top of the tank. “OH SHIT OH SHIT I DID SOMETHING WRONG OH NO” was his described reaction as I chuckled along with the telling of the story. My bike didn’t have a large tank, which I was soon to regret, but filling it took long enough for a second story, in which he was with his friend when the friend hit a deer going 50 on a back road and cut it in two. Surprisingly, neither rider was hurt, but the warning stayed with me.

I camped at hidden spots off the road and made my way to the ocean. I knew I was getting close when I had my first glimpse of a Tsunami Danger Zone sign off the side of the highway. Unlike Oregon, Minnesota doesn’t have tsunamis. Or earthquakes. Or volcanoes. Or poisonous spiders, snakes, scorpions. Or anything, really, but snow and diabetes.

The Oregon Coast turned out to be the most beautiful stretch of land I’d ever experienced. The greenery is lush and overhanging, the sheer cliffs drop hundreds of feet to rock beaches, and the ocean view is pebbled with outcropping rock islands that add to the grandure. I have a coastal bicycle trip already fully planned which I’ll get to someday, maybe after the 18 other latent adventures come to fruition.

I started the southward leg of the journey in Astoria. I checked the oil diligently and professed to pump my own gas going forward, even at the potential loss of further motorcycling anecdotes. I drove to Mt.Hood on a whim and stayed at a campsite in the national forest. I’d be back here as well several years later when finishing up the Pacific Crest Trail. I hiked 300 miles in 7 days that trip, but statistics are for losers.

My mom’s partner told me about a hitchhiking story where the driver he was with got lost on some forest service roads in the mountains of Oregon. I didn’t have a map or working GPS and was fated to replicate the story. Wondering how long my tank would last, after several hours of driving through fog and mud, I made it to a highway and took it south by the angle of the sun. Once I saw the ‘Welcome to California’ sign I knew I was on my way in roughly the right direction. I stopped at a gas station to look at a map and get directions and was accosted by an ancient hobbit looking who was dressed in a long coat and scarf (the weather being the mid-80s) and who must have been less than 4ft tall. “Go west young man!” he shouted at me, in the middle of the convenience store. I responded in a startling affirmation that yes, I was trying. His grizzled voice rejoined that I’d made it about just as far as I could and he hobbled off. I got the map, gas, and was off to the Redwoods, the impetus for the whole trip.

The Redwoods were worth it. I saw them again last week and they’re still worth it. No rainforest or mountain range, even the Himalayas, can compare to the spectacle of a living being reaching up 300ft into the air, with a base wide enough to drive a car through. I implore every person to see them at some point in their life. What else is there in life that can spark such a feeling of profound awe and reverence? I suppose trees are my religion.

I left my bike by the park entrance and hiked to the ocean that evening. Intending to swim, I walked out to the surf and was surprised to see a seal swim by. It was cold enough for what I figured to be an Arctic seal, so I headed back to the tent to read some Cormac McCarthy and idly ponder about introducing myself to the group of college-aged girls at the group camp nearby.

I headed farther south the next day. California is gigantic even if going by motorcycle and not hiking mountain trails, and I took my time. In California, I wanted to see more redwoods (the Sequoias), Death Valley, Lassen Volcanic National Park, eat at an In-and-Out Burger, and experience whatever else came my way. And so I did.

Meanwhile back at the ranch (read- farm), these last several weeks have gotten busy. Every-day-is-a-12-hour-day busy. I resoled both of my nine-year-old leather Wolverine boots just to cut through them with the rototiller the next day. I ran up one of the steepest paved roads in America. I picked up an old hitchhiker who lives in a tent on the Klamath River. I saw redwoods. I learned about calf branding and castration from a 60-year-old OG western cowboy. I was informed in a long conversation about Spinoza and Thomas Paine from a local Happy Camp resident. I ate a squirrel.

Beyond ranching knowledge, the biggest takeaway I got from an afternoon spent getting drunk with the old cowboy was one joke.

“What’s the word for bra in German?”

“Dat schud stoppem frum flappen”

Anyway, I’ll skip past Thomas Paine, you all can read the Wikipedia page on his essay Common Sense without me, and get straight to the squirrel. The old wolf-dog here caught it as it ran out from the greenhouse. I figured as long as I’m sleeping in a tent living off beans and cornbread I might as well dive in deep with the rest of the wilderness living skills. Which of course requires sauteeing it with garlic and shallots in a red wine sauce after refrigerating it in a liquid amino marinade for 24 hours, served over brown rice with a black-currant gravy. I don’t cook meat often, but it turned out as well as one could have hoped. Now I just have to get better at skinning.

I made it out to the Redwoods and have done some hiking in the Marble Mountain Wilderness, which is where I finally got some first-hand knowledge of the California Conservation Corps. I saw a rattlesnake and mountain lion tracks on the trail just before treeing a very small, very loud black bear cub with the mother nowhere in sight. I had the binoculars out and once I honed in on the source, just a hundred yards away, m hiking partner and I booked it. The folks working for the Cs live out there for the duration of the project which can include trail construction and cleanup, a task often taken for granted with the hundreds of thousands of miles of trails maintained by the US government for public use each year.

