car notes- part one: mistaken identity

i borrowed my dad's car this past week and after going out one night received this note on my windshield:




it freaked me out. until i realized that i'm not dating (much less living with) anyone, that my father is still alive, and that i'm not fucking anyone named mark ("the piece of shit"). then i decided that it was kind of funny that i received this scathing, psychotic note on my car. that someone could flip out over something as simple as seeing a generic vehicle parked downtown and could leave such a ridiculous note without even checking to see if it was even the correct car.

first reaction: freaked out
second reaction: amusement
third reaction: scared as shit for the poor girl this note was intended for. who knows, maybe she is two-timing "j" and he's had enough of it but his instinctive, out of control reaction to seeing a car downtown makes me think that he is possibly a little off his rocker and that he might have a tendency to overreact. greatly overreact. at least he said that he would only "CALL THE POLICE" if she came home and not beat the shit out of her. i'm not trying to be flippant- that stuff happens more than most of us realize. in any case, i hope he cooled down after writing the note and that if he happens across this blog that he feels foolish and doesn't decide to find me and kill me or something.

my advice to "j": take your meds and, if this girl really is so horrible, just leave her and get on with your life. oh, and have a pleasant day.

mountain wildlife

i spent last thursday and friday up at coweeta attempting to do my fieldwork even though i've already quit and am having a difficult time motivating myself. each day the was pretty miserable except for my wildlife encounters.

day one i saw this guy:

hello mr. copperhead. he was very polite and let me come close enough to take his picture. he didn't move a muscle until i rudely poked him with my tripod 3 or 4 times to get him out of the road. then he made his way into the underbrush and i realized that i had directed him into one of my sampling sites. oops. hopefully we won't have any unpleasant confrontations in the future.

on day two i ran into this wild beast:

she was not as well behaved as mr. snake. ms. kitty ran yowling from the woods and scrambled up my jeans and shirt and then perched herself on my shoulder and made it pretty clear that she was not a wild forest kitty and that she would appreciate it if i remedied the situation as soon as possible. so i took her home (my two cats are most displeased), gave her a name (adel- short for adelgis tsugae, the insect species i was/am still somehow suckered into studying for the next month or two), and found her a home (eli will be the best cat owner ever).

so there you have it. i wonder if anyone would have adopted the copperhead if i brought it home? anyone? come on now you guys. he doesn't have enough venom to actually kill you. unless he bites your face or neck or something.

regret and mediocrity

decisions are difficult to make because once you've chosen one option you've automatically rejected at least one other. and what if that other was the "correct" one? how can you know? so you vacillate back and forth and finally settle on something. not because you want to but because you have to.

if you're lucky, you're one of the few individuals with faith in their ability to make the right decision. with the type of personality that doesn't look back and wonder "what if" after the fact. what if you had gone with the other option? would that one have been better? would you not feel that sense of regret?

when i was younger and slightly more optimistic i vowed to make every life decision with the idea that i would never have any regrets. whatever i chose to do, i would chose based upon my innate ability to decipher right from wrong. as if my life were laid out before me in black and white- a single line with the occasional branching point stretched out before me. the correct branch would, of course, be obvious once i reached it and i would follow it unerringly and look back in my old age to a life correctly lived. my own yellow brick road leading me toward fulfillment and away from regret.

now that i'm a bit more mature and less of the idealistic stranger to myself that i was a few years back, i recognize that there is never a correct path. that no matter what decisions you make in your lifetime, you will automatically have to exclude some options that may have been, in a sense, right for you. and you will have regrets. there is no way around it.

regret almost feels like nostalgia to me. bittersweet. it's like looking back at something fondly remembered except that it never actually happened. i think the quality of regret that lends it to nostalgia is that it's very inexistence allows you to idealize what could have been and what will never be- to create a possible reality for your life that never would have existed anyway. but oh if it had! what my life could have been! to think of all of the possible lives i could have lived... nostalgia times fifty. nostalgia times one thousand. infinite nostalgia...

i know i'm not really very old, but sometimes i feel like i am. is my life winding down or just beginning? i can no longer tell. sometimes it seems to me that life is full of mediocrity and failure and that i don't want any part of it because i embody that mediocrity. that meaninglessness. at other times i feel like i will never get enough of the experiences life has to offer. at these times an overwhelming feeling of disappointment (and excitement) that i will never live long enough to experience it all weighs on me and pushes me back out of my everydayness and into the world. i feel frantic and seek change. constant change. constant stimulation. are there other unfound remedies for this restlessness? i certainly hope so.

