I don't like quiet. Both kinds of quiet.

When things get quiet, I get worried.

Usually, it's just my hearing aids. Dead batteries.

It's when I find myself quiet that bothers me. Exposed and stunned, like a deer being pursued through the woods, and bursting into a clearing. Whatever barely-evadable predator that was close behind must still be here, but now is stalking around the edges of this new arena, crouched to pounce from whatever unanticipated direction it likes. Unbearably quiet, vulnerable, and suddenly victim to whatever lies beyond the treeline. Trapped, every chirp becomes a growl, every gleam of moonlight off dew is the sheen of licked-clean fangs. A distant snap is the subtle herald of more doom approaching.

All we want is to be back in the forest; darting, dodging like quicksilver, navigating around the trunks of so many trees the way blood flows through our veins. Back where everything is a blur.

Animal impulse demands our legs to propel us back into it. But, eyes peeled and senses steeled, we can only react now.

Then it hits. Like deep black water, the coldness begins somewhere toward the back of where thoughts come from, and seeps into consciousness. Permeates. Grips. Instinct still keeps the body tense and alert, but the mind is paralyzed. Somewhere out there, the beast is still stalking and waiting for the right moment, but right now, the cold poison clouds it all.

All the right turns, and left turns, and what was left behind, brought along, and how I wound up here, where to go next, and what I should've done, couldn't stop, let go of, hid inside, destroyed, fell in love with, and should've felt something about. The quiet is overpowering.

My lungs fill up with it, and I breathe deeply, suffocating. I fight to center, and stay focused on the peril at hand. I have to get out of here. The only way to expunge the vileness of it is to move, return to the rapid speed and motion I am accustomed to. Back to the blur. This quiet is killing me. There is also what waits in the dark, ready to slash with calculated precision, just as I bound into the trees. I could try to stand and fight.

Leaves rustle, a rapid and unexpected feeling of panic rises, and I respond without question. Bolting back for the forest, the cloud in my head immediately dissipates. The moonlight on my back sheds in a flash as I dip back into the tangled and familiar mess of the woods.

A cacophony of frantically-displaced underbrush pursues me, and I smile.

Escaped the quiet. Back to the blur.

Posted by Tyler at 14:17 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (18)

Some of the most beautiful places in the world can elicit the most profound sadness. There is a trait in humanity that drives us to seek what makes us happy, and many of us find happiness in beauty. When we come across true beauty, in all its myriad shapes, forms, sights, and textures, we feel something powerful. We feel complete and whole and made in gold. We attain what we look for. Such heart-rending beauty makes us wish we could live in that feeling forever, and it is with that thought the feeling suddenly molders and spoils like a dying tree in the dark. We suddenly realize the ephemerality of what we behold, be it because of the temporariness of our own life, or the fleeting longetivity of what we are in awe of.

The saddest feeling in the world is knowing that when we find happiness, it will always, inevitably, inexorably, leave us. No one is happy forever. But those brief glimpses of beauty beyond pale blast away the gray dust of daily life like a wind possessed, and we find ourselves refreshed once again. But so often, we ignore the gusts that swirl around us day to day. We pay no mind to the way the sun filters through a tree, leafy and green. We take little notice of the passing Venus in the multitude, hair floating in the air, soft curves inviting us to admire her form. The sound of laughing children who see all these tiny insects of pure happiness, and think nothing of how so many around them willingly squash them.

Notice them. Notice them all, however slight or magnificient.

Posted by Tyler at 05:36 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (2)

I've started going back to my high school tennis courts to get some sun and exercise (not that IM East isn't nice). One thing, though, is that since going back, I've run into some people who haven't seen me since I graduated from high school.

Their reactions have been nearly identical each time: they simply don't recognize me right away. They even say this: "Man, I didn't recognize you at first?" or "I thought it was you, but from back there, I was thinking, 'No way could it be.' " Yeah, I have put on some muscle since high school and gotten a fairly large tattoo on my arm, but...that alone shouldn't cause such a case of the "whoozats?".

