Want

I want to lay face down on the grass.
I want to stop having miniature panic attacks.
I want to be financially comfortable.
I do not want to be rich.
I want to travel on a regular basis.
I want to ride the subway all day long.
I want to ride my bike all day long.
I want to fill the streets with sod and the lawns with prairie.
I want to speak all languages.
I want to have seven percent body fat.
I want to learn about something new every day.
I want to live in the city, on the top floor of an apartment building.
I want to live in the mountains by the ocean.
I want to have perfect pitch and a photographic memory.
I want to sleep in a hammock with a book on my face.
I want to touch sea anemones.
I want to make my own sourdough bread.
I do not want to go shopping.
I want an interesting job that takes four to seven hours a day.
I want to understand everyone.
I want to throw a party at which the guests dance until the morning sun rises up over the grocery store.
I want to dig for freedom.
I want to stay up all night in the back seat of a car, watching water drops inch their way past my eyes.
I want to break it down into its component parts, then reassemble them in a variety of ways.
I want to go sailing.
I want a glass of milk.

Bike Ride

The smell is the dry, dusty, sharp kind that hangs about under stands of red pines. It is localized. Just faintly reaching the trail when the stands are close enough for it to compete against the manure and river water and sunflowers. The sap must be boiling. Half a mile distant, the temperature gradient of the rising air causes undulations in light rays. The asphalt appears to be flowing. The sap fades abruptly and I am surrounded by a floral nectar. A rolling green and yellow.

This whole thing is nice because it unplugs my mind from the constant and rapidly changing stimulation it usually receives during leisure time. It is halfway between reflection and meditation, free flowing and cathartic. Alternating between issues, which eventually need to be addressed and transient concerns. A smell is not sharp. That has no meaning.

Found

I've been going through my things, packing for the move. I found an external hard drive with some photos I had taken on my trip to London. Here is a selection.

I had a dream that I was a different person. Also, I ate my brain with a spoon. I didn't want to eat too much of it, but it tasted so good it was hard to stop. I remember feeling lucky that I managed to abstain from my cerebellum and brain stem.

Sorry

Stolen from Kate Beaton:

"Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view."

Part IV

In the years after I was told that we were not able to return my brother, I made several attempts to take him out of the picture using slightly more fratricidal methods. One of these dramatic scenes took place at a departmental picnic my family was attending. The adults were eating and having conversation around a couple of picnic tables. A short distance away, a few baby-grub things, including my brother, were crawling around in the grass. I was standing by myself, in awe of one of the most awesome objects I had ever laid eyes on.

It was a green and yellow tractor. I believe it was used as a maintenance vehicle for the institute. The tractor was well worn and had body rust, but was definitely in fair working condition. Larger than a lawn tractor, but smaller than your standard farm tractor, it was one of the more impressive tractors I had ever seen this close up. It was also unattended.

It was an open invitation, and I accepted it. I was positively delighted to be sitting in the tractor seat, bouncing up and down and gripping the steering wheel. What's more, none of the adults seemed to notice or care. I was having a ball. Then I glimpsed the Best Thing.

The key was in the ignition. At two years old, I knew about some important things. One of these things was that if you wanted to make a car (or a tractor) go, you needed to turn the key. This was probably on of the better moments in my life up to this point (especially considering that many of the other moments in my life involved trying to fit myself into my duplo barn; these were not good moments). I leaned forward, one hand on the steering wheel, and grasped the key.

The tractor had been left in gear, when I turned the key it immediately started rolling forward. Nice. I was moving forward at around two miles per hour, maybe about half as fast as walking speed. Directly in from of me, probably ten feet away, grub-brother was drooling on the grass. This was my chance. Ramming speed! my beautiful tractor.

Unfortunately for my plans, my mother noticed this chain of events almost immediately after I turned the key. She let out a scream, dashed towards the grubblet and scooped him up, out of harm's way.

Foiled.