allmostrelevant

Agh, damn. My toe just started to itch inside my shoe and I can’t scratch it. Well, there’s no good way to really scratch your toe anyways, so i usually end up using one foot to kind of squish and grind the other so my foot rubs against the inside of my shoe, and hopefully that’ll be good enough to scratch it, but sometimes it makes it worse. Why does my toe itch? Ugh, it feels like it’s actually inside my toe, too. And of course the more i talk about it it doesn’t go away because you really just need to distract yourself to make itches go away. I wonder if itches and hiccups come from the same place? Itches are a weird thing. You know exactly where they are, but at the same time they don’t really exist. An itch is just a feeling, a sensation; but it’s more a location than anything. It’s weird because it’s a feeling that’s unprovoked, like your body got bored or something and need to test that everything still works, so it sends one of your nerves out on a mission. I really have no idea what I’m talking about, but my toe stopped itching… damn, there it is again.

I want to go on an adventure. I want to miss my flight and have to hitchhike home. I want to do something stupid. I want to tell a story that I didn’t make up. She’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of in a girl. I want to take her on an adventure and laugh and get into trouble, do stupid things, and then get out of it together. I want to tell that story with her.

I think I’d make a good life coach or counselor. I’m really good at convincing people that they have what it takes, that they can do it, and that they can succeed, and then giving them reasons why. I’m especially good at doing this to myself, but somehow when I tell myself I can succeed and rise up to overcome the most unfavorable odds it comes off as self-delusion, a dream only kept alive by words and not by reaching out and pulling that dream into reality. In other words; something you can only see in the mirror. This is only true because I have to keep encouraging myself because I haven’t risen up to anything yet.

How fast are you supposed to run when you hear footsteps? I suppose that’s what makes us different–everyone’s got a different speed.                   Why are you supposed to run?

That moment when someone you know is having “a moment,” but it’s not really there moment to have a moment, however it takes you right out of the moment even though everyone was kind of having their own moment anyways.

At the end of Terminal B in the Sea-Tac airport there is some art that consists of a few ladders shooting up from the ground and going into the ceiling. These ladders are like normal aluminum ladders you can buy, except there is glass on the sides that is made to look like rushing water. The hallway leading up to this has a subtle wavy blue streak embedded in the floor that is every now and then adorned with a metallic fish. This leads me to believe that all of this effort and money was put into this… “art” just to make a pun: Fish Ladder. I make a pun and it’s silly and whimsical, but someone spent the money to buy that meticulously transparent project, and it is literally just the same thing; a pun. But not just any pun! It’s an expensive pun; the best kind. Now art just seems like a fish ladder in and of itself. The metaphor being that we’re all swimming upstream against the current, trying to get to the top, and once we do we sell out and our artistic principles die and get washed away with all the money, back downstream, making it harder for those at the bottom who hold fast to artistic principles to swim upstream so they too can sell out.

At airports they don’t let you sit on the baggage claim carousels, but they never have any benches near the baggage claim, so that’s pretty much your only option. A big man told me I wasn’t allowed to ride the ride.

Out of the blue my grandmother gave me a McDonald’s gift card for $20 dollars. She said I was a good kid and should have it, but I didn’t do anything. Have you ever gotten something you know you aren’t supposed to have? Not in a guilty sense, like I shouldn’t have all these tweenage pop albums in iTunes, but legitimately having something that you know isn’t yours. I was walking in a mildly run down part of downtown when a man with a cane hobbled towards me, “You ain’t afraid to talk to a black man, are you?”

“No.” I crossed the street because the red hand turned into a little walking man.

“Let me catch up to you.”

“I’m just about to leave.” My car was 20 steps away. I never turned fully around to address him, but kept a safe distance even though I didn’t feel threatened.  He stopped and then I stopped. His cane leg was swollen to three times its normal size. He had three dollars and an expensive disease. He was hungry. I said I didn’t have any money, but remembered the McDonald’s gift card. It’s better for me to not eat McDonald’s anyways. I gave it to him and drove home… I kind of want McDonald’s now.

When I was young my family owned one fifth of a boat, so every few weeks we’d take it out and go sailing for a half-day mini-vacation. We’d bring snacks and soda for refreshments, but I was only allowed to drink a soda if I helped out, in other words; earned it. Soda became the reward. I would sip it and relax because I knew I did my part, and it was vacation; at least that’s what I learned. At home I would do the yard work and have a soda, do my homework and have a soda, set the table and have a soda. I started having them more frequently so I stopped earning it, but it still felt like a little mini-vacation. I would sit down to work and then have a soda and not do anything because I already got the reward. I must have earned it. I forgot how to work hard and drank more soda, wondering why nothing ever got done.

A man worked for the engineering department at an oil company. His job as an adviser was to guide the rookies into professionalism. Once his mentees had learned all they could from him they would step  out and assume a loftier position elsewhere with a larger salary.  The company would lose one engineer every year, but would foresee this coming and hire another so productivity was never effected. This went on for many years until the adviser had aged well enough, and his own advice was being reciprocated around the country by his previous mentees, now advisers themselves. On his last day he stared at his empty desk and chair before walking away. His boss, and friend spoke with a sense of content and rest. “Don’t worry; we’ll find a way to fill it.”

The adviser patted his friend on the back. “We lose one every year, but I never thought it would be me.”

As spring begins to close and students begin to part for the summer, they want something to hold on to. People turn their ankles unexpectedly because students start taking bricks from the paths around campus, leaving big holes. Some poor guy has to go out in the morning rain and get on his hands and knees and put a replacement brick in because it would make a cool memento. I saw that guy as I walked the path today. He looked tired.