I like how I can look at a picture of the sun on the horizon and decide on my own if it's a sunrise or a sunset. [nerd voice] "Technically, it's both because the Earth is revolving."

I've got most of next week off. Tuesday through Friday. Woo-hoo, a 6-day weekend! I have no set plans for this time period, except maybe clean up the backyard. The puppies have found everything that can be torn apart and strewn it all over the yard. They got into a cushion for one of the outdoor chairs and it almost looks like snow.

I guess I'll need to purchase a rake. 

I also need to get to the turf shop and buy some scraps of turf. To put turf over the entire yard is a large expense. But scraps of turf throughout the yard might at least give the pups something to lie on while they sun themselves, although they are quite content to lie in the dirt. I pet them and it's just a cloud of dust.

Wary though. Will still need shade for the summer. Turf can get hot. Maybe I'll design it and go from there. Pretty little pictures. 

 I feel much better today. According to my future-watch I got over five hours of deep sleep. Yesterday I'd had just below three. I used to keep better track of these things. If I had less than 4 hours of deep sleep, I knew to avoid anything too complicated.

Nothing written in my pocket notebook yet. Er, I did write something it just now because I remembered what I'd meant to put in there earlier. 

In my work, ye olde field of Medycal Supply, I encounter various situations. Often I merely brush by them like a feather on a pillar of granite. Sometimes, I become aware of a 38-year-old in the late stages of cancer. I thought, "Hey, I'm 38. Should I be thinking about my own mortality?"

And the answer is I've always been thinking of my own mortality. Not in the finale, so to speak, but in the chapters leading up to it. Every day a page.

Only The Book of Sand is infinite. So I hear. I search ancient libraries for it, but I have yet to find it. 

Do I know any stories? Maybe. Once I asked an author what advice he would give to his character at a certain point during his story. After his answer, I reached across the table and grabbed his shoulders. Shaking him I yelled, "Then why didn't you!?" until I was dragged away by the Literary Security Force. They took me behind the library and smacked me with rolled-up periodicals, right on my snout.

But I think I got my point across.

So that's in my journal now. Cancer patient, 38. I'm not sure if this is a real memory, but I feel like some people back in ye olde day thought cancer was contagious. If they did, maybe it was because stuff in the environment was causing the cancer and that's why clusters of people seemed to get it. 

But maybe that's not a real memory.

 Weary today. Feeling hollow, worn-down, frayed. Note to self: go to bed earlier. 

Maybe I dreamed too hard. There was something about a car accident. 

Heavy is the head that avoids the crown.

One of the puppies snuck onto the bed; maybe that's what interrupted my usual rest. 

Time to go into "dumb-mode," where I perform only the most basic tasks and avoid anything requiring more than two layers of thought. 

 Wore my big black coat this morning. Didn't really need to; but I wanted to. Why suffer mild discomfort for the 6 steps from my door to my car, and then the 8 steps from my car to my office door.

I don't hate snow, I realize. I just hate stuff getting in my way.

Being cold is also okay; just not at work because my fingers get cold and I type even worse than I normally do. 

I should wash the puppies today. Will they immediately go out and roll around in the dirt? Yes. But they'll be clean for a moment. 

The walls in my office are thin. In addition to smelling the delicious breakfast cooking in the cafe next door every morning, I can hear muffled conversations from the office on my other side. Sometimes singing.

It's fine, really. Mainly the only distraction in here is me.

And the breathing of charlatan shadows. (This doesn't mean anything; I'm putting words together to listen to the sounds. I wonder how I would write if I were born deaf? Alliteration and all that might not mean much. Languages like Chinese might have the advantage, with their "logographics" (I looked that up just now).)

I created a user name called "DustDriftsUpward" because I liked the sound of it. And I imagined that playing online people might call me Dust. Nobody does, because I rarely use that account, and I almost never talk when I play multiplayer. The other players see a little speaker icon next to my name and know that I can talk, if I wanted to. Then again, they don't really know if I can talk. Maybe I was born deaf but I have some sci-fi headset that sits on my entire head like a spiderweb and vibrates to indicate sounds. Like if someone was sneaking up behind me it would vibrate their steps softly and then louder as they got close.

Inventing a device like that wouldn't be too hard; probably already exists. Probably the hard part would be programming the software so the head-net knows how to translate each types of sound. And maybe getting everyone to shave their heads. 

