Bike Trip / Spain Journal #1

Last April (2008), I took three weeks off of work to go on vacation. First, I loaded up my mountain bike with gear and spent five days biking to and from the Oregon coast. I started in Portland, biked up Highway 30 to Astoria, then came back on Highway 26.
I then flew to Spain to spend two weeks with friends there, traveling briefly through Chicago, and Dublin, Ireland. This is the journal I kept during those three weeks:

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I believe I just learned what puncture repair kits are for.
--Wow. I have only just finished feasting on the eve of my first day on the road. Everything has tasted incredible. I am so incredibly beat. It’s barely past nine, and I’m ready for sleep. My head is thick and heavy and my limbs and back are sore. It’s been a long day. Twice, I was prepared to settle down and make camp, and twice, I had to continue for lack of a campsite. The second time was at the bottom of an incredible hill. A mountain. It looked like a great thing to tackle after a solid nights rest, so I ask around a bit, after a spot to camp.
“Hmmm…,” the girl in the deli says.
“Well, go up that big hill there.”
“Up that big hill,” I asked. It’s sure reasonable that my passionately desired nights rest lay at the top of the hill, and not the bottom. Surely.
“Yeah, it’s a big one, but you can do it. Bikers go up it all the time.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, and smiled.
She gave me directions to a park with camping that lay a short distance from the top of the hill.
“Oh, that’s not so bad,” I told her. I could easily get there before nightfall. I left the deli, and munched down some celery, and a bit of a sandwich. I knew I’d need the energy. The road climbed up from where I stood at a punishing grade and then curved out of site. I could feel my tent around, just around that curve. It looked worse than it would be, certainly. I started up the hill, and my bike crawled beneath my tensed legs. I reached the curve. I looked for my promised tent.
It wasn’t there.
The road continued to climb, with no decrease in the grade at all, up and up and up and around another curve that was at least as far from me as I was from the bottom.
I feel that people are often more capable than they think they are. It’s usually true. But what happens when things are not only as bad as they seem, but actually worse? Well, it turned out that that is why I’m sleeping in a tent at the top of that hill tonight. I wanted to find out. Which says I made it up. I had to stop three times to stop wheezing, stretch and refuel, and I had to walk my bike the last eighth of a mile, but I made it. It was really worth it. This trip has been much harder than I realized it would be, but I think it will be easier from here on out. This is reminding me that I am a capable person. Life’s been difficult recently, and I’ve been forgetting. Forgotten, is the feeling. This trip is the hard part, remembering who I am. When I’m done out here, I’ll go to Spain. I’m gonna be full of heart and steel. Something. Full of things. In Spain, I will relax myself, and drink some Garnacha. Hang out with the pretty girls, and whomever else I find. Stumble through Castillian. Drink sunshine. Come home. Good night.

me me me m(feminine)e

"My brothers name is Nathan," she said to me.
"Oh," I said.
"...," I paused.
"Is his name Nathan, or Nathaniel," I asked.
"I have two brothers," she said. "One name Nathan, one named Nathaniel. And my name is Nathalia."
"Oh wow." "Nathalia."
"Yes, not Natalia, but Nathalia."
"I bet that happens to you all the time."
"Uh huh."

indulgence

At one a.m. this morning, with one beer, two cigarettes and an irritatingly expanding bladder in me, I decided that I wanted nachos.

Since I became a vegetarian non-mammal eater about three weeks ago, I hadn't visited my favorite Mexican restaurant. I decided that it was time to test them out with my new limitations.
I entered and noticed their veggie menu, something I previously ignored. Good omens. My choices were settling between a veggie burrito, and veggie nachos. I chose the nachos and paid my five bucks.

I sat down to wait for my food, understanding that it sometimes takes them awhile to prepare it. They get very busy at night as the drunken crowd wanders in. I picked up a reader and read the cover story while I waited.

It was about a man opening the first USDA certified organic restaurant in Chicago, and the fourth in the nation, and the difficulty that exists in getting certified and remaining so. It's going to be a pizza place in Wicker Park, and I doubt I'll ever go there.

While I was waiting, a woman and three men came in. I heard the woman say, "we're getting it to go." They were dressed tightly, fresh from a bar, and the men were drunker than she. She helped them place their orders, asking each of them what they wanted, and then paying for all of it. The story on the pizza place segued into an organic bakery by way of a shared wholesaler. The pressure in my bladder grew painful.

