people notice something I'm wearing or holding and say, "is that new?"
And then I say,
"HA! New to YOU!"
It's a pretty needlessly rude thing to say to someone who's just trying to make a friendly observation but I like to imagine that I have all sorts of esoteric knowledge and wisdom that I've known for years and is only just now apparent to wide-eyed green-horned first-rodeo individuals.
Maybe don't do this one. It never gets a laugh or a good reaction.
I will keep doing it though.
One piece of running wisdom that I've accepted for a long time but recently started to question is the idea that most of training should be done with a controlled approach. If you watch videos of athletes and their coaches doing workouts you'll often hear the coach saying that the most important thing is that they stay relaxed--"RELAX! RELAX!!" The whole video is them screaming "RELAX!!" They'll say that the only time they want to go 100% is during a race or maybe a few key workouts leading up to a big race.
"RELAX! RELAX!"
The idea is that going too hard too often can fry the nervous system and slow recovery between sessions. It's like there's a continuum between Low Intensity, High Volume that Produces Little Stimulus for Adaptation and High Intensity Low Volume that Produces High Stimulus for Adaptation. And most training plans seem to want to aim for like 80% Intensity. That seems to be where most people can train the longest without breaking down and still get a fruitful response.
It all seems very sound and there's plenty of anecdotal and clinical evidence to support it but something really irks me about coaches preaching RELAX! and DON'T PUSH in workouts. Yesterday I was reading this tweet from Steve Magness about how the way the brain and body perceive discomfort is super subjective. If you tell an athlete to relax and go easy, then you're priming their system to notice any discomfort and it tends to make the reps feel harder. By the same token, races where athletes push as hard as they can can feel relatively easy. You're priming the body to ignore as much as discomfort as possible for the sake of performance.
Caveat: it is absolutely the case that you can assign 4 reps in a workout and an athlete goes way too hard on the first one and can't run the last 3 reps with any quality. But I would argue that thinking about relaxing and staying controlled and patient isn't the only way you can achieve smart pacing. You can try hard and still pace well.
that's a simple joy of my day
if I had to guess the percentage of people who own heated blankets I'd say confidently that it's not enough. you need a heated blanket. those things are good. don't believe me? ask me!
Um, yeah, I'm right about that. Heated blanket best sleep you've ever gotten in your life kid don't even question about thinking it. Regular blanket no heat from the blanket whatsoever heated blanket heat from the blanket makes all the difference.
Things have just felt a little more hectic than usual. I blame the cold and how much school they missed. Everybody's routine is off. I'm proud of myself though for how I've had patience while still maintaining boundaries and structure. I like that working with kids can still be challenging and make me question how I can be better. I know I'm a better coach than I was a year ago and two years ago.
I like having tough times because it reminds me why I do what I do.
this kid I coach was on a slab climb where he didn't have anything to put his hands on and he was balancing on this really slippery piece of textured wood and his foot pops off and as he's sliding down his shin brushes against what he was standing on and takes off a good patch of skin. And immediately on his face I can see he's in so much pain and he's hobbling away from the climb and the judge asks if he wants his score card back and he musters up politeness from deep within himself and very calmly says, "no thank you" and takes the card and goes back to wincing and limping. I was amazed at the composure he was able to summon.
We were running out of time fast in the comp and he had another climb he wanted to try and so to cover his raw shin he takes the band-aid he'd placed on his bloody knuckles at the beginning of the competition and moved it to his shin. Not a sanitary move whatsoever but it demonstrated is drive and determination in a way I have rarely seen.
you can cherish something for being big
wow! I just made a BIG mistake!
you can cherish something for being small
my W2 form came on such a SMALL paper! I feel like they're not normally that small. Why is it so small?! I cherish that!
you can cherish something for being yellow
yellow M&M. you're the dumb one. and the red one is the angry one. but I don't think dumbness is a quality inherent to the color yellow. I cherish you all the same
Sometimes when I feel like using fancy words I like to get in people's faces about it and ask them if they know what the word means because I think they probably don't and then I tell them what it means by using simpler words and then they'll say "WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST USE THAT WORD' and then I smile because they've fallen right into my trap and then I say "Because the human experience is endlessly vast and varied and occurs and infinite detail so why would not want as many colors as possible to paint with?!"