Do I walk differently or act differently than I did in high school? Undoubtedly. I surely don't notice it because it's probably so gradual and natural to me. But is that change so dramatic to cause a former teammate to not recognize me?

Who knows?

The summer's cranking up. The workload at my day job is growing each day, and by the start of next week, I expect to be there for 9 hours a day or more. Freelance, I've got a brochure I'm designing for a optometry clinic in Wayne, MI, and two heav-duty websites. All said and done, it's fairly safe to assume I'm going to disappear off the map for most of my friends. Weekends will become recovery-and-catch-up days. I guess I'm just warning everyone, this blog will probably be sparingly updated until I move back into East Lansing for my third year of college.

I should probably also warn my friends, those of you who read this, that a lot of my time is now spoken for. Please don't be upset if I can't hang out as much as before, or at all. Please don't take it the wrong way if I disappear or fail to respond in the middle of an IM conversation--I'm just on a roll with work. On that note, if I don't return your calls or IMs, chill--I haven't forgotten.

I'm a ghost until Autumn. Take care.

Posted by Tyler at 15:34 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

On the heels on the last post I just wrote, I read this article in The Chronicle, a journal for higher education.

In it, it describes President Bush's plan to remove postsecondary education as an activity that qualifies as work, which in turn, qualifies those on welfare to receive benefits.

As a college student, I'm dumbfounded and a little offended.

Bush is saying that college is not work?

I understand that the system is abused and we should crack down on individuals who take advantage of loopholes. But I would think that any man or woman who is in college, by grace of federal funding alone, would appreciate that, and apply themselves. If I'm wrong, I stand corrected.

"The new rules... [state] explicitly that baccalaureate and advanced-degree programs cannot count."

But even if the number of students on welfare that are actually working toward a degree is low, is it fair to deny them the means to make something of themselves? Furthermore, doesn't a college education greatly increase the employability and desirablility of a person?

I still feel there's some other way to solve welfare fraud without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There has to be, because this is not an acceptable solution to me.

Posted by Tyler at 14:09 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (2)

Here's the problem with America: we have too many wars to fight, and not enough soldiers to fight them all.

Here's the other thing: every citizen in America can be more than just a citizen; each one of them can be a soldier in our wars. Blind, deaf, elderly, children, and everyone in between: we can all be soldiers. We're under the mistaken impression that the only American soldiers are those that are young and in the best shape of their lives.

We're under the mistaken impression that the only wars we have to fight for America, are the ones we fight with guns and bombs.

We're fighting a war in Iraq, to be sure. We've been there for years now.

But what about our domestic wars, of which there are many? I speak of our fight for better education for children, for civil liberties, for human rights, for our war on school violence, for our war against censorship and government-controlled media, for our battle to uphold the Constitution, for our war against drug abuse in children. These are only just a few of the causes that America's undergoing.

Politicians, conservatives and liberals alike, don't seem to be doing anything right. They're looking at each one of our battles, and trying to win each of them separately. Has no one considered that America needs only one revolution to turn this country around?

It's all about education. Education means hope!

A lack of hope and confidence is the root of so many problems in this country. Sir Francis Bacon, almost four hundred years ago, figured this out when he said, "Knowledge is power." Education empowers our youth. It lets them know that they have options, they have control over their lives, that they can become somebody.

Look at the ghetto. People see symptoms; drug use, poverty, rampant crime. What's at the root of this? Lack of hope. They don't see options. Why would they? All around them, they only see social decay and cars being stolen in daylight. There's nothing for them at the public schools, underfunded and staffed by underpaid teachers, when all they need to do is look and see wealth roll in their neighborhoods in the form of expensive cars driven by drug dealers. For some of them, that person is "somebody", not the scientists, writers, artists, and scholars that others look up to.

The war on crime would be obviated if every kid had an opportunity to have a top-notch education. Have you ever heard of a kid who's studying to be a microbiologist knock over a jewelry store? Have you ever fucking heard of a kid who wants to grow up to be an astronaut steal a car? Real dreams give kids hope, and make them work toward them. Real dreams come from good education that teaches them they can reach them! To believe in themselves!