As I read, I noticed that two of the men had already received their food. What? Hmmm... I continued waiting, eyeing the counter. Then the last man and the woman got theirs and left. I left the paper and went up to the counter. I really had to pee.
The order taker looked at me blankly. I told him that I ordered a veggie nachos about twenty minutes ago.
He looked at me and said, "veggie nachos?" I nodded. He turned around and grabbed a Styrofoam container from a pile. A man next to him stirred beans, nonchalantly. I felt like grabbing my crotch and jumping up and down. The place did not appear to have a bathroom. They must not eat or drink anything while they work.

The order taker prepared my nachos in less than a minute, put it in a bag, and handed it to me.

I stared at him.
I felt like asking for a free drink or something. Extra avocado please?
I didn't. I left, thinking about a toilet, or a dark, out of the way, place. I thought about an article I read recently, citing that 95% of all Londoners have peed, shat, or vomited in public, due to an extreme lack of public toilets in London.
The pressure in my abdomen was awful, and it made me very aware of each step, and my surroundings, like a suddenly turned on spider sense, with an emphasis on urine.
I thought, "I should try to enjoy this extra awareness, and forget about the pain.

I didn't enjoy it.
I got home, and couldn't pee fast enough. I felt that my urethra might tear.
Relieved, I turned on a movie and opened my nachos.
Although they were made in under a minute, they looked good. Cheese, sour cream, guacamole, beans and jalapenos.

I munched through them.
They were much better with chorizo.

peskitaryan?

I've had internet service back in my home now for about three weeks, following a seven month stint of zero home connectivity. I had anticipated my return to easy internet use, and had been preparing myself for it for months, as I contemplated connecting the service. During this blackout period, I decided that I would become a better net user. I would be more productive with it, and, especially, having the ability to blog again would be great for my writing. I felt that I was ready to blog everyday, regardless of the content.
Well, that hasn't happened. Habits are strong, and I've found that my daily internet activities consist mostly of checking the weather and reading boingboing.net.
So it goes.
About a month ago, I became a selective vegetarian. A pescatarian? A peskatarian; only eats pesks? What's a pesk? I stopped eating mammals, but I'm willing to eat their eggs.
Three weeks ago, I had a dream that I was walking around and waiting for something with some friends from high school. I had a bag of cheeseburgers, and had already eaten one. I reached into the bag and pulled one out-- and remembered that I was a vegetarian. "Oh shit! I can't eat these!" I offered the bag to someone else. Later on I woke up. End.

meaning

I had a conversation about meaning last week.
Where does meaning come from?
If I make something with a very specific meaning in mind, and give it to someone else, they'll find their own meaning in that thing. The meaning they impart to the thing will be different from mine, even if I do my best to explain what my meaning for it is.
Is my meaning more important because I was the creator?

Is the meaning that Picasso put into one of his paintings more important than the meaning I derive from looking at it?

Terror

I am in love with the terror of my existence.
I am in love with the terror of my existence!
Sometimes it is like a drill coming through my temple,
slowly digging into my brain.
So slowly that it would take my whole life to drill through.
It pulls at the edges of my skin
and wants to tear my face off.
I am in love,
with terror!
With terror!
And there is no end to it!
I want to cry,
and I'll die, too!
I am...
It's...
It's a gun!
Somebody give me a gun!
I want to kill,
I want to shoot them,
and tear them apart with m y nails,
with my teeth.
I want to drink blood,
but I could never get enough.
I could drink until there was no more,
And I would still be lonely;
My own blood being the only answer left.
Is the only answer,
My blood is the only answer I have!
I-
I-
I will spill it!
And I will pour it,
and throw it,
and I will shower you all with my blood
and I will drown you in it.
I will suck up the sea to make
MORE blood
and drown the world with my blood,
and I will swim through it,
breathing it,
and I will still be alone!
Whatever blood I have left
will again be the only answer.
I can't kill you, love, terror,
I can only kill myself.

And when I contemplate that answer,
it's just too goddamned easy,
and too goddamned funny
to realize that I don't really want any answers.
Leave it alone,
Just leave it alone.

