On Wednesday I went to the beach as I always tend to do when I'm not feeling well. The water was far too cold to swim but that didn't trouble me much, I'm sure a frigid dive of that sort would have set my condition back weeks anyways. I instead chose to walk along the shore barefoot, feeling the sand pressing through my toes and enjoying the ambient noise of waves clashing against the rocks. There wasn't anyone else around at the time, not that I was in the mood to be with people anyways. I was in the company of myself and all was well with the world, even if that sentiment didn't last more than a brief moment. 

I found myself unconsciously slowing my pace down, shortening the length of my stride until each step was all but exactly aside the last. With each slight movement of my feet I bent my knees slightly, relaxing them and allowing gravity to ease me towards the ground, onto a balding grassy patch in an otherwise sterile stretch of sand. Once my knees touched the earth I ran the tops of my feet parallel to the ground and fell back onto them, settling both into the beach and myself. I recall sitting there for a good amount of time, just feeling the breeze on my face. The air was warm and soft and yet somehow I felt as though it were tearing right through me. As though even the softest thing imaginable-- a balmy, wafting breeze was too much for me to handle. I was softer than wet tissue paper, more fragile than the brittlest snowflake. 

I hadn't realized it but in my state I had been made vulnerable not just to other people but even the most pacific acts of nature. The wind picked up. I braced against it but the sensation was too much, the air threatened to pull me apart. After a moment of deliberation I gave in and relaxed my whole body. And at once each and every part of my body separated from itself and dispersed, like the smoke from a fire rising up into the night sky until there was none of it left. 

I was both nothing and everything at the same moment, gaining height but also keeping low to the ground, flying east and west, north and south. I became the wide blanket of sky that encircles the Earth. I experienced the world from the outside in, seeing and feeling from every given point in every given direction. My breath ran the currents and my nerves became the stars. It was liberation.

I saw a young girl and someone who I imagine must have been her father walking beside her. The girl had a piece of paper, like a flyer for something. I think they were walking back from school so she must have gotten it there. She had rolled up the piece of paper into a cone and was using it like a megaphone to shout into. She wasn't saying anything in particular, it was half song and half nonsense. The important thing though was that she was having the time of her life. She was jumping around while walking hand in hand with her father and every time she hit the ground she let out a strange little shriek. Her father didn't seem to mind. But then the unthinkable happened. She dropped the paper and it hit the dirty sidewalk. She immediately scrambled to pick it up and was about to put it back up to her lips when her father took notice, and at the last possible moment intercepted her hand so she couldn't. I don't recall exactly what he said but he really didn't want her to put something in her mouth that had just been dropped on the ground. She then had the audacity to try to hand it off from her one hand to the other so that she could keep using the filthy bootleg noisemaker. He quickly grabbed her other hand with his free hand and using her arms to puppeteer good behavior, he walked her over to a nearby garbage can and made her drop the paper into it. She was not happy but within 10 seconds it seemed like she had forgotten all about it.

I was in the library and a middle-aged couple came over and sat at the same table that I was working at. The woman uses the power strip to plug in her computer and phone, while the guy sits down and begins to make himself comfortable. It couldn't have been less than 50 degrees out (Fahrenheit, 10 in Celsius) but the guy was wearing a thin down jacket that was zipped all the way up to his chin. It was quite warm in the library so he went to unzip it only to find that it was stuck. This happens to me all the time personally so I felt pretty sympathetic. Pants zippers, jacket zippers, the zipper on a tent. They all get stuck every once in a while and it takes a minute or two to get them unstuck. So fast forward, this guy is 5 minutes into trying to take his jacket off and he begins to look more and more desperate. He has tried to go at it from just about every angle and he really just can't seem to do it. His wife and him switch off trying to get it undone, and all the while he looks like he's getting more and more sweaty. I consider asking if I could do anything to help but I realize that there's absolutely nothing I could do that they already couldn't. The wife is behind him, having him in a pseudo-Heimlich maneuver while trying to get this zipper undone. I casually glance up from my computer in a concerned, nonjudgmental way but he avoids eye contact and does everything he can to make it seem like nothing is wrong. I go back to working. The wife gives up and laughs it off, while he is looking considerably more upset about the whole situation. He finally decides to take off the whole jacket in one go, and his wife helps him. He puts his arms up and she takes it off him, but his undershirt gets caught with it, making him practically shirtless in the library when the jacket is nearly off. Now with his arms up in the air and the jacket covering his face, his wife takes notice of this and stops pulling up the jacket to pull his shirt back down. Because of how tight the jacket was he is unable to move during this time and just sits there, somewhat defeated. Finally he gets it off and looks extremely relieved. He continues to work on unsticking the zipper now that it's off but with no luck. They leave pretty shortly after, with his jacket tucked under his arm.

This one is quite short but there was a middle aged man (a different man than the one in the previous story) who was walking hand in hand with a woman. As they walk past a woman's clothing store with a large display dedicated to underwear models the guy almost loses his footing having craned his neck all the way to the side to stare at the display. I don't think the woman noticed but I did. Eyes on the road, fellow.

I saw a pug the other day walking down the street, its owner trailing right behind it. I'm not going to pretend even for a moment that I didn't find it completely adorable but there's also something sinister about them. Not so much in how they act or behave but in concept. Pugs are kind of grotesque. They have tiny little faces that hardly allow them to breath, they're subject to all sorts of physical challenges due to selective breeding and they tend to live pretty short lifespans. Encephalitis. Myelopothy. Hemivertebrae. Brachycephaly. I don't think anyone foresaw the consequences, but now we have to live with them. The consequences, I mean. We don't mind living with pugs, we just worry for them. I'm by no means the first person to point this out, a number of dog breeds have issues just because of how they were created. It's troubling to say the least.

But is that fair to say? If I were to go one-thousand years into the past and knock on my ancestors' door, what would they say? Look at my round face. My pale skin. My narrow shoulders and my wide hips. Am I a pug to them? They were the product of survival. I'm not, or at least I'm not in the same sense. My parents could have had as many children as they wanted to. It wouldn't have changed our chances of survival. People who could be deemed the "fittest" in whatever given environment choose not to have children all the time. We are removed from the process of evolution. The only way to bring it back is to challenge human's ability to live. To make it hard to eat, hard to drink, hard to breathe.

What will the post-climate human look like? What features are ideal for surviving a sun-scorched and rime-ridden planet? An almost non-existent metabolism? A sense of direction? A fast-acting liver? A sense of purpose?

They say inside every dog is a wolf, but wolves don't live all that long.

Andre woke up at 6:34 in the morning with a pounding headache. He sat up slowly, but apparently not slowly enough as the blood rushed to his eyes and he saw nothing but matte blackness and TV static for several seconds. When his eyes adjusted to his surroundings he was just able to make out the display of his clock in his windowless bedroom. 6:35 am. He didn't have to show up to work until 8:30 and it was less than a 15 minute commute, so he was unsure whether to start preparing for his day or to try to get another hour of sleep. He laid his head down and rolled back over onto his side but the sudden movement caused his head to scream out to him once more, cursing him for making such a naive decision. Sleeping would only make it worse. He sat up again and swung his legs over the side of the bed, head still throbbing, only to find that his feet rested upon the piled-up pants he had worn the day before. Andre was a somewhat lazy fellow but he scoffed at anyone who felt shame in wearing clothes a few days in a row, and did so himself so as long as they weren't excessively disgusting. He defended his actions under the guise of water conservation but deep down he knew (as others did) his long-undiagnosed depression made him disinterested in proactively caring for himself until it was an absolute necessity. Just last week Carol had pointed out the grease stain on the leg of his trousers in front of everyone. He had to act as though he hadn't noticed it and it had only just gotten there but in reality he had known about it for days and convinced himself that nobody else would take note of his sloppy behavior, or at the very least no-one would be bold enough to point it out in front of everyone. Especially not when Melissa, his workplace crush, was also there. 