The war on drugs is a complicated issue, but think of it this way: the man who does nothing but sits on his porch, clutching a forty all day, has no hope. The drug addict who looks forward only to his next score has no hope. Anyone who says that drugs are the cause of social collapse is ignorant, in my opinion. Drugs are a symptom of social collapse, which has been brought on by the lack of quality education across the nation. If a kid has a dream that he believes he can reach, and knows what crack will do to him, he'll figure out his priorities pretty easily.

I'm pissed about the attention given to forms of media that are "corrupting our youth." Does Liebermann really think that violent video games can turn an ordinary kid into a psychotic killer? That they can program and send a kid over the edge? That kid would have to be pretty close to the edge already if playing a video game every day could to that to him. In that case, I'd be looking at that kid's living environment, and parents too. Same with music containing violent lyrics.

It actually offends me each time these politicians stand up and rail against petty shit like this. It insults our generation: we are some of the most capable, intelligent, imaginative, creative, and forward-thinking individuals that this country has seen in decades, and these old farts are saying music and TV send us into homicidal rages? It insults me, because they are blindly lumping the ninety-some percent of us well-adjusted individuals with the remainder that are whacked out of their gourd.

I said earlier that we are all citizens, and that we all can be soldiers too. An army of almost 296 million, the population of the U.S., pushing for an educational revolution, can surely bring it about. I can hear some of you saying, "How can we provide such a wonderful education for everyone? How can we come up with the bread?"

I say, get creative. For 2006, NASA gets $16.5 billion (whitehouse.gov). I think our final frontier can wait a year, and take maybe one or two billion and get planet Earth in order first. We're apparently spending $613 million to develop something called the Littoral Combat Ship, which is being designed to defend against submarines (whitehouse.gov). Last I heard, Iraq didn't have a navy, so maybe development can be delayed until we're at war with Cuba, or maybe when Alaska tries to secede. These are just two examples of where we might be able to draw some funds to set up a quality, well-financed program that would actually work. Hell, us citizen soldiers could actually donate to the war for better education.

We'll always be fighting for control over natural resources. But when we consider the fight that a child has to make to feel like they can become somebody, a valued individual that can positively contribute to society, how can we not be moved?

This is just my opinion, and for all I know, just what one person thinks. But I'd like to believe that there are millions here who believe better education is our main priority.

Posted by Tyler at 09:50 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

"So your life is a vomit stain on the wall."

This how the latest conversation with my friend Al ended.

According to him, his life is what you'd get if "some seven-year-old suddenly felt nauseous and threw up all over the wall." His life structure, he says, is anything but. His life is structured like a mess. Like a vomit stain on the wall, with a bit of sausage up here, and a little of yesterday's breakfast down there.

Waving his hands in front of him, "It's all right here," gesturing a five-square foot area. "It's just all over the place." His life lacks structure, but not direction--this much I can attest to. A lack of structure, as I gather from him, allows him to roll with life's curves. A girl comes out of his rear-view mirror like so much a 'vette barreling toward him on a country road, and he just rolls with it. He has no idea what he's going to do, or where he'll wind up, but he'll figure it out. He'll figure it out.

If you had a kid take a Sharpie to the wall, and run from one end of the hall to the other, that'd be the structure of my life. At least only up 'til I graduate. As Al put it, using his two hands to section out the air in front of him, "You've got this. Then you've got this, and this, and this. It's all right there, one at a time." Something happens that I don't expect, I'm ready for it. Damage control procedures were in place long ago. I got a good idea what I can do to deal with it, without deviating too much.

The lack of flexibility, and Al's abundance of it, allows us both to deal with life's challenges. The difference is that I think ahead, and Al thinks around.

Whatever works for you. Whatever lets you get through the day. In the end, whatever keeps you sane, and failing that, whatever keeps others thinking you're sane.

