I went driving again today. it was simple, just going through a local cemetery and crossing my fingers that I didn't totally eviscerate some innocent person's headstone.... but I succeeded! it's honestly quite relaxing once you get the hang of it. like my mother said, the car does a lot of the work for you........... but those sharp turns are my enemy, I'll be honest. scary! scary!!! but by the end of it, it was pretty fluid. I'm more nervous about driving on the road, mostly because having to watch for other cars is just a nervewracking concept, but honestly I don't think it's too bad. just keep your eyes on your environment, right? I'm good at that, luckily. I'm the designated deer-spotter, after all... I was born for this!!!

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately reading about the natural wonders of the world. well, I'm kind of always doing that, but I found this little nature handbook from the audubon society I did not realize I had. I've been spending some time flipping through the pages and reading about all the different facets of our environment. despite it being one of my greatest interests, it's amazing how there's always so many new things to learn - even in the things you think you know like the back of your hand! I've gotten pretty interested in clouds and weather patterns especially.

it does, however, make me think about how disconnected we all are from these things that make up our entire lives. we (as humans) used to be so in-tune with the environments around us and how they impact us and our lives, but now it's barely even a second or, hell, even third thought in our minds. it's little more than an inconvenience (when rainy) or a blessing (when sunny). culture in general is just so overwhelmingly dictated by the internet right now, it's pretty bizarre when comparing the modern era to ages past.

I mean.... all the mechanisms, gizmos, and gadgets didnt come out of nowhere - they're all inspired by the natural processes of the world around us. many of our own inventions were pulled, of course, directly from the natural world around us, and experimented with and modified to achieve its technical specificity. it's pretty incredible. the circuitry of a computer can be compared to that of a brain, and we only were able to take flight by studying the physics of birds. even as society moves away from the natural world and the gifts mother nature brings to us, we still carry it in all our modern technologies, because without it all, we would be and will be nothing.

and another thing that really is lovely and also a bit amusing about people... the insatiable desire to understand. storm chasers dedicate countless hours of their lives towards chasing tornadoes and trying to understand them as intimately as possible. humans really will do ANYTHING just to understand. we all have that insatiable curiosity, and if not curiosity, that internal confidence, to understand or believe we understand. we want to know soooo baddddd OOHH we want to know so bad. I'm going to have to do research on where this inherent human curiosity and desire for knowledge comes from on an evolutionary scale, because, well, it's certainly one of the biggest reasons we are where we are right now... for better or for worse. humans are flawed and messy in all their own ways, after all... and sometimes curiosity does, indeed, kill the cat...

aaaanyway. I saw plenty of lovely little birds today. a group of brown-headed cowbirds hopping along the road of the cemetery, a pair of crows trotting through a damp soccer field, a flock of pigeons flying in circles above a house, a mockingbird flitting from branch to branch showing off its beautiful white wing spots, a house finch singing its heart out from the top of a lone tree in the middle of a wawa parking lot... I'm sure there were plenty more that evaded my sights, but I was more focused on driving the car anyway :-P

also, my eye has been twitching incessantly for a few days now...I'M GONNA GO NUTTY!!!!!!!!!!!! please make it stop.

GRAAAHHH!!!

the sludge is back, of course. that thick, black, gooey, sticky sludge that trickles through my body, squeezing its way through every foramina and coating my organs until they slowly yet slowly rot and decay. dripping and peeling and splitting and melting and mummifying and then melting all over again. it's itchy, almost. a deep, deep, unscratchable itch that nothing but a good blunt can reach in and scratch. maybe the smoke goes in and flushes it all out, like how beekeepers smoke hives to quell the aggression of their little bees. sure, yeah, it's something like that, sure, I think.

I feel very trapped. I'm stuck in one of those indiana jones temple traps where the walls are rapidly closing in, just moments away from brutally crushing you; except the walls never close. at least being crushed is some form of release, because once it's over, it's over; but I'm instead stuck in a permanent state of anticipation. that anxious itch, that tense brace, waiting for an impact that isn't coming; not like I'm one to look much for conclusions anyway, but I am, however, one to despise any feelings of stagnation, which is exactly where I am right now. stuck. Im stuck!! STUCK!!!!!!! text does not give me the proper faculties to express myself!!! STUCK!!!!! imagine the letters are really big and shaking around.

also, can we talk about how fucking abysmal the internet is right now? holy jesus you can't do anything without it opening up like 30 windows or pop-ups or something. not to mention how dastardly EVIL social media is. just everything about waking up and experiencing life as it is right now is a miserable experience. and I hate being miserable. I HATE IT!!!!! I love to complain, but complaints are temporary! misery LASTS! it attaches to you like a parasite and sucks you dry of everything you got until you're a shriveled up little skeleton of whoever you were before your infection. at the very least, I feel like people are starting to wake up to how ridiculously evil, insane, and absurd life is right now. we, as humans, as people, as a society, have become so far removed to who we truly are in our hearts and in our heads, we are all rotting away from the inside out. the world is rotting, these systems are rotting, it's all rotting and nobody knows how to maintain the upkeep necessary to salvage it. as ted kaczynski predicted, of course - the downfall of modern civilization will come! we are in the late stages of this system set up with no genuine foresight, and we suffer the consequences. we are in the infantile stages of a great, great shift! mark my words! everyone, everyone, young or old, is yearning for, begging, and searching for any sense of connection. and it is quite hilarious how the internet, the thing meant to connect everyone all around the world, only ended up driving everyone further apart, huh? funny!! VERY FUNNY!!!!!!!!!! but people are realizing. I hope they realize faster. a revolution cannot happen with the snap of a finger or the firing of a gun or the lighting of a flame. it is a communal effort, and we are watching people search and yearn for a regression in real time. after all, to err is to human, and perfection is a disgusting, unnatural thing.

sometimes I wonder if I were better off being the member of a nomadic tribe in 500 BCE. and I think the answer is yes. severely shortened lifespan be damned.