holy shitake shaman, batman.

I found this place in knoxville where a creek runs under a network of wooden bridges under a canopy of old lightning splintered oaks, and there's a little space floored in brick and moss. needless to say, I found this area while exploring the UT campus instead of attending my classes.

everything was in question yesterday morning. maybe victor creed is just fucked and I have to accept that. it's possible that opening an auto repair shop is an unrealistic goal for me. maybe I can't make it in italy. maybe nobody's interested in what I want to write. I really probably don't at all have what it takes to conduct a successful romantic relationship, ever.

and you can't go to class in state like that. you'll do something crazy! like throw things. at people. so what do you do? you fuck off and go into the woods. where if you throw something at somebody you're unlikely to make contact because of all the tree branches.

also, it was way pretty yesterday. pre-storm weather. warm & balmy but windy, overcast. I go walking and thinking, taking my shoes off then putting them back on; and I don't feel so bad, and I stop having questions just because I don't care about the answers.

so as I'm walking back to my car I think about pragmatism, in the sense that "truth" is the set of rules which best promotes the survival of our species, and that's all. pragmatism is kind of the good twin of nihilism: nihilism purports that because nothing is true, one should believe in nothing, whereas pragmatism suggests that because nothing is true, one should hold those beliefs that are useful and reject as false those that aren't. basically, pragmatists have blanket permission to answer any argument with, "well, that's not true because it's fucking retarded."

so I don't know why I'm thinking about that on the way to my car, as I get into my car, but I am. then I'm driving home and the voice in my head arguing against pragmatism coagulates into this guy and we're sitting at a table. I get tired of arguing with him and I say, "what are you looking for truth for anyway? just walk forward. things will happen." and he says, "what things will happen?" and I lean forward (over the table, toward this guy, and possibly forward in my car, into the steering wheel) and say, for no reason, "give up everything you own and come with me."

just then daniel bedingfield's "inflate my ego" comes on the radio and a car pulls out in front of me with the liscense plate YESHUA7.

it's a weird moment.

later, I go to a quilting bee with elizabeth and wendy. we watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I don't like it.

I go to bed at eleven-thirty! drift into meditative state. feel weird and aroused. something strange is going to happen. I fall asleep and am woken around one o'clock by Fly, who tells me she's in the emergency room and she's had a xanax and can I come pick her up. also, she doesn't know *which* emergency room she's at, so she gets some guy in the hallway or wherever to give me directions.

and then I go pick up my good friend from the emergency room. she had some kind of crazy magickal experience which caused a minor heart attack. she was okay when I got to the hospital but she, she was sort of out of her mind, talking about how she wasn't herself anymore, about god and spirits and a boy she met in california. she seemed strung out and terrified but she kept saying how happy she was, how euphoric and calm and how she'd never be afraid of anything else for the rest of her life. she kept saying, "erin. erin." and I say out of her mind but I only mean distracted, or intensely focussed. she was perfectly lucid.

anyway, it started storming. it's storming today.

on the way to class, the wind blew so hard that it turned my umbrella inside out. so if you thought that only happened in movies, you were wrong. sometimes you just wanna be like, "fuck you, wind!"-- but nobody's going to listen to you, because who are you, the wind god?

--alestar

***
god and I are like two giant fat people in a tiny boat. we keep bumping into each other and laughing.
~ hafiz