Which is true. If you give all the burden of being understood to the speaker and none to the listener then yes you should be as specific as possible BUT it's just as easy to put the burden on the listener and say 'I like the painting because it's BIG and YELLOW' and as the listener if you dismiss that as trite and banal it's because you didn't take the time to consider how cherishing something for being big and yellow is actually a beautiful thing to do.
"Maybe you should tell on yourself more," he says to me.
"What's that?" I say back.
"Well you keep doing things you're not supposed to do and then someone goes and tells on you and get in a lot of trouble. Why not skip the middle step and tell on yourself instead of waiting around for someone else to do it?"
"Won't I just get in trouble faster that way?"
"No. No. No. It's a brave and honorable thing to admit your own faults. Everyone is doing something wrong all the time so it's very honest to confess."
"I don't think it works that way."
"Sure it does. If you do something wrong because it's convenient for you in that moment and then admit to doing it--all you've done is exert your will without shame. It's much worse to not act at all or to act but then have someone else talk about it--you'll seem a coward."
I rip out the Tree of Life by its roots and throw it into the Sun. The world freezes and burns as it ceases to turn.
To some extent I understand the logic of, I'm going to give people I care about a hard time or challenge them or antagonize them because I want to inoculate them against the people out in the world who are going to do that. But I think the emphasis should overwhelmingly be placed on caring and understanding. I'd put it at ratio of 9 parts understanding and support to 1 part teasing.
Yeah I'm sure if someone only ever received support and never got any push back, they'd probably be overly devastated when some stranger tried to antagonize them. But I think the inverse is way more dangerous. If you teach someone that the people who care about you are supposed to be mean to you, you're gonna end up drawn to horrible people OR you're not going to know how to assess someone who decides to show you support and they could be genuine and you don't trust them or they don't have your best interests and you can't see that because they're telling you things you've always wanted to hear.
Priority number one should be being safe, stable, unequivocally supportive and that's your baseline you can work from. But if you don't have that then all the other stuff gets really screwy.
I was looking about the etymology for the word 'saint' and it was pretty boring. It was just some Latin word for sacred that sounds like saint.
But then I found the Old English version 'hallow' which shares the same root as 'holy' and basically in Old English the word for holy, 'halig' was derived from the word for 'whole' which was 'hailaz' and so a connection is made between things being sacred and divine and things being complete and healthy and whole.
That's kinda cool I think. The Greek word 'hagios' also means divine and sacred but its connotation is 'different' or 'set apart from'.
I think that's a very different sense of divine and I think the Greek sense is how most people interpret the word holy. The Old English version feels much more earthy and worldly.
Which would you prefer? A divine that is separate and set apart or a divine that is healthy and complete and whole?
Today I was standing with this kid I coach and he's a great kid who got into climbing a little over a year ago and now he's competing in his first season and today was his third competition and it was at a gym that tends to set notoriously hard climbs. So we're standing there in front of this climb watching other people do it and making a plan and this kid I'm coaching is a good climber and he works really hard and I know he's going to be great if he wants to stick with it but there are still some moves that he's not as comfortable with and this climb looks like it's going to be a challenge for him. But he's got a great attitude and he's open to failing at things because he knows it's going to make him better in the long run.
This other kid is right in front of his, about to get on the climb, and the kid looks back and receives some directions from his coach and then he walks up to the start and sends the climb with relative ease. He looked good. He drops down to the mats and gets his scorecard from the judges and calmly walks back to where we are and his face immediately turns red and he begins sobbing uncontrollably. He sits down right in front of us and pulls his shirt over his face and keeps bawling. His coach walks over to comfort him and me and the kid I coach both kind of tastefully look away and act like we don't notice and after about 10 to 15 seconds of us standing in dead silence the kid I coach says, dry as a bone,
"Well, that was encouraging."
I lost it. But then I had to quickly regain it because it looked like I was laughing at the crying kid which I wasn't.
ha! easy work!
I could handle 11 more of these before this year gives up
just like all the others
Years I've Felled:
2005. 1998. 2013. 1994. 2020 AND 2021!
1994 was so easy for me I don't even remember anything from it. Barely a challenge at all.
I also still contend that I have a strong case to be considered The Baby That Toppled The Soviet Union.
All it took was exactly 8 months of me being alive and it was officially dissolved.
