I squated 225lbs today!

 heeby deeby! that felt good!

I got a new plant today!

 welcome to the apartment, new plant. 

Practicing Gratitude

 grateful for a good dentist check-up, good spring weather, a body that works good, good friends, food, the people in my community, my plants, and good things yet to happen.

on turning 34

"haHA! I've achieved inner peace and you probably haven't yet!"

"haHA! I've aligned my resolve with my intentions!"

"haHA! I understand that it's a song you're supposed to sing and dance to and not a game you're meant to win or lose!"

Just kidding. I also hope that you achieve all those things. And I only feel those types of ways sometimes. But Maw Maw said I'm doing good and that's worth a lot too.

I dropped the last move on MAGNUM (V6) and did Feet Cut Var (V6) in two parts!

moonboard update. really pleased with my climbing session today. goal was to work hard moves with little to no expectation of sending anything and I ended up doing a lot of moves! were they easy for the grade? yeah for sure. But I still did them! big confidence booster.

it's my birthday tomorrow!

happy to be alive. here's to another year of getting older and better.

 I like life best when it's a weird little play that you put on for yourself and others

A line I'll never not think about is from Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

'And every breath that is in your lungs is a tiny little gift to me.'

did the opposite of doom scrolling today

 I went outside to my little patio area and I enjoyed the view. The clouds were covering the sunset but it was still golden hour and I stood at this sidewall that overlooks the parking lot and the backs of the businesses I live behind and the trees behind those and the road in the distance and I looked and listened.

felt real good. might become an evening routine. 

Baudrillard and colorful objects

 I just remembered at the afterschool program I went to growing up that if you did something bad they would put you in time out but they didn't call it time out they called it "sit in the brown chairs" because there used to be brown chairs in the lobby of this building which was a public recreation center that also had a childcare program but then soon after I started going there they got new chairs and they were purple but 'go sit in the purple chairs' didn't have the same ring to it and so they still called it 'go sit in the brown chairs' and I think that's a beautiful thing.

It gets at what Baudrillard called in Simulacra and Simulation the 4 stages of sign order.

So in the first stage the brown chairs refer to actual chairs that are brown where you sit when you've done something bad.

The second stage is a perversion of reality where now the brown chairs refers to chairs that aren't actually brown at all. The purple chairs.

And then in the third stage it would be like if the chairs were gotten rid of entirely. And "go sit in the brown chairs" meant that you just stand in a spot where it is believed that the chairs used to be.

And then in the final stage there is no connection to reality whatsoever. And so 'sit in the brown chairs' purely means you are in trouble but you don't go to any location or do anything. You're just in an abstract state of being that is known as "sitting in the brown chairs." 

This is also similar to the therapeutic boarding school I worked at where if you did something bad you were put on something called "green sheet" which was an actual green sheet of paper that you carried around with you throughout the day but if a boy said "I'm on green sheet" you know that that referred more to their standing within the community than the actual green piece of paper. And then being the boys they were some started referring to it as "gren shen" and so they would just go around saying "gren shen. gren shen."

There's not really a point to any of this I just think it's interesting.

license plate

 yesterday I saw a vanity license plate and the only thing I could remember about it was that it belonged to an annoying person. but I couldn't remember anything else about them. 90% sure I didn't like them though.

It's like when a dog growls at something for no reason. oooo I don't know what that is or what it does but something inside tells me I'm supposed to hate it. 

comfort eagle the album

 I heard the Cake song 'Love You Madly' on the radio yesterday and then I remembered that I have the album it's on, Comfort Eagle. And I've been listening to it and I can't believe how good this album is. I've heard it many times but I haven't listened to it all the way through in a while and now I'm going to share my favorite parts of each song.

Opera Singer- My favorite thing about this song is the syncopation (?) or the timing John McCrea uses but I can't sing a lot with it. I mean I can sing along with it but I can't do it perfectly. Like perfectly perfectly. I've tried so many times. Using 100% of my brainpower. I know all the words but he never comes in on the beat and there lines he repeats but he changes them each time slightly. I don't know. Every time I start this album it's a challenge to sing along to the first song and come in at the right time and I can never do it perfectly. That was a weird start and it makes it seem like I don't know how music works but you have to listen to the song to know. He's doing some crazy stuff. All the other songs I can sing along to. Literally any other song in any language ever I can sing along to. It's just this one. Probably no one can. 

