Unmanmade

I had a nightmare two nights ago, and I would like to describe it here, on this blog. It seems an appropriate place, and I haven't posted in awhile so here goes:

I woke up at 7:30 in the morning clutching my pillow and my mattress tightly and my eyes were tearing and my heart was pounding. I remembered the dream vividly and I still remember it. It was an anxiety dream in the truest sense, and my subconscious most likely conceived it as an unintentional by product of issues yet to be dealt with. In the dream, I was still in college. All of my friends had graduated and I had the distinct sense that I was alone. Not in a physical way; I was surrounded by happy and energetic young students, but in an emotional way, and I felt like I was part of the scenery, an immobile and inanimate object framing the collegiate experience of others. I suppose that I felt like a ghost, now that I think about it. Yes, a ghost. Anyway, I had to get to class and I couldn't remember what building it was in and I was running across campus, flying really in the way that ghosts tend to, and I remember thinking that this is it, this is the end, the death of everything I've known and all of the people I have met and all the experiences I have had, all melted and drained into an inaccessible abyss or, worse yet, packed onto a super sonic rocket and propelled far beyond my reach, maybe into orbit around a better planet somewhere. I gasped with fear at the notion of everything I loved going missing and I awoke with my eyes tearing and my heart pounding as I said before.

Here's a photograph of me in New York City:

Baby Come Back

I don't play video games anymore and I can't remember the last time that I made a YouTube video. Yet I keep finding killer montage songs! In other news, my new car is working marvelously, and I'm having a lot of fun playing paintball with my friends. My students are doing well and I don't dread going to work in the mornings. I'm listening to great music and I just finished season 3 of Downton Abbey. What else could I possibly hope for at the juncture of my life?

Here's a picture I took of an autumn road in Connecticut. Walgreens tried to ruin it. They only made it better.

Before the Rise of the Oceans

I bought a new car. I bought a used car. I replaced my old car with a newer, older model. A car with more room in the back. A car with less cup holders. A car with better air conditioning. A car with worse radio reception. A car with a cassette player. A car without a CD player. A car with all four tires attached to their respective rims, and two working catalytic converters still attached to the under body and not scattered in broken pieces on the ground and a rear passenger quarter panel that is not crumpled and broken and slightly imprinted with the logo of a Suzuki XL-7. I'm also trying  to sell my motorcycle. I got a great deal on the car. I think I will lose money on the motorcycle. Hopefully everything will end up in the middle. That seems to be the tendency.

Here's an interesting photograph that I took of a lamp:

Cliffs and Cliffhangers

The last three weeks have been a whirlwind. Getting into that car crash has turned out to be a bigger inconvenience than I ever imagined, although I am continuously reminding myself that I was lucky I didn't get hurt. Losing my car has been a hassle, but a sort of frustratingly bland hassle, the kind of hassle with a strong undercurrent of consumerism, the kind of hassle which is probably experienced in its purest form in the United States. Of course I must buy a new car to replace the functionality of my old car. When I bought my first car, I was accompanied by my mother. Now, on my most recent outings to inspect potential candidates, I am accompanied by my father. It is a giddy and exciting rush at the beginning. The whole situation is charged with a sort of masculine bravado; my father and I fighting against the forces of lemons and flakes.

Sometime during our journey, usually between the first and second cars, the attitude changes. I am along for the ride and my father is driving. He is in his element in the absolute fullest sense of the word. He brings dirty dip sticks close to his nose and smells engine oil, he rubs transmission fluid between his fingers, he crouches low and inspects undercarriages. I occupy myself with the struts; I lean on the back of the car, pressing my weight down and feeling the slow compression of the suspension, my whole body is tuned for the areas of friction, of slow movement, of unsuspected sounds and sensations. I run my hand over the rubber gaskets which seal the windows, I test headlights and air conditioning units. Together we are inspecting a car, but only in the sense that we are both inspecting the same car. We stay on opposite sides. If I get to close to him as he circulates, I'll back away and talk to the seller.

Old drunks, migrant workers, a woman who is probably high. A ripped receipt for a Dunkin Donuts. An empty plastic wrapper that used to house packets of dry soup mix. A pair of shoes. Our vehicles are very real manifestations of our minds. The insidious, the hideous, the haunting, the beautiful and fragmentary pieces left to flutter in the void of our subconscious. We leave things behind in our cars when we sell them. Do we leave things behind in our minds when we die?


Here is a photograph I took of a rock face on a recent hike with two of my friends. I've included one of them in the shot near the base of the cliff to add a sense of scale, depth, and the often-missing human element

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Weekend in the woods

This weekend I traveled to Vermont in a too-small car with three of my friends. We stayed at a small and old cabin in the woods which served to protect us from the rain and little else. The accommodations were wonderfully primitive and after a long day of hiking and playing paintball I felt exhausted but in a righteous and wholesome way. I have started a new job and there are many uncertainties in my life, but I am certain that I would like to experience a cold Vermont morning in a creaking and faded cabin more often than I have in the past.

Here are some photos from the trip:

The end of an era

Today a woman fell asleep at the wheel of her car and drove through a red light, slamming into my car as I was driving across the intersection. I saw her silver SUV out of my window a half second before she hit, and I knew with absolute clarity what was about to happen. She hit me on the passenger side of my car near the back, which is probably the best place to get hit by a car, not that getting hit by a car is ever something you desire to have happen. The force of the impact crumpled the rear quarter of my car and spun me around so that I was pointing exactly towards where I had come from.

I walked away with no injuries. I'm so incredibly sad to lose the car. I visited the wrecking yard today to clear out the rest of my belongings. There wasn't much there, a few photographs in the glove box, an ice scraper, and a beach umbrella in the back.

This was my first car. And the beach umbrella was once shared with someone important. And I also remember using the ice scraper on a frigid February afternoon to extract my car from the frozen slush of a college parking lot. And the photograph is creased in the middle, but I look happy in it and I can still feel her in my arms when I wake up in the middle of the night. And she was the first person I wanted to call when I opened my door and stepped onto the smoking, rubber-stenched pavement and I couldn't hear anything.

Here are two photographs I took for the insurance denizens:

Tall trees

Still heartbroken, I bought a paintball gun. This seemed like an appropriately masculine response to the situation. I am fortunate enough to have friends who have the same ideas that I have. This is a rare thing. I brought my paintball gun to them and they brought their paintball guns as well. And together we hiked into the woods and explored. We traced the path of a trail, an abandoned relic of the infinite days of early puberty. When I returned, I had a conversation with another friend. She told me about words in other languages which do not directly translate to English. One of those words seemed especially relevant. Waldeinsamkeit is a German word describing the cathartic sensation of being in the woods and being thoughtful. There seems to be a delight and a purity to exploration and I want to seek it out and be comfortable finding it in myself.

Here's a photograph I took of the hills of Connecticut.