Shards

It's not human,
but it wants to be.
It is sucking warmth,
a hole because it is broken and fragmented.
Shards of a face
stare back;
a little piece of chin,
half an eye, blinking.
It looks empty, but has a semblance of face.
Where is the terror? Where is the love?
A low, steady keen is filling the space,
which swells to brittleness.
The floor shatters around the shards.
It is too much to ask,
to be held up.
It is not a given.
The shards fall, the keen recedes,
and as it does,
it loses its pervasive monotony.
The sound, growing softer,
acquires pauses,
and tonality.
It is saying something,
but as the sounds form (words?),
they become quieter,
and as I listen,
something so close to coalescing,
fades away.

wine

I just watched a short from an episode of nova on aging. They were discussing how certain genes may allow for longer lives in creatures fortunate enough to have them; fortunate, if the creature wants to live longer.
It was mentioned that resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, extended the life span of mice by ten to twenty percent.
They then said that a human would have to drink one thousand glasses of wine each day to achieve the same effect.
"Salud! (Please drink responsibly.)" - Nova

re-introduction

I have just re-acquired the internet in my home after a long dearth, in the form of dsl. The flow of bits is now constant, according the flashing green light on my little electric box, mailed to me via the ubiquitous network of brown vans, sporting the fashionable "UPS" symbol.
If I could get one of their jackets... I'd be the talk of the scene.

Scenes.

I had a conversation tonight, during which someone told me that they'd had to leave the scene for awhile, as a reaction to a bad experience within the scene.
I asked, "What is a scene?"
I was told that it was the poetry scene.
"Ok, " I said, "I've never really been in the poetry scene here. Just in and out a lot."

This is in Chicago. Scenes seem really foreign to me now, but it didn't used to be that way. When I lived in Utah, the first scene that I became a part of, outside of the horrid high school scene that I had fought for survival in, was the rave scene. I was definitely a scenester, then. I knew who everyone was, and I knew what was going on. I got satisfaction from that, and felt badly when major events took place that I wasn't aware of.
Later on, I became a part of the poetry scene. I was getting to know circles of people in that crowd, and I wanted to know when and where the events were. Satisfaction.

The person I was talking to went on to say that s/he was back now, and feeling alright about things. A quick bearing of hir immediate sense of wellness.
How much is my own ability to feel good about going out and socializing a measure of my own mental health?
Like everything, I feel that it's the middle ground that is the nice place to walk. Go out, talk to people, communicate as a happy human, and then go back to aloneness, and find some satisfaction in that solitude.
The solitude allows me to write this. The happy human gave me something to talk about.
We're all happy humans, sloshing about in my belly. With some beer. And tea. And a squishy little rice cake with a dot of sweet, red bean paste in the center.
Welcome back to my home, internet.

Hunt Journal #3

Last night, while I was sleeping in my tent, I heard a quiet, repetitive, high pitched sound coming from nearby. I was reading when the noise began, but it worked quickly to unravel my concentration. I pictured a bird first. Something small and dark, picking through our camp, following a scent and looking for scraps.
At night. I turned off my flashlight.
What kind of bird would make so much noise at night while foraging? A small bird that did that would not last long. We sleep at night, but there are plenty of hungry creatures that wake at sundown.
Something bigger then. I thought about my rifle, lying next me in the tent. I don't keep it loaded, and the shells are in my bag, outside of my tent. Why do I do that?
I lower pitched noise joined the high one. This one seemed familiar to me.
It grew just a little louder, as I listened; I soon recognized it.
It was Luke. And the first noise was Celine.
I turned my flashlight back on, and the beam splashed over the butt of my long rifle, the carbon looking very dull under the harsh light.
I picked up my book and continued to read.

Hunt Journal #2

I looked at the end of what I wrote yesterday. I stopped in the middle of a sentence. I thought about picking up where I left off, but I just didn't feel like it. It's stupid.
We played cards last night. I forgot about how annoyed I'd been. Writing helps sometimes.
This morning we awoke to fog. A lot of fog. We talked about delaying a day, but Luke and I both were concerned about losing time. We have a finite supply of food, and delaying could cost us more than we want to pay later on. We decided to start this morning, regardless of the fog.
We brought headlamps with us, so it wasn't so bad. The beginning of the trail was well delineated, and visibility was better than I thought it would be.

I was surprised that Celine wanted to come on this trip. In the past, when James, Luke, and I went off on one of these hunts, she always declined. She's been quiet, but very careful with Luke. And Luke, he's been strange towards her.

Hunt Journal 1

We left Portsmouth just before dawn this morning. Myself, James, Luke and Celine in Luke's bronco. It took us all day to drive to the trailhead at Chopper's Curve. We just finished eating dinner, and I was feeling irritable, so I went off by myself to sit in the truck and write this. I feel silly, really, but a strong sense of anger stirred in the bottom of my gut while we were eating dinner. In a way, I feel like I shouldn't be writing about this, or even thinking about it, knowing how much time we're going to be spending together from here on out, but I feel that I need to, so I am.
It was James. Dammit, I've known him for a long time, so this shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. It was the way he ate. He chewed with his mouth open. I'd never noticed it before. I don't know how not. It's the sound. The sloppy chewy noises. The sound of the food and saliva squishing between his teeth and around his tongue. It was really horrible. We were sitting together, eating our sandwiches

Free Cell

You may have played it. I know that I have. Recently, I've been ill, and I've rediscovered it.