Meanwhile, Rick James- The best line in this song is 'We will swim in your kidney. Kidney-shaped pool." What a twist! Also, I always thought the chorus was "Meanwhile, Rick James takes anew" Like he's...doing a new take or something? Because he's a musician? But no I just looked up the lyrics and it's "Meanwhile, Rick James takes her nude." And I don't like that. I'm not gonna sing it that way. 

Shadow Stabbing- The consonants in these lyrics are incredible.

adjectives on a typewriter

he moves his words like prize fighter

the frenzied pace of a mind inside the cell

The crunchy sounds are so good. Also this song is used in the opening sequence of a movie I saw on TV once. Orange County starring Jack Black. I don't remember the movie at all but I remember this song was in it.

Short Skirt, Long Jacket- I heard this song for the first time on WNRN with my mom in the car and we thought it was the coolest funniest thing we've ever heard.

Commissioning a Symphony in C- I'm going to say this and you won't believe me and you won't understand but there's a line that goes:

"to your nephew you can give it as a present"

And it scratches my brain in a way that no other delivery does. It's like when water is flowing so smoothly that it doesn't look like it's moving at all. The way those words move together unlocks something in my brain. I can't explain further.

Arco Arena- I think of this song as the intro to Comfort Eagle and the only lyrics are "YA!" and there's a couple YA moments and it's a very satisfying build and then you yell YA! I guess there are also some 'heys' or something.

Comfort Eagle- Every time I sing all the words to this song I get...mouth fatigue? Like it's tiring to sing all the words and only this song does this. He's doing this kind of talk-singing thing and the words are relentless. It's very fun. I love this song.

Favorite line: The double wide shine on the boot heels of your prime

Long Line of Cars: This is a good song but it is the first potential skip. But also it's commentary on how car-centric American life is and I like that kind of commentary. It's a good song.

Love You Madly- I first heard this song from like a JMU Acapella group when I was in high school. Oh and Comfort Eagle I first heard in like an old flash animation back when websites just hosted animations that people made. The crazy thing about this album is that I have like old old memories of all these songs before I ever owned the actual CD that I bought from a Goodwill in Harrisonburg with my sister one summer. It's like if through your life you met all these different people that you formed meaningful relationships with and then when you were like 27 or something you found out they were all related. Anyway the best line in this song is "when I kiss your lips I want to sink down to the bottom of the sea."

Pretty Pink Ribbon- This song confuses me. The lyrics

Your cancer would eat to the bone

your muscles would bulge underground

your demons would all be around

without the pretty pink ribbon

you'd end up just like me

I still don't know what this one is about. Well, I guess those lyrics are pretty clear. But then the rest of the song has nothing to do with any of that stuff. I don't know. 

World of Two- I think Cake wanted to make a song that like a best man or maid of honor could sing at a wedding. Or a parent maybe? It's clearly about being close to someone who is presumably getting married. It's a nice song to end the album on. There's this part at the end where he goes

It's not that I don't think you are

two of the most

perfectly

beautiful

people in your world 

in your world of two

Anyway, I could understand if people don't like these songs as much as I do. I think you either like John McCrea's voice or you don't. But I do and like I said I heard a lot of these songs growing up and I love the lyrics and how they sound. So there you go you read that whole thing and if you did then I'm proud of you and I love you. 

my birthday is in ten days so I'm writing a poem

when you are my age

and your birthday is soon

and on your way home

a rock chipped your windshield

then for your birthday

you ask for a 

new windshield

It's more of a song really. You gotta sing it.

Wealth is being free from wants.

people look at me and probably think,

 "that guy--that guy doesn't know how to stack Adirondack chairs on a tractor. no way."

Well guess what I do. I do know that. I can haul 15 to 16 at once baby. I am a tractor man. Who knows his own feelings and the feelings of others too. A modern day Da Vinci some could say. 

work endorphins

do I like work?

do I enjoy labor?

do I feel satisfaction like I haven't felt in a long time after a day spent going around doing tasks??

Acquiring items. Moving things from place to place. Operating machinery!

Yes. Maybe. I don't know. All I know is that at like 4pm on Saturday I'd spent the day doing nothing and I had a moment where I was like, "I feel bad. I feel like I don't want to do anything and that I might never want to do anything ever again. This is not normal. Something is wrong with me."

And then today at 4pm I was driving home only so I could turn around and do more work and I was like, "Something is deeply right with me and the world right now."

Nothing good or bad happened in either scenario. One I didn't do much of anything and the other I did a bunch of stuff.