Posted by Tyler at 17:40 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I'm over at my friend's house. It's raining. I hate it when it rains. Especially when it's ice cream. The kids have already spilled out of the houses, running like yolks from a cracked egg. They've got their heads back, mouths open, trying to eat the most ice cream. One kid doesn't seem to care about germs as he's licking it off his front driveway. I shit you not, there is only one cause of childhood obesity: ice cream rain. You can't tell me it's genetics; fuck that shit. It's these kids who haven't been informed by their guardians that eating too much ice cream will make you fat. Like before, when we had that Moose Tracks deluge, I yelled to the kids, you ignorant, foolish, nemetoadal children, get back in that house, I said. I ran out to the front of his house, and yelled at them again.

They looked up at me in the same way a groundhog looks when they find they have sprung right up in front of a wolf.

Then a dollop of the ice cream, with a mini peanut butter cup, smattered against my shirt. It ran down it leaving a sweet trail down it like a slug. I scooped it up in my hand, and took a little taste. And it was good! So, I gave in once, and stood out there with the kids, head back, collecting raindrops of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

So, maybe kids are right. Maybe we should be more imaginative! All that bullshit about ice cream rain, just a lie. A plot detail. Something to get started with, to draw you in. Christ, if I ran around yelling, "It's raining ice cream! It's fucking raining ice cream!" they'd throw me in the loony bin.

But, if I'm five, it's alright. I'm innocent and don't know better, It's cute. I'll grow out of it soon. Grow out of my imagination. Well, I'm not letting it slip away. I refuse to become boring. I will always work to keep my creativity and my originality.

The rain is subsiding now, and it appears there's enough on the ground for the kids to run in and grab a spoon for the layer. It looks as though we had a blue moon thunderhead coming from the south--there's a nice racing strip of blue headed down the center of the street.

Ice cream pavement, it looks like to me. And roll around in a nice ice cream car, and drive on ice cream roads.

Sorry. I'm just hungry.

Posted by Tyler at 17:16 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I went out to see Cars, that CGI Disney movie about a racing car that gets lost and winds up in a middle-of-nowhere town.

I know what you're thinking: I, the man who laughs like a kid in a candy shop to movies like Saw, went to a Disney flick of my own free will. I didn't go alone, though. I went with Al, and we met up with two of his friends there.

I went to see the movie, but I wound up seeing something entirely different.

In the row in front of us was a little girl with her mom.

Above everything else, even the booming theater speakers, I could hear her laugh. The kind of laugh that only a kid could have; one that doesn't erupt because of bitter irony or from defensive escapism. She laughed at all the jokes, even the ones I didn't hear. She laughed everytime the rusty tow truck showed up onscreen, and whenever a cow/tractor stampeded across.

I laughed too.

Disney movies have always a lesson to teach, and this one was no different. I started to think, where else will they get them? Not even a thousand laughing kids will make me think different: we live in a moral cesspool. These kids are exposed to so much more shit than me and my friends were. Kids her age know what dirty bombs are. Kids her age understand what war is. Kids her age have seen on the news charred corpses of insurgents.

Nothing wrong with that. It's just a sign of the shift in our culture. But my worry is that they won't understand the other side of the coin. The side that even I too often wave aside as Disney-flick fluff, that crap about everyone overcoming challenges to join hands against some easily identifiable villain that will always be defeated after an hour-and-a-half passes. It's true, though. Teamwork accomplishes a lot. Love requires sacrifice. Judging people without knowing them only leads to bad blood. Taking responsibility is necessary to personal growth. Loyalty is rewarded, and betrayal has a nasty blowback.

These are the lessons we're supposed to learn as kids. Too bad it seems to me that Disney movies are the last place that a little boy or girl can watch and understand what the basic tenets of civil behavior are.

That little girl's laughter reflects on my own bitter worldview, and reminds me to laugh too.

Posted by Tyler at 19:55 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (5)

The majority of warning labels make sense immediately. A good thing, since if the warning sign on electrified wire was a bit confusing, we'd figure it out ourselves the hard way anyway. But then there are those that make sense, but are completely redundant. We know we're not supposed to eat poison. And then there are...these.