I'll get the team working on it. What team? Note to self: get a team to so I can develop inventions.

Could probably make something like a sonar blind people too. They could ping ultra-high frequency sounds for the headset to pick up. I pity the poor fool with sensitive hearing who thinks they're going mad. 

My limbs become trees. 

You call that an abyss? I got voids within voids.

Drown myself in my work, I guess. Have I been? Maybe. I've certainly been more productive. Dogged determinism. (Yes, I mean determinism.)

The grief is vast, but I appear to be floating on it this time.

I woke up this morning at 6 am, a full hour before I needed to be awake. Again, if I remember correctly. Perhaps I'm internalizing some sort of mangled daylight savings time. Darkness saving time. 

There is much to do, I feel. House stuff, I think. Draining the hot water heater. That's a thing people do. Or cleaning the lint hose for the clothes dryer. That's important because it could catch fire when drying out piles of oily rags and old newspapers.

Wayward hounds bound beyond.

 I have forgotten to bring my pocket notebook. I remember what was in it; a note from years ago about getting Rouba some supplies for the kittens she was fostering. So....long time ago.

I woke up early this morning, around 4 am. Reminded me of the times I used to get up that early to work at the animal shelter. And also when I used to come to work early, at this job, and write in my journal. Trying to fill up one of my beautiful ones. Which I did. One of them anyway.

Probably time to scan everything from my journals so I have a digital copy of them. Darwin's notebooks were scanned, and although they appear to have been stolen, the world still has the scans. Pretty sure nothing of universal import is in my journals, however someone could potentially read them and think "That's a particularly poor turn of phrase, now that I've suffered through reading it, I shall avoid ever writing anything like that myself."

And thus, I will have done a small good.

Strawberries in the summertime.

I've eaten a lot of meat because of Thanksgiving. I'd been pretty content with my diet of rice, beans, cheese, and tortillas, and the occasional egg. An added bonus was not having to spend any time thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner. Is there a word for someone who loves food, but doesn't like thinking about food? Porcine? I also don't watch cooking shows or food competitions. I do watch food videos where someone is recreating a food from a fictional program. 

I'm going to cancel my Amazon Prime account after Christmas. I'm going back to the week-long free shipping, which gives me enough time to regret and cancel whatever nonsense I've purchased. 

A negligible improvement to my life, but a recurring one. All these recurring costs....each one another thread on the worm gear of the meat grinder.

Or whatever I used to call it. The Crush? This whole system that keeps me making money for investors while I earn enough to survive and spend the rest on passing desires. I can see the appeal of drugs at this point. Buy em, use em, move on. You don't end up with a garage of clutter. Just the regrets.

Time to start my church for dogs. St. Francis of Assisi's Home for Wayward Hounds. Supreme Court is just giving away all the religious rights these days; it's the way to go. 

Modeled after the Catholic Church, of course. We'll have doggy church, and perform the holy rite of the Poocharist: a dog treat and a sip of gravy from a golden dog bowl/chalice.

 The city burns. Not my city. Broad Ripple is burning, according to this song. I think maybe this isn't about literal fire.

The house is quieter with only 3 dogs. Watson was the watchdog. Marceline does a decent job, but she lacks the preternatural awareness of any movement outside the house that usually comes standard with dogs. 

The puppies just think everyone is their friend. They also aren't afraid of the vacuum cleaner. Correlation or Causation? This merits further study.

I am at work, and I am busy. End of month is when I am most popular. Hard to get away for even a short break. Hard for most people, anyway. I remember when I used to never take breaks. That was some time ago. I don't regret it; I learned a lot from trying things with all my might. 

I was listening to the "Amelie" soundtrack and looked into the composer, Yann Tiersen. Seems like the association I have with the music as the eternal soundtrack of a whimsical romantic pseudo-Paris is not what he was going for when he wrote the music originally.

Then again, there has always been a deep longing and melancholy in the music, like it was building to a joy that would never come, that I would pick up on sometimes. Like the moment when you wake up from a dream of a loved one that has died. 

Will we come out of this plague different? Seizing the day all over the place? Or will we just go back to living our lives as before. I think of this movie...can't recall right now. The main character says of being a parent "When you have kids, you say you'll do anything for them. The words feel right on you lips. But mostly, you just go on living your life." Something like that. 

Will we rebuild Broad Ripple the same way it was, after it's done burning?