It would be unfair to say Andre was anything he shouldn't be, but he certainly had his difficulties going about his daily life. He was 29 but only ever thought of the past and was essentially employed full-time as a human photocopier. The pay was enough to tide off the loan payments and all his necessities however, so although he wasn't making any progress towards becoming a better version of himself he was at least content in his daily life. He didn't view his job as a central element of the broader problems which plagued him, although many others did consider it to be one of them. He didn't take any pride in what he did and only rarely did he show any outward expression other than a mixture of melancholy and haggardness. 

Whenever Andre daydreamed about doing something exciting, like shooting his own film or getting really good at a sport, he felt the slightest modicum of fulfillment simply for having thought of it. This feeling was nothing compared to the joy of actually achieving something extraordinary (which he had not done since high school, perhaps) but this peculiar feeling of satisfaction was an absolute vice for him, affording him just enough short-lived contentment to never actually make something more of himself. He feigned being well for the sake of others more so than the sake of himself, as if there was one thing he cared for deep down it was the well-being of others. But even this was often overcome by his self-sabotaging tendencies. He reflected on this as he took out the cereal bowl and poured himself some life, the namesake of something he so desperately needed but couldn't seem to get himself to want. He elected not to dwell upon these thoughts further as they made him feel empty inside, like an empty box of cereal as the last few pieces are poured into a bowl. He instead began to think about Melissa but was startled by the sound of silverware hitting the tiled floor of his kitchen. He turned around, head throbbing once again, to see that his cat had knocked a salad fork onto the ground from the counter. It was odd that his cat was inside at all, he was quite fond of the outdoors to the point of being almost feral and the warm Arizona climate certainly allowed for his outdoor lifestyle the majority of the year. He took a moment to appreciate the cat's tail as it flicked back and forth when suddenly the cat jumped off the counter and raced up the stairs. That was it, Andre thought. He just wanted to come in to use the litter box, after which he would probably take off once more. It was all coming together now. Andre turned back to his cereal and resumed eating, one eye on the bowl and the other on his phone. 

He had recently gotten into the habit of watching internet videos about lock picking as they intrigued him and could keep him occupied during the duller parts of the day. He hadn't ever picked a lock nor did he feel the urge to do so, but seeing all of those tantalizingly complicated mechanisms get outsmarted so easily pleased him. He wished he could take this intricate know-how and somehow apply it to his own life. After all, all the troubles he was facing could be overcome relatively easily, right? If only there was a shortcut. In reality, many of the difficulties Andre faced felt like locks-- cold, steely, and only serving to keep him away from something better. Andre finished off his cereal and gave the clock a cursory glance. 6:58. He still had plenty of time. It's not very often that he awoke so early, so he was a little curious as to how he should spend his newly acquired time. He transitioned from the kitchen table to the couch, lounging on it while also reminding himself he mustn't fall back asleep or he would likely be late to work. When he stretched out his arms and yawned, the resulting tension in his jaw caused a sharp pain on the right side of his head. The pain stopped his movement but it subsided slightly after a few seconds and he followed through all the way with his stretch. He settled back into the couch, realizing that his headache had worsened to the point that it might be worthwhile to call in sick. 

His supervisor was actually a reasonably considerate person and probably wouldn't ask too many questions given that Andre is almost never sick and always gets to work on time. His punctuality wasn't due to his interest in working as much as it was due to his fear of consequence and the fact that he often had nothing better to do but to show up and work all day. Now the idea of calling in sick was gnawing at the back of his mind now even harder than his headache was. Had he ever called in sick to his job before? He didn't think so, but his mind was rather blank at the moment. How fun it would be to have a moment to himself. Or maybe he could actually go outside and find someone to spend it with. As long as he didn't go near the offices hopefully nobody would see him out and about only suffering from an (admittedly painful) headache and nothing more. He hadn't pet his cat in a while, maybe this would be a good opportunity for them to bond. The more Andre thought about how he would spend his sick day the more jittery he got. "I hate work" he said aloud, as though hearing himself say it made it more true to him. 

