::Distillation

toplayalongathome:giantssponge

I’m in dreamtime.

School ended with me in a mental freefall. I felt I was falling more than I was flying. The maelstrom has stopped for a few weeks now. The ground is SO far away. I have a few days to glide before I have to start hauling again.

My grades were good. Very good. Extremely good. Just one half-step shy of the perfection I was aiming for. All in all, not bad. 3.9+ is not bad. In the slightest. I keep telling myself that while the back of my mind is telling me I could have had a 4-point-oh-my-goodness!

It’s good enough.

Sunshine and rain this week. Monday I took a night off of work and went with K to the far reaches of nowhere. The middle of Brown County — about as close as you can get to wilderness in Indiana these days, I guess. Her mother owns enough land that you can walk for a long time. And not hear much of anything, except what lives there. So much sunshine and fresh air. They left for her mom’s doctor appointment and I had a shower. I couldn’t resist walking around naked and airdrying and feeling the sunshine and the perfect breeze. I felt so naughty. Good thing there aren’t dryads in those parts. I’d be locked up in a tree humping my poor little brains out.

Not that I couldn’t stand a little seduction by a wood nymph. One thing about being male that annoys the ever-loving piss out of me is that libido that seems to have come as standard equipment. It’s springtime and warm — apparently my body thinks it is breeding season and refuses to let me think about much of anything else. Gar. Can I please quit thinking about naked sweaty scrumping and do something productive now?

Anyway. I have at least a couple of days to spare where I actually *can* lie around and think naughty thoughts. It’s such a luxury that I’m not sure what to do. The last year of school+job+job has really conditioned me. Ring a bell and I study. Or something like that.

K’s mom is doing a lot better than I expected. I had a vision of her all shriveled up, bedridden and dying. I guess that’s what I expect all cancer patients to look like. But no. The chemo has her feeling like she has the flu. She can’t eat a lot. She sleeps most of the day, and is very low on energy. But she talks, she smiles, she thinks, and she does look great. She is full of healing energy. She’s excited that the chemo has already shrunk her “mass” after only three weeks. I think she will survive and be with us for another twenty years. I’m really happy about that — she’s a neat lady.

She had something interesting to say about death: “If I do die from this, I’m not really afraid of it. Regardless of what comes after or what kind of divine being is waiting for us, I think passing from this world will be a lot like being born. At birth we were thrust from the womb into this beautiful world. When we die, I believe we will be thrust into the next world which will be just as confusing and lovely.”

That floored me. Me, who is still absolutely petrified of death. I still stay up nights with fear clamped around my guts and have to get out of bed, turn on a light, and go watch infomercials and Adult Swim until I forget about It.

Anyway — this leisure time is not suiting me well. I’ve lazed away the entire day. Seriously, I’ve done nothing but eat and catch up on some of the Web sites I read. And spent two hours clicking the “random” button on OD, and being consistently annoyed at the lame sites full of pre-teen classroom soap opera bullshit, music lyrics, awful poetry, and general sub-literate nonsense.

It makes me miss my old OD community. I mean the people I knew around here two years ago. Three. Many of them were interesting, vibrant. They could make me think, or laugh. They had insightful things to say about me and what I wrote.

I deleted the last of the old guard from my Favorites list today, with a heavy heart and a reluctant finger on the mouse button. They hadn’t written since 2004. There was no point. But I miss them all and I wonder what happened to them. Did they get married? Move to the desert? Die in a car accident? I hate not knowing what has happened to the people in my past. Even the ones that I’ve only known by sniffing the pixels that they have trod upon.

A lot of thinking about the past, lately. Wondering where the ancient and powerful figures of my history have gone — who have they kissed, where have they lived, who do they hate? Wondering whether or not they think of me, and if they would know where to look if they did. Time builds walls, and after a while they become too tall to climb. I’ll never find these people, armed only with memories and maiden names. I keep thinking I’m not that hard to find — but I have had an unlisted phone number for years. You tell me.

This summer vacation is going to be about two days more. I have to hunt for an apartment. Register for fall classes. Pack. Move. Kill! Maim! Destroy! Fuck!

…er, maybe not those last bits. At least not without permission.

Remind me to indulge myself and register for GenCon. Soon.

I’m off to work, to play with 10-ton heavy equipment in the dark. This monsoon that’s hit Indianapolis this week really has me feeling (cough) washed out. A little limp and stupid. Nothing like walking around with soaked feet all night. Maybe more about my job another time.