hey babe,

it was an odd day. i dont know. i'm not feeling spiral oriented exactly but eh. just eh. maybe just a long come down from the enthusiasm of volleyball and the busyness of last weekend. and after all today is wednesday. not even a weekend. so maybe that was throwing things a bit too. i didn't want to go to a beach on the otherside of the island and so didn't have an orbit to get sucked into and apparently i was left floating into space. and then doing bad math about when our next random break was which is exactly 7wks away when i'll have a week to be bored? i dont know. i'm really going to have to come up with a plan. i thought about going to japan but i've been spending a bit too much this month and a week there would do some damage to the downward trend not to mention the won not doing well anyway... like my eating habits in the last 2 wks. along with a lack of water. i mean i'm here but now i have "goals".

so today, i went hiking and that was good. (messy warmth and growth and vertical challenge and time with God) and then my enthusiasm for independent travel sort of tanked into an inefficient mess of wandering and being completely noncommital with myself. nothing really appealed. i thought i would go see a movie- when it came down to it: wrong times, too many people, not quite the right movie, but i did go to at least 2 movie theatres just to stare into space trying to convince myself it was something i should do. i went to see where the foreigner clinic was in shin: i walked right by it because i just didn't want to go inside, i kept walking, to the next unsuccessful event, though eventually on my way home, got off the bus, to see the hospital mostly quiet bcs of the holiday and reluctantly peeked in just to see the layout and then left just as fast to catch the next bus home. the two sure things after the hike were my enjoyment and eventual regret of the frap (cool tasty relief/too much sugar) and that the ipod battery hung on long enough to let me listen to the book both coming and going from shin where i did nothing at all for hours, but walk and reject things i thought about doing so suredly hours before. i did have a good lunch in btw. i suppose the day took a turn around 130. i was back by 6. it was amazing how much i failed to do in that amount of time. i probably should've turned around after lunch and went to sleep on the beach. but they're bulldozing it for summer? or uh? somesuch?

anyway- i think overall i just kept expecting something- to run into someone, for something to catch my eye, for something outoftheordinary to happen? maybe? so hard to say.

oh and i have a veracose vein, and my cat's in heat again... shocking. oh also- woh to your snake story?! i'll uh, pretend it made it out alive. i remember as a kid at my school people flipping out and killing snakes- it always made me a bit sad- they were always harmless gopher snakes... now the one time the guy killed the rattlesnake with a shovel and then cooked it at camp...i mean ok... and no words for fake recycling. it's like you've discovered the other reality neo. just know that i'm having to ocd trash it for you- white bags we buy for combustible "trash trash", the compost bag which is foul and dumped into an equally foul bin, and then the paper bin, and then the plastics/metal/glass bin... so yah.

also also, trying not to fear the humidity and yet i do. you know i do. dread. non-evaporative non-coolingness. it comes. it comes. the weekend promises to be warm. and though the battery on my new/used phone is acting up i did finally acclimate to wi-fi access. small victories.

ok enough- my love,
xoxo, m.

friend,

i tried to have an adventure today. i think maybe i came out ahead on gas money and good conversation but only grazed the unfamiliar. the book i was reading just didn't cut it either.

i was going to say, i woke up- then remembered what r.california said, that everyone since the dawn of time does this, so why start there? except to say it's exposition. but this time a chime from my phone woke me up in the middle of a dream i never left completely. blinking sleep and lacking focus. started my day because it seemed like the thing to do opposed to going back to bed. this must be a shared experience. filled with regret.

i spent part of that time as the computer hummed and churned awake (not a laptop) for creditcard numbers and pondered transfer balances. but gave up. made breakfast, noting the slightly overcooked scramble and the slightly tinged toast as i headed to the metro. because i have to drive 10min to the station makes me feel like i live in an unreachable place but also mostly absurd to then get on the train when i could keep driving and arrive in non-rush hour circumstances in about 25min. but the firm belief of "journey" and book reading propelled me down into the upper strata of earth. it went well except for the jumbled story i'd put off reading for 12 years. the idea of no 'e' in the entire text must have originally made me purchase it on that merit alone. i was feeling egotistical at the time i'm sure. but no more. goodbye book. i gave you 50pages and i skipped to the end and NO. i can't even think of the money i wasted.

so i rose out of the subway, taking in the pleasant glistening chrome and tiles and out onto 7th and metro already feeling after fighting to find a parking space in the lot (failing) and contemplating not paying the $3rt for my ticket (thievery) that the whole thing was off but i was determined to take it all in. then, i saw the starbucks wouldn't do as it was too small anyway. and grain was running latish. which just gave me a moment to ponder about being in a place i wasn't expected to be in, where there is a routine happening for people who come and go from there everyday. and i was just watching, but even that seemed forced. i wanted it to seem foreign, but i felt welcome to the story. i felt curious. i felt, ok, this is where i am now in the narrative. sitting at a coffee bean staring at a cigar shop across the way.

and then she came and we found a starbucks a mile or two away, not within the city proper unfortunately (already mapped and plotted not discovered)- i wanted tall buildings and strange shops, but no, near a food for less and homedepot right on the fringe of city. well there is something to free parking i suppose. and once we drove around the park to see if it was safe and not full of daywalkers i was too sleepy to even desire to be near the water and the fountain and we resigned ourselves to a shaded table on the patio overlooking the street and the mcdonalds back at starbucks (retracing steps). it is urban though just not narrow cityscapes urban...or joss whedons version of los angeles urban, perhaps... but then going there, that seemed forced too, and a movie shoot was happening on a side street near the park (i thought, at least somebody's working)... but then, there was a woman who was shouting angry things on our corner mid latte. unintelligible. angriness. i was in the middle of talking about a girl who is angry with me. who said, 'i am hurt by your words.' but didn't tell me why or give me an opportunity to fix it which made me level judgment in the form of- oh, here is the victim. here is the manipulator. and meanwhile the woman in a red shirt kept gesticulating and barking out words from her gut and head. and we couldn't help but stop and be caught up in them, we literally couldn't keep talking over the energy, and then, we prayed for her. it was all we could do.

bcs the woman was being fed on by her demons, and feeding them in turn. and i'm sure it started out because she wanted to be heard and understood and grain thought, yes, this woman, she wanted to be protected, defended- and she wasn't. and afterawhile in between a ups van and a white truck crisscrossing and blocking our vision of her she quieted down, and then wandered away. and we kept drinking and chatting and then it was time to go. and after grain dropped me off at the station i talked to cathy about journeys and never having the time or space to be bored, to observe, comment or construct... so there i was watching. and then after, took the wrong train, which seemed to illustrate the point as it set me back 20minutes but became merely irritating and illustrative of nothing as it was rather...ordinary, as did the waiting in a long line for my in/out burger... and the slumped into the couch watching episodes of twin peaks because i can't quite manage to cancel n@tflix. and then waiting for wendy to come over and talk about objects and memory and eat chocolate and argentinian sausage and watermelon.

so there it was. that was my day. come fullcircle and still waiting for an answer.