Sunny Weather

I've been in a pretty good mood lately. Oddly enough, it sprung out of a terrible mood. Monday, I was in a deep, deep funk. I tried dispelling the depression every way I knew how: I read, I wrote, I moped, I exercised, but nothing worked. There's only one fail-safe, sure-fire way to chase away bouts like this, and that's to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. So, I whisked it off the shelf and started rifling through it, waiting for Marcus to tell me about how reality was just a sheath, waiting to slip away off my immortal soul or how my when and where is one pointless, listless locus on an infinite plane of existence. I wanted to feel minute, transient, silly, and distracted. Marcus had saved my life once before. In high school, paranoia gripped me pretty bad. I couldn't stand the people, their drugs, their fashion, their jibes, their fads, their insecurities. I asked Marcus, who was writing to me from the Danube River while holding off hordes of Macromanni and Quadi barbarians, whether I should even give a fuck about life. I mean, if my time here is to be spent among people, and I hate people, what was to stop me from hating my time left here? Marcus shook his head. Always dignified, always resigned, Marcus was. He told me people usually aren't worth it. They can be cruel, worthless, vile, destructive. But, we still have a soul, we still have a holy code to be good people. We are patient parents ignoring the stings of stupid children, we are rivers running against boulders and dams. We have to be stolid, steadfast, and strong. Whether or not there's worth in people, there's worth in being a person, a good person.

As a philosopher, Marcus presents some glaring holes. He posits the existence of a soul...I think that's ridiculous, at least for now. Anyway, anyway, who cares, though. Marcus was a man, and once again, he showed me how to let all the people I know and all their hurt, their small-minded assaults, their suffocating expectations, their self-serving small-talk, their jealous psychological war just wash away.

If there's a God, I'll finish the fucking Golden Bough tomorrow. I've been working on it for like four weeks now. It's embarrassing and time-consuming. It's not even really that good. I just...well, I wanted to both challenge myself and cross off another monumental work of literature.

Got clotheslined in the balls today. Some kid took a twenty-foot acceleration, then flipped his hand up and into my nads, not even stopping to see me wince. It's a good thing he didn't, too, else I'd a seen the bastard who belted my boys.

Today, I set a kid up to hit a wiffle ball off the tee. He took a few practice swings, his face the picture of concentration, then stepped forward with all his might. Unfortunately, he not only missed the ball, but toppled the tee. "FUCK!" he said. Did he just say "fuck"? I started laughing uncontrollably. I couldn't believe it. Five-years-old and he's saying "fuck" and saying it correctly? I couldn't keep from envisioning the same kid in a business suit realizing traffic will make him late to some big meeting: "Fuck!" I asked him what he said, and, clear as a bell, he answered me, "Fuck...," with a slightly confused look on his face. Aren't I supposed to say "fuck" when I fuck up? "Well, don't say that," I said.

I went to Susan's family cottage last weekend. It was pretty fun. It rained the whole time, but we made the best of it and squeezed in tubing where we could. A friend of the family, Chad, brought the Manta Ray tube, the one that lifts out of the water, pulling you behind the boat like a kite. I only got a couple feet of air on it, but one little girl must have been ten or fifteen feet out of the water. Susan herself got pretty high! After the Manta, Susan wanted me to do a double tube with her, saying it was "more fun." To Susan, fun must involve equal parts fear and pain. Needless to say, I agreed with a very reluctant "yes". The water was like a fucking washing board-choppy as hell. the compartment in which I was to sit was about the size of a hamster cage, and the 60 or so pounds I have on Susan tilted our tube in my direction. I was crusing for a bruising. "Don't be scared," someone called out from the dock. "Oh, I think you should be," said Chad, my driver, once again. Flooring it to 55, Chad shot out of the dock like a cheetah, leaving me and Susan eating wake-She was laughing, I was screaming. After three or four white-knuckled turns, I noticed a pain spreading through my balls as if they were being lowered into a blender. Keep it together, man; Don't show Susan how big of a baby you are, I thought. So, I tried to smile, but even through the spittle flying from our mouthes, the water drenching us from the wake, and the noise from the boat and all the cheering occupants, Susan could tell that I was scared out of my mind. "Cut the boat, Alex is in pain," she said. Shit, not only did you just get a tubing-neutering, but your girlfriend noticed what a big sissy you are! Oh well, knowing Susan, she probably thought it was more cute than anything else.

During the rainy bouts, I colored with Chad's son, Colin, a cute little kid absolutely obsessed with Nascar and, lately, "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen (The Boss! Hell yeah!). My poem for Susan was passed around most of the family while I was there. I was cool about it, though. I like having them read. Her cottage was four hours away from my house, and Susan and I spent a lot of time on the road together. We kept fighting about why farmers have horses. I maintained that there's no reason for them to have them: they don't serve any purpose; they're not used for food, fuel, fur, muscle, or milk. Susan thought there was no such mystery, and that farmers kept them sheerely for companionship. I think it's a good question, anyway. There must be some use... Glue?

I'm planning a camping trip with Franz, his girlfriend (AKA "the prospect"), Susan, my friend Danny, and Emilee, Danny's girlfriend. We're going to the Au Sable River next week, a really charming, clean river-I've been there once before. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm stockpiling jerkey and trail mix already.

As far as music goes, the only new stuff I like is the EP from Delorean, some Spanish electronica group that Pitchfork likes, and the latest album from A very U2-esque Australian band, the Temper Trap. They use a lot of good guitar delay and choir boy vocals.

I got my driver's license about two weeks ago. It's been all right. Of course, I'm now the family mule, meaning I'm the errand boy for everything- food, people-pick up, lottery tickets, movies, recycling, etc.

Susan has been great, but I'm still worried about my pessimism and the way I slowly but surely slouch away from people-all people. I'm confident she'll be the difference, though, i.e. the reason I won't retreat this time.

School starts up again September 8, and I would say I'm really, really, really upset by this and the notion of a return, but I'm trying to be optimistic (REALLY trying), so I'll just say that I'm nervous. A lot has to happen for me in a very little time.

Things used to just fall together, like a Jackson Pollock painting-random drips forming something beautiful and complete. I used to have epiphanies, where the light would just shine on my face and I just knew, I just knew I was doing the right thing. Now, to make my decisions, I have to buy a new bulb, screw it on myself, angle the lamp at my face, and decide whether it's bright enough to show me the way. Is this using my head vs. using my gut? Am I just to a point where I have to let myself make myself? Does it even matter what I make myself into? Can't I just adapt?

I noticed something about myself this week. One of the main grounds for my instability and my depression is my need to try and embrace two opposite or conflicting ideas at the same time. I ALWAYS try to hold two antagonistic opinions or philosophies in my head at the same time. I'm always trying to exist at both ends of the spectrum. I want to be social, loved, but cenobitic, isolated. I want to be successful, but unknown, small-time, local. I want to dissappear, but I want to reach people. I want to be happy and content, but I love to wallow, to drink in sadness. Am I trying to prove something to myself? Is it the challenge I like? Is it just scoffing in the face of the ever-changingb ever more pointless vicissitudes of human life? Do I just try to amuse myself?

Tell me, Marcus!