Shin Splints

I went hard two weeks ago.  After running 5 kilometers in 18 minutes on the treadmill, a spike of pain arose on my lower left shin.  I guess the lesson learned here is DON'T RUN INDOORS!  Though ignorant of the causal connection between the two, and at this point of desperate need for solution, I acquiesce.  I rode the Cascade Bicycle Club's "Chilly Hilly" amid the pain last Sunday and that was certainly not a good idea.  Still nursing the injury, not as painful as before, but it's still there and may not go away for awhile.  Boo!

The diagnosis is a bit facetious.  Correlation is not necessarily causation.

Anne Rice Said This

"I love god, and I believe in it, I love everything that it's done but I can't stomach what religion is doing."

WHOA!

"maybe you don't need a religion, maybe you just need to be a good person."

WHOA!

Back to School

Ever since I dropped out several years ago, I've summoned up the gusto to rekindle my need for education as of today.  I've been enrolled at Bellevue College since last year, only so I could tell people that I was studying, but that was never the case since attending class didn't quite enter the picture.  Now, that's all about to change.  Penciling in school into life is very inconvenient right now so I signed up for a music class; relatively mild in terms of work-load, yet mentally stimulating in my opinion.  I think I will go about this slowly and patiently, since I've now grown up and realized I cannot just dump work and still expect to live within the margins of comfort.

Self-Awareness II

I have come to accept that many years from now, I will be someone who was forgotten.

Stasis

I had a friend who once told me that boredom should never be an option.  That we should not accept the present as it is; to feel helpless and underneath it.  We should never resort to think that the forces around us are beyond our capacity to manipulate and control.  Satisfaction is a fleeting thing.  I often feel that it's a singular thing that remains for the duration of life, and that's why I occasionally experience this nagging sensation of constant boredom.

Rhapsody in Blue

A few times each year, I try to commit learning George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  This has gone on for a decade and I have, thus far, afforded myself the ability of delivering only the famous first measure, barely one quarter of a page.  The manuscript is 20+ pages long.  The excessive effort required to arrive at the mere threshold of the piece has to include a staggering amount of fear and indignation. Alas! What use is there in harboring effort upon the things that are so complex, learning them feels frustratingly unnecessary, and impossible; so difficult that their discontinuation seems like an attractive route?  Leaving aside the exceptional splendor in accomplishing things such as music like Rhapsody in Blue, or learning the sciences of geometry or physics, or making sense of the astonishing magic in books like Ulysses, learning and understanding the myriad complex things in life are adventures in and of themselves.  I think existence is enriched in this way.

This part may look easy but the entirety of Rhapsody in Blue involves some kind of finger-twisting acrobatics, migraine-inducing modulations, impossible chords, deceptive cadences, evident in Mr. Gibbons' performance below.

Self-Awareness I

Today, an abundance of sunlight filled my bedroom.  Typically, I do not bother to bring the curtains together before I descend into sleep each night since dark and gloomy mornings, especially amid this winter of exceptional solitude, are par for the course.  I awoke dazed as if my body had transported itself into a kaleidoscope.  While only half-conscious, I thought of Jeffrey McDaniel's Compulsively Allergic to the Truth, because the fanciful image of a "raspberry-scented candle, flickering in the mouth" could not escape me at the time.  I don't know.  Maybe it's too simplistic to describe the preciousness and value of life by accepting the mundanity of things that occur everyday as subject worthy of recognition, but little things like the sunlight bursting upon the face seem like something wonderful that I am meant to live in order to see.  At 8 in the morning, what else could there be?

Snowshoeing

Went snowshoeing yesterday.  Here are pictures: