Finally Finals

I somehow managed to come out of my latest depression. I think getting back on a steady medication schedule, as well as being really busy with school for the last week, really helped me pull out of it. I almost did not finish my courses this term and was(am) still worried about both my ability to complete the school year, or hold a full-time job when I get out. The economy is so bad right now that finding work seems really difficult. But, finals are finally over and if I don't think about much of anything, I have at least a couple of weeks to relax and catch up on sleep.

The biggest event as of late was that my car died. I really wish it hadn't, but to be honest, it was a long time in coming. It was an elderly car, 20 years old, and had 300,000 miles on it. I guess cars aren't meant to last too much longer than that. The specific cause of the car's death was the broken timing belt. It threw the engine out of time, and that caused the engine to run poorly and bend a valve. Someone (who knows these things) said that the broken timing belt likely caused other problems that would not be discovered until they opened the engine and looked inside. It was becoming ever more clear that the problems my car had were going to cost a lot of money to fix, more money than it was worth to fix. I suppose I could have tried to get the repair shop to fix those problems, but the money I would have spent on repairs would be better allocated towards a new(er) car.

My friend from way back called me last night to see how things were going. It was interesting to hear about his life: a job, a family, a house. Three things I don't have yet, and now that I am reaching the center of middle-age, these things seem even more unlikely. I am at a point where those thoughts are not as depressing as they might seem. It is just a different set of realities.

The weather has been overwhelmingly cold lately, and tonight, the local stations were predicting a little snow, and a lot of freezing rain. If the power goes out, it will be very inconvenient. Life will get a lot slower and a lot colder. However, I have already chosen a book I am going to read as a way to entertain myself if that happens: Charles Dicken's "Hard Times." One of these days, I am going to go back to Bleak House and read that, but I found it a little hard to focus on it, especially when I was so busy with design work. I hope the power stays on and the temperatures get above freezing again, but in case it doesn't, I've got a flashlight, a few blankets, and a book to read.

Magic Stop Watches

If I had a magic stop-watch, I think I would probably use it every other day. Click!, and time would be frozen. Just for maybe a day or two, so I could get my bearings, sort some personal emotions out, steel myself for the inevitable unpleasantness that would await me when time began again. Living time out of synch would be more of an alignment for me, since as it is, time always seems to be marching ahead before I am ready for it.

There were only a thousand things that I should have done over the weekend, but by Monday, there were a million. And all I could do was lie in bed all day. I couldn't even muster enough courage to eat dinner. I will try and face the music tomorrow. I am contemplating a long discussion with both my instructors about the nature of my depression this time, but frankly, even though it might be necessary to do have these talks to salvage my grades and my term, I would rather do almost anything else: push a marble around with my nose for a few hours maybe.

Every day that I experience a struggle with my depression, I find myself trying to cope with the fact of its disabling reality. Depression, for me, is not merely a set of circumstances that come together in a poor or awkward way to make me feel bad. I feel bad because of a chemical imbalance in my brain that is akin to a broken bone in my leg. A broken bone is not a perception; it is a fact, an existent reality that is indifferent to all opinions. You do not say, "if I just pretended my leg was not broken, I could walk on it without a crutch or a cast." You would not tell other people with broken legs that, "it's all in your head, your leg is not really broken. You just don't have the proper strength of character to walk around like a 'normal' person."

Another one of the various things that I am finding about depression is this: in order to try and live a normal life I have to do a couple of things. The first is perhaps the easiest: take my medication every day. I used to be resistant to it thinking that I could "will" myself to be better, but having been on the right medication for the last couple of months, I am finding that the difference it makes is hard to deny. Taking medication, while the easiest of the various tasks depression demands of you, is not always easy. If you don't have money for medications, you have to scrounge money for it, get free samples, or pray you get on a patient assistance program. For instance, I ran out of the free samples of medication I got from my doctor the other day and did without for about a week. He gave me a prescription for the pill form of the medicine, but it took a day or so to fill it, and then it still cost nearly 40 bucks or so, even with a discount. In the mean time, I had "titrated" off the medicine. That sort of yo-yo'ing on and off medicine makes you more resistant to it, not something that I want or need to have happen.

Depression also seems to be requiring me to talk to people about it when it affects my life negatively, and not always the people I want to discuss it with, and the people I do discuss it with may not always understand. Depression has a stigma (even in 2009, even though it seems like the whole world has it these days). And, I find that among certain people, depression is equivalent to weakness. I can't change minds like those or expect much sympathy or understanding, even if the law, school attorneys, or anyone else for that matter, might require those in authority to have a sympathetic response. You can see the dissonance in their eyes as they look at you warily. In any event, the talk with my instructors that I am contemplating having might go something like this:

"Hello, Mr. H----? Yes, hi. I am just wanted to talk to about my school work. I haven't been able to complete our most recent project lately because I have been experiencing a heavy bout of depression, partially due to the illness I had last week, which in turn caused me to fall behind on things. I know I should have called yesterday to inform you about my absence, but it took all of my courage to eat breakfast and take a shower. I am so sorry if this causes any trouble. I am hoping to get things completed by the end of the term, especially for your classes. I know that there may not be much that you can do to help me out with my projects and their tardiness, but if there is something, I would appreciate it more than you can imagine. Once again, I apologise."

I would then try to explain how my depression affects me, or even what it is again in terms of brain chemistry. I might even go so far as to show him the medications that I am using. I had a letter from the disability office at school about my depression and perhaps need for my time, but it is largely a symbolic agreement of goodwill between the student and the instructor, a paper tiger. As far as I know, there is nothing where the instructor would be "required" to grant me more time without penalty.

I do happen to think that most of my instructors are sympathetic people, but I also worry that they don't understand. Maybe they see me as complaining too much, as an ineffectual weirdo who can't get his act together on any given day of the week. I have seen those internet post from instructors complaining about one difficult student or another. Having been a college instructor (okay, graduate teaching assistant), I know that a lot of students have problems. So, it would stand to reason, some instructors might be completely inured to lot of pleading from students. I've met a couple. I may say depression cripples my life sometimes, but I worry that all instructors actually hear is a feeble excuse along the lines of "the dog ate my homework."

I would write much more about all of this, but it is time for bed. I really, really, need to pull it together, face the music, take my lumps, and move on with school and the rest of this term. I hope that I can salvage some of it. Even if I can, I will still have a lot of work to do, and I am hoping that maybe when I get into the lab, and start making progress on my work, the thin and whispery tendrils of hope will creep in again and I will pull out of my emotional nose-dive.

Cold Fire

The other night I had a dream of sorts that was really quite amazing. It wasn't about images, except maybe geometric shapes forming a circle. The the inside of a temple dome perhaps. In any event, the real substance of the dream was an emotion of an intense happiness that radiated to the core of my being. It was just a little unreal, and felt almost too happy, at least more than what should seem normal in real life. I tried to hold on to the feeling in the dream but, just like that, it slipped away.

Tonight, that dream seems ironic because I am fairly certain I am really depressed at the moment. I am worried about my long term ability to support myself and pay my already accumulated debts, which are substantial (at least to me.) The anxiety I feel about the future is the spark that ignites a cold fire that burns through my confidence, my hope for myself, and my sense of security. Medication helps, but my supply was interrupted for a bit because the doctor's office ran out of free samples. The various people I talk to during a day would say my depression is a natural result of not having medication for a few days, but I can't help but think the medication is actually masking my problems, which are real and "out there," not just internal. My problems have a substance that is unaffected by whatever attitude or emotion I happen to feeling at that moment.

If I had the opportunity to make other choices over again, I would. Graduate school would be one of those things I wouldn't do. Too much money and not enough return. I think my hopes were exploited for money by colleges that were willing to promise brighter tomorrows. Maybe if I were from the middle classes I aspired to, I would have been able to navigate grad. school better, been able to reap the rewards of familiarity from professional colleagues that so often helps people get ahead.

Right now, it is the middle of the night (4:00am.) I have class in 12 hours, and at two over-due projects still to do. I should have spent the last four days working on them but, except for a marathon homework session on Wednesday, I spent most of the time in bed doing not much of anything in particular.

I would try talking to other people about it more--people who have special meaning in my life--but to them, it just seems like I am complaining about things I can't really change. In that regard, they are right, except I would say lamenting or grieving instead of complaining. The responses from others that I seem to get are either along the lines of "me too," or "fake it until you make it." "Somehow things always work out for the best," they say.

But, I feel that I am too educated to believe that is always the case. Yes, maybe things aren't as dire as they seem, but then again the world can be very cruel and no amount of wishful thinking is going to change difficult circumstances. I've always disliked those philosophies that say that internal positive thinking creates an outward positive reality, an emotional telekinesis that says you can manipulate your mind to attract (when they often mean force) good, and typically material, benefits. The universe is turned into your personal butler, and all you have to do is to learn the trick to get it to do your bidding. Want 500 dollars? Send positive energy into the Universe to get it. Seems highly dishonest to me, even offensive.

I think that the honest acknowledgment of the seriousness and reality of my problems would help reassure me that my perceptions are real and not irretrievably distorted by depression. And, that, for some reason I don't clearly understand, would make me feel better.

