I don't know. Maybe I got hit on the head. Maybe I had a mini-stroke. Maybe I had a vision. I don't know what you'd call it. But I had to leave.

Get out. Now.

Warning. Warning. Will Robinson. Warning.

Staying may lead to mental deprevation. Staying may result in self multilation, hearing voices, or worse. Consult your physician. Side affects could be life threatening.

And like most chapters in my life, let's not rewrite, but let's delete. History repeats? I don't remember how it was. It's fuzzy. Pieces. I'd do anything to hammer most of it to microscopic dust. I used to do so well with history. Got an empty memory for facts, as long as it's not about me.

Clean slate. Restart. Move forward, always forward. Detox. Never saying what if.

It's another fall day, the sort that isn't so bad and looming into winter. It's crisp and perfect for wanderlust. I've been saving my chickens and trying to figure out what the next move is going to be. I want somewhere, anywhere new. Something that says starting over and second chances to do it right. How many of those have I had and nothing ever seems better?

Right now, my days are spent hating myself. Hating that I have to lock my cat up in my room because the apartment I live in is cluttered with useless items that he knocks over in his pursuit of happiness and curiosity. Materialism is alive and well. I want desperately for it to be clean lines, clean aesthetics, clean anything, really, so that he can play to his heart's content. I feel wretched each morning as I lock up my room, saying, trying to convince myself that it's just for a little while. Part of me just wants to throw every piece of the apartment over. The stupid vases, the ugly pictures, the clutter, the clutter, the mounts of useless crap, and the dust that will never go away (heaven forbid ANYONE dusts - and there's a wonder about allergies?).

It's laboring on the soul. I feel like an unwanted guest in my own apartment. I just want to leave, return to my home, my place of rest. This isn't it. The overstuffed fridge with food that will go bad. The freezer that barely closes. The stove that's never cleaned after it's used. I just want to fall off of the world for a little bit. My heart palpitates irregular when I'm at this place. It feels like a prison. And at times, I feel like the prison master, forcing my helpless animal ward into a life that he didn't ask for. I feel awful everyday I continue to live there. And I feel like a broken record for every breath that I use to say how unhappy I am. It's everything I guess, and there's no refuge in the place I live.

Blur.

It's a perfect fall day. Crisp and cool. Long sleeves and a corduroy jacket. Maybe I should have brought gloves with me. It's okay. I'll dry my hands out early this year. They already feel rough to the touch. It's the scales, I guess. The leaves are falling but the grass is still green and growing. It smells a little like burning but I can't quite place where it's coming from. Just a faint smell in the distance. I doubt anything is burning in the city, especially leaves. I'm sure that's a hazard.

It's been a mindless day. I slept through my alarm, or it didn't go off. I'm not exactly sure, but my body wasn't too happy to get up. No, no, no, it heaved as I looked at my cell phone to verify if I had any time left to lay in bed with my darling orange cat.

I left my apartment with half of my shirt untucked and my hair tangled. It didn't matter. I'm not here to impress anyone of any caliber, and definitely not anyone on the CTA. As I walked out of the underground Chicago red stop, I thought that I should leave. Where to go? That's a good question. What exactly would I accomplish by up and leaving? Some days I think that's all I've got left for options: just leave, get out, go and assume a new identity. Get away from everyone who's boxed you into that box that's so painfully sized wrong. Maybe I could brainwash myself and it'd all be okay. Just stop this, all this.

It's a perfect fall day.

I walked to my regular bus stop to find that a man listening to some sort of walkman device and talking incessantly was standing there. I appreciate the bus taking an extra long time to show up. I stood on the opposite side of the bus stop shelter, but I still feared that at any moment this not-quite-sane person was going to try to talk or touch me. And since I like neither of those things in the morning, it was a very long and chilly wait for the bus. I hoped he wouldn't get on the same bus, but alas, he did. And talked to himself the entire ride to the redline. What about, I couldn't quite makeout, but I always assume it's about the government and conspiracy theories. You know, the good stuff.

I blew out my hair this morning, and I'm quite pleased with myself. It looks rather fancy. I thought it'd be a royal pain, but surprisingly, it was easier than expected. Who knew if you followed the advice given in magazines, it might actually result in something good.

It's October, and Chicago is ushering in the month with chilly weather. I am ready for a change in season. A change in season means that I am closer to be living in my own place. It's thrilling and frightening at the same time. I'm definitely ready to be the only one that I clean up after (besides the cat), but it's also daunting all the things one needs to acquire to be a functional individual. Like kitchen stuff and laundry stuff and cleaning stuff and pantry stuff and oh, oh, oh my gosh...so much. It's okay. I will live to tackle it. I will utilize the addicting Martha Steward website and print off her bajillion checklists, and I will be okay. I'll be fine. I just want to jump right into it...right now.

Thank You For Letting Me Walk Around Like A Crazy Person

I just want to know why no one has suggested recently that I use under-eye concealer. I've looked at myself in the mirror recently and my reflection in the train and store-front windows, and I have very large shadows sitting below my eyes. They only get worse as the day goes on. You wouldn't think that I actually get about 8 solid hours of sleep, funny.

In transport kooks, my favorite crazy was on my train car this morning. I can't believe he wasn't sitting next to the Plexiglas divider. Some poor girl was, and I don't know how she did it. I've got a problem with people talking aloud to their imaginary friends while I'm in their vicinity. I don't know, maybe one too many Law & Order episodes about what some of those imaginary friends say has me a little spooked. Maybe I also don't like the possibility of being leaned on or bumped by someone who's constantly rubbing themselves. He's a rocker too; I also dislike people who can't sit still. So to that girl sitting next to him, you're a trooper. I would have switched trains entirely to be away from him.

I had to do math at work today. I love doing math, basic computation. I never really liked word problems, just math. Nothing else really on that subject before I look like a real antisocial.

I tend not to pay attention to the world news, American news, or anything political. Not because I don't think it's important, but because I don't want to be brought down by it. Very rarely is there any good news. Most of it is disheartening. We've come so far only to have the same problems as we've always had: discrimination, social unrest, misunderstanding, closed minds, economic troubles, general crime. It seems as if someone is always talking over top of someone else. It's constant noise, and I prefer silence and minimalism. It's better not to know.

I can't say that I believe that there is change in the world on any monumental level. I guess most people enjoy the idea of hope; the idea that we're trying. I'm not so sure I agree; I think it's just as depressing knowing that with all the work, it won't change enough. With all the hope, someone will still be more powerful and more corrupt to bring this world apart. And who's side of the story do we believe anyways?

This doesn't mean I think we should stop trying, stop working. It just means that I don't hang my hope on the change. It won't hurt as much when the results don't happen.

Either...or...

In regards to the current economical situation and government deficit from New York Times article by David Leonhardt:

“Things will get worse gradually,” Mr. Auerbach predicts, “unless they get worse quickly.”

Thanks for the update.

American Beauty has been showing on TNT these past few weeks. Even though I own the movie, I seem to stop and watch it when it's programmed on a cable channel. Even though all the good parts are cut out (whoo, censorship), I still sit, enamored, jaw dropped like it's my first time viewing.

Unlike my first time viewing, I'm not sitting practically on top of the television with the sound turned to barely audible. Hoping and praying that no one in my family will walk in on me, wondering why I was watching a movie with an almost nude Mena Suravi seductively filling Kevin Spacey's midlife crisis fantasies. Being as it was on HBO, nothing was cut out.

I don't feel sick after watching it. No longer is there an urge to vomit. It doesn't shake my sense of safety or shatter my world view. It did that first time I watched. I don't know why I was so drawn to it. I'm not even sure if I understood what it would be about. I just knew that I wasn't supposed to watch it, but for whatever reason (probably a general distaste for my past years as a leming), I went against what I believed.

It's like being beat for the first time for no reason. Hit hard, repeatedly, and unmercifully. Your understanding of the world and humanity starts to crumble. It used to be friendliness, magnificant and pure beauty; it used to be hope and possibilities; it used to be safe, blindly safe. Now, it felt shattered. Sickening. I told an older friend, one not indoctrinated, that it made me want to vomit.

Even though it was just a movie, I believed it thoroughly. My world view was more fake than this fictional movie. Everything was different. People were liars, cheats, homosexual, sexually active, smoking, drinking, killing. I was more angry that they had been hidden from me, made an anomoly, than I was of their existance. I felt like the world had been misrepresented to me; I was the one that was wrong. My construction was wrong.

It was hopeful though. The scene of the video taped leave, dancing in the autumn wind. The character talks about how there's so much beauty in the world, even in things that might be considered ugly or distasteful. It makes him stop, question his existance. There's so much beauty that he can't contain it, can't process it all. Maybe that isn't hopeful. It's too much...too much for humanity to handle.