Am I a busy bee??? I thought I hated being busy. I thought I was the champion of idleness and indolence.

Much to think about. Much to consider.

no more writing about quotes

 I have looked through many of them and I find them all lacking and limp.

I will now draw wisdom from my own experience.

I was in a bad mood getting groceries and I dropped my cart off at the front of the store and carried my bags to my car. I put the bags in the passenger seat and closed the door and turned around and saw that the person in the car like three spots from me had just left their cart right by their car. So someone else was going to have to return it and it was also taking up like two parking spots. They were just sitting in their car so I stared at the back of their head the whole time as I walked over, took their cart, returned it to the cart return and then stared at them on my way back to my car. And then they drove off all fast and ran a bunch of stop signs and were being way too aggressive and I was like, "Guess what? You're dumb."

gas station celsius

“Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”

Hunter S Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Of course it meant something.

mostly I just yearn

big yearner

the thing I love about yearning is that you have to do it. what am I gonna do? not yearn? what even is that? 

top 3 parts of the human condition

-joy and laughter

-yearning

-pain suffering and loss

-honorary mentions to boredom and dread

I feel like I make an effort to experience laughter and joy but you can't just be there all the time. Pain suffering and dread we really try to avoid as much as possible. And then it's not even a choice between boredom and yearning. 

"I'm bored."

How could you be bored when there's something you could be yearning for? That's crazy.

we like crazy

I hit a squat PR today! 215! hooray!

 today I was coaching this group of kids who were feeling extra silly and goofy, there were 4 of them, and we were doing this climbing game that had us going around the gym and trying different stuff and it doesn't really matter what the game was---the important thing is that as soon as they were put on a team they insisted that I call them 'The Funny 4' and whenever we went anywhere I had to say, 'Ok Funny 4, let's roll out' and they would all do a somersault in the direction we were going.

In service of the bit I acted very annoyed and unimpressed by the whole thing and as we made our way around the gym I kept going in a very flat and dull tone, "Ok Funny 4, let's roll out." And then they would all giggle and laugh and roll around.

So that was very fun.

And on Monday I made the club kids guess the word 'bolus' which is a large mass of chewed up food and the first time I used that word was like 6 or 7 years ago when we had an onion grass eating contest at afterschool. Good times.  

part two in my 'be like a tree' series

this time I'm not sleep deprived so maybe it will be worse. in part one we talked about how trees don't try to blow or not blow in the breeze, they just do it. 

in part two we will talk about doing the same thing every day but different. a tree has got to make leaves and flowers and sap and tree stuff. a human has to let the people around them know that they care about them. it's like that line in the louis armstrong song, 'what a wonderful world' he says, "I see friends shaking hands saying, 'how do you?' they're really saying, 'I love you."

you get to show it and say it and recreate it every day and that's what language and imagination and creativity is for. 

I love an underlying question. I could think about underlying questions all day long. you start thinking about underlying questions--that's where the juice is. And I think the underlying question of most interactions is 'do you care about me?' and also 'how much? is it the amount I think?' It kinda makes sense when people talk about constantly asking, 'do you hate me?' 'are you mad at me?' I don't think that's pure paranoia and insecurity.That question is the nugget at the heart of a good amount of conversations. That's what we're all trying to figure out.  

we lost the tree analogy but it's a great and beautiful thing to get to show people you care about them. And it's new every time but it's also the same thing again and again. Not to act like bad people don't exist and that interactions can't be painful and fraught and difficult. It's like football. Like if trees played football. There are penalties and injuries and unsportsmanlike contact but that's not the game. That's not the ultimate goal. Those things are part of the game but the purpose is to score a touchdown--a touchdown of bond and caring. 

not many people just talk into nothing

not many people that I know in real life anyway. Of course the internet is filled with people talking into nothing. But I don't actually know them. It's probably because most people I know use that time and energy to talk to people they know. When I say talk into nothing I mean something like blogging. Putting your thoughts and feelings out there for anyone who comes across it to read or watch. 

But I think even the people who are really good at it, the professionals, I'll never meet them. And I really enjoy spending time with people but I think there's something unique and special in hearing another person talk to themselves or talk to nothing.

On social media people either like what they think is funny or interesting or cute or use it as a platform to show what they think is important and that's what it's for but some people use it to narrate their lives almost. Like you get a picture of who they are. And that will never not be interesting to me.   