"I am a time fish that swims through time at a rate of one second per second"
when I was a kid I would go down the street to the neighbor's trampoline and jump around for what felt like hours and have really elaborate daydreams about what the world would be like if it was all snow and ice all the time everywhere. In the daydreams I would slide and zoom around and hang out in these cool underground snow tunnels.
Today I got to live out that fantasy in real life and like most things my stupid child mind came up with, it was actually terrible. I couldn't take two steps without almost slipping and busting my entire self. Took me like an hour to do my normal walk. You see all the car exhaust on the snow and think 'dang we really live like this huh?'
No but actually it was pretty fun. I've never seen a large clear field of smooth shining unbroken ice.
he has songs of wildebeests and angels. he has soared on the wings of a demon...
are you really letting a MAN block your shine right now? a MAN block your shine?
don't pop your tire with the chisel don't pop your tire with the chisel don't pop your tire with the chisel
and if you don't love me now, you will never love me again, I can still hear you saying I would never break the chain
One way you could think about the weather is that every day there's a new weather-related challenge for you to overcome but usually in Central Virginia the challenge isn't very hard. nearly non-existent even. So it's not a very good way to think about the weather.
the age old question. which came first? the school or the bus?
let's ask the answer to all of life's questions: ETYMOLOGY!
The word bus, surprisingly enough, is a shortened version of the word 'omnibus' which is latin for 'for all' and means a collection of stuff published all together that was previously published separately. An omnibus was also a horse-drawn vehicle--the precursor to the modern bus, some might say. Google traces the first uses of 'omnibus' to the 19th century.
It is not too far of a stretch, in my opinion, to say that the word 'bus' is a shortened version of a phrase that essentially means, 'THE FOR EVERYONE WAGON'
And I think that's really great.
Meanwhile, the word school comes from the Greek word for leisure?! Like the ancient Greek word referred to where you would go after working to discuss philosophy and hang out with the boys.
MY DREAM! MY DREAM! If only we lived in a world where 'school bus' meant 'the for everyone wagon that takes you to where you can hang out with the boys after work'.
See what they've stolen from us!? See what they've done.
Not the metal tube that takes children to the place where they're molded to provide value for shareholders and/or end up in prison. Not that! Not like that!
aw geez. aw geez.
I'll tell you who named school buses. The wrong people. How could you take those two words that are great in their source and nature and make them into what you did. Oh geez.
one time, my father came home very late and he told us that while he was at the 7/11 a man hit his truck with his car and drove off. for he was possessed by the great googly mooglies. and he did not know what he was doing. I was glad my father was okay. My mother was mad that my father had been out so late. Why were you out so late anyway? Searching for googly mooglies?
And then later, years later, I went to that 7/11 at three in the morning with my friends. And we went inside and no one else was there. The door was unlocked and we walked around for a few minutes and no one came out and we got scared and left. There were googly mooglies out and about that night for sure.
My father doesn't go out at night anymore. The only time he goes out is when my sister is home and can drive him. He says he is going to see "the night people." The people out at night.
The one time I saw night people was in college when my friends and I tried to drive to Richmond but we went the wrong way on the interstate by accident and drove to Virginia Beach instead. Walking along the boardwalk. Those were night people. They moved on a different plane of existence and we could see them but they couldn't see us and we didn't want them to see us.
In the Bible Adam gives names to all the livestock, the birds, and the beasts of the field. But he never named bugs or shrimp or slugs or school buses.
it gave me no small amount of joy to see it rendered useless by the snow and ice we were visited by today
another thing I was thinking about was how in college it became this thing during the study period before finals for people to flood the library and make a show of how much time they were spending there.
but you know that they weren't actually studying. they were just going to make a show of it. it was a mass emptiness. I've done it. Everyone's done it.
Everyone's gone to the emptiness where nothing really happens and you can look around and see that everyone else is at the emptiness and it's safe because no one is doing anything or experiencing anything. everyone is there and there's nothing for you to not get or miss out on because there's nothing there at all.
"oh were you at the thing?"
"yeah I was at the thing. I saw the thing just like you."
"oh yeah me too I saw the thing."
I don't know. Rah Rah Rah! I don't like the thing everybody else likes! I'm unique. I'm so special. But it's still true. You need to be DWELLING.
DWELLING I SAID!
I do indeed and shall continue
dispatch the shiftless man to points beyond
one thing I yearned for today was being a person who hasn't heard about all the snow we're going to get. It probably is important that people know about it and are able to prepare but in my experience it won't affect my day-to-day life that much and I like to imagine how it would feel to experience a big snow without any prior warning and also would it be like to live outside of information like that. In many ways it would probably be isolating and alienating.
today I thought about birds and how they can probably tell the big snow is coming. that's so awesome for birds.
another victory for birds. just like always. they keep winning.
most beautiful animal- birds.
most bestest flyers- birds.
lays the most delicious eggs- birds.
sings the most beautiful songs- birds.
collector of shiny trinkets- crows. which are birds.
they refuse to stop winning and respect it so much
Found this song today. Everywhere I Go. link to YouTube here
reminded me of Maw Maw and Paw Paw
I think of you everywhere I go
I hope you know I hope you know
And as the rain it turns to snow
This heart that beats under the fold
It shifts it shape like tides that roll
But keeps the rhythm fast and slow
Time it beats to and fro
As thoughts of you like April snow
Linger in my heart so deep
That piece of you I always keep
There goes my skin
Shedding again
I keep walking on a path that never ends
As birds fly by the moment too
Rides on the wind and passes through
Above the earth above the clouds
Above where strangers stand in clouds
Fire licks the wood to ash
Telling me that nothing lasts
But of the seeds that died and grew
Everywhere I carry you
There goes my skin
Shedding again
I keep walking on a path that never ends
There goes my skin
Shedding again
I keep walking on a path that never ends
I think of you everywhere I go
I hope you know I hope you know
Me. I am dwelling. I am a dweller. One who lives by being in a place. Where I dwell.
The definition of dwell is to "live in or at a specific place."
It comes from the Old English dwellan meaning 'lead astray, hinder, or delay' and in Middle English meant 'tarry or remain in place.'
You get the sense that it's a place where you lingered on your way to something else.
And is that not life?! Is it not?! A place you ended up for a time on your way to something else? Dwelling.
I am going all in on dwelling in 2026 and maybe for the rest of my life.
This blog is now a dwell blog. Where I will expound upon the differences between living and dwelling.
Living? Ephemeral. Fleeting. Chasing around one illusion after another. Like if you've ever been out on flat water and seen up ahead some shimmering shiny water and then when you get there and look down it's the exact same water where you were before but now the shimmering shine has moved further up ahead. That's living.
Me? I'm dwelling. I'm staying in the spot of water I found and when I wait for a moment the fish come out of hiding and a whole underwater world is revealed to me because I took the time to remain still in one place for a while. That's dwelling baby.
You're just gonna chase the shine your whole life? A fool's errand. A Seward's folly!
I'm dwelling. There's only one place. Right here. There's only one time. Right now.
we'd watch it every couple of weeks in the middle of the day and I remember they had this story about this 'wacky' new charismatic leader of Russia called Vladimir Putin and they were like 'ohmygosh look at this guy! he's so popular! he has pop songs about himself!' And then they cut to these Russian women singing
something something in Russian Vladimir Putin
And our teachers were like, wow. look at that guy, huh?
And then another time the teachers felt the need to tell the whole class that it was good that the US was invading Iraq. And it was something that needed to be done and we were doing it for the right reasons.
Fast forward like ten years and I would go to this open mic at this diner in Harrisonburg and there was this guy I really liked who would sing songs and he had this song called "Don't Trust the Government". I've written about this before. He also sang the first version of Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left by Andrew Bird I ever heard.
The verses in Don't Trust the Government were about all the sneaky corrupt things the government does and then for the chorus he'd sing in kind of a low spooky voice
dooooon't trust. the goooooovernment.
If you'd asked me at the time I probably would've said something like 'well yeah, sometimes the government lies. Or some people are corrupt, obviously.' But also, Obama was president. Clearly there were at least some people in charge who wanted to do the right thing. Or, at the very least, most people in the government have relatively boring jobs and are making decisions that most people in the same situation would make.
That was probably the biggest counter in my mind to any sort sensationalist claims about the government or how the world worked-- well it's actually more boring than that. If you're getting really upset about anything, well, that's just being overly emotional and you should just let the machine roll on because being upset doesn't accomplish anything anyway and also it's fine.
And then I was 34 and the president was a senile 79 year old man saying he wants to take over Greenland because he didn't win the Noble Peace Prize. And my whole life the message has been let it happen. you can't do anything about it. if you're upset it's because you don't understand. it's going to happen anyway.
