29

I'm in my apartment with a bad cough, waiting for Anna to get back from a night out with our friends. It's one thirty in the morning on the very last day of the last year of my twenties. I have horrible acid indigestion, I've eaten twenty calcium tablets today, I'm chewing on one right now. I missed a promised deadline for a comic by more than two weeks, and instead of writing it with all that extra time I've had these past two weeks I've more or less shut my brain off and barely left the house. I have some reason to believe that I'll have a pretty decent job soon, I have just graduated from college. This is a very big deal to me personally, even if, naturally, it seems to be not so much to everyone I've told. All these big ideas, but when there is time to do them I have no strength of will. Is this where my mind will lie, dead in the water? This is an active age, I must keep it so.

From "Critique of Pure Reason" by I. Kant

"For we are unable from our own consciousness to determine whether, as souls, we are permanent or not. Since we reckon as belonging to our identical self only that of which we are conscious, we must necessarily judge that we are one and the same throughout the whole time of which we are conscious, We cannot, however, claim that this judgment would be valid from the standpoint of an outside observer. For since the only permanent appearance which we encounter in the soul is the representation 'I' that accompanies and connects them all, we are unable to prove that this 'I', a mere thought, may not be in the same state of flux as the other thoughts which, but means of it, are linked up with one another."

Stupid Kitty

Well he wanted to go outside and I'm like fine buddy, knock yourself out. I mean you're gonna freeze off your little toeses. The door is open for three seconds and already the kitchen is cold and I go get under the blankets while he pokes around in the snow and ice. Five minutes later he's scratching at the door and he comes running back inside and I'm like Told you man. Then I'm sitting here typing and he's looking for a warm spot on me but the old laptop's got dibs on all the prime real estate, so he perches next to my arm. His nose seems pretty interested in my breath so I open my mouth real wide so he can smell all the onions I just ate, and he sticks his whole face in there. I wait for him to start licking bits of food off my teeth because that is so something he would do but he doesn't.

Bike Blog: Ugliness and Avoidance

I could have just let him go but my instinct is to do what I can to issue consequence to obnoxious and dangerous behavior. Freezing cold it was, the coldest day so far, 15 degrees, 5 with wind that worked against progress toward being prompt to work. My visibility was reduced as I had the enormous red scarf, the first knitting project of Anna and last year's warmest gift from her to me, wrapped around my face several times so as to limit head mobility. And slowly I pass across the street at a four way stop but a white sedan with government plates does not like that I have gotten in his way and he refuses to arrest his acceleration. So close now to the destination I am riding tentatively as my toes are frozen, I can not feel them, but he hits the back of my bicycle, the back tire, the most expensive and delicate part on the bicycle, and I rush to his window, gratified to see he is pulled over. An older man with white hair and glasses, a gray face with no emotion except a slowness to comprehend the situation, I insist he exit the car and he does after babbling some things to me behind glass. I am very angry, the animated kind when I am another me behind my eyes watching as I articulate rather elegantly how easily he could have hurt me. I do not respect angry people who though wronged do not act rationally with an eye toward productive enlightenment. But still I can not help but to say belittling words to attack him as I feel I have been, but am ashamed immediately. I insist he call the police and he does slowly on his cell phone while asking me why I am swearing at him, my intent is to shame him into being more careful. Again I check my wheel by spinning and surprisingly it is fine, I am almost reluctant to believe this and know there is no need for the police because money need not exchange hands. But I say nothing but that no I do not need an ambulance when the question is relayed from the operator- I am not hurt, I say, just pissed. He is still on his phone, standing amongst the frozen and dirty piled-up snow at the corner, as I walk my bike away without notifying him. I am within sight of my job and unhappy with the ugliness I feel responsible for but as I look back he has put on a white hardhat which he has retrieved from his government sedan in order to benefit from an implied interconnection to the officer who may or may not actually arrive, both servants are they of municipality, versus I who with my karate bandana and army-style helmet and studio headphones which are strapped over my face look like some kind of lunatic participant of a polar rugby team. I assure myself that since though this man did I did not provide my name or other relevant information I can safely disappear into the alcove which protects us from the wind as we wait to be buzzed into our jobs.

DIG dug

Well you thought I was a bee, but there you have it. I am not a bee. I am a tortoise showing up without a shell, or a turtle, if you prefer. I like to think I know the difference, clear enough as day.

I gave that boy an axe and all he could figure out what to do with it was throw it straight into the garbage. That’s all you got, buddy? I’m like who’s gonna give up against that thing, noone now that we think about it. I clicked forward until the battery light went out and lost general track of things. You give me a light and I’ll cast some pretty strong shadows for you, strong enough to get you thinking, at least. What a guy would do with string in his pocket. Not too much.

I left for college with a raincloud over my head that rotted my clothes and made my breath smell like tangerines. Lightning I saw strike out right from the center of it, just over my head, and all I had time to do before it cracked my beetle collection in half was open my eyes just a little bit wider, like if I let more light in the information would be clearer and easier to utilize. I half expected molten asphalt to come gurgling out of the chasm it made, stinking like tar and burned hair- I even coughed. But there was only this extended moan, like a pressurized breath escaping from the lungs of a roomful of asthmatics. It rolled over our ears and set our eyebrows up high enough to balance plates on. It made our mouths peel back over the surface of our teeth. It would have reminded anyone watching from afar of dominating g-forces or waves of flame from a nuke.