Buried

Written last night

Consistency comes at a premium...

Just kidding; I would not drag my readers into my masochism (that's a lie, but try to ignore it) by creating some perpetual and dull theme (___ comes at a premium...).

However, today was not much different than yesterday in timbre. Solomon would say that there was "nothing new under the sun" but the old bastard is wrong: the sun never came out today. My sister, Molly, was far more accurate when she said "it's a crappy day anyway—don't worry about it. It's just the weather...". The weather became my official excuse for not weed-whacking our ditch. The truth of the morning is actually a story of relative impotence. Clad in my designated lawn-care clothes, I made my way to the garage to fetch the weed-trimmer. I was pleased to find that there were two working units available—but frustrated by the apparent lack of two-cycle fuel to put into them. I cannot remember how to mix the two-cycle properly. So, I stuck my hand out of the garage door and pretended to feel a droplet hit my hand. All that I actually felt was my ankle, still throbbing from Monday's failed chin-up experiment (my foot has turned such a lovely purple...). I replaced the weed-trimmers and grabbed a dog brush instead.

It never rained, but I did pull four brushes-worth of loose hair from my beagle-mix.

As usual, I ate breakfast and became entirely too interested in the television—flicking the remote desperately for something that will justify my lingering presence on the couch. I gave up and played my bass for some time. That was second on the list of useful things I did today. I never did break double digits. I ate and lingered. Then I visited the bank and lingered. Then I visited the dog and lingered with him. I lingered in the kitchen and harassed my sister and her friend (to the extent that asking dumb questions and pacing-around is harassment). At some point in the day I practiced my cornet and discovered, yes, I did lose most of my stamina by slacking-off for over three weeks. I reviewed the dismal situation that is my debt to Michigan State university, then showed my mother who insisted on hugging me and telling me it would be alright. That unnerved me, naturally. I lingered and talked about random things with my father while he did dishes. Then, after dinner, I finally absconded to my room to sit down at the computer! I was right on the verge of writing something...

When I decided to play my favorite puzzle game instead.

Forty-five minutes later, I opened my word-processor and... here I am. I am not the least bit interested in what I have to say, either. What do I have to offer even myself, at this point? I have remained in the tentacles of the same inertia I complained about two days ago. No, I don't like the tentacles image as well as I like one of... hmmm... a tar-pit. Yes. Cords of noxious black goo hang from my arms and chest. My legs pump in vain against the congealing surface of my sticky prison. The more I struggle... the more I like that image too much: it is getting a little melodramatic. Tar-pit accidents are contingent on searching for something, then stumbling upon the trap. [insert explanation of tar-pits and how predators are disproportionately represented in them]. No. As demonstrated by my recent 45 minute hiatus (a drink of apple-juice that decayed into watching a baseball game in the middle of writing this entry) I am not stumbling into anything. I know exactly where I am going, which is nowhere. It's a stand still. I am more like one of many curious mounds I saw in the Belizean countryside. Amidst an otherwise gently sloping landscape there might be a cluster of particularly conical hills. They are covered in dirt and vegetation like any other part of the forest but they may actually be temples. The people who own the land either cannot afford or do not care to afford (if you know what I mean) the expense of hiring archeologists to uncover the ancient structures and the government forbids that anyone else take a shovel to them. The temples were washed over by a tide of vines, then one of ground covering plants, then shrubs, then trees, etc. At every step, the assailants' roots and foliage deteriorate and add to its loamy blanket, so that with disuse each temple becomes more and more an ordinary hill. All the temples have to do is sit there and wait to be folded into the pages of oblivion.

Am I a temple underneath all of my dirt after all? Perhaps those acute angles are nothing more than anomalies. Yet, that is not possible, is it? Where do such strange things come from if they are not built? We will never know for sure without digging; this is why I need to make a motivation proclamation. Whatever it is that is burying me needs to be thrown off.