I found this on the plastic wrapper covering a Dell keyboard. I guess Dell is anticipating infants installing brand-new keyboards, then playing with the wrapper and accidentally suffocating themselves. Furthermore, if you're the kind of guy who leaves plastic bags around where your baby might get to it, you're probably also the kind of guy who lets his dog play with his kid, or leave the baby strapped in the car "for a second," meaning that baby probably has got bigger problems than a keyboard wrapper.

The way I see it, the warning label is an example of the rut we Westerners have dug ourselves into. In order to explain the rut I speak of, I first have to explain something else. As a breed, lawyers are geniuses, on the order of Houdini. The Great Magician managed to get out of boxes without ever breaking a lock. Lawyers get people out of trouble by proving they never broke a rule. Lawyers have a lot in common with magicians. They're steeped in illusions, be it visual or oratory. Lawyers create the illusion of absence of evidence, even though it's right there on the table. "The blood-stained murder weapon does not exist, as the DNA evidence doesn't connect my client to it." Bam, that knife is gone! Lawyers, like magicians, can stun audiences by making elephants appear from nowhere. We are all familiar with the 2-ton elephant that lawyers conjured up out of a (very hot) crappy cup of McDonald's coffee. I have a lot of respect for lawyers; I fear them too.

The rut we're in is as a result of the aforemented elephants. Class-action lawsuits cost a company a million or two dollars, and lead to a whole new product packaging restructuring. Now, I can't pick up a box of cereal without reading all the things that it doesn't have in it that causes cancer, which its competitors most certainly do. Or read on the package of a bar of soap that I can't put it on the floor of the shower, or I risk great bodily harm. Or how many different ways my cell phone will kill me.

We're immune now. The bright red and orange colors that used to catch our attention, they blend right in. Every minute of the day, every product we use, anywhere we go, we're warned of how we'll die, and we ignore nearly every single one of them. It's not that there are more ways for us to die now, it's just that it's now required by law that the products we want tell us how they'll kill us. We don't shop for the product that will help us most, we look for the one that promises to kill us the slowest. The lawyers made labels magically appear everywhere.

But it is the consumers that have made death common. It is we who have carved out the heart of Death. We are not afraid of it anymore. We've been told so many times that we're going to die, that we just don't believe them anymore.

I blame the unisex person who warns us by example every day that we'll be eletrocuted, how we'll lose a limb, risk head trauma, and what happens when we reach into the bottom of a stalled lawnmower. I blame the lawyers. I blame us.

In ten years, I expect to log onto some news website and read about how hospitals are now labeling babies with indemnity clauses. Stickers on the stomach of every patient, just born or about to die, stating that the hospital is not responsible for any damage that the patient incurs during their stay. That the only way to close a loophole is to simply put the defensive legalese onto a sticker and label every single patient. Or that we be required to sign release forms before entering Burger King, allowing our image to be videotaped on their security cameras. I wait for the day I have to carry a card that lists all my medical problems, which must be presented to every waiter anywhere I go, to protect the restaurant from lawsuits that their 30 oz. ribeye steak caused your fat-clogged, wheezing, 60-year-old disease-ridden heart to stop. I'm waiting for the day that I have to prove my citizenship at the checkout line to protect corporations from federal prosecution that the corporation sells products to terrorists.

You've been warned.

Posted by Tyler at 05:55 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The school year is over.

But really, these last eight months have been about everything but classes. In these last eight months, I've grown more than I ever have before. I've learned more than I thought I could; about humanity, life, the world, myself, and those close to me.

In these last eight months, I've vacillated from feeling lost as in the tunnels of an ant colony, to feeling moments of clarity that illuminated like a lighthouse on a dark night. The moments of the latter have been few and far in between, but have always struck when I needed it.

There are moments in these last eight months that I will not forget, so irrevokably changed by them that there's simply no way to shake them. Moments that have left a tangible, perceptible mark on my life and who I am. These times have been intensely miserable, and some as joyous to the point where my heart skips at the mere remembrance right now.