Perhaps, a big part of why I would feel better might be that I'd feel reassured that my grip on reality has not slipped, that my judgment is still intact. And then, if that were the case, I would have the firm hope that since I knew the problem as objectively as I possibly could know it, I might be able to find a way to adapt, or even (dare to hope) find a solution.

I've lost at least 10 pounds in the last couple of weeks. I hardly eat breakfast anymore. I am behind in my work. My car is getting more unreliable. I have no money. I am not where I want to be with my art. I feel like a fraud much of the time. I haven't been able to take a shower since Friday. I still cough up phlegm more than a week later, even though the main symptoms of the virus I had have gone away. At times, I really don't like myself very much and can't see why anyone else would either.

Still, for all of that, I will go to school in the morning (six hours from now maybe), and I will try to work on my projects as best as I am able. Sometimes, after the last class is over for that given day, the anxiety surfaces and I feel it best to flee for home and get in bed again.

Yeah, I do try to fight it. The thing about it now, as opposed to three or four years ago, is that, even though I am more aware about the depression I have and its physical causes, I am less able to force myself through it as I was when I was a young man. Ignorance about my depression gave me the strength of will to blunder through daily activities with a tenacity that usually carried me pretty far. Nowadays, I feel like the fighting I did back then to push through did more harm than good. It was futile. So often, during my weaker moments, I find myself back in bed, doing my best to forget about my problems. And trying to forget takes up a lot of energy, almost to the point where I can't really do much else.

Busy week

This week has been pretty busy, with the end of result of my being sick. I slept most of the day today, but now, I am up at 1:00 a.m. and it feels like my eyeballs are going to explode. I just took some Nyquil, so let's see what happens. I am really hoping that I feel better by Sunday at least, because being sick really stinks.

So, it has been constantly raining for the last couple of weeks, and I mean constantly. And yet, when I woke up on Tuesday, I saw daylight and was told that it was going to be sunny until later in the afternoon. Now, here's the thing. I have a brochure project due in class in a week or two, and the project is supposed to advertise a local town as a vacation destination, but due to the rain, I haven't gotten the photos I needed. I had to make an executive decision. After a moment of thought, I called up my instructors and told them that I wasn't going to class that day. I then spent the next six hours or so taking landscape and architecture pictures of the given town. I got a handful of strange looks from the locals, especially since I was using my tripod to get the photos I needed, but looking back, I am glad I took that day off from school because the rain started up again and hasn't really stopped since.

Wednesday was Veteran's day, so I had that day off from school too. I spent the majority of my time that day reviewing the photos I took and color correcting them as best I could. I probably could use another photo session of the town, but I don't really want to drive out there again -- four separate trips should be enough.

Thursday, our class went to the major art museum in the biggest urban town of our state. I have to say, I wasn't all that impressed with the exhibit we went up there to see specifically. Yes, it was interesting, but it wasn't all that different from things I have seen before. Some of the items on display could easily be found as reproductions for sale on internet sites. However, after the official class tour was over, I decided that I would stick around and see the rest of what the museum had to offer and that part was much more interesting. I met up with the foreign exchange student and we took a leisurely walk through the rest of the exhibits. It was nice to have a companion as we walked past famous, and not so famous, works of art. I liked the Kenny Scharf and the Basquiat works, but the classical impressionist stuff was pretty cool too.

And, of course, on the next day, I got sick. My head is killing me, and the chills I had earlier in the night have been replaced by a fever and the sweats. I really hope I feel better soon. I have too much work to do to be sick for very long.

Famous Designer

Designer Presentation

Tonight, I went to a presentation given by a famous designer about her work. You might be able to tell from the image who it was, especially if you're familiar with the work she's displaying, but then again, you might not. I am not going to say who it was just because this is my personal blog, and I wouldn't want keyword searches on her name directing people here. I am still not sure if I care if that happens or not. Whatever. For the time being, in my uncertainty, she'll remain a mystery (unless you already know.)

So, at the beginning of school term, the instructor in my layout class mentioned that the famous designer you see in my photo here would be appearing in our state in two places: one place in the state's biggest city, and one at the state university about forty minutes away from where I live. I'm intrigued by successful people, so I knew that I wanted to go, and the state university one sounded like my best option.

Normally, I have another class that meets at the time when I should be getting in my increasingly elderly car to drive the forty minutes to this presentation. And this other class is about forty minutes in the totally other direction. It seemed crazy to drive forty minutes to class only to spend a half hour there before having to leave to go to the presentation that would now be eighty minutes away. Staying home from school seemed like the only sane choice.

In my typical fashion, I wasn't sure where I needed to go, so at the last minute, I called this other school's library. A student worker answered the phone and introduced her self with an unusual name. Although I had already thought about the question I had planned to ask her, I was thrown off. My question came out in chunks, and finally I stopped in mid-sentence. I stammered, "excuse, me. I am sorry. What is your name?" She repeated it, and I replied in what I hope was a friendly tone, "wow, that's an interesting name." It was very stupid thing for me to say because I should have said "nice" or "beautiful name" because interesting is what people say to be polite when they actually hate something. Of course, I didn't hate her name, I was genuinely impressed by it. It was totally out of my character to ask people personal questions like these, but for some reason, I did it. She was very friendly and answered the questions I needed to ask.

Even though I had planned to leave much earlier that I did and visit the art gallery, I only managed to get out of town with just enough time to get to the presentation a few minutes late. My first problem was that I took too much time getting dressed, and my second problem was the unexpected difficulties with parking. The school was packed with cars, and navigating on these gigantic campuses are always trouble merely for the sheer amount of student pedestrians and cyclists milling around and in the streets.

The venue in which the famous designer was presenting was entirely inappropriate for her for the simple fact that the room could not hold everyone who wanted to attend. I had overheard from another person that she was visiting from yet a third college. There must have been many other people, like me, who had come in from other places. I stood in the hallway in the back and strained to hear what the famous designer was saying. It seemed like she was presenting her works and talking about the concepts that they represented.

I had hoped that she would have talked about her background and creative process much more, rather than her somewhat mechanical cataloging of her work. While it was interesting to hear her representation of the subjects of her work and what she intended their thematic meanings to be, it wasn't as insightful as I had hoped.

The thing about works of art, any work of art, is that interpretation is such a personal thing that anyone can come to their own conclusions fairly easily (if they are thoughtful and rigorous thinkers.) The work, to each of us in its own way, speaks for itself.

As a student of design, it would have been more helpful to hear about her approaches to her subjects, how she tackles the visual problems and themes she encounters, or how she solves the problem of typography in her work. I felt that her presentation was essentially like looking at the vacation photos of another family. Yes, I am sure it was a nice trip, but can you give me any advice about how to go on my own adventure?

After the last slide, the lights in the room came on, and a representative of the college, a balding professorial man in an argyle sweater, announced that there were refreshments in the lobby and that the famous designer would be signing copies of her portfolio. The portfolio cost fifteen dollars more than I had with me, and I did not have a checkbook. Nevertheless, I intended to stick around and ask her a question or two if I could. I met up with some of my fellow students in the lobby who, like me, had driven from far away to get there. I was surprised to see one of the students who had graduated from the program a year earlier there. I nodded hello to him, and while standing behind a crush of people milling around both the designer and the snack table, we made polite conversation.

I was confused about whether or not he was going to this state college or had graduated from it years earlier. I tried to ask him about it, and he said yes to something, but I wasn't sure what he was referring to.

Moments before I had gone over to talk to him, he asked the famous designer if she could sign one of her posters with a phrase to the effect of "Go [College Mascot]!" It was silly request, and the designer expressed her reluctance to sign the silly phrase on the poster he chosen, one supposed to raise consciousness about the horror of war. He told her he had chosen it because it had the school's colors. I was little shocked at the frivolity and audaciousness of the request, but then again, that was his personality all over. She had told him that she would "think about it," and suggested that he stick around. I think her artistic sensibility was offended. I imagined someone during the renaissance asking DaVinci to sign the Mona Lisa with the phrase "Hot Chicks Rule!" Wasn't this the same thing?

While he was waiting for her to agree to his silly request, I chatted him up about his life after the school's program. He said that he was freelancing and earning enough money to pay his bills, something I found impressive. He said that he was steadily building up a group of clients. Laughing, he explained that he begins his first client meeting by quoting them a fee for work that is hugely exorbitant. But, as a special favor for them, he would make it cost only a third of that. It was an ingenious way of disarming client's objections about costs before they could even have them. The fact that he had clients with which to pay his bills only a few months after college actually made sense to me because he has an approachable personality that makes it easy for him to talk to anyone about almost anything. He puts people immediately to ease with his disarming, if frivolous, manner. If anyone ever could get the famous designer to compromise her artistic integrity and sign the poster with his silly phrase, it would be him.

We chatted for a handful of minutes more before I noticed that the line to talk to the famous designer had gotten rather short. I excused myself to stand in line. The woman ahead of me was asking the famous designer what software she used to lay out her type on the computer. "Adobe's InDesign" was the answer of course, and again, I was a little shocked. It would be like asking Herman Melville what type of pen he wrote with, hoping if one bought that same type of pen, they'd be able to write a famous novel too. Aside from the fact that any first year design student already knows that InDesign is pretty much the industry standard for this sort of thing, the question is so absurd as to be entirely beside the point. And yet, the famous designer was patiently and politely answering the question, appearing very professorial in her own right. I could imagine her teaching a freshman design course and having to say essentially the same things over and over again.