i can live with regret because i have to. what i can't live with is mediocrity. so i'm still looking for a cure for the commonplace even though i don't really believe that one exists. does this mean that i will have to learn to accept mediocrity in my life just as i now accept regret? hmm, check back with me in five years.

tales from the city part one: new york- "there's a god-wind a-blowin"

immediately after my arrival at the new york, laguardia airport i am struck by the strangeness of people. sure people in athens are pretty strange, but i'm used to all of them. and once you're accustomed to something (or someone) it's no longer strange, now is it?

so new york people- visitors and residents alike- man they're odd. take "david" for example. my friend leslie and i met him on the bus from the airport to the train. the bus was packed with people and most of them had gigantic suitcases with them. suitcases stategically placed to block the aisles and prevent anyone from getting on or off the bus and, in the process, incur the wrath of the bus driver who refused to budge until the aisles were cleared. needless to say we were there a while.

as leslie and i caught up with the happenings in eachother's lives i could see david watching us. waiting for his in. he struck me as strange right off the bat. there was just something a little off, a little contrived, about his carefully cultivated rocker style. he was an attractive guy but his hair was a little too bleached (sun-in maybe?) and carefully messed up. his clothes were a little too urban outfitter-esque to be an expression of his own unique style. his guitar case looked too clean to have put in much time on the road. and his not so subtle, trying-to catch-our eyes coyness was a bit too determined. he appeared to have an agenda. so we ignored him.

unfortunately the bus remained immobile for quite some time and as leslie and i launched into my failed graduate school plans at uga and what i was going to do instead, i made the fatal mistake of mentioning the possibility that i would go to austin. to the university of texas where there is a great ecology program.

oops. texas was the in. how was i to know that? too late to take it back.

"TEXAS?" frown. "texas is a terrible place."

of course it is. bush country. rich right-wing republican haven. blah. blah. but nope, that's not what david meant at all. david is from oklahoma and, according to him, there is deep, long-standing hatred between oklahomians ("oklahomians"? did i just make that up?) and texans due, not to political differences, but to a college football rivalry. his fellow travelers nod enthusiastically in heartfelt, heartland solidarity. fascinating. football, my favorite topic.

but david didn't really want to talk football, gosh darn it. he wanted to talk GOD. of course. a christian rocker. how did i not spot it immediately? he was in town from oklahoma with the aisle blockers to "hang out at the park and play some music and talk to people" (read- to "save heathen souls such as mine and leslie's and show them the ways of our lord and savior jesus christ and maybe get laid in the process if that was god's will, amen.")

really, i shouldn't make fun of him too much because he was a nice guy despite his agenda. he wasn't a pusher. he just talked a little bit about what he was doing and asked us about ourselves and just casually mentioned that he was going to be in washington square park on friday night if we wanted to stop by. well, we didn't want to stop by but we acted our part and said that we might just do that (when hell freezes over).

but then fate or coincidence (or GOD?) had a different plan for us and we found ourselves meeting a couple of people at that same park on that same night.

while sitting by the fountain with our friends joseph and ian, leslie and i looked around for david. there was a large gang of "folks" gathered around a few guitar players but our david wasn't with the other rabble-rousers from oklahoma. now, you can blame it on the frame of mind created by the companionable passing of a flask of whiskey among friends, but leslie and i were disappointed. we actually wanted to see good old david. maybe we felt the pull of salvation or maybe we just felt a bit drunk and silly. at any rate, we kept checking back with the christians to see if he would show up.

and then, finally, there he was. david. so we got all excited and pointed him out to joseph and ian who didn't really give a shit. except that when ian saw who we were pointing at he got a funny look on his face. a look that appeared to be a definite mixture of disgust and humor.