I think that is one of my fundamental motivations in life. To exist in the minds of others while not physically around them. It's a feeling of like, "Yes! I did it! I beat death! I transcended space and time!"
One thing I also love doing is I've reached a point where people ask me to write recommendations for them and that's so fun and great. People I love and think are great ask me to tell other people how great they are. And I'm all over it. This is the easiest thing in the world.
That's me bearing my soul to you for the day.
Stay tuned for tomorrow where I will think of something else to say.
One time I gave my best friend in high school a ride home and we were hanging out and he goes, "Hey. You want to see something?"
And then he took me over to his barn and there was a whole entire golf cart in like the hay loft area.
And he was like, "Yeah, the Russians in the neighborhood stole it from the high school and needed a place to hide it so they hid it here."
like the whole thing. all of it.
I had this moment today where I was like 'why is everyone talking? why does everyone keep talking? why is everyone talking and no one is saying anything? no one is saying anything and they just keep talking.'
And that was an anti-social moment for me.
but!
The lady at the bank was kind of flirting with me today. And that was very fun. So that is what I will choose to remember from this day.
Many of you-- all of you, in fact-- will recognize this line as the end of the chorus of the immortal Doobie Brothers's song What A Fool Believes, sung by Michael McDonald and cowritten by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins.
The song goes, guy and a lady used to be together and then they meet back up and the guy thinks something will happen and the lady knows nothing will.
And it should be obvious to the guy but he's a fool who believes and so no wise man has the power to reason away his belief.
What I'm trying to say is
AI Psychosis has made liars out of Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins. No, it can actually be really dangerous to believe something in spite of all evidence to the contrary and you should listen to smart people in your life who know things. Or, just accept you don't know.
The world in What a Fool Believes is a world where two people can have a significant disagreement and yet at no point are they threats to each other. They live in different realities but how they treat each other in this is never questioned.
Ol' bingle basketball bringing a big ol' casserole.
that's it. we got it one.
that's the post. everybody go home early today we did it.
Pastamole. Like a Pasta Mole. Like a subterranean mammal whose body has undergone radical transformations to thrive while burrowing through enriched macaroni product.
Back in like 2018 I bought this little device that looked like a portable radio because it was a portable radio but it also had an option where you could plug in an aux and use it as a speaker and you could record anything that you played on it. Great device. I put 143 songs on it over the course of like 5 years and then one day it stopped being able to record songs to it and I stopped using it.
But anyway today I decided to use it again because I've been trying to pay attention to how I feel before working out and doing things and I thought the music would give me a boost and the songs made me so happy. It was like seeing an old friend. Remember my brockhampton phase? No. Of course you don't. I forgot about my Brockhampton phase. But hearing the opening to GOLD. So good. SO GOOD.
And I know it doesn't even seem worth remarking that music made me feel good. But like, the older I get the more I think I deprive myself of music in a way. Or more so that I don't feel like I need music to regulate my mood. I'm baseline okay. Pretty good even. I don't know what I'm saying. Deprive yourself of music, I guess.
Few things will make you happier than hiding parts of yourself for you to rediscover later.
why would that be? I dunno. But I bet if I strengthen it my left hand will stop being weaker than my right hand
So way back at the end of September, on 9/30, I tested my finger strength using a 20mm edge and loading plate and with my left hand I briefly lifted 125 pounds and with my right hand I lifted 130 pounds. I also held 105lbs for 7 seconds and then 8 seconds on my left hand and 11 seconds and 10 seconds on my right hand.
My finger strength has not improved since that day. Twice a week for months I've been doing the same tests and sometimes it's been a little worse or a lot worse and some days it's been about as good. Nothing has moved the dial.
Today I did a full RPR warm-up, or at least my understanding of it. I did the belly breathing. I activated the diaphragm. I activated my psoas and my glutes and my lats and shoulders and all the places. I thought about my sympathetic nervous system and tried to put myself in a performance mode.
Left hand held 105lbs for 9 seconds and then 9 seconds again which is only a 1 second PR but lately I've been lucky to be around 5 seconds. And normally if I get a longer hold, like if I get 7 or 8, usually my second attempt will go down to like 3 or 4. To hold 9 seconds twice was huge.
Right hand held 105lbs for 21 seconds! Crazy. Absolutely bonkers. One time I did 15 seconds and lately I've hovered right around 10. To jump to 21 seconds was crazy. And then I loaded up 135lbs and just barely hovered that off the ground. But that was huge. I've been stuck at 130 for a long time.