To describe to you just how numbingly involving this game can be, I'd have to crawl into your head, sever all of your ties to reality, and then massage your brain with a scrub brush.
I've spent perhaps 10 hours in the last week playing this game.
It tracks my percentage of wins/losses, though I never manage to keep it higher than 85%-90%.

The "Help" section of the program states that: "It is believed (although not proven) that every game is winnable."

I felt that I was getting really good at the game, and was starting to wonder just how good I could get. If I was careful enough, and only played the game when I wasn't tired, could I eliminate enough of my own errors to win every time? Is that even possible?

That bothered me, so I decided to find out. The day I decided to do so, I didn't have internet access, so I had to figure this out without research.

Hypothesis: All possible initial arrangements of the deck can lead to a win.

Ok. From that, I set out to prove how one could win every game, but that soon became a formulation of tactics, which I already know that I don't have enough of a mastery of to be able to win every time. It began to seem impossible to prove that every game could be won.
Then I remembered that there are very few situations in which I lose, and realized that it would be much simpler to imagine a game which could not be won, if that were possible.

Challenge: Find an initial arrangement of the deck in which no win is possible.

The picture at the top of this post is what I came up with.

1. If the aces cannot be freed, the game cannot be won.
2. Picking up any four cards will not free an ace.
3. Every card is at least four cards away from its top or bottom mate (the number before or after it of opposite color).
4. No more than three cards can be brought to a top mate before a no-win situation is reached.
5. The only movements that allow three cards to move to their top mates, do not free any aces.
6. The aces in this initial arrangement of cards cannot be freed, so this is an arrangement that cannot be solved.
7. If this arrangement is included as a possible game in Free Cell, then there is at least one game of Free Cell that cannot be won, therefore:

It is not possible to win every game of Free Cell.

I'm sick.

I woke up last Tuesday with a sore throat, feeling a little low on energy. No big deal, I stayed up till 2am writing and playing the god forsaken hellspawn that is Freecell (I recently rediscovered it; it has plagued me before. (I'm also reading: "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves." How's my punctuation?)).

Wednesday morning I woke up with a more painful sore throat. Nose, not so stuffy, but I felt something hibernating in the center of my head. Going outside and doing things proved to be confusing and exhausting. I left my home for only 3 hours, but when I returned home, I wanted a full body massage and mineral bath.
Instead, I played Freecell for a little while, then remembered that doing that is an abysmal waste of time and played Starcraft instead.
Later that night, I went out to the grocery store and bought a bulb of garlic and a can of cream of chicken soup. And some Ho-Hos. I was craving them.
That night I crushed the whole bulb of garlic into the soup and heated it until it was warm, leaving the garlic mostly raw. It took me an hour to eat it, so I watched a movie while I did so; "In the Realms of the Unreal". I cried afterwards.

Thursday morning, I woke up, barely. I was quite definitely sick. The garlic I had consumed the night before had had the necessary effect; it made me smell really funky. I spent Thursday in a dizzy, woozy fog. I went to an art store and bought things. My nose dripped like a little kids, though I managed to keep from tasting boogers, except for what slid down the back of my throat from constant and painful snorting. That night, I watched a movie with a friend and drank two beers and smoked. Why did I do that? I got really dizzy because my ears clogged up like thick corks. I ate another bulb of garlic that night, but I accidentally cooked it until it was palatable because I was distracted by playing Freecell.

Friday I had to go to work. I bought Dayquil. It's changed. They removed the psuedoephedrine, and replaced it with phenylephrine. Sure, if you just glance at the active ingredients, it looks similar, but my beleaguered immune system knows the difference. It was nearly as assaulted and oppressed by chemical stimulants as I had hoped. Phenylephrine is a poor substitute for the crack-esque mania of psuedoephedrine. America is a country flushing down a sewer; freedom does not exist.