i:"that's the guy?"
l and me: "yup."
i: funny facial expression continues.
me: "why? what the hell? do you know him?"
i: "um....no but we were just in the bathroom together and....never mind."
me: "what? just spit it out."
i: "well..." makes a weak, wheezy, singsong farting noise.
me: "what the fuck was that? he farted? if so, that was the most pathetic farting noise ever."
l: "he either farted or sang a really weird song in the bathroom."
i: getting more enthusiastic "dude, he didn't just fart. he let it rip like no one i've ever heard before. it was like he just didn't care who heard him."
me: "that's because god will love him anyway."
j: snorts
me: "did it smell bad?"
i: his expression says it all. i think it's safe to say that it didn't smell like roses.
l: "gross" drinks some whiskey, hands me the flask.
i: "i think i'm ready for a hit off of that flask now." drinks. grimaces.
me: "christians fart, too? it's too bad god can't cure that. if he could i bet a lot of people might suddenly convert to christianity." tilts it back again.
j: "who wants to go see billy graham with me on sunday?"
me: "are you hoping god will cure your farts if you convert?"
j: "i'm already christian."
me: "oh, yeah. i guess it's official then. christianity is not a cure for gas."
j: mean look directed at me

then, as we got up to leave, leslie and i got another surge of desire to converse with david and his crew. as we drew closer to the crowd we hesitated. stopped. and then veered away from them completely. i guess we just weren't feeling god that night. or maybe we were just afraid that we might get caught downwind from david and his pals.

if it was god that tried to bring us together, it must have been a powerful wind indeed that blew us apart.

premature goodbye

new york city. what can i say? i've lived in chicago. i've lived in dublin. i've been to cities all over the u.s. and europe but so far no other place has screamed CITY, has represented what i always imagined a city should be, would be, like new york has. the first time i went to new york i was 21 or 22. since then i've been there 4 or 5 more times and it never changes. that feeling that i am in the one place that defines the word city.

i've never though of myself as a city person. for a time i even thought that i wanted to forsake all society and live in the middle of nowhere away from all people. seriously. but now... i don't know, maybe 3 years in chicago changed me. now it seems that i miss the stimulation of city life. the people-watching alone keeps me endlessly entertained. the culture. the museums. the variety in everything. all things you can't find in athens.

not that i don't love athens. it has it's own charm. it's own draw. living in athens is like living in a comfortable, predictable bubble of like-minded people. easy. simple. but i'm back to the point where easy and simple bore me. i need a challenge. that's not to say that my past two years in athens haven't been difficult. they have and i've learned a lot about myself. i've changed a lot, too. for the better? who knows? i do know that i am a different person than i was when i came back two years ago. essentially the same, but still different somehow.

in any case, sometimes you just know when your time somewhere has been used up. when a place, even one that you love, has nothing left to offer you. or what it does have to offer is no longer enough to make you stick around.

the conundrum that is athens- you feel forced to leave because life here is so easy. too easy. so you must go for the sake of your own self-preservation and in order to salvage what is left of the productivity that you set aside during your athens interlude. at the same time, if you leave you're always trying to resist it's pull- that call back to your comfort zone. somehow athens has become the closest thing to home that you know.

i'll miss athens. especially all of the amazing people that i've met and even what it's taught me about who i am and who i want to be. it has been a necessary stop in my life but it's getting close to time for me to move on. so this is my premature goodbye to athens.

i'm not going to michigan but neither am i staying here. blame it on new york city if you want but it was really only the necessary catalyst that kicked my ass into gear. so i'm going... where? somewhere new. a city? new york? austin? tuscon? san francisco? i don't know just yet but my deadline is january 1st. maybe january will come around and i'll still be in athens and i'll have to eat my words but the way i'm feeling right now i don't think that will be the case. in the meantime i'm going to get my act together and get some shit done. finally. hopefully.

iPod blues

(this is actually bob II's japanese cousin, but the family resemblance is striking and i don't actually have a picture of bob II himself. )

my ipod, bob II (named after my first ipod, bob I) has decided to pull a bob I on me and stop working. damn those wonderful, life-changing gadgets. i have the worst luck with anything electronic. maybe i have some electric force field thing around me that short circuits anything with a microchip or a motor. who knows?

in any case, apple was kind enough to send me a shipping box and now bob II is on his way to get repaired. halleluja and praise the lord!! but what, oh what am i to do in the intervening weeks? if you don't have an ipod then you will not understand , but i have become very codependant on bob II. i now live most moments of my life to a sountrack played through cute, little white headphones and i feel lost without my dear companion! so lost that (confession time) i "borrowed" my roommate's ipod today without asking. i couldn't help it. even though her music is different i needed something to listen to. it's not my fault! ok, maybe it is, but still...