Then it was my turn. I always feel awkward in moments like these, partly because I feel that my odd appearance puts some people off. I am a bit of weirdo with an awkward manner, almost the complete opposite of the student who I had just been talking to a few moments before. And yet, I didn't feel my question itself was stupid. I first thanked the famous designer for an excellent talk, and then asked "what is your basic approach to typography?" She answered that, for her, she does a lot of hand rendering, something that was already apparent from even a casual review of her work. She also explained that she prefers type to communicate simply and be readable, too many fancy tricks are unnecessary at best and can ruin your work at worst.

I was a little unsatisfied with the answer even as I nodded obsequiously in an effort to appear graciously understanding. I consciously was trying to play the role of earnest student. Her answer was essentially the "text-book" answer I could literally find in most books about typography. Maybe she assumed I was just another idiot asking a stupid question. I had not yet figured out that I wanted to ask about her process.

I quickly followed up by asking what was the one thing, the one "bottom-line" thing, that she thought design students should know about typogrpahy. I said I wanted to know if she had any gems of wisdom about type and type design. She answered that it was important to work with it for a long time. She compared type to jewelry on your dress, the jewelry has to be the perfect complement. On a similar token, a bad piece of jewelry can ruin the whole outfit. It was at this point, I noted that the remaining stragglers in the room with us had stopped talking among themselves and were listening intently. As she explained her answer more fully, she began to address her comments to them as much as me.

At this point, I felt that asking any more questions would have been impertinent and excessive, so after she finished talking, I again thanked her for her answer and talk as a whole, and moved on. After getting a little lemonade from the snack table, I told the other students goodbye and walked out into the dark with them towards the parking lot. That one guy was still hanging around trying to get her to sign his silly phrase one his poster about war.

I had had a serious sense of deja-vu when I first drove on to campus. It made walking around in the dark after the presentation feel exotic and strange. I had a sense of wistfulness about my lost graduate school career in English literature, but I also remembered that the money I had spent chasing after it was looming ahead of me threatening financial disaster for years to come. I could not afford any more second chances.

Of course, there was the parking ticket pinned to my windshield that I half expected to see on my car when I got back. The talk went longer than the hour I put in the meter, and I did not want to leave to fill it up again and miss something important.

Fifteen bucks.

I could barely afford it, but it seemed somewhat reasonable for all of this. I imagined that if I had to pay for the famous designer's talk at the big city tomorrow, fifteen bucks would be a reasonable admission. After stopping at Burger King for the fattening burgers that I seemed to be eating too much of these days, I drove back home into to the dark, listening to the radio.

At some point, I need to take serious inventory of my life and get everything in order. If I try to look at myself from an outward perspective, it seems to me my life is in a mess. Thanks to medication, my emotions are not mired in the big blue trenches of depression as much as they used to be. Still, while my internal thoughts are not as oppressive as they were a few months ago, my outward circumstances are still in as big mess as they ever were. I suppose it is time I start trying to sort that all out.

Not Enough Sleep

I am walking through the park towards the end of summer. While the park feels remote as it is in the hills and surrounding by trees, brush, and lush grasses, it is not too far away from the town where I went to college to get my undergraduate degree. I am looking at the creek down in a small gully as I pass over an asphalt bridge marked for bicycles, when a car drives slowly by.

A man in the car asks me for directions. I tell him what he needs to know, but then he asks for a big favor. He seems pretty desperate in a polite sort of way, so I tell him that I would be glad to help him out. I get in his car, and he takes a short drive to his house. He is a heavy set man, with cropped dusty blond hair and a bushy beard. He seems to carry around a plodding sadness with him, but I take that as evidence of his persistence and earnestness. He seems like he is a hard worker from who life occasionally demands too much. He says his name is Osbritch.

He explains that he and his wife have just moved out to the west coast from the mid-west. They are obviously mid-westerners as his house is decorated in that mid-west country style and his politeness seems genuinely habitual. He has two babies and he needs help feeding them. He struggles to get each into their high chairs, and it is obvious that he hasn't done this too much as he nearly drops one of squirmy babies out on to the floor. With a reaching strength, he manages to juggle the baby back into a stable hold, and we set about feeding the children.

Once fed, I look around at his house from my seat at the kitchen table. This home is attached to his farm business. The babies happily eat their snacks at the table as I watch him get up and start doing a little inventory at a few of the displays. He's over worked, but doesn't say anything about it.

At this point his wife comes home. Her personality is the opposite of his. While they're both friendly, she seems full of energy, talkative, and bright. He lives his life under the gloomy grey cloud of responsibility; she lives her live in the full, almost carefee, sunlight. Her name is Saija. Again, both of them are mid-westerners, and their Scandinavian ancestry is suddenly and obviously apparent. If he comes from the grainy farm lands of Kansas, she must come from the cold snowy north of Minnesota.

I immediately take a liking to Saija. She introduces herself as Osbritch goes about his business. She explains that she and her husband have moved out here to go to college. I ask which one, and she explains that it is the same one that I went to nearby those few years earlier. "No kidding," I say. I ask her what her major is, and she says "English," the same major I had in college. I explain all of this to her, and we share the common bond of the same interest. I offer my experiences as a source of wisdom about her future path. I tell her who I thought the best instructors were and how I think it best to navigate through the administrative bureaucracy. I offer my general wishes of good luck to her as way of support. I talk all about my experience in the graduate program at grad school, eventually explaining that I am currently studying design. She says she plans to become an English teacher. I really like Saija.

Osbritch comes back into the kitchen and sits down at the end of the breakfast bar. I ask him his name again, and how to pronounce it, as I want to make sure I got it right. I have made two new friends that I don't want to forget. "Osbritch and Saija," he says. I repeat them, but I can't get the handle on the exact Scandinavian pronunciation. He smiles and says it doesn't matter, even after I repeat their names a third time trying to get it right.

And then I wake up.

From a Tuesday Nap

It's the g-d d--m zombie apocalypse. Four men, paramilitary types, are being attacked by another group of people. The men have retreated into an enclosed courtyard in the bad section of town. They hide behind concrete barriers, burned out cars, and assorted city junk. The people attacking them appear to be normal looking in every way. They don't act like zombies, at least not yet. They zombies are alert, intelligent, and persistent. The way the men know something is definitely wrong about them is that they can be shot many, many times before going down. The zombies attack the men with their own guns while getting overhead direction from a helicopter gunship.

The human men are under siege, but fight back hard. Gary, the leader of this group of four, shoots at the helicopter with his AK-47. He stands up from behind his cover, yells as he shoots, and the helicopter eventually goes down spinning. Still the zombies are coming. The men shoot one zombie twenty or more times, but he still advances with murderous menace.

Gary calls for a retreat as more zombies-who-don't-look-like-zombies pour into the courtyard. They retreat into an area of stacked container cargo boxes next to a railroad car which is buried partially into a hill. They quickly set up barbwire and booby traps. As the zombies enter the enclosed space, the men shoot them down in a hail of metal.

One of the zombies drops an odd looking device. It looks like a metal green drinking glass with a needle like point in the center. It has a rugged plastic bottom that can twist into a locked position. The men soon discover that this is a type of grenade. When it explodes, it releases an intense blue light that is somehow more harmful to the zombies than to themselves. They recover a few of these grenades from the zombie bodies, and using them, they stop the seemingly endless zombie advance. Relaxing as much as they dare to, they fall asleep from their entrenched position.

They are awakened by a group of five men and women. They point the guns at this group. Mike, an imposing black man of considerable height and muscle, and the leader of this new group, convinces Gary that he and his friends are humans and not zombies. Mike explains that, actually, the zombies are not people either, but they are an invading force of aliens. If the aliens do not get their nutrients by drinking some kind of milk, they start to act like brainless zombies. It is something about the earth environment that causes them to act this way. Hence, the confusion. Gary and his group of four men have been isolated for a long time since the fighting began. He hasn't gotten much news and this new information makes as much sense as anything.

Mike and Gary become an alien fighting team. They learn how to navigate through a world of zombie-like aliens, even as the aliens adapt to their new environment. Several months pass as Gary, Mike, and their band fight the invaders. The aliens have developed into a significant invasion force, entrenching themselves in the cities and building up considerable support resources.

The aliens can only appear like normal human beings for three or four days, after which they become the brainless aggressive types seeking to kill any human they come across. For some reason, the noise emitted by vacuum cleaners will placate the alien zombie aggression, like music soothing the savage beast. They brainlessly push their vacuum cleaners around until more clear-headed aliens come along and feed them their milk nutrient to restore them to clarity.

Mike and Gary discover this odd fact. After killing one of the vacuum cleaning aliens, they grab its vacuum and push their way into the city. The come across a zombie/alien super market. One of the clear-headed aliens, a sergeant-major type, impatiently directs Mike and Gary, who are faking the brainless shuffle of a zombie, into the store after giving them passes. Mike and Gary come to the center of the store where there are large shelves filled with foodstuffs, including the new milk nutrient mixture that is more effective at staving off the zombie effect on the aliens. They grab a couple of three-gallon sized jugs of it, planning on studying what it is about the nutrient mixture that the aliens need. They are in some significant danger by being this brazen with their raid. They know that as they begin to shuffle out of the store and back out onto the darkened streets.

