Just finished His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. *closes eyes, sighs languidly* God, that is what a story is meant to be. Thought-provoking, rebellious, mentorish, knowledgable, heart-warming, tragic, up and down and all around and through the eye of your soul's needle all at once. Why I didn't read these before, I haven't a clue. But if I wasn't meant to read these lovely things until now, then so much the better for it was JUST what I needed at this time. Finishing this... even beforehand, simply becoming absorbed in the tale as it unfolded to my reader's eyes and my sympathetic mind, this reaffirms my faith in the fantasy genre. On the surface it tells an impeccably wonderous story of many things, from God to parallel universes to witches and talking polar bears and dark matter. It's an amazingly woven and engrossing meander through the trials of growing up, of changing from innocent to experienced. Any human being should be able to empathize with the characters, with their faults and their strengths... with the battle between wisdom and stupidty, with the horrors of losing someone you love and the glory of falling into that state of soul. If you cannot, you do not allow yourself, or you are not human. *smiles* After reading strains of cookie-cutter fantasy and terribly horrid science fiction, it sparkles the fires in my heart to full flame to envelop myself in the inspired, gifted taletelling that Mr. Pullman delivered to the world. Seeing something so close to my own convictions enshrouded in the words of another's thought makes me warm and the eyes of my heart glow with the knowledge that something to true to me will be absorbed by millions of other minds and maybe not embraced, but at least contemplated. This inspires me. What a damned good trio of books. *nods*

When those movies come out, I truly hope I'm not disappointed. I'll try not to be picky about it like bibliophiles tend to be about book-based movies... but... there's such potential in this story... it would be terrible to fall short of it. Though, in looking into the films, I found out they're making a new "The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe" movie with Nicole Kidman. Disney's making it, which worries the piss out of me, but we'll see. They CAN do good things, as we've seen with "Lilo and Stitch".

NY went smoothly. Wandered the city after checking my grandmother onto the ship. Saw a "Druids" pub, the Munson's Diner that I'd read about in some magazine article on diners across the country, Times Square, a very very big ship and then drove 4 hours back home. Ate lotsa food at Cracker Barrel, am home. On the trip up I finished The Amber Spyglass and on the trip home I've gotten well into Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett... so, all in all, was nice. Grammy shall have lots and tons of fun in the Carribbean. *nods*

Am sick. Messages will be unresponded to until I can think straight again, and am not full of antihistimines. Thank you for your patience, and please put your tray tables in their upright and locked positions.

Milkshakes rock my world, much like storms.

amid the night I sit, internally spit, trying to divine
the source of these wary visions
in sight, sound and scent, that shine-
beacons of a watchtower straining
to be seen and recognized for the truths they contain
but I question as to whether this veracity will overflow,
or merely tease my capacity
to read the text of my own inner musical strains, strands, of DNA
double-helix twisted beyond normal human cognizance
or at least that of this poor boy; gene-alloy of recession and dominance
whose strands and bands of anthropologic demands
that maybe one could sense make
of all this hallucinogenic give-and-take;
a drug created by the synapses selectively firing along your own mental wiring
behind this unsettled façade, perspiring
while he sleeps unsound, conciousness all unbound, unfettered
and of these new realms inquiring
as though he possessed the necessary technologies,
all the prerequesites of his understanding's request-
gnostic negatives, these mirrored ontogenies, not merely recapitulating,
but reworking entire phylogenies
yet if garbed in raiment right for the task,
he could buy a small peek
and of varied silver visions may speak
just for a minute, a moment, a minute glimpse of truth and understanding
to ken those personal mythagos that into his soul are expanding
trailing his thoughts' curiosity, in a dance of hop, skip and leap
because with knowing would come that blessedly silent sleep
________________________________________________

Tramping through a swamp in the chill rain, toes cold and wind nipping under hair and coat... even that's more or less a beautiful shot to the heart and a reinvigoration of my soul (albeit mayhaps at the cost of my health). But as rivers and tides, hills and forests get me smiling, so the mud and grasses of the last strains of DC's once-marsh along a little-used footpath on Potomac's bank send my spirit skittering like a step-dancer. I spent a comfortable few minutes under the only pine in a 4 mile stretch of woodland, shaking the mud from my boots and the rain from my hair as I waited out the worst of the storm, only to be hit by it's return a while later. *shrugs, smiles* Oh well. Nature's fickle, I know that. That path is very long... I want to ride from the 10 mile mark all the way up to it's inception in Maryland and see if it continues... The Appalachian trail is somewhere near to the west of us and I miss that tract of protected beauty.

Yes, I have in fact been setting out to ignore civilization as much as possible, even though I fear such distance may impact friendships forming or those already established. But I need to get beyond my own head for a while... it's been a wretched couple months. *smiles, shrugs* I think these discoveries of new places of Earth within this den of capitalistic hatelove that we call Washington has been my saving grace. That and my friends, new and old. *shrugs* I'm in a sappy mood... ahhhh, the spins my heart takes sometimes. Primus on Saturday, and Great Big Sea on St Paddy's Day. Wow, that's a bizarre couple of groups to be seeing so close to each other. Primus is... well, if you don't know, I couldn't explain... and GBS is superhappy music, even in their sad lyrical attempts. Celtic happy music. Mmmmm. I'd like to go see George Clinton & the P Funk, but I'm sorry, I already have a concert paid for on the 13th. And then there's the art show at Chiaroscuro I was asked to be in is the same night... bloody hell.