The Redwoods, America’s greatest national treasure, never lose their grandeur. I managed to hike 20 miles that day and only see one person. How can the world’s most impressive living beings stay so unknown to the curious public? If everyone got to see the redwoods at least once in their life I can’t imagine there could ever be another armed international conflict. And the best part, it’s free. Just pay your taxes (or get your friendly neighborhood billionaire to).

On the way home I picked up a man hitching his way upriver to a tent he had stashed down the side of the canyon alongside the Klamath. He said he was retired and spends half the year livign outdoors fishing for trout and salmon and half volunteering in the Sierra Nevadas. As I drove slowly along the twisting canyon road he told me more about Rhinovirus (the common cold) than I could learn in a day’s college lecture and said he’d traveled over 1,000,000 miles in his life, hitting almost every continent more than once. I saw some part of myself in this wayward man and was a little scared.

Between this and the bear which left its prints in the lettuce patch last night, life is staying interesting. I’ll try to finish up the motorcycle story before the ultra-rare squirrel prion disease sets in.

So the underground dairy network was a bait and switch. There truly does exist an old refrigerator hidden in the back of an unlocked garage in a small Montanan town where you can drop off $10 in return for two quarts of delicious unfiltered, unpasteurized goat milk, but the full story will have to wait. I figure it’s time to finally write down my first cross-country magical motorcycle mystery tour.

$500 won’t exactly get you a motorcycle. It might get you a hodgepodge contraption of leather, rubber, and steel, which may or may not start depending on the moment, which coughs smoke and backfires on its way out the driveway. But I drove it once around a Macy’s parking lot around 10 pm on a cold Minnesotan April night and shook to close the deal. I put 500 miles on it on the backroads in Wisconsin my junior year of college. The speedometer promptly fell off and I rode it out of gas twice, but I cut my teeth and gained confidence even if I never actually got my license.

When my junior semester ended I set off out west. I had two burlap-style saddlebags, one full of oatmeal and the other full of Soylent, a food phase my body probably won’t forgive me for in my later years, with the camping gear stashed in my backpack strapped on behind me. On my way to Minnesota, the exhaust burned through the bags and cooked the oatmeal straight up. So much for meal planning.

I swung through to visit my parents and for my birthday was gifted a set of armor-plated riding gear. I may have looked like a Power Ranger, but there wasn’t room on the back for a fair-haired hitchhiking companion swooned by a badass motorcycle riding vagabond anyway. I also had a National Parks pass which I intended to put to good use, though I never made a destination or plan more than 24 hours out.

Straight west from Minnesota led me to Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The area is gorgeous by midwest standards and here I had my first opportunity for adventure. While riding through the gravel roads of the park I was stopped by a herd of buffalo passing through. I turned off the engine, sat still, and watched. They came close and my bike and I sat shadowed under these beasts. Riding a motorcycle in the middle of a herd of buffalo made my heart beat just as loud as their hoof steps. I camped nearby that night and woke early to enjoy the dawn. There were a few other morning risers scattered around the open field. I peered across the grounds at a man and a solitary buffalo seemingly at ends with each other. Sipping tea, I watched in astonishment as this buffalo charged the gentleman. He jumped out of the way and the tent appeared to catch the force of it. I blinked twice. There was no sound to the altercation, just a few beats of hooves and a rustle. I shook my head as the buffalo meandered away and reflected upon the vividness of my own experience the night before.

South Dakota turned to Wyoming which in turn became Montana. I camped on mountain roads and swung through a provincial town for a new bike chain. When I had this repair done I forgot to check the oil, a mistake which turned the next several weeks into more of an adventure than I bargained for. I rode the bike pretty hard across the interstate, with the Montanan elevation contributing its due. The sun was out in such force I got sun poisoning on my only exposed skin, my right wrist where glove nor watch nor sleeve was protecting it. It was this hot out when I descended into a small valley which I came to learn was home to the small town of Little Deer, on the Crow reservation. Descending in, I heard a terrible noise of clanging metal under me and lost most power to the engine. It still rode, but just enough to get it to a gas station and investigate. I’m no mechanical whizz and it didn’t sound good. I filled it with gas and pondered on what to do.

Sitting in the gas station parking lot I began to take notice of my surroundings. A few seconds later I was approached by a rather ghastly-looking woman asking for money. I gave her a few bills and she ambled off, only to directly turn around and ask for more. Seeing this, a man got out of his truck and began berating her, which cemented the fact in my mind that this is probably not an ideal situation for me to be in. To remove myself from further developments I drove my hobbled bike across the street to a grocery store parking lot. Hopping off, I approached a jovial-looking man sitting outside his truck and asked him if he knew of a repair shop anywhere. He asked me if I was stranded and I responded in the affirmative. “Go talk to that cop” he said, pointing. I kinda hesitated, being unlicensed and not exactly appreciative of the previous altercations with police I’d been partial to. “Go talk to that cop NOW.” Yessir. I made haste and asked where the nearest repair shop was. Being a town of 300 people, there wasn’t one, but there was a junkyard with a mechanic a couple of miles back and I could try my luck there. So I headed out.