And then I wake up.

Airball

Another dream. I'm playing basketball for a team with national recognition in a large sports arena. It's my big chance and, against all odds, I'm blowing it. The other team has almost completely fouled out and have given up hope of winning. They are all on the verge of going home and some of them have already gotten dressed in their street clothes. For some reason, most of my team mates are not able to be on the court, but they are cheering for me.

I get the ball and shoot for a basket. It bounces off the backboard and out of bounds. Disappointment begins to creep over me and my team like a cold fog. The other team begins to perk up at this point. One guy, one of the ones who is already dressed in street clothes in an outrageous club style that looks ridiculous on the court, comes out on to the court to play opposite me. He has on a long white coat edged in white fur and wears a white, old fashioned, hat. He is not really offering any defense. He is merely there to distract and maybe rebound the ball. I shoot again. This time the ball goes wide and misses the hoop and the backboard completely. The crowd laughs. The street clothes guy deftly recovers the ball and bounces it, delighted to see that I have messed up again so completely. I have one more shot, and to my team's utter shock and dismay, I mess that up too. We are defeated. Or rather, I am defeated. Entirely. The other team, delighted as only sports teams can be in such moments, rushes out on to the court, jumping up and down with glee and abandon, hugging each other.

All of this means that I am going to become homeless. I, of course, get fired from the basketball team. I have blown my big chance and will no longer be earning a paycheck. I can pinpoint the cause of my homelessness to the exact moment I missed that critical shot. It is humiliating in an expected way. I think to myself, "Of course I screwed up. For me, there isn't any real chance of success. Ever. Failure will always be my destiny." Metaphorically, I wear failure like a worn bathrobe, an easy fit that feels familiar.

In reality, I am wearing a black jacket with the hood down behind my shoulders. I shuffle through my old neighborhood. It is a poor neighborhood, but I used to own a house here. I am consciously trying to learn how to be homeless. There is a culture to it. If I don't learn what is expected of me as a homeless person, if I am not aware of my surroundings, I will get attacked I am sure. Thugs looking for an easy target will take advantage of me as a source of thrills and use me as a punching bag. I see other people with their hands in their coat pockets, so I consciously put my hands in mine. A few people still recognize me from the days when I was on the team. That protects me a little, but also brings up my shame again in a mild form.

I walk through people's backyards, ignoring the bits of trash blown into the grass, lifting the latches on dilapidated gates on rusty fences. Back on the sidewalk, I approach my old house. There is a new family living there. I can see a few kids' toys in the front yard. That's how I know it's a family. It looks like they fixed the porch where the railing was broken. They have made a few improvements, sturdy improvements meant to last for a long time.

I feel a mild jealously that this isn't my house anymore. I want to look inside, and when I get closer to the back stairs leading into the basement, I lean to peek in. All of my things have been packed into broken down steamer trunks of various sizes. One trunk is smashed into bits as to be useless. It is obvious they are clearing me out. Of course, if they saw me standing there, they would not know who I was until I told them. But, I wouldn't tell them. That would scare them. They would probably wonder if I wanted to take the house back, if I was going to cause trouble. I wouldn't cause trouble. I do want the house, but there is nothing I could really do about it. I have no job, no money, and no hope of getting either. Certainly never enough to reclaim what I have lost.

I shuffle off again, away from their basement, and I begin to think about where I might sleep. I think about crawl spaces underneath outside porches. Places where I would be hidden from view. Small spaces that would take some effort to crawl into. Places where I might be hidden and forgotten about. Hidden even maybe from myself. Asleep so no thoughts about failure could bother me again.

And then I wake up.

Spirits

It has been awhile since I posted last. For the most part, I have been busier than I was, but it has been hard to find the motivation to write as well. I am not sure why exactly, especially since I have been generally feeling better. School has started again. I am already into the second week of classes. It's nice to be back in a solid routine, but I've been tired when I finally get home in the evening, and maybe that's why I haven't felt like posting these past few weeks.

I probably would not have posted today except for the dream I had last night. I wanted to get it down before I forgot it. It is brief and perhaps not interesting, but it was pretty vivid. I am on a new medication and bizarre and vivid dreams might be one side-effect. In any event, here it is:

I am sitting in a tiny field with a few cats that I know. These cats start acting strangely, as if they all heard the same thing and were drawn to it. Slowly they begin walking towards the invisible call that they heard. As they walk, more cats--cats I don't know--gradually join the procession. It is a tribe of cats. They are low to the ground, still walking, but also almost stalking this hidden call. Finally, they come to the edge of a grove of trees. In unison, all of the cats begin to wave a single paw in the air as if they were trying to catch something. I sit still and watch.

Soon, I feel a presence behind me. There is a ghost cat, an ancient apparition that appears to the group. This cat looks almost demon-like. It has a smaller head, a jaguar like body exaggerated by lean skinny muscles, the eyes are burning bright yellow and blue. The cat's face is twisted into a permanent growl, a permanent scowl that almost looks like a hungry smile. Tiny beads are twisted into its fur around its neck. There is a tribal ear ring dangling from one of its huge ears. I know that this is an ancient cat, the cat of tribes and shadows, a spirit cat that has been a spirit for thousands of years. I cannot hear what it might be saying to the assembled cats around it, but these other cats are transfixed, silently communing with the spirit cat, listening to its inaudible sermon.

I strain to hear it. It is saying we must attack someone who, through carelessness (but not malevolence), harmed the society of cats in some way. We must teach this person a lesson. I know the person the spirit cat wants to attack. He is a friend of mine. I know he is motivated primarily by his love of money, but he is not an evil man. I am somewhat alarmed.

The cats begin to march in the direction of their target. And the spirit cat has transformed itself into a human covered in tattoos, wearing much of the same tribal jewelry, carrying a spear. His face is powerful. He glowers. His thighs, his sides, his ears have been blackened by war. He lopes toward the target with the assemblage of cats.

I try to talk him out of it. Speaking about the careless man, I ask "what if I could change his ways?" I ask, "what if I could get him to stop his harming cats out of his ignorance, make him aware of his wrong-doings?" The cat-man ignores me. I know that if I am to stop this attack, I must try this anyway.

Then I wake up.

I am not sure what the significance (if there is any) of this dream might be. I know that the vision of the spirit-cat was pretty intense. If I ever been as accomplished with my art as I want to be, I would do my best to capture what I saw somehow. Words are good, but they just can't quite catch it.

Sick Cat : Part Two

Monday morning. I woke up after a fitful sleep with barely enough time to get the cat to her appointment to the vet. I was groggy and not full awake when the phone rang. It was the vet. He said he had "terrible news." I sighed. I knew that this was one of the possible outcomes of the blood work tests he had performed on Saturday. I had just allowed myself to hope that the vet would be able to perform the miracle I wanted and stop the cat's pain and make her feel better.

I listened to the vet rattle off a series of numbers that proved that the cat's kidneys had been irreparably damaged by some sort of chemical she presumably ingested, but after the phrase "terrible news," I really wasn't paying any more attention. I thought about my experiences with the cat outside, feeding her, watching her lounge in the farmyard, hearing her meow at me. When I became aware that the vet had stopped talking, I asked him what he thought would cause such a thing to happen. He said that it was more than likely anti-freeze. The cat needed to be put down. Anything else would prolong her suffering. He said that he could euthanize her any time I brought her down to the animal hospital.

I hung up the phone, and despite feeling groggy, got dressed and located the cat. She was resting in the hallway. During the past 48 hours, the hallway had become her favorite place to rest. I knew that because I had been checking up on her several times during those two days. She seemed to have more energy, and was eating a bit more, and drinking a lot more. The vet later told me that this might be a result of the fluids he had given her during our last visit. I felt overwhelmingly bad, but lacking a miracle kidney repair spell, what else could I do? I picked her up and held her close to my chest for as long as she could stand it.

I put the cat in my car while I searched again for the cat carrier I couldn't find before. This time I was luckier. I found it in the barn hidden under a plastic bag that I had not noticed before. I managed to fish the cat out of the backseat of my car and put her in the carrier with a threadbare towel for comfort. She was compliant enough, and was even purring as I placed her insider the carrier and then put the carrier on the passenger seat of my car.

The trip to the vet took a little too long because there was road work being done on street to the vet. My car was stopped by a young flagger with a long beard. I wasn't sure if he could see the carrier through the windshield of my car. The cat was becoming a little restless inside her carrier. I poked my fingers inside the gate screen to comfort her, and she obliged the offer by rubbing her face against them.

During this time, I was in a sort of denial. I thought that there might be a chance that the cat could recover somehow. Maybe if I gave her more attention, fed her more rigorously, gave her more time to rest, the cat just might be able to recover. This cat had been nearly as strong as an ox in her healthier days, so I reasoned that if there was any cat that could overcome this problem, it would be her. The possibility of the cat's recovery was all I could think off during our drive to the animal hospital.