He picked up his phone and pulled up his manager's number in his contacts. Jolene Morse. Andre had never known another Jolene in his life, save the one from the Dolly Parton song. And yet his contact for her had her last name in it. Was it to be professional? Or was it because their relationship was that impersonal? As Andre reflected on this one thought echoed in his mind: "I owe it to myself". He had been working hard, today should be in the hands of himself more than anyone else. Jolene was a go-getter, she would be up by this time in the morning. He started the call and waited as the dial tone rung out. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times. He expected it to go to voicemail, but at the last possible moment the comfortable hum of the machine was replaced by the anxiety-inducing ambiance of another person's home. 

"Hello?" Jolene said. 

"Um, hello. This is Andre Torgeson, from planning. I fear I'll have to call in sick today, I've got an incredible headache like never before and I feel it would really impede my work. I'd be much better off resting at home and coming in tomorrow as I feel it's quite serious. If that's okay." 

There was a short pause, then: "I'm sorry you're not feeling well Andre. I don't think you've ever missed work before so I take it this must be quite serious. Have you been in contact with a medical professional?" 

"No, but I plan to if it doesn't clear up in the next day" he fibbed. 

"Okay, I'll make a note of that here... give me a moment. Okay then. Keep us updated, we hope to see you tomorrow if you feel you're ready to return." 

"Okay, that sounds fine, goodbye."

"Bye."

Andre was ecstatic. He had never felt this way before, or at least not in a long time. It felt like he was a child again, like when he was sick enough to stay home from school but not sick to the point that he was going to have a miserable day at home. Why did he feel so alive all of a sudden? Had something changed within him? His headache surged slightly again but his elation suppressed all sensation aside from an overwhelming sense of freedom and newfound discovery.

Andre Gerald Torgeson, 29, passed away on the morning of Thursday November 8th in his home in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona. He is survived by his parents; his brothers, Austin and Rainer Torgeson; his grandmother, Ida Denice Torgeson; and his grandfather, Samuel Copeland.

A funeral service is scheduled at 2:00 pm on November 18th at the Pentecostal church on North Leroux. Reverend Alfred Hall will officiate.

Memorial donations may be made in Andre's name to the Lisa Foundation for Brain Aneurysms. 

If you've ever gardened or cleared foliage from a yard you may have realized how difficult it is to distinguish a plant that is truly dead from one that just appears dead. Sometimes after even the harshest of winters more has survived than you had thought possible. Take this plant here, for instance. The leaves have mostly fallen off and either blown away or become a part of the soil at the base of the stem. The stem has blanched and withered, what was once a spritely green is now a light sand color, dry and decayed. It is covered on all sides by small flecks of black and white, a nice little reminder that life gives way to life, even when the newly established neighbors are nothing more than fungal blights, pests to feed. The stem has become fibrous and thin strings run the length of it, like ribs on an underfed dog. But if you uproot the plant (as you think you should), you've chosen the role of executioner. There is no jury, there is no judge. For at the very core of the plant is a fresh sprout, the last vestige of a collapsing organism. It's round and cylindrical with no sharp edges. It hasn't yet had the sun required to turn green, but its white arms are starting to yellow slightly as they seek out the warmth and light of the outside world. The dead outer layers are like a suit of armor. They protect the sprout but they also weigh it down. Once the plant unyokes itself and these outer shells are cast into the earth they will provide valuable nutrients for the sprout's hungry roots. If you were to rip the plant from the ground you would see for yourself that the roots are still living, still seeking, still moving. They would petition for mercy and ask you to replant them in the ground once more so that they can resume tilling the earth for their daily water, stone, air. You wouldn't be able to tell what's going on inside the plant husk without tearing it apart. So why would you? Give it a moment, let it settle, and only when you are certain of its death should you give it the burial it rightly deserves. Because otherwise, who is to say that the plant doesn't have another opportunity for life?

Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't treat people the same way. Why do we have to rush to a decision? People have misdiagnosed death before. They used to install bells above burial plots so that if someone was wrongfully buried they could tug on the string and alert the folk above. Let people lay out a little while. See if there's something inside. See if they come back. If not, there was no harm in waiting.

I think that the establishment of the United States Federal Witness Protection Program as part of the Organized Crime Control act of 1970 was a major catalyst for change in the human experience as it applies to Americans. I believe that the theory of the witness protection program will exist alongside and eventually replace organized religion as a whole at some point in the near future.

I feel no shame in admitting that I don't know enough about religion nor about government programs such as the witness protection program to prove what I have stated above beyond a reasonable doubt. However, I do believe (as has been proposed by many scholars and free thinkers before me) that religion exists to answer questions that humans had previously had no answer to. Questions regarding the miracle of life, the indifference and inevitability of death, and the purpose of humanity have only ever been (allegedly) answered through religion. Pursuits such as biology and philosophy have made incredible advancements towards the answers to these questions, or at least have worked towards classifying and clarifying the many variables that would go into answering questions such as these. This holds true even in cases where the availability or existence of any one "answer" is questioned. But you will rarely find a biologist or philosopher who claims to definitively know the answers to these questions in the same way a religious leader may.

On the topic of death, many religions offer an alternative to an all-consuming nothingness, often depicted as some sort of beautiful afterlife where one can find delight in the pleasures which they were never fully afforded on Earth. In these places people reunite with loved ones, meet the gods and spirits to whom they have prayed, and somehow never grow tired of an unendingly pleasant but also sensorially numbing experience. Residents of the afterlife can either eat whatever they want or perhaps there will be  no need for food, they can spend their days in bliss without growing any older, they can forget their comparative daytrip on Earth for an infinity among the stars.

Biologists and philosophers, clever as they are, are still having trouble determining whether or not such a place exists. Nobody has found physical evidence of a landmass above the clouds, nor within the center of the Earth. They have yet to observe a human soul leaving the body, much less travelling to another dimension. Instances of contact between the death and the living are always immediately dubious and are best suited for daytime television programming, i.e. paranormal investigation shows. Moreover, when there are so many religions that differ on how they describe the afterlife, who is correct and who is wrong? Are the various religions of the world describing one singular place, they just all are mildly incorrect about the specifics? Are there a multitude of afterlives depending on one's religious or spiritual affiliation? Those who view the "afterlife" as the act of being reincarnated on Earth, where do they fit into the equation?

The percentage of self-described "unaffiliated" persons has been growing against a decreasingly large proportion of "affiliated" (religious) individuals, at least in the United States. People are having trouble consolidating their modern lifestyle with more antiquated beliefs and many are increasingly looking for answers outside of the world of organized religion. But a key element is missing. There is a certain peace of mind associated with the thought of an afterlife. "That person who suffered so long is now finally getting their kicks in a land of eternal bliss." We take our sense of justice and revenge and we apply it to the dead, a group that may or may not be entirely indifferent to petty human desires. Sometimes it's not even about wanting people to be happy or sad but rather wanting them to stay conscious, to continue experiencing the world and choosing to enjoy what it has to offer should they so please. Regardless, removing religion also removes this peace of mind. But through the (you haven't forgotten, have you?) witness protection program, the possibility of an afterlife is granted to us once more. The very concept of the witness protection program allows for peace of mind, knowing that the dearly departed in fact did not die, but have rather been relocated to rural Cuba where they now spend their days on the beach sipping on mojitos and chewing on raw sugarcane. They must have witnessed something truly ghastly for the government to have faked their death so convincingly. It was open casket and everything, with an incredibly realistic dummy in place of a corpse. Everyone was grieving the loss but deep down we all knew that they have since relocated to a better place, the better place of course being Cuba. Or at least we think it's Cuba. Conceivably it could be anywhere but the point is that they are now enjoying an early retirement, living off of the back of American taxpayers and living in paradise. They of course will inevitably die, at some point. But so as long as we (the living relatives of this person) do not receive notice that this person has in fact died for the second time, it is entirely reasonable to assume that they are still alive. We can only hope to one day be as fortunate as them, or to be relocated to the same place so that we may see them once more.