With the bike refusing to start, I began pushing. Three things worked against me. First, it was uphill, out of the valley. Second, it was 100 degrees out and I was wearing armor planted jacket and pants. Third, three stay dogs followed me, literally nipping at my heels. Stopping to rest once the dogs understood I offered nothing but the smell of burnt oatmeal and kicks, I looked down between my legs to see a used needle, and the gravity of my situation sunk in. I had 21 years, long hair, and ambition that outweighed my ability. But as they say, all you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

I eventually made it to the wrecking yard and worked alongside the mechanic to find out I’d bent a rod from lack of oil. The fix was a new engine, which wasn’t going to happen for this 1981 Honda out in the middle of big sky country. I called my dad to give him the scoop. After a bit of chatting, he offered to drive out and get me. It was a generous offer, there being a thousand miles between us, and I considered it for a second. But I declined. I didn’t know where I’d stay that night or what I’d do tomorrow, but I knew I hadn’t made it truly west yet. There was the Pacific Ocean to see. The Rockies. The Redwoods. I asked him not to tell my mother everything and turned to the immediate situation. Where to sleep?

The genial Native American owner of this junkyard offered me a bed in his camper. How could I refuse? In fact, I offered to give him the bike in return. We signed over the title and stood outside his shop talking in the setting sun. Suddenly gunshots broke out. Automatic and semi-auto shots all across the valley. He turned to look at me solemnly “There’s a war on, son.” My eyes widened a bit in my blank face. I was at a loss and we stood there for a moment. Then he cracked up and between laughs chortled out “Nah I’m just shittin’ ya they’re out target practicing and all.” After all that had happened that day, I just shook my head in resignation. I got into the lower bunk of the RV that night and only let one tear slip out.

The next morning offered a world of possibilities. Hitchhike east or hitchhike west. West it was. I made a rule to myself to never sit with my thumb out, but to keep walking backward when a cat came by. I’d smile and every so often gives the oncoming cars mimed tugs on an invisible rope to reel them in. That never worked, but I was picked up by a full car of friendly Native American men, only one of which spoke English. In fact, in the dozens of times I’ve hitchhiked since I’ve had the most luck on or near reservations or native land. People with a community are always more compassionate.

I caught two more rides on my way to Billings. One woman didn’t speak any English, but the next man did and he had stories to tell. Upon picking me up he said he always picks up hitchhikers, since he himself was in the same situation at my age. He said to stand back from the highway when semis go by because he once was knocked unconscious by a blown-out semi-truck tire. He said he’d met Bob Dylan and that the singer was the biggest prick he’d ever had the misfortune to converse with. And he said he was adopted into the Crow tribe after an eclectic tribunal, which he went on to describe.

“I was a bit older than you when I hitchhiked my way here from out east. This little town existed at that point even, but the creek we just crossed was called ‘Shit Creek’ in the native language until the government came through and named it ‘Fly Creek’ in English. I stopped at a general store and hung out on the porch. I offered my help when it was needed, and they offered me a spot out back for the night. I liked where I was so I stayed another day. And one of the elders watched me hanging out on that porch and helping out. I stayed another day. And one more. Finally, after watching me there for most of a week, this elder spoke up and asked me simply if I’d like to join them. I thought about it for a bit and said yes. A year later I met my now wife, a beautiful Native American girl, and I’ve been here ever since.”

He also pointed out a hillside and said it was the famous battleground of Custer’s Last Stand. Apparently, a rancher under the name Buster had bought some of the lands, changing it from Custer’s Battleground to Buster’s Cattleground. He pointed out houses and lands which were foreclosed on and bought up by wealthy real estate owners and bought me breakfast before dropping me off in Billings. On our way, we picked up a fellow hitchhiker, a man much older and more forlorn. With this, I began to learn the difference between homeless and home-free.

Standing by the side of the on-ramp in Billings, with my backpack and helmet stacked next to me, I stuck my thumb out. No luck. After an hour I meandered around and read the graffiti on the nearest lamppost. “10 hours, nothing!” High spirits can only last so long. But, it didn’t take much longer for a short-sleeved young man to pull his tiny black roofless two-seater to a screeching stop on the side of the highway and open the door for me to get in.

I looked into the passenger side seat to see an AR-15, muzzle pointed to the sky, already in my place. He grabbed it, shoved it aside, and asked if I was getting in. “Yep!” I crammed myself in there next to the semi-automatic rifle, with backpack and helmet on my lap, and let the wind whip my hair all the way to Bozeman. I didn’t think the morning’s stories of folk singers and native people could be beaten, but indeed they could.