The wait in the lobby was short as we were the first patients of the day. The vet tech led me into the examining room and told me that the vet would be in shortly. I let the cat out onto the examining table and began to pet her. She was purring. It was frustratingly sad to have to do this, and I couldn't help shake my head. The cat explored the table, and at one point even wanted to jump down to the floor. Instead of letting her jump, I put her on the floor so she could walk around down there.

The vet came in and I asked my questions about her possible recovery. The answer, explained in a wave of jargon, was no. If she was a human being, she would need regular kidney dialysis treatments, but they did not do that for cats. He said that the best he could do would be to put off the inevitable for several more days by giving the cat another fluid shot. But, in either case, the cat was going to die.

Not the answer I wanted to hear.

I held the cat again, and made the difficult decision. He brought in a blanket and gave her a shot of sedatives. When she was asleep, he came back in and gave her the final shot.

I told him that I would be taking her back with me so I could bury her behind the barn, essentially her home for the last couple of years. Whenever I thought of her, inevitably it was at or near the barn.

I placed her body in the towel, put it in the carrier, and drove it back. I found the shovel and walked out into the pasture and the morning's rising sun. I did not want to be doing this. It seemed like such an unnecessary shame. A younger cat, only about a year old, followed me through the field and sat in the tall grass as I dug a whole in a hard and dry ground. It was tough work, but eventually, I had a hole deep enough for her to lay in. I gently wrapped her body in the towel she had been sleeping on and buried her.

After I filled the hole, I sat with the other cat for several minutes and thought about mortality. As I get older, I find that life is over far too quickly. It feels deeply unfair, and this particular death seemed especially unfair. The cat died before her time. I hope that I get my own life sorted out to a reasonable sense of emotional equilibrium and financial stability before I have to leave this world. Leave this world like we all must do at some point. A point, that, as far as I am concerned, is very much in the distant future.

Sick Cat

Every morning has it rituals, even if your life, like mine, is in a kind of disorder. One of my morning rituals is to take a little walk on the back walkway, which would essentially be a porch in any other home, but as this home is a confabulation of lower class architectural styles, it defies easy categorization. It is a brief walk, but comforting for its familiarity. Over there, for example, is the same barn, same little fence, same stand of trees, etc. Some people have their morning coffee; I have this little walk.

However, it was during Saturday morning's walk that my eyes fell on a cat that looked like it had crawled out from underneathe a rock. Its fur had lost its luster, its eyes had a rheumy non-focus, and its walk had the deliberate uncertainty of creature trying very hard not to fall over. I had seen this cat during the past week, and even then, I noted it looked like it was ill. Yet, this particular morning was something else altogether. The cat appeared to be deteriorating quickly. When another cat, an animal that, if it were human, could easily be described as a real jerk, lunged at the sick cat in the opening move of an attack, the ill cat did not react. It continued its sad walk towards the food bowl in the backyard with the singular focus of someone who is very ill. The attacking cat was confused for the non-reaction and sat suddenly still trying to puzzle the situation out for itself.

I had earlier debated about whether or not the sick cat needed to visit the vet. The thing that held me back was the cost. As a poor person, my money might be better spent on food and healthcare for myself rather than the cat. I had hoped my attention, a fresh can of cat food, and some rest would be all the cat needed to recover. However, looking at the cat that morning removed all doubt. This cat was dying, and I couldn't face myself if I ignored her plight. It seemed immoral to not help out.

I knew there was a strong chance that if I took her to the vet that morning, the vet might tell me that she was dying and there was nothing he could do for her, and oh by the way, that will be fifty bucks. However, if there was a chance he could lessen her pain, then it was worth a shot.

I scooped the animal up and put her in my car. I could not find the cat carrier for the life of me, and as this was Saturday, if waited any longer, the vet would close and I would have to wait a weekend that the cat may not have. The drive further convinced me that I was making the right choice. If this cat were healthy, she would have climbed all around the cab of the car, on the dashboard, into the back seat, probably even in my lap or by the pedals at my feet. As it was, she curled up in a little ball in the passenger's seat and lay there for the entire trip.

Her biggest reaction during all of this was in the lobby of the vet's office, where a dog the size of a pony happily barked at us. The cat, using claws sharpened from frequent outdoor use of course, tried desperately to climb out of my arms and onto the safe space on my shoulders directly behind my head. The dog owner, taking note of my painful problem, fortunately directed his son to take the dog outside so the cat could calm down. Once the dog was outside, she settled down into my lap as we waited our turn for the vet to call us into the examining room.

The visit with the vet was brief enough. He confirmed her dire condition to me, and while he was not ready to diagnose her without having blood work done first, he gave her a shot and some fluids before sending her home with me. She has another visit with the vet on Monday morning. All of twenty minutes later, I was $170 dollars poorer.

Fortunately, for the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday, the cat seems to be doing better. She is still very skinny, but her appetite seems to be returning, and she has been drinking plenty of water, something I hadn't noticed her doing before. Tomorrow will be part two of the sick cat saga that at some point I might document here in this blog.

Even though it is still possible that I will have spent over 200 dollars on a cat that will die anyway, I think, at least for the benefit of my conscience, I did the right thing. The animal was suffering and it was in my power to do something about it. The cat has a nice personality and is way too young to be dying of so-called natural causes. And, someday, I hope to have enough money in my bank account to not have to worry about whether I can afford to do the right thing. Apparently, one of the lessons in life is that doing the right thing is not always in our control.

Sleeping Wrong

I am not sleeping the way I should be. I go to sleep around 1 a.m. most nights, wake up at 10 a.m., and then take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. The nap is a recent occurrence of the past two days. You would think that nine hours of sleep would be enough, but then again, those nine hours are pretty restless. One night, I woke up at least ten times, tossing and turning. Other nights, I am awoken by the cat around four a.m. because she needs to be let outside.

Today was hot, at least 90 degrees, which made my afternoon nap more unpleasant than refreshing. I did wake up with more energy, but I had a metallic taste in my mouth and was very thirsty. I need to eat and exercise better to improve my health, but my mood makes finding the motivation to do either very hard. On the other hand, I have not being feeling 100% physically aside from the problems I just mentioned. I had a weird phlegmy cough that made me think that on top of everything else, I might be coming down with a cold or something.

But all of this: the not eating right, the not feeling well, the not getting things done is just a sideshow to the thoughts about college and my future. Of course, I am talking about two futures, the imagined one of five years ago, and the real one. The first future is the failed one. I had imagined that I would be successful as an English Professor and that, by now, I would be well on the way to publishing papers in literary journals, grading freshman essays, and doing my best to achieve the financial security I imagined for myself. The reality is that I am back in school trying for another career path that has a lot of similarities to the other failed one, except this time I am questioning my ability to achieve the new one in light of my past failures.

I had been telling myself that the reason I did not become an English Professor was largely a combination of circumstances and bad luck. If I made a few decisions that slightly altered things as they were, I would be in an office, pouring over those essays. But now, the benefit of experience, combined with my ill mood, makes me think the problem lies "not in the stars," so to speak, but in myself. Maybe it is a defect in my ambition. I seem to want more than I can realistically achieve. Therefore, I over-extend myself emotionally and financially, only to collapse into a heap of failure, paralyzing my will or ability to get on my feet again. Maybe there really is a physical source to my issues. Maybe, due to brain chemistry, I am not as equipped or able to gracefully navigate the world of social interactions the way a "normal" person might. I don't know.

I spend most of the day either thinking about such things or trying not to think of them. The latest worry is a form of concern about getting older. My youth is fading and that is becoming daily more apparent. I can appreciate the wisdom of age, but sometimes, that is cold comfort in our culture, where youth is sometimes seen as the highest moral virtue.

Daily Frustrations

Today was much like the day before. I did not post yesterday like I had planned, but I already can't remember what I did yesterday, so posting about it now would be pretty pointless. I helped my mom out today around dinner time. Dad isn't here and she gets a little lost without him. Dad is taking a vacation on the east coast to visit family, so I am doing some of the things that he normally does: loading the dishwasher, corralling the pets, getting the mail, etc.

I still need to clean up my place. There is a bunch of clutter lying around that makes it harder to get all of the work I planning to do done.

I know that I should write more here about what I did during my day, and while there are a few things that I could talk about--like my trip to walmart or the grocery store--I really can't seem to justify the purpose of doing so. There isn't an artistic meaning to what I do during the day. Mostly, I try not to think too hard about things, hoping that, somehow, the mystery of life and the whirlwinds of unbidden thought will suggest to me a new way of thinking that will provide the renewed spirit I guess I am seeking. If I think about the larger questions in my life and look at my actions as if I was an outsider to myself, it feels as if I was moving underwater.

I am frustrated with things without a logical reason for being frustrated. I am told that my issues are essentially a question of brain chemistry and DNA, and therefore, it seems a little fated. If I am made that way, what hope is there for permanent change? I can take pills, but there are permanent issues with that too. There are things that are unchangeable about my physiology.

Part of the answer for me might lie with reading more literature, as in the classic English literature sense. Yes, this might be escapism. But it is one of the few things that gives my mind something interesting to think about, and because each work has an artistic purpose, it makes the thinking seem worthwhile.

I don't know what else to say here. I am tired again. I still need to do several things in the next few days: check the school schedule for the details on my fall classes, fold my laundry, work on those photos, get my hair cut, and clean up this cluttered room.