When I was little my mother said I looked like a cherub. I think in my recent years I've strayed quite far from looking like one but thinking back I can definitely understand where she was coming from. I had dirty blonde hair that spilled over itself in little curled ringlets among straighter waves and locks. My eyes were a bright blue and they shone like beacons from their perch above my puffy cheeks, which would always turn a rosy red during cold February mornings. February mornings like the one on which I was born. I was born on Valentine's Day, which no doubt contributed to my mother calling me a cherub, given how they have become the most prominent of a small number of unofficial mascots for the holiday. Because it was both my birthday and a holiday, Valentine's Day naturally became my favorite time of year. I have always had fond memories of Valentine's Day. There wasn't as much unrestricted candy access as on Halloween or Easter, but there also wasn't as much mushy sentimental family time as on Christmas or the Fourth of July (something I didn't appreciate until I was much older). Valentine's day was a holiday of compromise, a birthday and a combination of what all other holidays should be. I may no longer look like a cherub, but I take pride in knowing that for some period of time I did, just like the ones in the Bible. The beautiful little winged baby boys who look over us and sing praises of the Lord.

Ezekiel 1:5-14

...In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved. Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.

For as long as I can remember I've been extremely nearsighted. I remember when on the first day of second grade we were asked to copy some words from the whiteboard into our notebooks and I had to stand up from my desk and walk about an arms length away from the front wall of the classroom just to properly read them. Thankfully my family caught on pretty quick that something was amiss and got me a pair of prescription eyeglasses. I needed such a strong prescription that my glasses were very thick, almost comically so. Although my closest friends would sometimes tease me about them (calling me "four-eyes" and whatnot), thankfully no-one ever made fun of me in a way that actually hurt my feelings. 

By the time I had reached the fourth grade I had outgrown my old pair, so I opted for a new pair of lenses that were not only thicker than the originals (apparently my nearsightedness worsened when I grew) but they also transitioned to become darker in the sunlight. Transition lenses, they were called. Because of the thickness of the glass, the outer edges of the lenses curved inwards to the side slightly. This curve in the lenses, combined with whatever coating they used to make the lenses darken in sunlight, meant that I could sometimes pretty clearly see what was behind me. It was dependent on the lighting on any given day, but generally I could make out the shapes of people standing behind me, sometimes even their faces if they were standing close enough. Because of how nearsightedness works, the image that would get reflected on my glasses would be much easier for me to see than anything far away. I thought this was very cool because one of my friends had once had a pair of toy "spy glasses" which caused a similar effect. If you're still having trouble understanding exactly what I'm saying, just imagine a pair of glasses that unintentionally work like the side-view mirrors of a car. 

Anyways, cool as it was, this rarely ever came in handy. It turns out that the stuff happening behind you is rarely as interesting as the stuff happening in front of you, and after a while having your attention split between two different perspectives can get quite disorienting. However, there was one particular instance that made me wish that I had never gotten glasses to begin with. 