I don't know what this post is. This is me doing a nothing and saying I like it when other people do this thing too. As if that should be a surprise to anyone. I don't know. Do it.

One thing I've been working on is doing things that are special for myself. And doing things to make days and moments special. And the way that manifested itself today was I gave my plants plant food. Every two weeks I mix a teaspoon of plant food into a gallon of water and I water all my plants with it and they're looking a lot greener and happier than they have been. As I've said many times I love my plants and I really make an effort to take good care of them but to me and my simple brain 'plant food' felt like a complicated thing. Anyway I'm glad I got some and took the time to do it because my plants look better and that makes me happy. 

Something I really value is consistency and showing up and doing the things I committed to doing and I think I avoid going above and beyond sometimes because in my mind it's like now that's where the bar needs to be and if I go all out one time  but it's not repeatable then I'm letting others down. So I just try to do what's manageable every time and do it well. But maybe that's inflexible thinking a little. Do a good job and then sometimes do a great job. And sometimes do a bad job and feel bad and then do a better job. Yeah. Anyway if you've read this far as always I love you and wish a million blessings upon your head.

How do the trees know that it's windy?

Today I was coaching at a climbing competition and fueled by lack of sleep and overstimulation I said to one of the climbers I coach,

"Look out the window. See the trees? How do the trees know that it's windy out?"

How do the trees know that it's windy??

Because, because because

Right? Because the trees don't know that it's windy out. Obviously. It is windy out and the leaves are blowing in the wind. It's humans that are always trying to know if it's windy out. Not windy--like windy--but like 'oh me oh me oh my what should I be doing? Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing it the right way?" We're always trying to figure out how windy it is and if our leaves are blowing too much or not enough or the right way or the wrong way. 

How silly would it be for a tree to be anxious or uncertain about the wind. A tree just trees.

But what about all my precious choices and decisions??? You cry.

Nah. If it's calm-be still. If it's windy-- sway and rustle. Make fruit and grow.

Yeah but trees don't really do anything.

Trees do so so so much! All the time. Just most of it isn't labor that can be exploited efficiently. Or confer status. Trees do real stuff that make the planet habitable and nice to be in. Nerd. 

Anyway there you go there's your discount Alan Watts and Ram Dass for the day I'm gonna go eat potatoes.

sometimes I feel like I get messages that are meant for me to see

and even if they aren't

it's an experience worth having

worth sticking around for

what I did today

 Today I woke up and then went back to sleep. Overall a pretty good slumber.

Then I got up and made my usual smoothie with canned mandarin oranges, protein powder, vanilla Greek yogurt, banana, and frozen berries. I did the sudoku in my sudoku book and watched Youtube. I'm on them medium difficulty puzzles now and they take twice as long to do. I also made coffee. I was noticing a lot of noises happening outside and I was trying to concentrate at the same time and I didn't want to sit in silence but also I couldn't find anything to play in the background that wouldn't start giving me a headache. But I powered through and solved the puzzle anyway because I'm a champ like that I guess. Then my friend stopped by to give me some eggs and we made a little zine about eggs and hung out and then I went to the track and met up with my other friend and we did a sprint workout that went pretty dang good! I was happy.

I showered and ate plant burgers and then I went to the gym and did squats and hung out with folks there. Squats weren't feeling great but then I did 195 and 200 and it started moving pretty well so I went for 210 which would've been a 5lb new best and got stuck about halfway up and fought for what felt like a really long time but was probably only 2 seconds at most. It was really close though. On a day when I actually feel good I can definitely get it. 

My thought of the day is this:

As the sweet apple reddens on the highest branch,

high on the highest branch, that the apple pickers forgot-

no, they didn't forget; that apple they could not reach

scanner guys

 

oorbs mcgoo and duckthony quacktano

front desk guys

 

From left to right: Lil' Big King Rashes, Belt Sander, Oofus Wainwright, Cindy Clawford, Lt. Dan, and Booki Boomaj

april chalkboard

 

can you solve it?

march chalkboard

 

 Pixar movie called 'Doors' where the people is doors and keys are their food and this one mean door--everyone thinks he hates keys but then, um, it's just the one specific key that unlocks him and he never really hated keys at all. 

Right? Will this heal our wounded soul? What if we pretended to not understand the relationship between doors and keys and then solved it with the plot of a movie? Couldn't we all stand around then and pat ourselves on the back over the triumph of understanding and emotional growth?

Doors!

who wants to be my FOOL?