Tired Again

Since I posted this morning, I'm not going to spend a lot of time posting tonight. I spent much of the day on the computer again, and in that digital world, I made some progress that made the game a bit less stale than before.

In the real world, I think I am coming down with an illness of some kind. My joints and head ache, and I've been coughing occasionally. I am not sure what I have yet, and I can't be convinced that whatever I have is a result of my junk food diet. Perhaps, I only have a case of the physical blahs.

The biggest point of progress I made today was, aside from visiting with my family members, I did some laundry. I'm out of clean clothes at the moment, so a fresh batch of clothes is a bit necessary. I turned off the television for the majority of the evening, and I found that the night passed a little more slowly. I was feeling tired by nine thirty or so. I should have went to be at 10:00 p.m., but some habits are hard to break.

I will try to get more accomplished tomorrow, including those pictures that are dogging me. The barrier at this point is money, but I think I can overcome it to a degree. Tomorrow, my dad gets ready to leave for his trip to the east coast. He will spend a week and half there, so I will need to help my mom out with a lot of things including keeping all of the cats fed. That's all I can think of right now. I am too tired to keep writing at the moment.

Rescuing the Man in the Fire

Last night's dream was pretty emotional, so rather than wait until tonight before recounting it, I figured I should get it down now, just after having woke up. Already, I have forgotten some of it.

I am at the scene of a pretty intense fire. A fire that is raging through some apartments in Greece. Everything is pretty chaotic, but I note a man is stuck out on a balcony. I want to rescue him, and because there is a sloping wall that comes really close to his balcony, I think I can. However, the firemen at the scene (the man on the balcony also happens to be a fireman) don't want people getting close for safety reasons. I stand helplessly and watch. Soon, the building deteriorates in the blaze. The firemen haven't gotten to him in enough time to rescue him. The wire railing of the balcony pulls away from the building as the bolts come out of the wall and the concrete flooring he is standing on begins to sag. The balcony slips off from the building, and the man dies in the fire.

Seven years pass, and I still think about the tragedy of the fire often. It is a painful memory that feels like a loss for me as much as anyone. Yet, somehow, through the reading I have been doing, I have figured out a way to travel back in time, even though the time travel will come at some personal cost. For instance, I will lose all the close friendships and relationships of the present. I might be able to rebuild them as I grow back through time, but that is uncertain. One can only travel back in time, not travel forward. Even though it will be a sacrifice to go back, I know I have to do it. For me, there really is no other choice.

So, I go back seven years in time to the scene of the fire. It is just as terrible as it was before. I see the same distraught man on the balcony, but instead of hanging back as the firemen want me to, I directly go over to him. I calmly put a ladder between the wall and the balcony so it works as a bridge and pull the man over to me. He is so grateful he can barely function, and soon after I have rescued him, the entire building collapses. He is in tears and somewhat injured, but he is deliriously happy to be alive. I am soon hailed as a hero in the Greek Press.

I gain a very small amount of fame in Greece, but soon, he gets on with his life, as do I with mine. It turns out, aside from being a fireman, he is also an artist. As I have saved his life, I have become a "friend of the family," so we remain in contact to a degree. His family is as grateful to me for saving him as he is.

At one point after the fire, his friend shows me some of his art, which is stored in large drawers at the library. Technically the art is near perfect. The brush stokes are interesting, the shading is perfect gradated, etc. But, despite of its technical achievements, the art has the strange quality of being devoid of real meaning or merit. It is like the soul has been removed from it, but I chalk that up to his "not knowing" how to create this rather than his being "unable" to do it. I suggest to his friend that he tells the man to think of his dreams and try to figure out the emotional logic of them. If he can tap into the problems presented by his dreams, he can represent them in his art and thereby become a much better artist. His friend tells me that he will pass along the message. Shortly thereafter, I wake up.

Sunday Bird

Last night's dream was a little weird. The streets were being flooded with water, and for some reason, there were a lot of lions and tigers that were being displaced by it. They lounged like lions and tigers do on the concrete walls and stairs of the city as I crowded into my apartment room and watched them warily from the large living room windows.

I did not get up at decent hour like I had planned, but instead slept in again until 11:00 a.m. However, I didn't stay in bed like I had the day before. I got up, ate breakfast, and eventually took a shower before surfing on the computer.

Yes, I did spend a lot of my time in the world of Azeroth, but not as much as yesterday. I did a few dailies and helped a friend with some quests, but for the most part, I was bored. This game is offering me fewer and fewer surprises. I could start over with a new character, but I think that the game is going to be stale for me until the release a new patch or until the new expansion comes out. Being bored with this silly game may not actually be a bad thing though. I think it will give me more time and motivation to work on some personal art projects as a way of entertaining myself.

During the afternoon, I was feeling really tired, perhaps due to low blood sugar. I didn't have a lunch today. Anyway, I had dream when I took my nap. I was with my girlfriend and she was playing a pachinko like game where you rolled a single ball bearing on a large table. You had about five or them to roll, and if they rolled in the right spots, you won some money. There were a couple of spots that represented cards, like ace, queen, and king, but for the most part, there were spots that represented amounts of money, like five hundred or fifteen hundred dollars.

When I woke up, I went outside for a little break and I saw a large ring necked pheasant in the driveway. At first, I thought it was a duck, that was until I saw the large feathers on its hind end and recognized it for what it was. It meandered out of the driveway and on to what I assume were better places to forage for snacks. Essentially, I went off to do the same.

After dinner, I returned to the Internet. I am finding television less and less satisfying these days as there isn't much to stimulate my mind, and the mindless shows that keep me company are becoming increasingly more mindless and less easy to withstand. I enjoy the occasional art show, science documentary, or political roundtable (if done right). I also like watching the creator driven cartoons on the kid's channels for the artistic creativity they employ. I imagine kids watch them for the manic craziness, and while I appreciate some of that too, it's also fun to look at stuff like the designs of the backgrounds or the color schemes. In a way, it's like watching a moving watercolor.

Yet, tonight, there really wasn't anything I found I could enjoy watching, so I turned the television off and surfed around the net and listened to the Internet radio. There was an interesting article about a famous photographer that I read online. The insights it gave on the high art world of new york photography was what I found most interesting. I know that in my humble design program at school, no-one will ever get to similar heights even though nearly every eighteen-year-old art student secretly harbors those ambitions. Forgive my cynicism when I say that colleges are adept at selling hope to those who can barely afford it.

I am not sure what tomorrow will bring. I know I need to look up my schedule of classes for the fall term. I also should clean up my room to the best of my ability. If I make it out of the house again, I will consider that a bonus. Finally, regarding the photos I took yesterday, I think a handful of them came out not-terrible-looking. Still, I made a huge mistake. I had the shutter speed set way too high. That is why if you look at my photos, like the one in this post, you can see a lot of "grain." During my previous camera outing, I must have turned up the shutter speed to take a few pictures in low light. And, I forgot to really check my settings when I pulled my camera out for this latest photo trip, ugh. I could have also used a telephoto lens to get better pictures of the egrets, but as I have no money for such things, that will have to wait.

Egrets and Pelicans

I stayed up way too late tonight. I am tired, but I needed to write in my blog before I hit the hay. Today was not a big bust on productivity even though it seemed to start out that way. I went to bed at a decent hour the night before, about midnight. However, I managed to sleep until 11:00 a.m., and then I stayed in bed surfing on the computer for another two hours. Usually when I surf the net first thing when I wake up, I am reading design blogs, the opinion pages on the online newspapers, or looking up things on wikipedia.

Today, there was a really interesting article in the New York Times about Ikea's decision to switch typefaces in their print catalog. They had been using Futura, a very nice choice, and decided to switch to Verdana. Most of the response from design types was that this was a crazy choice. I have to say that I do think that the typeface is unfortunate, especially since Verdana was designed primarily for a computer screen, but some of the people objecting come off sounding like real art snobs. I saw similar things happen in my writing classes when I was getting my English major. Some felt that grammar served the needs of creativity first, while others, a majority of others it should be said, felt passionately that the rules shouldn't be broken, ever. They might later claim that a true artist can break rules whenever they felt like it, but in practicality, they heap scorn on the unknown innovators, good and bad alike.

I woke up from a dream where I was interviewing a cowboy named Cole at a Western themed restaurant. We were at a corner booth discussing the details of the movie and stunts that needed to be shot. There was a scene in which a cowboy leaps into a bullring, but when it was filmed, the stuntman injured his back, so we had to have a meeting to discuss how to avoid that kind of thing from ever happening again. There was much more to this dream, but I could only remember the last few scenes of it.

The productive part of my day came in the afternoon. Remember yesterday when I said that I wanted to take pictures? Well, as you can see from this post, I did it. I drove to Baskett Slough after feeding myself some lunch and shopping for razors at Walmart. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing, and the deciding factor was my noting that the storm clouds were beginning to clear up a little so the rain had stopped. I knew that Baskett Slough would be closing for the winter season, so I wanted to see it before that happened.