One evening my mother was picking me up from a friend's house. I said goodbye to my friend and went outside to get into the car but my mother was heading into the house because she wanted to talk to the mother of my friend. I had really wished she wouldn't because I knew it would mean that I could be waiting a half an hour for them to catch up, but I told her it was fine and that I would wait in the car. It took me all of two minutes to get bored, my attention span being as poor as it was at that age. I was too young to have a cellphone and I didn't have a book on me, so I was kind of left just to stare into space. My mother gardens heavily and frequently hauls lawn cuttings and other debris in her car, so the car unfortunately has an odor that can give me a headache if I sit in it for too long. After a few more minutes of sitting went by, I decided to walk across the street to sit in this big grassy lot that was next to a church. I was the kind of kid that rolled around in the dirt and played with insects so this was much more welcoming of an environment to me than sitting in the car. 

It was a little dark, the sun had been setting for a fair bit of time, so everything around me was turning from that sunset orange to twilight purple color. As I sat watching the friend's house waiting for my mother, the lights in the house came on. I then thought I saw the shape of a person walk out of the back door of the house but I quickly realized it was the reflection in my glasses of what was behind me. I spun around, only to see a line of trees. These trees were a maintained line of pines but behind them was a dense, raw forest. Nobody was there. I turned back around but it wasn't long until I felt the need to look behind me again. Still nothing. I glanced back to the house and it happened again. A fuzzy black shape that looked somewhat human was reflected in the peripheral of my glasses. Regardless of what it was, it was definitely moving. I turned around again to look, nothing. With my heart pounding out of my chest, I looked once more towards the house and decided I wasn't going to turn around again, but to keep as still as possible and see if I could focus on what my glasses were reflecting. 

Sure enough, it looked like people walking along the treeline. They were all walking in the same direction, from behind my left shoulder to behind my right. I sat, staring at the reflection and wondering how it was possible. They were gray and smokey-looking, like when an old-timey photograph is taken and the person moves during the exposure. But this wasn't a photograph, these were actual shapes that I could make out, walking along the treeline. Faceless. Inexplicably menacing. I didn't want to move at all because I was somehow afraid that if I got up they would notice me and chase me or something. I just sat there, legs weak, and waited for my mother to leave the house. I muttered her name under my breath hoping it would get her to leave faster. After what felt like forever but was probably only a few minutes, she did and with her in my sight I had the courage to get up and run to her. I told her what I had seen and she told me that your eyes play tricks on you in low light, especially when you're alone. 

I didn't know what to make of it but it was hard not to cry on the car ride home. 

Your head on my stomach

With each breath of mine it slowly rises and falls

Like a boat docked in a sleepy harbor

The sun is rising

Not long until you'll have to go

I breath deeply

And hold

To slow the seconds down

I think the people that can't set aside a few months of their social lives for the greater good of their society are selfish.

Wash your hands or don't (please do), but at a more profound level we are divided as those who can accept a change in their lifestyle and those who can't.

But when the love I receive is filtered through a liquid crystal display,

when hugs and kisses are replaced with flavorless strings of text,

when my wingspan is the length from the A to the semicolon,

it is then that I begin to truly feel alone and afraid.

People often like to point out that we can't be entirely sure that our surviving records of history are true. It is entirely possible that dinosaurs could have been alive during the Washington presidency, given that not even the oldest person alive today was there to witness it. Who is to say that none of the history books are falsified? Who is to say that it is impossible for anything else to have occurred than what is stated in these records?

I'm certainly not the one to say those things, but I acknowledge that it would be hard to falsify things that are corroborated by multiple credible sources. When we determine that someone had no reason to lie and that they have built for themselves a rather credible reputation as a source of honesty, all we can really do is take them at their word, albeit with the occasional grain of salt.

This however is not true of the future. Almost any reasonably interesting prediction of the future can easily be dismissed as speculation, but it also cannot be entirely ruled out as a possibility. And no, to say that there is a 90% chance of rain tomorrow is not a "reasonably interesting prediction." I'm speaking of lottery numbers, the death of young celebrities, of stock booms and major world events. I'm speaking of the things that haven't yet happened on Earth that we would never see coming.

Because it is so hard to predict the future, while also hard to definitively rule out any specific prediction of the future, I aim to make a prediction that you will have no other choice but to accept as a distinct and thought-provoking possibility.