Also my legs feel lighter and bouncier. The psoas and glute activation is definitely real.
I haven't been able to find any information about any spots that would activate the forearms. I just guessed it would be around the bicep. There's like this spot on the inside of your elbow where a lot of nerves and muscles meet so I messed around with that. I didn't send my moonboard climb which would've been the icing on the cake but I made some small progress so that was good too.
I'm bought in. This horse has wheels.
A year and a half ago, so April 2024, I began a journey to try to get better at sprinting. That very quickly led me down some Youtube rabbit holes where these guys are talking about the philosophy of speed training and all this sports science. Most of the information out there I think is pretty useless but a couple guys I found really seemed to know what they were talking about and made sense to me.
In addition to all the speed training stuff they were talking about, they had this thing called RPR which involved a lot of belly breathing, relaxation, and activating different parts of the body like the psoas and the glutes by touching different parts of the abdomen and the back of the head. Initially I tried it because the claims they made about its effectiveness were pretty incredible and then very quickly I was like, 'yeah this is too out there for me. I just want to run hard and get fast.'
Recently though I've come back to it because I'm starting to feel like I've gotten as far as 'just run hard' will take me and it's time to start trying some stuff that I initially thought was too weird in earnest.
I spent a lot of time today belly breathing and watching videos about how to do it and it felt like it had more of an effect this time than I remembered.
I want to write down what it felt like so I hopefully don't forget as quickly. The first thing I noticed was that it felt like my abdomen was able to expand more while breathing. I was able to take deep breaths. Especially in the climbing gym when the air is cold and dry it feels like I can only take shallow breaths. Another I noticed was how strange it felt to touch my ribs and stomach area. I was like, 'wow. I really never do this.' After a while when I took deep breaths I felt like I was more aware of my hips and the breathing kind of extended my awareness into my hips, back and legs. When I went for a walk I felt like there was a warmth in my legs and my walking gait was smoother than normal. I felt energized and if there was a good flat stretch and no one was around I would do a short run and try to pay attention to what my legs and hips were doing. Sometimes I would build up into close to an all-out sprint and I started to feel a float between when my back leg pushed off and when my front leg made contact. Almost like a very small quick bound. That's a feeling I want to hold onto when working on sprinting.
I also think it helped my mood overall and my brain. It's the kind of thing where I'd really like to make it a habit. I feel like I do stuff like this and then inevitably life or something dumb gets in the way and then it falls by the wayside and then months later I'm like, 'man I feel kinda awful. I wonder why?' But I'd really like to make this a habit. It also seemed to help my shoulder a lot which I've been feeling some discomfort in for close to two months now.
We're optimistic on belly-breathing in 2026!
Also matches are the devil. And you should only use your oven and stove on the lowest possible setting.
Your head has been placed in a cage made entirely of graham cracker. Your arms and legs are restrained. What tool could you use to escape. See if you can figure out the riddle before reading the answer
Answer: Before you have the graham cracker cage put on your head, leave a trail of highly addictive Doritos crumbs from the entrance of an ant colony to your open mouth several yards away. One by one, eat the ants until you reform the colony in your gullet. After the cage has been placed on your head, you can simply open your mouth and the hungry ants will crawl out and make quick work of the cage. Afterwards you can do whatever you want.
Or like, something that makes your teeth grow out. Like a narwhal horn. Put Patented Goodstein Narwhal Sleeper DNA in your pituitary gland that you can call upon to make your tooth grow out and then gouge a hole through your graham cracker tomb.
What else? I guess you could just vomit and then that would make the graham cracker soggy and then you could thrash your head around violently until the compromised structure breaks loose. That's probably the worst option.
Other things. Other things.
Oh instead of vomiting you could just have a mouthful of water or milk when they put the cage on. Same process as before but much less gross.
One time I was scrolling and I saw this post from tumblr telling a story about a time a cousin fell in a blackberry bush and later they found a blackberry vine growing under his skin and I never bothered to look into the truth of that until now but it turns out: not true. Plants can't do that.
And another thing I'll say is this: it doesn't sit right with me that things on Earth can be brighter and hotter than the Sun. That feels spiritually wrong. The Sun should be the limit on brightness and hotness. Anything else: devilish behavior.