anywho. i'm hungover and my brain isn't feeling up to par so i would like to apologize for the lack of literary merit contained within this post. the main purpose of writing anything is to let you all know that i'm about to blow this town and head up to the big apple. i'll only be gone for a few days but blog fans have a tendancy to be fair-weather about their devotion and i figured that if i didn't squeeze in at least one post before i left that many of you might wander off and forget about me. so i tricked all of you into sticking around with this shitty-ass post. i'm sneaky like that. (eyes shift to the right. then to the left).

well, i'll be back soon. hopefully with some new york-inspired stories. man, that place is nuts.

chow.

michigan?

well, this post is once again just me taking a moment to FREAK OUT! um, ok. i have two weeks to decide if i want to move to ann arbor, michigan in january with my major advisor and continue grad school there. two fucking weeks. here are my four choices:

1: stay in athens for graduate school, find a new advisor, and continue on the project i have already started. unfortunately my current research is very dull. but i am almost guaranteed to finish it within two years.

2: stay in athens but look for a new advisor and a new project to work on. this option is tempting but it might be hard to find someone with funding to support me and it would take me longer to finish school. on the other hand, i could end up working on a project that really interests me (evolution) as opposed to one that doesn't (soil nitrogen dynamics).

3: move to michigan, keep my major advisor (who rules, by the way), and go to grad school up there. this would, of course, require me to uproot my life, start an entirely new research project, make new friends, etc. on the other hand, it gives me a chance to move to a new city and have a guaranteed job (i can feel that driving urge to move on, to keep looking for something new waking up again. i try to ignore it, but i've never been able to do more than temporarily still that restlessness).

4: forget school, leave athens, go somewhere fun, get a useless job, hang out for a year and then go to grad school in the fall of 2006. in ann arbor maybe?

help! two weeks!!!!

outsmarted by a crawdad

so, back before athens had that nice greenway and the current greenway entrance on oconee street was a just crappy old salvation army store, there was a small tributary of the oconee river across the street. it was there that i found my pet crayfish, little guy.

ah, little guy. we had such good times together.

when first i rescued you from your beautiful, free home and forced you to live in a small fishbowl with two dirty old goldfish you were indeed little. but how you grew. catching all of those fish flakes in your claws and biding your time. you had a plan all along to regain your freedom and i had no idea. sneaky little guy.

i didn't think that crayfish were intelligent enough to plan, but i should have realized that something was up when you started stalking the goldfish. waiting on your rock for them to swim by so that you could jump on them and hang onto their tail fins. is that how you did it? it is just a small leap from the back of a fish to the top of the bowl. i wonder...

and still you grew. and plotted your escape. and still i had no clue. feeding you more and more fish food and remarking on how cute you were and how you were getting so much bigger.

then one day, the inevitable- little guy was gone. he disappeared. i still don't know how. i looked everywhere but to no avail. finally, i was forced to come to the sad conclusion that simon the cat had eaten him. poor little guy.

later that night i went out to the manhattan and ran into my friend ben who said that he saw the strangest thing earlier that evening. what did he see? well, he was out walking his dog on milledge avenue and saw a crayfish walking down the street. casually making his way along the gutters of milledge. now i know that it's improbable that the crayfish he saw was actually little guy. milledge avenue is quite a ways from carr street but still... perhaps it was more than just a simple coincidence. perhaps little guy made his break for freedom and headed off to sorority row for some good times before making his way back to the banks of the muddy creek where we first made our acquaintance. i'll never know for sure but i certainly like that version of the story better than the idea of him in simon's stomach.

little guy. the coolest crayfish i've ever known. perhaps because he's the only crayfish i've ever known but anyway, i like to imagine him dropping into the rain gutters of milledge avenue at sunset and spending the rest of his crustaceous life listening to the sounds of bad country music blaring from the frat houses and looking up the skirts of sorority girls as they pass by chatting on their cell phones. hell, i guess it beats living in a damn fish bowl.

*addendum: eli would like me to note that little guy was also his pet. this fact was omitted from the story for the sake of simplicity. i was in no way implying that eli was a bad crayfish owner or that he was not equally invested in the welfare of little guy (rip).

who? what? nitrogen? good lord, i need a beer.

i'm currently up to my eyeballs in papers about hemlocks, nitrogen, invasive species, earthworms, and fatty acids, among other fascinating things. too much to do. too many papers to write, no time for blogging fun. don't give up on me though. soon enough i will post something good. or maybe my brain will be so fried that i will just post the only thing i've written lately. my thesis proposal. let me tell you, it is a page turner. pray that it doesn't come to that.

athens in a nutshell

my fabulous friend leslie m. sent this cartoon to me and i just had to (illegally? i would give the artist credit if i knew who the talented soul was) repost it here. she called this new and apparently popular pasttime "hipster heckling". as those of you who read my blog know, i have been an unfortunate victim of this disturbing hate crime (see previous post entitled "hipster cat fight" from january for many more details than you really need or want).
today, life is cracking me up and i don't know why so i'm just going to go with it.

how to impress a lady...