Turns out this generous young man, maybe mid-thirties with close-cropped black hair was a deep-sea underwater welder. He fixed bridges and battleships with tools he described as ‘lightsabers that work underwater.’ He said he picked me up because I didn’t look like a normal hitchhiker (who carries around a motorcycle helmet?) and figured he could use the company. From him, I got an almost unbelievable story involving him meeting three beautiful women on a flight to Hawaii, who then invited him to stay and party at their condo for the length of his trip. It was one of those stories that seemed too ostentatious to make up, so I actually believed him, still to this day. He dropped me off in downtown Bozeman where I had a friend I could crash with for a bit while I got my affairs in order. Here ends the first part of this saga, which I will pick up again next week in ‘Motorcycle 2: Electric Boogaloo.’

With the only news from the farm being nine tiny newborn piglets and a field of undersown legumes ready for mowing, I figured over the next few posts I’d share some stories from my past. I’ve scoured my list of personal tales jotted down over time and picked a couple deemed worthy of sharing. I don’t know if the writing can do them justice, so hopefully they can sail on the strength of their bizarre content alone. Between the ‘Kal Krawl’ – a night when a dozen of my friends wore my nude portrait on sweatshirts out to the bars, crashing for the night in an RV on a Native American reservation while hitchhiking through Montana, hunting for fungus filled caterpillars in the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, or receiving an award in front of the entire high school swim team plus families related to auto-erotic asphyxiation, there were some tough contenders. Here’s one of my recent favorites.

I moved back to Madison, WI for a year a short time after graduating. I had the chance to live in one of the the hipper areas, Willy Street, and spent most of my free time reading Marx in coffee shops to attract the eye of socialist leaning baristas and browsing the backroom bookshelves of the thrift store down the street. It was in these cramped back shelves that a drama played out which still confounds me to this day.

I’d come straight from a coffee shop and was sailing high on caffeine and flavonoids, an intense state of mind for anyone out there as sensitive to caffeine as I am, and tittered around the shelves looking for old Turgenev translations or at least a tattered Autobahn Society Field Guide. Perusing down the racks in the ‘Nautical and Sea Navigation’ section I caught out of the corner of my eye a young man of pale complexion bent over, peering at books a few feet away at my side. I surreptitiously glanced to get his profile. He looked prim. He wore a suit over a button up, which I’d describe as tweed if I actually knew what tweed was, buttoned to the top, tucked into dark slacks over shined shoes. Boardingschool-esque. He was younger than me by several years and a head shorter. None of this stood out. What did stand out was the perfect bowl cut of his flat black hair, shaved underneath and all. He could have stood in for one of the three stooges if the need arose.

With this registering in my mind, which was still bouncing from the legally imbibed stimulant, I went back to browsing. Turning in the opposite direction, away from the man, I almost bumped directly into him on my other side. In my surprise I took an unprepared quick half step back and continued to swing full circle. And found myself facing him once more. Completely dumbfounded, my mind reeling faster than my body, I came to realize it was identical twins, both dressed identically, with an identical interest in dilapidated nautical literature. Both with the same incredible, straight lined bowl cut. It must be a joke they play on life. Once this fully registered, I chuckled inwardly at the effort they put into crafting this beguilement and edged my way behind them out to the isle.

Now a bowl cut on anyone takes some audacity and to pair it with a stiff suit takes even more. If it ended at this point the story would be relegated to a anecdote and lost to history. Maybe leaving me with and inspired confidence in practical joking and hairstyle anarchy. But when I turned out of the isle and saw this young man duplicated once more, hand raised to a shelf fingering the spine of a softcover fiction novel, I lost my composure. Down to my knees, fingers stretched raised to the temples trying to decipher what coding error caused this glitch in the simulation running my life, I stared at the ground wide eyed. I feigned interest in the bottom row as my mind, still grasping outward, filled with military rows of well dressed, black haired men, disembodied scissors moving through the regiment churning out line perfect snips and the men in their proletariat obedience being whisked off to the nearest used book emporium to induce a mental break in every poor sap who’s luck it is to first stumble upon them.

I tried to regain composure as the developed outward situation wasn’t as serious as my developing inward one, and managed to straighten up and look around. I wasn’t mistaken. There were three, all of which I made sure to count together in my field of vision at one time. They tittered together in what had to be a language spoken nowhere else on earth.

Upon leaving I immediately called my partner and shared the strange waking dream I’d just experienced, with their surprise hardly matching the emotion I continued to experience for the next several hours. Stay tuned next week for an account of my foray into the Montanan illegal underground raw goat milk trade.

I know not what to do: my mind is divided. – Sappho

In a conversation on altruism and living a purposeful life, a past partner of mine once said, paraphrased, “You have all these ideals and perceptions of how things should be, but you’re not actually doing anything about it.” I didn’t especially take offense and I had my counters, but the idea stuck. It has become one of those points in a person’s life where they wake up to new ways of thinking, see opportunities and future possibilities in a new light. I suppose for some people this could happen through drugs or harrowing experience, close mentorship or fortuitous happenstances. For me, a cynical girlfriend.