So, music wins out. ; ) *whistles along to Leaf*

(11PM) Saw Donnie Darko at one of the school's lovely film nights. Fantastic movie, every time you see it. I want to cry and sing and giggle and just about seem as nuts as that fellow in the flick... but since... I left the auditorium, I must... get out... it's... INCREDIBLE outside. The wind is like a surge of soul every time it blows through my arms...

Weather like this... it's... *twitch* ...almost fucking indescribable. I... feel like I'm growing bigger with each breath, like I'm a boundless sea of energy surging to cover the earth... I... could run all night and fight until the dawn, I could breath in enough air to start a storm... I'm... god, all i can tellis that its like I'm feeding off the growing force in the air birthing the coming storm and jesus it's amazing... i want to howl and run and scream and laugh mad as a hare until I collapse, gasping and then do it some more... i want to swim and climb and fuck and fight and giggle insanely and dance my goddamn heart out untilIbreakdownadbloodywellshatterintotheinfinitepiecesofitall.... *GRIIIINS* ...I can abrely hold still to type... god I LOVE THIS. WELCOME, SPRING! *hops* I'm out, it's time for wandering. Hehe.

eDiT (6AM): I rarely feel so much simply One as tonight. Like I could feel everything, be everything... I don't know if it's merely a passing idea, or whether yet may prove truth, but I think maybe I am never more at peace than when the world around me is in chaos. As full and abounding as the sense of complete dissolution and yet... concentration... is, I am focused on nothing but everything, and hold no grudges for the time and no anger manifests... *half-smiles* Joy, complete to the point I've felt only in one other instance- being in love, and having it returned fullfold. I'm in love with the world, I guess. People suck, but people change. The world is there through our lifetime, constant in its inconstancy. And storms, the build, the release, the catharsis... it's like one may find all of life's wonder condensed to a few hours. I listen to the patter of rain and the spill off ledges, and I wish only one thing... someone to share it with.

I am... a klutz.

One thing that's certain in life- it'll fuck you over, it'll throw you curve balls you can't juggle long, it'll decieve, stone, and whip your existance like an ancient criminal.
And the love of another and your ability to return those feelings is just about the only thing that's a guarantee of at least a flicker of a smile, no matter what. It's about the only definitive "good" thing that you can peer at from any damn angle and always come up with the same thing- "Damn I'm lucky." And this doesn't alter even on the worst of seas life becomes. So if it's undousable, and unflappable when it's true... why isn't love enough? *scratches head* I don't know if being who I am, I could ever understand ...or at least, I could never come to terms with any answer someone might give to justify love not being enough. It has to be. With what can we hold faith if love, that purest of emotions, isn't the strongest thing? *sighs* And if anyone says "god", I'll smack you. In my opinion, should god exist, god is love. God is everything, including love. *shrugs* When someone says "I love you" and you know they mean it beyond the boundaries of those three short syllabic arrangements, beyond even what they themselves can comprehend, it's like being shot through with a direct line to the divine, in a way. Not theologically speaking, either... just... look inside next time the one you love says that. It even works with great friends on a level. *shrugs, half-smiles* Nothing like that can possibly be bad. Obsession is bad, infatuation is temporal, friendship is beyond priceless, but... the kind of love that causes you to dismiss the rising of the seas, to forget that the sun didn't rise, because there's someone there you can keep smiling and who'll keep you grinning stupidly back just by being around... that's... beyond judging. We shouldn't be allowed to have it, we fragile creatures with shifting hearts... and yet somehow we're privy to its smallest secrets. How could something so treasured and yet so all-encompassing fail? It baffles me beyond knowing, and probably always will... when I know full well the difference between a crush, a deep interest in and what I choose to call by that cliched phrase, "true love". The moon knows what I feel, and the night air carries my breaths across the streets and rivers of this world... and my heart strains to find itself, and to patch what remains. It's trying to find pieces that're held by the past and yet it yearns to step up and simply reclaim them if it but knew how. Sometimes it seems like if it isn't enough, and I'm wrong, it'd be better if the sun didn't rise tomorrow. At least for oneself.

Like I said, I'm a klutz. I don't think I could create the wizardry of circumstance that brought me such luck again if I sold my soul for it. -.-

Went to a bizarre birthday party with Charles, Bess and this gal Kendra who apparently knows half my friends from Corcoran, even though she goes to GW. Yeah... um... clubs are blah. But my friends make it bearable, and I left early anyway. For all I know, cha and bess are still there. I was gonna teach Kendra chess, but we couldna find the last black pawn and she was falling asleep, so homeward I walked her and am now on my life-pondering kick, as you can see. And I smell like cigs. Have I mentioned I hate clubs? Blechfuckassbabygnawmaim. The shit I do for friends.

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.