Yes. But it doesn't LOOK bigger than the sky.
But then you could say, well what if you just took a graham cracker and held it right up to your face and then it took up your whole field of vision or if you locked yourself in some kind of graham cracker cage that went over your head and everywhere you could possibly look was graham crackers. Does that mean graham crackers are the biggest thing you'll ever see?
I mean, just think about how that sounds. Just think about that for a moment.
Not implying that Crab would make that argument. No. He's too good for that. He would never.
No the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see.
And the tiniest thing you'll ever see is the shift in someone's face when you unknowingly do something that makes them realize you aren't the person they thought you were.
They'll hit you with the
o__o
o__o
You won't know. But it's there.
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing you'll ever see
the sky is the biggest thing that you will ever see in your whole entire life
The Clod and The Pebble
"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."
holy BUCKETS! what a poem! what a difference in perspective!
In the first stanza the speaker is the Clod of clay who is malleable and all day cows step on his little Clod face. But guess what?! The Clod believes that love is the power to give ease to another. Love is selflessness and wanting to make life better for someone else. Isn't that nice?
Then in the last stanza we hear from the Pebble of the brook. Probably has a pretty good life. Being a Pebble. Living in a brook and all. Way better than being cow stomped 24 and 7. But the Pebble he says that love is selfish.
Is it like the inverse of the Clod? Like the Clod experiences what it's like to give love to someone but the Pebble describes what it's like to receive that love? I don't know.
I guess you could say the poem is talking about how some people view love as selfless and some people view love as a selfish act but that feels like it doesn't give Blake enough credit. There's gotta be something else at work.
I don't understand the Pebble. The first line makes sense. Love is to make the lover happy. Oh I love how much this person is in love with me.
"Joys in another's loss of ease,"
I guess it's like, 'oh look how desperate this person is for me. they're so miserable because they're obsessed with me."
Does that give anyone joy? That seems extremely sadistic. I guess that's the point. The Pebble doesn't have a very interesting perspective to me. And I guess the Clod is pretty boring too.
I think most people would argue that they like to make others feel happy because that also makes them happy. It's nice in a "selfish" way to know that you gave someone joy. And I would argue that most people who act in ways that would be considered selfish in a relationship are usually more interested in the idea of someone loving them and because of that they don't really care about the other person which can be harmful but in most cases it probably doesn't extend to taking pleasure from seeing someone hurt.
The more I think about it the more I think the Clod and the Pebble are perfect for each other.
The Clod wants to be miserable. It doesn't want any joy and somehow it thinks that's going to make someone else feel love. If someone was truly torturing themselves for you, you would probably feel pretty uneasy. Only someone messed up like the Pebble would find joy in that.
This poem is about how when you try to give love to inanimate objects like Clods and Pebbles they mess it up and aren't any good at it. They lack basic social and emotional reasoning skills. The Clod loves that cows step on it and that it's worthless as if that lack of any respect somehow proves the purity of its love. Meanwhile the Pebble is a classic bully who thinks that putting others down automatically raises itself up.
I take back what I said about William Blake and giving him credit. He's wasted our time by imagining two idiots sharing perspectives that almost no one would want to hold.
I've got a poem called Book and Sourdough
Food only exists to create hunger
never eat food
you should starve yourself
that's what makes food taste good
said the Book
who was an old dusty book
but then a loaf of Sourdough
also had something to say
eat as much as you can all the time
the purpose of food is to make yourself explode
never stop eating food
gorge and engorge yourself forever and ever
Just as good. Just as good as William Blake.
one time in college I joined a running club that no one was on but people used to be on it and this older guy Matt told me about this guy George who used to be on the team who was a compulsive liar and he said he was from a school called Oakton Township and they were the Oakton Township Cougars and they had a fight song that went
Oakton Township Cougars
we are a real school
we actually do exist
we are a real school
And Matt sang me that song one day and yesterday in the shower I thought about how I am very likely the singular keeper of the Oakton Township Cougars Fight Song. Passed down to me secondhand as an afterthought. A school that does not exist despite its protests to the contrary.
There is a school in Norther Virginia called Oakton High School and their mascot is the cougars but Virginia doesn't have townships.
Anyway it's an all time great bit.
Right up there with this time we were playing capture the flag at camp and we told this 8 year old, "your luck will run out eventually" and he replied "no it won't! it'll run UP!"