After a long period of consternation, I decided to enroll in graduate school in the fall focusing on sustainable development. It’s a program called Development Practice in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. It’s also ridiculously expensive, in the midst of not just one but two metropolitan cities, far from the mountains and any true wilderness, but will hopefully open up my future and allow me to pursue passions for economics and ecology in international development. A far cry from Computer Engineering. But as Einstein said “I was originally supposed to become an engineer, but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me.” I think the sacrifice will pay off. And even if it doesn’t, hopefully I’ll meet some hot, long-legged socialist there.

I spent the last afternoon soaking alone in some luke-warm sulfur springs at a closed-off campsite in the Marble Mountain Wilderness. Car’s still broke but the bike ride wasn’t bad. First sign said three miles, second said four, and the campsite was five down the road. Being barely spring season at elevation I was shivering after an hour, but putting on some weight from chopping wood all day and eating an inordinate quantity of beans and bear meat (much to my greenhouse partner’s vocalized chagrin) delayed hypothermia. Reflecting alone, wondering if the kind of person who has relegated themselves to manual labor hoeing beans in the sun and living in a tent is really cut out for managing an international non-profit. But the time is necessary. Rustication. Penance for bourgeois living. Maoist praxis.

Anst I’d take the tent and wood stove over the fully furnished condo on the 23rd floor of an Ayn-Randian glass and steel behemoth crystalized out of stolen labor and surplus vlaue, located in the upper loop of Chicago, complete with cleaning service and A/C that goes down to 42, fully subsidized by the world’s fastest financial market-making company. I slept on the floor every night while working there. I couldn’t bring myself to lose touch with people who have less. I even had a girl over, some traveling gal off Tinder. She slept on the bed, rolling over the edge to peer down at me in the middle of the night and whisper “Do you actually do this every night? You can come up if you want.” I declined, but I paid for her parking and she left some hash on the table the morning after. When my manager asked me what my favorite part of the internship was, I said simply “the free breakfast.” Yogurt and espresso.

Is it morally acceptable to throw away great things? Great opportunities and relationships, just to prove you have it in you? Is audacity a personality trait? I guess there’s always a price to pay for the chains you refuse.

Mysterious happenings on the farm these days.

My only coworker, a rather witchy young lady with a predilection toward the occult, has raised some concerns about the location we’re in. Now I’d classify myself as fully residing in the practical, testable, scientific, atheistic realm (I asked whether the study she described on how ’emoting at water changed it’s molecular configuration’ was peer reviewed), but with the night brings the unknown, and there’s still much to be learned.

This woman of the metaphysical persuasion has placed the usual salt rock crystals and polished rose quartz around our lunch quarters, which along with the ferns and lilies has created a pleasant homey ambiance for my part. But according to her, she’s begun to find the aura of the room a bit unnerving. I’ve found the amount of mouse feces unnerving and am steadfastly feeding the cats sardines to get them on my side of the battle, but there might be some battles you can’t wage with omegas and feline friendship.

After moving into my tent I hammered some crude crates together to store wood for the stove and made a small bedside table. I strung up some drying lines and brought in a small desk to set the laptop up on. On the whole, with a small foam mattress and some wool blankets, it’s quite cozy. Combined with white noise from the creek all night it’s practically ideal. Downstream things don’t seem to be going so well.

A short jaunt away from where I’m set up is a grove of pines with a nice camping area underneath. This is where I set up my personal tent when I first got here and I found the available bed of pine needles exquisite. I didn’t concern myself with much else. My convivial coworker and I traded spots when setting up the permanent tents and a few nights after switching she inquired whether I’d felt anything strange while I slept there. I had nothing to report besides mouse eaten boots and a wet spot on the southern side. But after several discussions, she’s convinced there’s some bad history in the area.

These discussions come a day after our hosts informed me of a terrible series of massacres, perpetrated by white settlers, of the indigenous people who lived here when the gold rush begab. I haven’t followed up with the books they mentioned, have to finish Elliot Coleman’s New Organic Grower and then the tattered manual on How to Beat the War on Drugs I found in the lunch quarters, but I’ll report back if there’s anything known about the region. I suggested keeping a hatchet in her tent, just for kicks. I have one in mine, allegedly for splitting kindling, and it provides a certain amount of comfort when you’re too far away from anyone to hear you yell, and even if you did the stream would swallow it with a snicker.

Yet to be sure, the stream isn’t loud enough to blot out noises directly nearby. The first night I set my tent up, and pounded the eight inch rebar stakes in, something ripped one out at about 10pm and flung it six feet over, shaking the tent in the process. I suspected a deer, elk, or bear (especially likely) tripping over it as the line is located in a common throughway. Most nights I hear things trampling by. They could be the wolf-dog making the rounds or other wild quadrapeds. Living outdoors enough, often without any tent, it doesn’t phase me.

But last night phased me. I’m an extremely light sleeper once I get out of the initial long deep sleep cycles early in the night. Last night I woke up, checked my watch, 3:02, and laid with my eyes open for a short time. A minute later, I heard footsteps. I couldn’t tell if they were two legged or four legged, but I stayed quiet and still. And along with the footsteps, a subtle light through the canvas of the tent slowly passing nearby. It was faint, but near, and didn’t bob or jitter. Just faded in and faded out with the footsteps.