...with your supreme idiocy and repulsiveness

1. when approaching the woman you are interested in conversing with make sure that you are so completely trashed that you get her attention by drunkenly bumping into her and making her spill her drink.
2. fail to notice your clumsiness because you are so obliterated and interrupt the conversation she is currently engaged in by butting in rudely.
3. when speaking, make sure that every word you say is so slurred as to be completely incomprehensible.
4. have the pleasant combination of stale beer and vomit on your breath.
5. stand as close as possible to the lucky lady and try to grab her arm but miss and hit her instead.
6. have an unidentifiable brown crusty substance (vomit, dried blood, tobacco juice?- all of the options are equally scrumptious) caked on your lips.
7. when she turns her back on you stand behind her and wait for her to suddenly realize that you are indeed the man of her dreams or at least the man she wants to go home with. keep standing there until she walks away.
8. repeat steps 1-7 with every woman at the bar so that each one knows that she has a special place in your heart.
9. when steps 1-8 have been completed roll out the door (strangely alone), jump on your souped-up hog and speed away at a recklessly fast pace kicking up a huge cloud of dirt in the process and causing every bar patron that is standing outside to choke on your dust. very classy. by doing this you have certainly shown all of us ladies what we missed out on.

usually, being a woman rules. occasionally it doesn't.

comments

sorry kids, i had to disable all anonymous comments as i've been getting some pretty nasty sexual comments lately. i don't know if it's just spam or if it's some loser with nothing better to do. unfortunalety i believe it to be the latter. in any case, if you want to comment you'll have to register on blogger so that i can trace where the comments are coming from. sorry!

family pee stories: part three

the adult diaper

have you ever noticed how when people got to visit friends and relatives in the hospital that they feel obliged to relate every tale of their own previous hospital stays? well, i have. probably because it pisses me off since i have no broken bone-mysterious illness-crazy doctor-experiences of my own. luckily the women in my family are extremely clumsy and tend to fall often. as a female member of my family i, too, tend to fall whenever i get the opportunity and, as it so happens, opportunity lies just around the corner for me. every corner. i have the bruises to prove it. however, since i am still young(ish) and drink lots of milk so my falls have yet to land me in the hospital. not so for my mother or grandmother.

just the other week my mother fell and found herself in the hospital with a fractured cranium (not to worry, she is recovering quite well) which reminded my grandmother of one of the many times that she fell and was herself in the hospital. (remember, this is not a sad story about injury and hospitals. it is about peeing. specifically peeing in your pants as it is the third installment in my "family pee stories" series.) so, this last time that my grandmother fell and was hospitalized she had to deal with the dreaded bedpan because she wasn't well enough to get up to use the bathroom.

it seems that bedpans are a pain in the ass not just because they are annoying to use but also because, according to my grandmother, the nurses take their sweet time getting the bedpan to you. she claims that she had to threaten to wet the bed before they would bring it and then once they did they liked to let her sit on it for an extended period of time. so not only would they not let her get up to pee, she had to suffer the added insult of sitting on her own excrement for longer than was strictly enjoyable.

one evening while my grandmother repeatedly pushed the call button, she enviously observed her bedridden and be-diapered roommate not having to deal with such discomfort and humiliation. sure, the lady was wearing a diaper but, at this point, a diaper sounded like heaven to my precariously perched grandmother. unfortunately she was considered too fit to be diaper-eligible.

so she suffered, relying on the whim of the busy nurse staff for permission to relieve herself. little did she know that the fact that the nurses were overworked would play to her advantage later that same day.

later that same day...

time to change the diapers! the roommate gets her fresh, new diaper in preparation for the evening. sighing, my grandmother prepares herself for an uncomfortable night (she pees a lot). but lo! what is this? the tired nurse is heading my grandmother's way with a diaper in hand. she seems to have overlooked the fact that my grandmother isn't supposed to get one. my grandmother starts to speak up. then she pauses. and smiles. and thanks the nurse for the diaper.