I surprised a bunch of Egrets at the little pond where they congregate. They moved from the side of the pond where I had parked my car towards the farther end to where it was harder to see them. They moved rather gracefully, and for the most part were quiet, except for a guttural honking noise they made once or twice. An elderly man and what I assume was his middle-aged son stopped near my car and used their binoculars to look at "the pelicans." I am not a bird person, but I am pretty sure pelicans are something else all together. Shortly after they arrived, I got back in my car and drove over to the hiking trail. The hike was nice, but the fact that I was out of shape was soon brought home to me as I trudged up the hill. Fortunately, there was bench halfway up that provided me when a few minutes rest so I could catch my breath and move on towards the viewing stand at the summit. I took many pictures as I went along, including a few of myself that only seemed to show me how old I was looking these days. My hair is much more thinner than I want it to be, and there are noticeable wrinkles around my eyes as I squint in the sun. Despite all of this, I enjoyed my hike. I should do things like that more often so my body doesn't have the terrible reaction it did.

I made it back home around 4:00 p.m. There was a health survey in the mail for me from a college doing a statewide study. I indicated that except in the rare instance, I don't get any healthcare, primarily because I cannot afford it and don't have health insurance. The mail will pick up my responses on Tuesday since the mailperson won't show up again until then.

For the rest of the night, I spent my time watching television, adventuring in the digital world of azeroth, and later, when there was nothing on television that I cared to watch, I listened to the radio. I saw the new remake of the "Get Smart" movie that, although mostly dumb, I found it a bit entertaining.

After I post this blog entry, I will read for a few minutes in bed before falling to sleep. I'd still reading the Paula Scher design book, "Make it Bigger." I'm enjoying it tremendously, and at some point on this blog, I should write about what I thought of it and why I liked it. Hopefully, I will not sleep in tomorrow morning for as long as I did today. That is a bad habit that will definitely have to be broken by the time school starts.

Fridays of Indolence

Today was mostly a waste. I did not get out of my chair for much aside from a break to stretch my legs outside, to feed the cats who were prowling around their food bowl, and take a late afternoon shower. I should have done much more, but I was really tired when I woke up this morning and thought I should wait until I had more energy. Unfortunately, the energy I was waiting for didn't come until about six p.m. when it was really too late to do anything of real importance.

The dream I had during the night was the most interesting part of my day. For some reason, I was in Japan, either as a tourist, or as an English teacher. I did not have many friends there, but I did get out of the apartment a lot and walked through the city and into the city parks when I could. There was a nice modern park along the river with broad white concrete walkways and a pedestrian bridge that stretched across it. At one point in my dream, I found that if I jumped into the breeze at the right moment and threw my arms behind me, I could glide about twenty or so feet above the ground for a really long time. It wasn't flying exactly, but it wasn't merely jumping really high either.

I went to the park to practice this pseudo gliding as much as I could. It was hard to control at some points. I remember clutching and then breaking a high tree branch to both prevent my crashing into the tree or my drifting off out of control into the sky. I think I was afraid that if I got too good at this, I might not be able to get back on the ground. I jump glided above a few people's apartment courtyards and saw a kitten or two among the clotheslines and cramped sidewalks. Most of the people in the apartment block I was staying at and flying over were fellow foreigners.

Now back at the park again, I continued to jump glide. I noticed that I was wearing a weird robe like shift with African-Dashiki-like embroidery along the collar. My hair was down around my shoulders. It was about this time that I woke up.

Back in the waking world, like I said, I did not do much the entire day. I drank way too much root beer and ate a bunch of leftovers. I listened to podcasts on Itunes again as I played computer games. I thought about the friends I should be calling to see what they were up to. I also considered going out for a drive a few times, but I couldn't find a real motivating reason why I should do either. As this is a holiday weekend, the roads would be way crowded and probably not worth the hassle.

There wasn't much on television. I find that it is getting hard for me to watch television without becoming a little irritated at what superficially appears to be going on in the world. I am beginning to suspect that what is being presented on television is an increasingly distorted view of the world and its interests. Of course, I always knew that television distorted things (*I mean, as a former English Major, I could go on and on about the construction of narrative and the editorial aspects of merely choosing what to show and not to show), and yet, it seems to me the distortions of television are getting worse. When the nightly news consists primarily of stories about the misbehavior of celebrities, I get a little depressed. If the popular version of history is to be believed, there was a time when the news told people about what the editors deemed civically important to know, not necessarily what they thought would increase ratings and thereby sell commercials and increase their profits.

Tomorrow should be a little better for me. Among the many things that I would like to do eventually is take more photographs with my camera. I've not taken many pictures lately, and I want to change that. A picture in these posts would certainly break up the wall of text I've been producing lately.

Talking to Yourself in the Street

Today, I woke up early enough in the morning to get a shower and start driving into town for the final meeting on my calendar project. I was in such a rush to get out of the door and on the road that I forgot my cell phone on the drafting table in my room. It had left it on the charger cord and only remembered that it was still at home as I was pulling on to campus.

I wasn't expecting any phone calls, nor did I have any calls of my own to make, so it really didn't matter if it was home. Still, the cell phone is such a presence in my pocket these days, it feels weird not to have it. It is also weird to think about how something that seems like a necessity today was something that I comfortably did without for several years before. I remember thinking to myself how odd people seemed talking on their cell phones out in public back when cell phones first started showing up in any kind of great numbers. If you passed by someone talking on the phone in the street, you might have needed a moment or two to note that they weren't addressing you or that they did not have a mental illness. One usually only saw mentally ill homeless people talking to themselves in public before the advent of the cell phone. Today, phones are evolving further, and it won't be long before we're holding them in front of our faces to talk each other instead of pressing them against our ears merely to listen.

Once on campus, I printed up my calendar project, had the meeting with the art gallery director to get her approval on it, and then worked on fitting it into the printer's online template. The fact that I am getting a heck of a deal on the printing costs almost makes the various idiosyncratic weirdness of their print process worthwhile. They don't use the industry standard software that the majority of their clients do, so their is ton of fussing with things on the computer to get things to print correctly. However, because all of this fussing occurs on the computer or over the phone, you really have to cross your fingers and hope the project comes back in the way you envisioned it. The last thing I would want to have happen is for the calendar to come back folded nine ways to Sunday, and have eight of those ways be wrong.

I expected the process to take an hour or so, but the adjustments and the uploading took three and half. Thankfully, we (me and the lab/print technician) finished it up before my 2:00 p.m. meeting.

The meeting at 2:00 p.m. was concerning some minor administrative issues regarding my finishing up incompletes that I regrettably received in Fall 2008. My plan thus far is to finish them up this term, but I've been in school long enough to know that even the most carefully laid plans can get irredeemably haywire if you don't shepherd them through the bureaucracy as you go along. Fortunately, it seems that things will work out.

I bought a sub sandwich when my school obligations were done, ate it in the computer lab, and talked with the art director and some of the other students for a bit before finally returning home. I spent much of the evening at home in front of the computer surfing through design and photography sites, watching television, and playing silly games. Later that night, since there was nothing on the television worth watching, I listened to some Grateful Dead on Itunes.

This is my second day on the new medicine, and I cannot tell if it is having an effect or not. My arm is a little sore where I put the patch, and I am more tired than usual, but I can't tell if any of this is related. At some point, I plan on getting a hair-cut, but I have to make an appointment, and I have to emotionally commit to spending about 20 bucks to do something I only half want to do. I also need to finally finish up that picture project I've been promising everyone that I am working on. Tomorrow might be the right day for that.

The Rest of that Same Day

After that morning meeting (see post below), I finally drove into the city and eventually made it to the community college campus. I needed to finish up the calendar project that I was working on for the art gallery.

Briefly stated, the art gallery calendar is an unfinished project from spring term that has been dogging me for weeks. The calendar is both a poster/flyer/mailer that the gallery director (also the head art instructor at the college) can send to interested people informing them of the various dates of the various shows. The calendar also features some works from the various artists that will be on display during the school year. I volunteered for the project because I had the most time availability and because I really needed to have something I made for my "studio practices" class go to print.

It turns out that getting artists to e-mail you print-ready samples of their work is like organizing an all cat marching band--maybe you could get the cats to line up neatly in rows, but the good Lord help you if you need them to march in unison or play instruments while they do it. That process combined with my own finding out of how to do things in InDesign, or trying to get the department chair's approval on my layout extended the project to the very end of the deadline.

I just found out today that the calendar must be sent to the printer on Thursday no matter what. After meeting with the gallery director for the fifth and final time, I made the necessary edits and sent a PDF off to the department chair for e-mail approval. I hope it passes her inspection. On the day after tomorrow, I have to return to campus in the morning and format the calendar to the printer's template. I will also cross my fingers and pray to all that is good and holy that it will return from the printer as perfect as can be.

While on campus today, before meeting with the art gallery director for the last time, I made an appointment to see the disability services coordinator. This next term will be more than unusual and I want to check in with the disability services offices to see if there is any support I can get should the unforeseen happen. Last Fall term, I had a problem finishing my classes, a problem related to the fact that I was switching counselors at the time. The best solution to making up those classes was to wait until next year and finish them up when they were next offered. I would not be enrolled officially in the classes as I had already paid for them and attended seven weeks of them before. Instead, I would sit in on this year's classes and pretend last year's didn't happen.

Speaking on a purely personal level, this is a not a problem for me. In fact, it's an ideal "do-over." However, administratively, this could present a problem or two since I am not in this term's system. My meeting with the disability service office should help me clarify what, if anything, I would need to do to protect my rights should I have problems.