Immediately after this I spent a short time considering. Animal, human, other? Eventually I threw in the towel and took my Nepali friends advice on spirits: they can’t interact with the world and thus can’t hurt you. When I asked him what he’d do if they could interact, he said that would be a different story and the topic was dropped.

Could it have been a reflection of the moon off antlers? It was a brightly lit night. Could it have been someone with a headlamp, my coworker making a bathroom run at the witching hour? Seem’s unlikely, my tent is on a different trail. I’m hesitant to ask though. Stay tuned for further developments, I’ll keep my third eye open for any sightings.

Also, I’m going to grad school.

Today I biked 20 miles to town in the dark to spend an entire week’s pay on canned fish. I also saw a scorpion.

With this I’m settling into life on the farm. In the first three days my car’s head gasket blew, my bike tire popped, and mice at my leather boots. It seems the writers of this horror flick doesn’t intend me to leave soon. Though I’m not worried, I found 50lbs of dried lentils in a box under the sink. I can make it a few months here if necessary.

Lentils aside, I also found 50lbs of dried beans. And we planted some 1500 vegetable seedlings this past fortnight so the season will be off to a quick start. Besides seedling planting and transplanting, I’ve weeded strawberries, weeded tomatoes, weeded squash, weeded peas, and split 10,000lbs of firewood. We’ve threshed tulsi, winnowed seeds, sanitized greenhouse implements, and fertilized soil. It’s surprising how much must happen to begin a simple season of vegetable growing.

I’m graciously set up here in a canvas tent with a miniature wood stove for the next eight months. And coming basically straight from The Belly of the Beast (Washington DC) I’m practically in heaven. We’ll see how long 10,000lbs of dried Douglas Fir lasts with these cold, Californian mountain nights.

Biking home today was surreal. Being far out enough from the civilizated world that everyone in the zip code has signed up for Starlink allows for a truly sublime nightly view of the stars. I stopped and stared into the sky. The light from my headlamp pointed to the sky, the guide keeping my bike from whizzing off 2,000ft cliffs while careening around corners with 20lbs of fish strapped on back. With it off, the night is glorious in it’s profundity. A sky of velvet, purple, blue, and stars crisp in their cool, scintillating, unfeigned indifference to humanity. Moments like this can only come when one is alone. When the act is dropped and only the smoke of last night’s forest service burns drifts between you and the revenant. Seek them out or you’ll pass your life by without ever having looked in the mirror.

This last year has been a challenge. On top of the pandemic, my personal life has been terribly hectic. But, there is always a new path forward if you have the courage (audacity? temerity?) to take it. Last week I quit my safe government job, secured an internship on an organic farm in California, turned my Prius into a mobile dwelling space, and started a move across the country. Here’s a bit more about the process:

The gig – There is a program called Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) where you volunteer your time in return for connections and skills. I secured an internship on a small farm near the community of Happy Camp in northern California for the 2021 growing season, March through November. The farm offers skill development in the following areas:

* Soil and bed preparation
* Annual and perennial seed starting (including scarification and stratification techniques)
* Seedling care and nursery techniques
* Waterline maintenance and drip irrigation
* Transplanting techniques
* Mulching
* Weeding – tools to use, techniques, methods, prevention
* Plant care – disease and pest prevention, maintenance and feeding
* Food harvesting, packing, storing, and preserving
* Perennial herb growing, harvesting, drying and processing
* Herbal medicine making skills
* Essential oil/hydrosol distillation
* Greenhouse growing
* Mushroom hunting and growing
* Pruning, thinning, and chainsaw skills
* Firewood gathering and fire building (seasonally dependent)
* Perennial food cultivation
* Orchard maintenance and care
* Plant identification
* Fence building
* Machinery operation basics
* Carpentry

Along with this, the opportunity provides organic food and a preparation space, a secluded tent camping area for the summer, and general utilities like electricity, wifi, laundry. This is less common, but because of both the duration and daily time commitment, this opportunity also pays a minimal weekly stipend.

The goal with this is to develop the skills necessary to start my own farm one day, even if it’s more of a hobby farm than my sole source of income. Also, I believe spending all day doing manual labor in a quiet secluded area, surrounded by nature and creative passionate people, will help my mind settle down a bit. I plan to use my free time to pursue passion projects like classic literature and studying the Russian language. The farm is pretty disconnected and I don’t know how much service I will have so I downloaded some classic movies, lectures, podcasts, and study materials.

The vehicle – I bought a 2012 Gen 3 Prius in 2019. It’s the perfect travel vehicle. To retrofit it for living in ( at least for the drive over and maybe on cold nights), I installed a mattress pad in the back with several pillows and wool blankets. The Prius can also be left on in ‘Ready Mode’ which will burn about one gallon of gas to keep the heat or AC on all night. The simplified packing list is as follows:

* Mattress pad, sheets, blankets, pillows
* Clothes with duffel (rain jacket, windbreaker, underwear, socks, pants, shorts, t-shirts, sweaters, towel)
* Toiletries
* Laptop, phone, kindle, battery pack, cords, earbuds, headphones
* Road bike with maintenance equipment
* General camping/hiking equipment (tent, pad, stove, bowls, first aid kit, sleeping bag, liner, ax, saw, rope)
* Homemade hang board (to stay in climbing shape)
* Books (Six-volume set of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Collected Works of William Shakespeare, Don Quixote, Ulysses, Phenomenology of Spirit, Little Known Works of Mark Twain, 50 Brain Teasers and Riddles, life magazines from 1947), Kindle with everything else.
* Harmonica
* Cooler, week of food, ice

It all fits pretty well. I referenced the following resources when planning out the car.