she said that it made her feel free and that it was like being a kid again. the simplicity of it was so refreshing. none of this getting up half asleep to go to the bathroom and pee or calling for tired nurses that refuse to come. if you need to go, you go. you can just pee in your pants. right there and it's considered to be ok. in fact, if you're wearing a diaper you are expected to pee in your pants. astounding! she made it sound so great that for a moment i was like, "dude, i want some diapers. they sound awesome!"

the next day my grandmother made the unfortunate mistake of telling my mother that she was wearing a diaper. my mother did not like this one bit and marched off to the nurse's station to let them know that her mother does not wear diapers!

that night, no diaper. just the familiar and dreaded bedpan. sighing, my grandmother prepared to ring the call button for the umpteenth time and vowed that if she is ever lucky enough to receive another diaper that she will never, ever mention it to my mother.

ah, the freedom of diapers. at least we have something to look forward to in our old age...

they said that california is the place you wanna be...

well, i'm not packing up just yet as the hemlocks are relying on me, but maybe one day.
hmm, i think i need a vacation. california anyone?

p.s. thanks to carrieoke (you rule) for making my blog look so pretty and not boring with my lovely new banner!

working hard...

i did not personally write this, but i did contribute an idea or two to my labmates brainstorming (procrastination) session. this little number is inspired by those oh so oddly worded and indecipherable band descriptions in the flagpole and describes my labmates and myself perfectly. in other words, it makes no sense at all:
(side note- actual quote from this weeks flagpole: "HO-AG (Caledonia) -Pray for the Worms is the new album from this interesting Massachusetts five-piece, whose music is best described as "horror folk." Maybe "cave core." right.)

The Flagpole
A @ B on C

Jen-na-na and the Coweeta Quicksteppers
Hook-filled transhypnotica often dabbling in the realm of alt-Baroque
Bus Behind Little Kings, 8pm, $.55 cover

I am the world tractor center, featuring Breana Simmons
Beatnik Europop with a sharper edge comparable to Dan from I am the World Trade Center
Athens Feed & Seed, 10pm, free with any Round-Up purchase

Slang to Bang Time, featuring Becky Ball
Ecclectic afropop with Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque southern charm and a side of Tin Pan Alley
Classic Center Parking Deck, 9pm, K-Bob cover

DJ Astiggity Kyliggity
White Snake-style Math rock that grinds the sleeve of your sweater into the floor
Boneshakers, 11pm, $73 cover- transvestites get in free

Sofia Oat Patrol and the Fantasmoids
Hair metal dipped in Indian dance hall vibes sprinkled with warehouse grind core
J.R.’s Baitshack, 10pm, 7 rupee cover

keep in mind that most of us are studying soil and/or agroecosystems (except for me) and that all of us are crazy. crazy cool that is. let me know if you want to book my band for a show sometime. i'll try to learn a chord or two by show time. maybe.

wakeful interlude (restlessness)

if you've seen me out on the town more often recently, there's a reason. unfortunately i don't know what that reason is but i think it's something that has infected us all. by "us all" i mean all of you kids that i see out every night frequenting the bars alongside me. there's a force driving us out looking for something. making us stay out until 2 or later even when we're bored and the fun is nowhere to be found.

what is it that we're looking for while we're pretending (and maybe even believing) that we are thoroughly entertained and occupied by those at hand? what is driving us out into the night is not content or a simple desire to have fun. we are not content with our friends, with our chosen company, or, perhaps more tellingly, with ourselves. we're all searching.

the problem with this search is that we don't know what we're looking for so we continue on blindly and remain commonly isolated by our singular loneliness and discontent.

my fear is that this feature (or fixture?) of discontent in my life will never have that revelation (!)- will never recognize that missing element that i'm looking for. so i'll continue on searching for some unknowable thing that might not even exist. or if it does might pass me by in my ignorance.


on a side note, this is what i looke like after spending countless hours battling underbrush and wildlife while crawling up steep mountainous terrain. my reward was finding the largest hemlock tree i have ever seen. why is this very old hemlock still standing in a forest when it should have been logged 100 years ago with the rest of them? because no fool was willing to risk their lives to get it. ah, my job. i don't remember "risking your life for science" being in the description when i signed on.

dreams

dreams: part two (myth buster)

so you know that story about how if you die in a dream that you die in real life? well, i hate to break it to you folks but that myth is completely untrue.