Ten years from now, even a year from now, I have no idea where I'll be, what I'll be doing, or who I'll become. In eight months, I went from knowing nothing of HTML and CSS, to redesigning the MSU Professional Writing Program website. In eight months, I went from turning my back on humanity, to thinking that it has a chance. In eight months, I went from feeling like a college student taking classes, to a college student with a future underneath his feet. During those eight months, though, I've felt considerable stress, guilt, frustration, and smash-your-face-in-with-a-brick rage. Through it all, I have to thank my friends for keeping me grounded and sane, for without them...I don't know where I'd be. But prison or a mental institution might be a good guess.

Right now, memories are flashing through like a reel of film gone haywire. Bits and pieces of random scenes, taken out of context. A foggy November morning, standing on a bus at 7AM, barely able to keep my balance. Throwing and taking punches in the dark on a street somewhere. Laughing, splitting my sides, with three good friends. Strolling sidewalks with a friend, talking about everything from zombies to debating why "Moisty" is a good name for a first-born. Reaquainting my ass with the concrete by way of skateboarding for the first time, under a semi-watchful, trained eye. Realizing I've fallen in love.

Eight months. How powerful is time so that just eight months can shape me so much?

But right now, most of all, I can smell the blossoms by the back entrance to Berkey Hall. I can smell how distractingly, alluringly sweet they were, and how it drew me from a somber reverie and made me chuckle in its simple, quaint power over me in that one, brief moment.

Posted by Tyler at 23:25 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

I don't normally post twice in the same day. I don't know if I ever have before. I was already in a wierd mood, but when someone asked me today, "What is our purpose here? Why are we here? What are we supposed to do?" I felt my brain twitch.

My immediate answer to his question was, "Nothing." We're not supposed to do anything in order to make life purposeful. "We don't have a purpose," I said.

"We have to have some reason for being here," to which I replied, "Do we? Or is it just you?"

"No, that's wrong, man. That can't be true." All I said in response was that I've lived this long without a purpose, and I'd say I turned out alright, for the most part.

"That's not a good enough answer for me, dude."

I stopped talking to him. But my mind kept thinking. I've been thinking about it all day. My skull finally was full, and I didn't have space anymore to form a complete thought. I went for a walk, and it was the best thing I've done all day.

Did you know that the bushes by the rear entrance to Berkey Hall are in full bloom, and the fragrance of their flowers make you stop, walk up to them, and smell them?

Did you know that somebody lost a white t-shirt behind the gym downtown? (Maybe a weary kid who forgot to zip his backpack up, or maybe a drunk-ass guy felt like taking his shirt off at that moment he was walking by.) Did you know that from the right angle, the doors into the side of the Music Practice building look to positively glow? Or that if you're walking past the back of the Union, you can hear and understand conversation carried by people sitting on the ledge? Or how insignificant everything looks from up top of the parking structure catty-corner to Starbucks? Did you know that when you play with the knobs on the pipes behind Starbucks, nothing happens, as far as I can see? Did you know that one of the tasks that's part of the job description for working at Pinball Pete's is to go around with a metal scraper, and get up all the gum stuck to the floor? Did you know that a pebble thrown with force at the other riverbank makes a softer-sounding splash as when you just drop it in the water in front of you?

Someone had left a chair in the courtyard between Mason and Abbot. I picked it up and leaned it against a tree. There I sat for over half-an-hour, after walking around for at least an hour. My brain felt less full. Then I began to think more about the question I was asked.

There is nothing set in stone that dictates what we must do in order to have what we could call a satisfying existence.

It's a true Ouroboros. Life is the purpose of life. Our existence justifies itself.

No one can convince me that I am meant to do anything. I am not meant to be happy, or sad, or successful. There's only one thing we're meant to be:

Alive.

Everything else is what makes life worth being alive for, and everything changes.

So, no. I'm not wrong. Maybe I'm not right, either, but fuck it.

There's no purpose to life, except to take in everything that happens while we're alive.

Why are we here? We just are.

And,"What are we supposed to do?" is the wrong way to ask that question. It should be:

What do I think I should do?

Posted by Tyler at 20:33 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

It's Sunday, and it's quiet. Hell Week starts tomorrow for a lot of students. All my projects and tests have been already finished (I turn in one paper tomorrow, but that's that.)