* Stealth Prius
* Prius Dwellers (reddit.com)

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about what I want out of this experience. In general, I’m hoping to just peacefully tend some plants during the day and hang out in a hammock and read in the evening. No responsibilities, no commitments, just intellectual repose. Listening to the birds, enjoying the sunshine, staying happy, strong, and healthy. I’ve also put together the following specific goal list for reference over the next 8 months:

No caffeine, alcohol, or drugs. I did this while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and it really cleared my mind. I think a long bout of sobriety can do everyone a bit of good everyt now and then. Minimizing phone usage. I’ll likely keep it in a different place than where I work and sleep so that I don’t constantly check it and waste time on Social Media. Dopamine resets for hardcore drug addicts takes about 90 days and I found that after that much time hiking there was a significant difference in my thoughts and habits relating to my phone/the internet. As I’ll be quite remote, I’m also attempting to not make any significant purchases for the summer. Small enjoyable things like a sandwich or new shorts, certainly reasonable.

I set this tentative daily schedule, dependent upon my free time:

MWF – Read Marx / Hegel / Critical Theory
TT – Old films / fiction / non-fiction / shakespeare
Sat – Read/memorize poetry + writing + Bioshock Infinite (After rereading Ayn Rand)
Sun – Adventure (hiking, bike rides) + writing

Russian – Daily flashcards and finishing the Princeton Russian Course. Mostly listening to Pimsleur speaking and listening lessons during the day.

These are all rough ideas and I’ll probably settle in and focus on a couple specifics mentioned above, but in the end, I’d like to get the following out of the experience:

* Requirements I need to meet to start my own farm
* Timeline for doing so
* Better at Russian and knowledgeable about Marxism
* Having fun, enjoy life, and meeting new people
* Stop thinking about money, cultivating a healthy poverty and simplicity.

I’ll follow up this blog post with a write-up on travel life on the way out and share thoughts on my experience on the farm once I get settled in.

The self only exists in the now. Human relationships affirm this existence of the self, which we seek to continue indefinitely. The closer the relationship, the more it affirms. Thus, why we experience such tragedy at a loss is because we lose that affirmation that we ARE something. We have innate desires to continue believing in the self and these are what latch on to others in an attempt to validate itself. Without these relationships, the self has little structure to support itself with, because the structure has nothing but itself to brace itself up against the inevitable realization that the self doesn’t exist. Interaction with others is a continual, necessary distraction for most people, especially those who have little internal supporting structure to keep the ego going.

People who reject human interaction are seen as unsociable because the rejected come to realize their own weakness at egoism or self validation. They want to rely upon and be relied upon, but when they’re not they see the denier as less human. Once the perpetual, universal system based on reliance upon others is set up, the easiest thing to do is to go along with it. But when you don’t, the system rejects you.

I don’t feel rejected though, it’s just a thought. Pretty easy to fit in and give and take a little.

These are a peculiar set of words. There exists a very specific time in life when you can use them and have it make sense. There has to be a lull in a relationship, where the contact between parties is hastening to an end and the vividness of communication is disintegrating. Neither wants to be the one to ignore the last reaching out and be stuck forever as the them who broke it off. This relationship probably did not start off with long term intentions and was full of flippant words and casual meetings. Yet, the breaking off is anything but casual. It is death. To really drop out of someones life is to let them die, and these words bring fact to life. Some people will look at this question and see it as mean. Or cruel. It could be asked from a point of advantage, in a teasing way where one party holds some sort of emotional power over the other, it could. But these words couldn’t be taken seriously then. They’d lose their power to create a profound moment. A moment where real acknowledgement of loss and change are actualized and nobody can ignore it and there is a tearing of something beautiful. A renting apart of human interaction and the ceasing of development of human bonding. It is not mean. It is not cruel. It is just questioning. It’s bringing to the fore something that not many people want to acknowledge and forcing them to really see what is happening. To wake up. To be drawn out of the stillness of simply living and experience that which they shirk from. The losing of another person to time and distance. To say these words requires the right circumstance else they will be discarded as a cruel joke. Often people don’t take the time to stop and probe into the meaning of words, especially today where the only way to be taken seriously is to not be serious. These words are serious. And they need to be asked.

To deny that life is meaningless is only a stopgap measure. I think many suicides could be prevented by people actively taking part in and thinking about the emptyness and meaningless of life. To bear witness every day to the truth, rather than sublimate and distract themselves until their hollow actions build up the suffering they won’t recognize and then crack under the pressure. Let the pressure out every day. Live the experience of suffering and share it with those around you. Camus might not have gone far enough in his ideas of the absurd, but his solution is one that works for many.