yes, you heard it here first, from the dream expert (at bullshitting) jenna.

how can i make such a preposterous claim you might wonder?

because i have been there. i have seen death in my dreams. i have faced it. i have felt my life ebbing away. i have (you guessed it) died in a dream. really died. and look- i'm still here to tell the tale. take that jason or freddy krueger or whatever scary movie monster used to kill people in their sleep. it just doesn't work and that's all there is to it.

so that's the good news. the cooler news is that i have felt what it's like to die and yet i'm still alive. sure it was a dream, but my dreams are quite vivid and intense. i mean, i really feel every physical sensation, good and bad, that occur in my dreams. the dreams i like best are the ones where i encounter sensations that i've never felt in real life. like the time i was a man (stay tuned for an upcoming entry) or like the dream where i died. in both cases, i'm glad that the physical implications didn't carry over into my real life, but they are still quite interesting to look back on. not that i can say for sure that the sensations i feel while asleep are legitimate, but i can say that i have experienced things while dreaming that i have never felt while awake which is cool enough for me.

anyway, i can't remember how i died anymore but i think i was shot. what i can remember is lying on the ground and feeling a unique sensation that i recognized at once as death as it progressed and my body shut down. i can't explain it very well, but let's just say that everything was fading. i was fading. it wasn't pleasant but it wasn't awful. i was more curious than frightened because it seemed stupid to fear the inevitable. so instead of fearing death, i felt it. the sensation of death, that dreaded but unavoidable accompaniment of life. i knew that i couldn't escape so i just lay there as it took over and i became less and less me and more and more a part of some great nothing and then there was nothing and that was it. i was nothing. i was dead.

some time later i woke up and thought, "damn, i just died. that was pretty fucking crazy." then i went back to sleep.

dreams: part one (mirror, mirror)

i have this one recurring dream. actually, it's just a recurring theme really as the dream usually starts out differently every time.

eventually, however, it comes to this: i find myself in front of or passing by a mirror and i see my reflection. something seems a little off and i start to feel nervous but i stop for a better look in the mirror anyway. i move my head a little. my reflection moves with me. i make another small movement and my reflection follows suit but something is still wrong and i'm scared at this point. something about my eyes in the mirror or maybe it's that my reflection seems to somehow be smirking at me in a very mocking and sinister way. i can't figure it out and i'm really frightened by now but i can't bring myself to look away from the damn mirror.

i make another movement and this time the strangeness is more apparent. the movement of my reflection is a little out of synch and there's still that odd malicious glint in my eyes when i look at them. but maybe it's only in my head? i make a move to turn away and can't because it's not in my head. my reflection has decided to give up all pretenses of simply being a reflection and is now mocking my movements.

it sees how freaked out i am and smiles. now it's not even bothering to mock me- all of it's motions are completely it's own. i really want to get the hell out of there by this point because it is very obvious to me that jenna-the-reflection has something not very nice planned for me that she thinks is pretty fucking amusing and i am not interested in finding out what it is. but i can't leave. part of me is too terrified to turn my back on her and part of me is curious to see what she/i will do next.

unless i wake up first, the next part of the dream involves my reflection somehow getting me to approach the mirror either by beckoning me closer or by breaking free from the mirror plane and physically pulling me towards her. it seems that she wants to pull me into the land of reflections and i am panicking by this point because, from what i can tell, that place is seriously evil.

i can't remember if i've ever actually made it through to the other side of the mirror, but i don't think i have. i must either wake up or manage to escape before that happens. in any case, i have a complaint to make about this dream. why the fuck can't i have a recurring dream about drinking margaritas on the beach or some shit? what's this crap about evil reflections!?

don't worry, i don't need you to analyze it's meaning for me. that much is obvious enough. what i do want to figure out is how to turn my dream around so that i can beat the crap out of that evil refection bitch when she tries to pull that "ha,ha, you can't even control your own refection shit". now that would be cool. i'd teach her a lesson in how a reflection should properly behave and afterwards i could wander down to the beach and drink some margaritas and reflect on how cool and in control i am. which, of course, i am in real life. totally in control. right.

the oddities of odd street

i didn't even know that a place known as "odd street" existed in athens but, i can now assure you, it does and it seems to be appropriately named. it is very odd indeed.

so, how does one end up in the vicinity of odd street? with a little help from your (drunk) friends of course.