After my afternoon meetings and appointment makings, I went home and watched television and surfed on the computer. I re-read my first year of blog postings and noted, with some mild regret, that my writing was much better when I was reading all of those complicated college articles and classic novels for my graduate courses. As my blogging frequency dropped, so did the clarity and creativity of my writing. Yes, there were more than a handful of awkward phrasings and absurd over-exertions in the creative vein, but it was definitely more interesting to read. I hope I can recapture some of that as I try to post much more often.

Typical Relationship Movie

Anyone who cares to read this should already know that I don't assiduously document the minutiae of my life in this blog. Even with the events that I do happen to document, there are details here and there that are inevitably left out, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not. It's the nature of the beast. Aside from not wanting to upset anyone with what I may or may not say, my act of putting text on a given page requires an editorial discretion will alter and distort events no matter how accurate I try to be.

In college, I encountered novelist Tim O'brien's idea of "story truth" versus "happening truth," an idea that says that sometimes something can be more accurate and emotionally true in story even if it depicts things that did not actually happen. The obvious example in his case is the Vietnam War. You can come closer to the truth of that war by fictionally portraying how things felt rather than coldly documenting facts as they happened. There is something about how we as human beings need stories to tell ourselves about our lives and our experience of psychic trauma that makes this idea resonate for me.

Consequently, while I do try to accurately describe the events I portray in this blog as they happened, for me, the more important element to my postings is how they seemed or how they felt. It's an important caveat I felt I should note.

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Today, I went to my morning meeting and, I believe, I inadvertently insulted a woman by telling her that I did not feel that "the relationship" entertainment genre of movies were any good. You've seen this movie before. When Harry Met Sally is the most famous and has the added benefit of being pretty good, but the majority of these movies are terrible and, to my view, wind up reinforcing horrible gender stereotypes and do actual harm in society as some people take them as illustrating a great truth about men and women and how they interact.

Love Story gave us, "love is never having to say you're sorry," which most people today would say is utter B.S. It's shocking to modern ears to hear how wrong that sounds, right? Yet, no one lives beyond their own time, so when the same type of B.S. ideas are presented in these modern movies, they sound normal and therefore unremarkable. Yet, as culture inevitably evolves, the distance of history might reveal some of those ideas for the trash they actually are. It might be hard to watch this type of movie in fifty years without laughing at the nonsense they seem to present as ultimate truth.

The women in these movies are typically attractive, smart, goofy, and earnestly seeking a "good man," a "good man" defined as someone who will be a modern prince charming that can provide to the woman's every emotional need without making any demand of his own. Midway through the film, the women express their frustrations at not finding mister right (or mister right not changing fast enough) and will try to change something about themselves only to realize the "good man" will love them for who they are not who they try to be. They revert back to wanting to be "rescued" by that prince charming. The men are attractive, slightly dumb, mostly neanderthals who really only want to have sex and will do or say anything to get it. Through their crazy adventures with these women, they wind up learning important lessons about themselves and somehow transform into the "good man" for the woman protagonist. They end up together and more emotionally connected as movie promised they would.

Real relationships, real gender roles, are far more messy and interesting than that. Of course, these relationship type of movies may put a spin on that basic formula by changing a detail here and there, but for the most part, that is all they are. I dislike horror movies for pretty much the same reason: simplicity of plot and character. Horror movies sometimes have the edge though in that they can be about the monster (like zombies) more than about gender, but not always.

Anyway, going back to the meeting this morning, I indicated some of my reservations about such movies to someone who recommended one to me. I could sense she didn't share my opinion and suggested, subtly, that since I had not actually seen the film in question, my opinion was uninformed. I don't have to see a horror picture either to know what I am likely going to see.

In any event, I regretted bad mouthing the movie for the effect it might have in future meetings. I still can't help feeling the same way about those terrible movies; I just have to resolve to be more careful with my phrasing in the future. I don't yet know much about this woman. I don't have a clear sense of her biases and opinions and she doesn't reveal much. We might be too different to reach an understanding on many issues. I am reserving judgment at the moment.

DMV and the 21st Century

Today wasn't quite as productive as yesterday, but I did manage to get my car registration renewed and I picked up the medication I needed. During the afternoon, I got really tired, right around 3:00 pm or so. I seriously considered taking a nap, but I didn't want to be up all night since I am trying to get bed at a decent hour every day.

Last month, I got my car's renewal registration form in the mail, and while I had a whole month and half to go online and pay the registration in just a handful of minutes, I waited until a week before it expired so I was forced to go the DMV. Typical for me. Still, I didn't mind going to the DMV, that is until I found out that I couldn't pay with my debit card; they only take cash or check. In the car, as I was driving back for cash money, I shook my head. I don't know why I expected the DMV to join the 21st century and allow debit payments. Plastic is so ubiquitous these days, I haven't written a check in several years. It was a minor inconvenience.

That was about it for the things I meaningfully did today. Yes, I watched television and surfed on the internet in the evening. I am making more progress in the world of warcraft game, a game that is becoming boring in its routines. It is the other people in the game that make it interesting, and now summer is winding to a close, it looks as if they have less and less time to log in.

Anyway, last night I went to bed at 1:00 am, tonight I will be in bed before midnight and should be asleep soon after. I am reading Beowulf in bed and can fit a few pages in before drifting off to sleep. It's interesting to think how rings played such an important part of their ancient culture. I could explain more, but it's tired and I am going to bed this very moment.

Arguments over Dragons

Today wasn't so bad as far as getting things done. I worked from home for the first part of the day fixing up a logo for the place I work. I tinkered with it in illustrator, and then put it in place onto a facebook page. Work needs to have a business facebook for reasons I am not entirely clear about, but I figure if the facebook page can drive people to the internet sales site, then it could be very good.

And yet, without input from the boss, I could only go so far with it. I needed to ask some questions about the information that was going to be placed on it. Consequently, I went down to work and tried to finish it up there. I also discovered, in the process of doing that, the bosses' computer wasn't properly updated. Therefore, in addition to doing the facebook changes, I downloaded and installed fourteen updates, three of which were "high priority." The boss had been having a lot of problems with her e-mail program. I am really hoping that this will clear it up. I stayed almost an hour after closing working on her computer.

During the evening at home, I did not do much else except watch television and play on the computer. I suppose it will be no surprise to anyone if I said that I played World of Warcraft. Most people already know what that is, but for the uninitiated, it is a game of swords, magic, and dragons that you essentially play online. I am not sure how many people play on each of the different game servers, but imagine each server like a small town consisting of a few thousand people.

Like all towns, there are a variety of people in it, but I know that the average player is a young male with plenty of time on his hand. Yes, there are a few women who play regularly, and perhaps more rarely, older people in their mid-forties or more who also play. But for the most part, one is subjected to the views, attitudes, and opinions of the various young men in their teens and twenties, and often the chat can be a bit crude.

I wanted to run one of the quests for the Tournament of Champions tonight, so I joined a looking for group channel. It wasn't too long before I was invited to join a group of four other people who wanted to do the same thing. Unfortunately, the leader of the group was being rude and wasn't reacting politely to simple requests. He wasn't being outright mean, but I could tell by the way he was talking that he was teenager with maturity issues. I endured silently for awhile, but when I asked for some assistance in marking the order of enemies to attack, he flat out refused. At that point, I left the group. I have been in other groups where similar behavior occurred and they almost always end badly. Such players are usually known to "ninja" the game rewards (steal a nice sword for example), rather than give other players a fair chance to roll for it.

Immediately after I left, the leader whispered to me that he was "only joking" and that I was being a "expletive-deleted." I tried to respond by saying that I thought he was being rude, and his insults only proved it, but he immediately put me on "ignore." The ignore action was interesting because it indicated to me that he had probably been involved in arguments with other players before, and this was his way of having the last word. Only more evidence for me that I had made the right choice.

So what was the point of me writing all that? It seems so inconsequential to note the ill-behaved teenager. The reason (or more properly, the significance of this), as best as I can describe it, is that I confronted bad behavior even though I knew it would bring conflict. I intensely hate conflict of almost all kinds, even when it is necessary to point out, as in this case, bad behavior. I wasn't rude about leaving; I merely left.

While being an angry teenager full of hormones gives someone more of an excuse than others, I have to say that I really don't understand why people are so impolite and mean to each other. If you're a player of this silly game, and you want to get things done, and you need other people to help you, the first thing I would think you would remember is to be polite to other people. If you insult them, or treat them poorly, you shouldn't be shocked if they don't want to help you.

The nice thing about this incident was that a mere hour later another group, one much organized and better equipped that the first one, invited me to run that same quest for the Tournament of Champions. I felt a little vindicated because I had stood up for myself, and I got to do the quest too.

I would rather not talk about video games since I feel somewhat self-conscious about playing them. They have a certain childish stigma for people who play them at my age. Then again, I did want to write about what I did during the day, and more often than not, my life is lived online at times so what I have to talk about will obviously include it sometimes.

Tomorrow, I need to renew my car's registration. I should probably check to see when school begins officially again. I should also try to live a little less of my life online and spend more time in the less electronic and pixelated worlds.