It's really quiet. [taps head] Up here too. My brain's not yelling at me to do stuff right now.

I woke up at 9:30 this morning, after dreaming about being trapped on an ocean liner filled with zombies with Russ. We made it off, in case you're wondering. I knocked around my room for about a half-hour then went back to sleep. 1:45PM rolled around, and I still haven't completely woken up.

I'm thinking, "It's been an incredible year." For so many reasons. For all the good things, for all the bad things, for all the moments I wished I had disappeared, all the moments I wished the world would disappear, and for all the moments I wish time didn't disappear so fast.

I'm thinking, "I should be doing work now." But there isn't any for me to do right now. I've run out into an open clearing from the tangle of the woods, and am finding I liked the claustrophobia better.

I'm thinking, "Maybe I should've gone to the cafeteria this morning." I haven't eaten all day yet.

I'm thinking, "My fingernails need trimming." I trimmed them three days ago, though.

As I'm trimming my fingernails again, I'm thinking, "I wish I didn't have a hearing impairment." When I try to continue the train of thought, it goes no further than that statement. I've already disregarded it as brain-garbage.

For no reason at all, I'm thinking of how it'd feel to be a soldier in WWI, trapped in the trenches. And then of how it'd feel to lie in grassy fields in Holland. And now of walking down an empty cell block in an abandoned penitentiary. Flying over the open ocean. Falling down an open well. Leaning up against a dark brick wall in the bad end of town. Driving a car fast down a desert highway in the middle of the day. Sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Standing on the coast of Bikini Atoll while the A-bomb is going off. Wrapped in the arms of my favorite girl, under a big tree, shaded from the sun by a million too-green leaves. Walking down Grand River in pouring, cats-and-dogs rain. Standing on top of Big Ben at night, looking out on all the little dots of light. Floating in space, watching all the lights across the world blink on and out and never turning back on again.

I'm thinking of how it'd feel to be able to watch the whole world go to sleep. Immediately after, I'm thinking of walking through snow.

Snow up to my knees, but it's not cold. The sun's out and bright and blinding me with its reflection off the white surfaces everywhere. When I look behind me, I'm not leaving any footprints. The snow is pristine, unbroken, and perfect. It's soft and fluffy, but with a crunchy top layer that makes a satisfying sensation when my boots punch through it. Little curls of snow wisp up around my ankles with every step. In the distance, a bear is in the stream.

I wonder.

Where did this little plum pit of anxiety, trapped in my stomach, come from? I just now noticed it. And it's bothering me.

I think I need to stop thinking now.

Posted by Tyler at 16:59 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Fierce137: I have been forced to take Wednesday as a No-Work Day.
Fierce137: I will be allowed to go to class, but I cannot work on anything. Photoshop is allowed, but only for like personal fun stuff.
cSHORTiE28: oh by who?
Fierce137: Russ.
Fierce137: He says that I couldn't go a single day without working, and I said that's not true.
Fierce137: So he's called me out on it.
cSHORTiE28: lol i think i have done everything but dared u to not work for a day
Fierce137: [smirks]
Fierce137: Well, we'll just hope I don't have an aneurysm or something.
cSHORTiE28: youre going to end up in the hospital lol
Fierce137: "Oh, god, he's spazzing out! Get me 10cc of work! Hurry!"
cSHORTiE28: lol
cSHORTiE28: that sounds....weird
Fierce137: What would work look like in a liquid form?
cSHORTiE28: you......in liquid form

Posted by Tyler at 17:49 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Hullow there,

My name is Worky McWorkerson. My favorite thing to do is work. I feel sad when I go home, but usually not for long, as I go straight to bed! If I've gotten over-excited at work and can't sleep, I like to:

Easter is lame.

If Easter were HTML, it'd be broken code:

<easter>

<jesus> cures leprosy, water into wine, brings peace to the land, has identity crisis regarding being the son of god, betrayed by apostle
</jesus>

<jesus>

</easter>

Posted by Tyler at 10:28 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)