Big red circle

I dunno how much more of this I can do. Every day at this job makes me pissed off. It ain't like it was, it's like it will be.

If my life was a circle, with me in the middle, with concentric circles surrounding me, red for bad and green for good, my circle would be almost entirely red, with a little bit of green at the center. But that little green circle would be polluted and brown, because the red is all up in it. And if the circles within the circle of me were labeled, the green/brown would be labeled 'I dunno, oxygen I guess' and the rest of it, the red, would be labeled 'that fucking job'.

This job ain't good for me, and that's the irony. I need the job, for something, I dunno what, I forgot, but I need it, but the job is leeching the life out of me, and FORCE FEEDING me bad stuff. It's like I'm tied down with a tube shoved down my throat, with this nasty slurry of physical nutrition mixed with a smidgen of poison going into my stomach, because my head is paralyzed.

The bad stuff is... is... is...

It's what monks go to the monastery to avoid. Stuff that pokes and prods at that papery thin barrier that protects the world from my big mouth, and me from the pokers and prodders.

Me, a sidewalk, a man, a bike, a cart, and a big ass potato.

I just saw the strangest thing. A guy, after pedaling a bike with an attached trailer cart around in circles in a parking lot for a little bit, rode onto the sidewalk for another little bit, then stopped, put the bike on a kickstand in the middle of the sidewalk, ran UP the sidewalk about twenty yards (I passed his bike at this point, thinking to myself, I could get on that bike), picked up the most hugely potato I've ever seen in my life from the grass next to the sidewalk - it was as big as a cantaloupe - ran past me and BACK to his bike, turned around, and pedaled off.

A dream - alter ego

I laid down to sleep thirteen hours ago, and I'm absolutely not sure if I slept. I kinda feel like I didn't sleep, but I slugged a bunch of z-quil so it's kinda like I don't remember NOT sleeping exactly, and there were a couple of dream things that seem like they might've happened, and I do remember turning over about two dozen times.

Oh, no, yeah, wait, I did sleep last night, I had two dreams.

The first one was, I was dressed up in my alter-ego costume. Black slacks, shiny boots, black shirt and tie, black suit jacket... you know. Church clothes. I still had that gray Ford thing I used to drive. What was that thing? A Contour? Escort? Whatever. That thing. The front bumper - uh, no, those aren't things anymore, are they? It's just cheap fiberglass now. The front piece of cheap fiberglass was gone, and that's how I could tell that it was my car. Just in this dream; it wasn't really gone when I had the car.

All of the St. Maximus parishioners were attending a concert at the Meyerson concert hall in Dallas, and I was late getting there. It was already dark when I pulled into the parking lot, and I parked way far away from the front door. I don't know why I did that, because the parking lot was completely empty. There was a long line however, and it seemed like it took forever for me to get to the door.

When I got to the door, the attendant asked for my ticket. Holy crap, thought I, where's my ticket? I never purchased one! Crap! The attendant said in that case he would need to see my ID. I patted myself down frantically. Where's my wallet? Crap! It's in my suit jacket. Where's my suit jacket? Dang it! It's in the car.

I ran back to the car and got my ID out of my wallet and ran back to the door. I showed my ID to the attendant, and then he said, okay, that'll be $20. WHAT! Thought I. Okay, so I ran back to my car, but... I couldn't find my car. Where's my car? The parking lot was empty just a second ago, and now it's filled up with cars!

I looked everywhere for the car that was missing the front bumper, but it was dark and I couldn't see very well. There were also lots of people still sitting in their cars, and I grew self-conscious that I looked conspicuous, lurking around the parking lot in the dark. I wanted to pull out my flashlight and search for my car with it, but I was afraid someone would think I was 'casing the joint' and call the cops.

I had another dream, but whatev. I'm tired of swipe typing.

Terrible

Dang.

Last night I was at Kroger, and on my way to the self checkout, there's a guy lying on the floor. I just saw his sneakers, sticking out from behind the chip rack. I couldn't believe it at first. It was like the time I walked into the bathroom when I worked at Dupont, and a guy had died in the stall. All I could see were his feet. I freaked out and thought I was back in time.