I think today is Saturday. I'm having trouble breathing and swallowing.
I'm getting better.
I told my supervisor that I had food poisoning today, asking to go home early. Then I felt bad and told him that the food I'd eaten hadn't poisoned me, but only tasted bad. Then I explained that I really was feeling quite ill, and that I'd like to go home 20 minutes early if I please please may; I feel like passing out. He let me go! That allowed me to spend the 20 minutes that I might have spent drearily rasping nearly obsolete questions and statements at people I'd rather not meet, typing this instead.

I'm going to go home now and play some Freecell.

There was a

device that existed to send messages. Two people had helped me to create it, and were now telling me that, in order for the messages to be effective, I had to put my heart into it.
I unbuttoned my shirt and opened the skin on my chest with my index finger. I pulled my heart out of my chest, a strange sensation, an emptiness opening inside of me; though it came out easily.
I placed my heart into the machine, and it began to work. We discussed the machine, and they showed me how it could be used.
After a while, I began to feel a numbness in my legs and arms. I realized it came from removing my heart from my body and felt concerned. I retrieved my heart from the machine and looked at it. I wasn't sure which way was up. I stared for a few seconds more, chose a direction, and inserted it back into the hole in my chest.
Presently, the numbness faded, to my relief.

I'm Fucking Hilarious

My co-worker was telling me about a meal she was preparing to cook later that night.
She was asked for advice on how to cook a certain piece of meat.

"My roommate was a really good cook, but she's gone now, " she said to me.

"Has she passed on?"

"No, she just went to Bermuda."

"Oh, that's what my mom said about my grandma."

Disconnected

I currently don't have internet access, which is partially why this hasn't been updated in awhile. I'm not sure that I even want to have internet access in my home. I've noticed that I can spend hours just reading news stories, and suddenly my morning has become my afternoon, bleeding into evening, once I've showered and eaten. Maybe it's better for me to only encounter it once in awhile, then my access is short and to the point.
I'll see.

To anybody who reads this, thanks for reading.

I'll start this up again, once I absorb it into a new routine.

Rain falling on an absence

I just spent a week in Wisconsin, camping in the forest and eating cheese curds. Consequently, the time leading up to the trip, and the time spent re-adjusting to city life has put a gap into the maintenance of my blog.

So here is some filler for that gap. Think of this as the insulating foam of my sequentially arranged thoughts.

Today's foam is my first poem written in Japanese.

一番目の日本の詩

背中が痛いですから
川へゆっくり歩いて行った。
雨が降り始めた。
私は雨に『何をするか』と聞いた。
雨は何も言わなかった。

Ichiban me no nihon no shi

Senaka ga itai desu kara
kawa yukkuri aruite itta.
Ame ga furi hajimeta.
Watashi wa ame ni "nani o suru ka?" to kiita.
Ame wa nani mo iwanakatta.

(my) Japanese Poem #1 (or First Japanese Poem)

Because my back hurt
I walked slowly to the river.
Rain began to fall.
I asked the rain: "What are you doing?"
The rain said nothing.

somethings in the something... daaaa da daaa

I acquired a song today while I was working. Unfortunately, I don't know the title or artist that sung it, and it is only in my head. I'm not even sure I have the lyrics right; I only know how it goes. I can sing two lines from it:

"[Something's] in the [bedroom], where we [lay].
The [moon] is always [over], when you [go away]."

The words in [brackets] are the words that I'm not sure of. Whatever is actually sung does sound somewhat close to to these words though. I've tried googling these lyrics, but I haven't been successful. I know that the version I heard today was a punk cover of the song, with a male vocalist; slightly sped up too.
The original version was popular about 3-6 years ago, I think, and was sung by a female vocalist with a fairly high voice; at a slightly slower speed than the punk version.
I would attach an audio file, but I don't have a microphone.
I should get one.

On the shore

The city is beautiful. It is like a giant shimmering lake of light, encroached upon on one side by a giant shimmering lake of liquid and jello quaking. The buildings tower and I sit still, like a rock on the edge of it. Boats swim and stream along the edges, near the rocks where I am one, and the water rushes in their wake; disturbed like a cup of soup in a shaky hand. The wake creates waves, rushing out ponderously from the boat's path. The path can be seen in the light that the city gives off, even when most of it is asleep. The stars barely make a mark in the sky; we are turned in upon ourselves, here in the big cities. The rest of the world and the galaxy and the universe hardly exist, compared to our work schedules and alarm clocks and appointments. The water rushes outward and slaps like a friend at the rocks, where I am one. Mist hovers above the lake, a parting gift from the heat of the day; one that will last through the night till the sun comes around again, coming up over the lake like a great big friend and a great big hug. The night won't last.