Dreaming is a form of taking control of your memories. You can take control of your internal situation of the world without having conciously done it. The reason this doesn’t happen in normal waking life is due to the constant influx of information, except the phenomenon of ‘day dreaming’ where we temporarily detach ourselves from external stimulation and let our thoughts and mind influence itself. It’s a recursive processes. We remember, change these memories, then project and extend these fabrications, find associations to them which stimulates the mind into bringing forth further memories to be enacted upon. The reasoning for this has been philosophized upon by many. To me it is no different from waking life. We build our model of the world through the information we gather externally, through our senses. Yet when these senses are lost how would we continue to form and ‘hold up’ our contrived world ‘scene’ without loosing all sense of the self? If we lose where we are, we lose all perspective and relation. You cannot imagine yourself without a world to inhabit. Even in empty space your hands exist, your sense of feeling and touching yourself. Your blinking and breathing. But asleep, you lose even this. Although there is still some external influence while asleep, like people whispering ideas or tap on your leg being transmitted to a dream, these stimuli do not pass through the concious mind. Or rather, they pass through us into and are assimilated by the unconscious, then brought to the fore back into the concious dream state. We dream with our concious selves present because without the concious mind we have no self, and we can sometimes remember and influence our dreams. This further illustrates why dreaming is identical to waking; it just has different stimuli. We must still have a world to process and inhabit always and if we were to lose this we would cease to exist to ourselves.

Today I woke up before my alarm. I checked a phone app which informed my I slept 7 hours and 49 minutes, and experienced 5 full sleep cycles. I didn’t feel tired on waking. I spent too much time in bed and then took a shower. Washing myself consisted of rinsing my hair 3 times, leaning back into the spray and then rubbing my shoulders and face with a Dove beauty bar. Leaving the shower I brushed my teeth and inspected myself in the mirror. I had some acne on my arms and a small rash on my chest, which I applied a cream too that I didn’t expect to work. Most of my clothes were wrinkly from not hanging them after the dryer so I wore a jacket and down vest. I sent a photo of myself in this outfit to someone before I left the house and they said I matched my bathroom.

I biked to work. On my way my wrist were cold because the jacket is slightly small and my leather gloves are rather short. I didn’t wear a scarf and halfway there I decided to zip up my jacket more. I wore wireless headphones and earmuffs under my hood. The rest of my body was warm. I listened to a lecture on Russian Literature which I enjoyed. The lecturer introduced Gogol and I was excited to begin because I have read one of his novellas.

I did not comb my hair before leaving, and it was wet and frozen when I arrived. I realized I had lost my comb the day before and left my brush in my other jacket. I stole a fork from the break room and surreptitiously ran it through my hair, glancing sideways every so often, wondering how strange my quiet coworker thinks I am.

For breakfast at work I drank 2 cups of milk, 1 scoop of protein powder, 1 banana, 2 cups of oatmeal, ½ cup of raisins, and ½ cup of raspberries. It took me 2.5 hours to finish it. I realized for the third time this week I forgot to bring tea and was disappointed in myself.

I talked to all of my coworkers today. At a meeting 2 of them gave me a curious, but not inquisitive, look over my outfit. I spend 30 minutes in the bathroom practicing Russian and went outside once. It hurt my eyes to look at the sun.

I finished some code today and posted a screenshot of the output where I figured my manager would see it. I was proud of the simplicity and colors of the results and figured that it would reflect, me, as a person. I stayed late and 10 minutes before I left I was informed a server was blocking a user. I mistook the person who informed me for another coworker and sent several less than professional messages before I realized my mistake. I fixed the problem and he didn’t respond back before I left. I didn’t really care.

After work I went to the gym. On my way there I listened to more lectures on Gogol. The novella I read, The Overcoat, was the topic and I was excited. After listening to a summary and analysis of the novella, I realized I couldn’t remember many of the main points. I was disappointed in myself again and resolved to reread the story.

At the gym I was able to increase my standing military press by 5 lbs and add 1 rep to my pull-up sets. I watched several snap stories, 1 of them sad. I wondered how that person would feel if I gave them $1000. I received messages from 3 girls while there. The first was complaining about not studying and I told her to turn to Jesus. The second sent me a message concerning her thoughts on suicide. I had to read it several times until I fully understood her point and then sent back my thoughts. The third asked my opinion of Full Metal Jacket. I stood half undressed in the locker room and explained my thoughts, using words like profundity, levity, heavy handed, lucid, and phenomenon. I related my ideas to an essay by David Foster Wallace analyzing a critic of Dostoevsky and mentioned Apocalypse Now. She replied with 1 word.

I checked my weight on the scale and found I had lost 6 lbs in 14 days. I rechecked it. I was disappointed in myself yet again and resolved to better track my calories in the future. I took the last towel and spend 20 minutes in the sauna.

It was 8:45 when I got home and I was hungry.