it all started out as a regular saturday night out on the town involving such athens staples as large quantities of pbr, shots of whiskey, and some bad music thrown in for good measure. actually, i think the bad music was the night before and i missed the good music on saturday because i was too busy getting drunk. anyway, the entire weekend seems to blur together at this point which is not important and is really not the point of this story. refer to my previous entry "binge drinking in your late twenties" if you are in the mood for a story centered around my exploits with alcoholic beverages.

as is the case on most weekend nights, you can always find a few adventurous (i.e. too drunk to know better) souls willing to continue the party past the requisite 2 a.m. closing time. yes, i was one of them on this evening. nothing unusual there. what was unusual was the arrival of a strange woman with a wooden flute. at first i didn't know who the fuck she was until i recalled her from earlier in the night when i had seen her wandering around the caledonia and playing her weird flute thing. i vaguely remember noting the oddity of such a thing at the caledonia where, in general, the weirdoes usually still manage to fall into the hipster category. clearly, this woman leaned more towards the hippie side. in fact, i think she might not be aware that 1965 is 40 years in the past.

in any case, this woman showing up at a small, after-hours get together was quite unexpected. i'm still not sure who to blame but i have my suspicions. she was nice but i couldn't understand what she said. i mean, i could understand it, but i had no idea what the hell she meant. she was far out, dude. in the stratosphere somewhere. eventually i think we all gave up trying to include her in the conversation which was just as well because the next time i checked she had fallen asleep.

i'll skip through the rest of the evening as it was long and involved many prank calls, some beer and cigarettes, and drinking from an open bottle of wine (i gave up on the wine glass by 5 a.m.). the important thing to note is that the woman drifted from my consciousness. i simply forgot she was there.

now i might have left well before 6 a.m. if i hadn't (wisely) chosen to leave my car downtown. since i couldn't leave and i was tired and getting a little bored with all of the prank calling i busied myself with consuming as much alcohol as i could and even managed to thrown in a few drags on a cigarette for good measure. hence, due to my inebriated and annoying state, i was completely unprepared when flute lady roused herself and started requesting rides home. i can't say for certain but i'm pretty sure that's when all of the caledonia boys high-tailed it out of there in quick succession. thanks a lot kiddos. since the only people left that weren't staying the night were myself (carless), my ride home, and flute lady it seems that we were to be stuck with the wooden flute. and the lady that went along with it.

fine, ok. it's 6 in the morning. at this point time has become surreal and i can stay up long enough to get this woman to her residence before i pass out cold. besides, since i wasn't driving i didn't really have much say in the matter. after all, taking someone home shouldn't take too long unless, of course, they have no idea where the hell they live and they live in some never-never sub-world in athens whose only directions include a hand drawn map and instructions to go to the trestle bridge and look for odd avenue. she had to be kidding right? odd avenue? and a trestle bridge? i've never heard of odd avenue and the name struck me as a little too apt to be coincidence. as for the "trestle bridge", what the hell is a trestle bridge anyway and why would that be the only directional information that this woman is capable of producing!? wtf!!!??

somehow i managed to hold my temper with this vague-talking 1960's throwback, but just barely. who was this odd woman with her wooden flute and crazy speak involving troll bridges and odd streets and maps drawn on little pieces of cardboard with red pen marking her house that, by the way, has a yard full of shrines? yes, shrines. or so she said although when i pressed her for information on what was being worshipped at the shrines she became more vague and looked confused. i told her that for something to be considered a shrine that it had to be built in honor of something or someone. she looked more confused and just kept repeating that they were built by her landlord and that they were his shrines. ok, whatever.

all the while i'm trying to direct j. to odd street which i think neither one of us really believed was real. real in flute lady's imagination perhaps, but not real in the real world.

then we saw it. the little green rectangular sign with the magical words "odd avenue" written on it. i almost cried with joy at the sight. ok, not really, but i was very, very happy. still not sure if it was for real but happy nonetheless. so we turned onto odd avenue, found the house with the enshrined yard (which, in the light of early morning, seemed to involve a red volkswagon camper, some giant flowers, and some metal stuff), and dropped the lady and her flute off at home. finally.

i still can't say for sure where the fuck we were or how exactly we got there, but odd avenue seemed real (or surreal) enough. i think. keep in mind that i was drunk and had been up for close to 24 hours. but whatever, the flute lady had been correct about a number of questionable points. my only remaining point of contention is that i never got to see the famous trestle bridge. looks as though i'll have to save that for another night.