I better write this now, even though I just want to break peoplethings and scream howling through the night, lest I lose some of it...

Went out with a backpack containing my reading for Art Theory, intending to discover for myself the nooks, crannies and niches of Dumbarton Oaks Park and sit among its birch and oaken floating shadows to read in the sunset's russet light. That place is the nearest enclave of pure woodland in walking distance (more or less). And while my Rock is beautiful on its own and does incredibly well for being manmade at making me feel better, I crave the confines of a divine nature, brought into being by nothing more than the wind and spring, and symphonied by the rill and tumble of a small creek over a jumble of granite and sandstone, peeked at by squirrels as you catch the flash of a raccoon's mask. The light spills through the trunks and the tangled boughs above like a golden autumn, although that season of a painter's dream is months past and months yet to come. The sunset paints the leaves a shade of green more warm than any to be seen until high summer, and the shadows stretched long and deep between the roots of fallen pines and oak, crashed through their neighbors in the past like a fainting figure caught by strangers, who now bow under their weight, bent to appear like penitent pilgrims at a woodland mass. The rustling of innumerable unknown creatures in the loam and the brush, only barely seeing the dash of a mouse or a squirrel or a rabbit's run through the field's edge in flight from human eyes... my eyes snag on fleet movements and imagined flashes that I think I see when in reality there exist nothing but the rippled sunlight on the edge of a rock or a stillwater pool along the ravined creek's course. I pull myself up by staff and hands, toes prodding for holds, through briar and fruitless raspberry vine by saplings of all sorts until I gain the height of the folded hills, to pause and breathe, listening before adjusting my backpack to onward move around the slope of a hill following faint deer paths or those long-ago trod by people like me, sometimes sighting a fallen strip of cloth or a glass bottle left by juveniles and bums seeking the hidden woods to drink away past nights. Dismissing the inevitable that this detritus of humanity represents, I poke around curiously under the torn roots of a young fallen oak, wondering if the small cave is home to anything that I can see, but nothing stirs except the dirt still clinging to the dry and withered roots.
I skip down the hillside, dodging between trunks and over limbs, scattering noise and leaves like a whirlwind (albeit a small, fuzzy one), to swing around a birch trunk and between some holly bushes incongruously stationed like a gate in the middle of the woods and hobble to a stop on the woodline, wondering which direction to take the footpath that's in front of me, across a field with a bench beneath an solitary oak like a place made for contemplating deep things or cuddling a loved one. I go right, and circle back around along the banks of the run that spills over manmade steps, and through holes in the rocks, gurgling prettily, if artificially in most places in this part of its flow. I feel like in the twilight's final deepening I've gone back centuries, and know only this woodland and the creek with stone falls and bridges over which I crouch, straining with my walking stick across my knees for the cold, waterclean fall itself as it spouts from between the rocks, and as my fingers grasp at the ungraspable, I baptise myself reacquainted with my roots in these woods so like the woods of home, drips collecting in the hair on my chin as I smile and scamper on along the banks back to the paved way that led me into these verdant confines... pausing only twice more, once to call over east and west arch of a fairytale bridge, tempting any resident fae with whatever riddle springs first to mind... and lastly at a natural falls to inch out over the brink and, one foot within the water itself, rinse my hands and face in the water that arcs from the moss-covered stones of the height to the dark pool in shadow at it's base. Dripping but cooler now, although my shirt is sweatsoaked under my jacket, but not a bother as my limbs stretch and twinge, even more sore than this past morning upon waking, I walk up the asphalt drive that heads uphill, and out the gates of this preserve of beauty in the midst of an electrical, concrete jungle that I will never feel a part of. And I almost forgot, I stirred up some dogs with my vocalized emotions. My usual way, that. *smiles slightly, shrugs*

I'm checking email. Not this, not my friends page, not a message board or a website or an instant message or a phone call unless urgent as hell. Clearly I'm not ready for social interaction at this point, and since I seem to simply be driving nigh on most people away from me for one reason or another, I figure communication is not the thing right now. It's funny how talking ruined one good thing after another. I'm tired of being the bad guy. How I do things seems to be antithesis to others, lately. Maybe the vow of silence is a better aim for one to seek. Or mayhaps it is merely a sign that my psyche is contrary to humanity at the moment and I'm an insensitive asshole. Could be a nice "I'm not grown up." Hell if I know. A balance of it all, tempered by a lively spattering of generalized frustration and anger at the fact. I'll be back when all is said and done and I'm not so damn chaotic. Trust me, no one wants me around right now.

If you want me, write me a letter. If it's urgent, you have my cell number. Toodles.