I kept walking though, but I stopped when I saw the whole guy, laid out with blood around his head. I thought to myself, what can I do, what can I do, what can I do, what can I do to help.

But there were already people around him, people who knew what to do. So I went to the self checkout thing and started bawling my stupid head off. Man was it embarrassing. Then the money wouldn't come out for my change, and I had to stand there while the machine blared, "PLEASE WAIT FOR ATTENDANT" over and over, with me standing there snotting up the place and crying like a little girl.

That was terrible. Just terrible!!!

A dream - alien mountain

A dream - alien landscape

I was on an alien planet, climbing a mountain to get a better view of the sunrise. Always wanting to be up higher, for a better view. That's me in real awake time. I never have a good view of the beautiful things.

I was climbing this alien mountain, and I could see the edge of the sky just beyond the summit brightening into this purplish-green color, and the bottoms of the clouds were just starting to light up in a strange, un-red cast. Totally alien. Seeing these things, I started panicking and scrambling to get to the top, because I thought that I was missing it.

When I finally reached the summit, I was just in time. Geez... how to describe a dream imagery that's so breathtakingly beautiful... no, that's an inferior couple of words. I'll have to use an unorthodox word to describe it, because it's simply indescribable, the beauty of it. It was deathly beautiful.

The details were like this... dang. Oh man. See, what I'm about to attempt to describe, it'll be like... like, or as if... it's like what I'm trying to relate, from my mind to yours, the memory of it... my attempt to describe that memory will be just a crude pencil sketch copy of God's final masterpiece.

But I'm compelled to try. The details were like this... I stood on a mountaintop of an alien world, and the first thing I did was to look down. Fog banks of snow rippled and rolled down the opposite side of the mountain, cast into sharp relief by the low morning light of the alien sun. These were like furrows of fog, but made of clouds of snow instead of water vapour. These banked furrows of snow-fog began to move lazily down into the valley as the morning heat nudged them out of their frozen and suspended state, and into languid motion.

With some effort I pulled my eyes upward and to my utter astonishment I saw, dominating at least a third of the far horizon and cast into a bluish haze with distance, this indescribably huge thing thrusting upward, as if a part of the planet had been peeled back and purposefully shaped into this mind-bogglingly enormous mountain. It was as if the planet had been run through with God's own spear, but instead of piercing all the way through, had instead pushed the land upward, forming this unnaturally steep escarpment with a peak so tall that it punched through the top of the atmosphere and projected into space. The alien sun was emerging from just behind the peak as I watched, and the light was reflecting off of my mountain and Illuminating the face of the distant one.

Intricate shapes cascaded down the sides of this far mountain; incredibly detailed patterns of colors and shadows that described vegetation and rocks and cliffs and stream runoffs and icy ledges, and all of it was cast into sharp relief. Everywhere there were different colors and shapes and patterns. Twisting around and through and following the lines of these patterns were bright banks of snow that reflected the light of morning. And as I looked upward and toward the summit, the Star was making its appearance, and it was as if the peak of the mountain had merged with an intolerably bright crown of orange fire, and runnels of it were streaming downward in rivers of molten gold.

It was so heart wrenchingly beautiful that I fell to my knees and looked away from it because I couldn't stand it.  As I looked down, I saw my brother Matt, climbing up the same way that I had come. "Hurry up, Matt, you have to see it before it disappears, hurry up, hurry up!"

When Matt reach the summit, we both turned to take in the view. But we were back on Earth, in a regular valley, by a regular lake, during a regular day. I was so disappointed that I wanted to cry. I was sure that there would never, ever be anything so beautiful on Earth.

Oh, but how I was wrong. My brother and I began walking along the edge of the lake, and as we turned a corner of the valley, we were poleaxed by a view that rivaled the alien planet. A vast mountainscape, containing all of the colors of the Earth, and the purest, bluest sky surrounding it, with the sun shining down and Illuminating rows and rows of fog banks on the distant side of the lake, and those fog banks were rolling, too. They hovered above the surface of the water, creating a sharp delineation between the darkened, bluish undersides and their shining, silver top surfaces, and they rolled languidly, furrows of them, like the alien snow fog, and it was just as spectacular, just as spectacular.