I predict that by the year 2033 the Human race will become functionally extinct and we will be replaced by a race (or rather a model) of sentient, pious androids who roam the Earth singing the praises of god in the form of pre-recorded mp3 files of Gregorian chants and other various hymns. They will not sleep. They will not eat. They will be solar powered and will be programmed and equipped to be able to repair one another. They will treat one another with more respect than us humans ever afforded them or ourselves.

I have terrible anxiety and at times it can be absolutely debilitating. It's been something of a spectre on me since I was young and I often make the unhealthy decision of using it as a driving force behind my actions rather than allowing myself to be free of it. But my mother shared something interesting with me today. She told me that psychologists had found that sometimes people with anxiety mistake their anxiety for intuition, that is to say that they may be inhibited from taking risks because they think they are a wise and cautious person, when in reality they are just overly anxious and aren't taking calculated risks. This struck a particular chord with me because it gave me a new perspective on the philosophy that I had been unconsciously embodying for so long-- being reactionary rather than proactive, being passive rather than active, sitting back and enjoying what the world has to offer while making no effort to preserve it or engage with it. I had always had these feelings and they applied to every aspect of my life. I thought I was just a nice person. I thought when newfound friends described me as "motherly" they were giving me a compliment. I thought that good things would happen to me if I would just wait.

I wasn't wrong for thinking any of those things per se, but I was wrong for not questioning them. 

Working through it is harder than it seems

Memories of you have soured

like fruit left out too long

We'd argue about things

slowly

playfully

on the topic of whose brother 

was stronger

than the other

It was always yours

of course

but I'd never admit to it

You said "no kids"

in passing

I mistook your realism

for anything else

but that's gone now

I took you out of my phone

No fault of yours

No disrespect meant

The pain was all mine

Regretful thoughts and sleepless nights

I didn't want to be reminded

of how you thrived

but your silence bothered me

Did I wait too long?

If I didn't then 

I certainly had now

Onto the truth

to push through the phone

the wire we knew to cut

I miss you more

than words can express

and curse myself

kindly

respectfully

again and again

But all that's left to do

is drift away

And try not to think 

about what could have been

but instead

how to stay afloat

next time

My sweet pea,

my summer clover,

my autumn rose.

Every feeble movement you make

hums life into me

like a harpist

plucking at heartstrings.

In appearance you are not perfect

you look

like a teddy bear

left out in the rain

or a dishrag

that gave form to a shrew

But inside you

is the most 

anyone could ever ask for

from a living thing.

Every bump in the night needs an explanation, every unexplained death or illness requires something unseen to have caused it. Of course the mind will always jump to the worst possible scenario given the chance. Poor children are bombarded with nightmares of giant insects, half-rotten ghouls, ghastly phantoms. Every culture has them. Even the night-mare itself is a creature, being a black horse or a she-wolf or anything in between, something that compresses the chest and brings omens of death. Juxtaposed with these creatures are those that instead may elicit a feeling of awe, or perhaps a mixture of both dread and wonder at the same time. Dragons are one such example, something both feared and exalted by cultures around the world. They're man-eaters that kill with a glance but they also are symbols of strength, wisdom, luck and mystery.

Of all the creatures that I know of, none bring me greater discomfort than the huldrene. Unlike those creatures that bring fear or awe, the huldrene elicit a sort of civil pity, a feeling of sadness and for-longing. Nobody knows where the huldrene came from, although scattered accounts exist. As with many things Norwegian, contemporary explanations bend every which way to best conform to a christian viewpoint. The huldrene may have been the spawn of Lilith, Adam's first wife and the one who took even greater liberties than the simple act of eating from the garden of Eden. Children of Embla (the Elm) no longer, huldrer are now the estranged stepdaughters of Eve. Others suggest that huldrer came about in recent times, when a mother was visited by God and found to have not been bathing her children. All of them were turned into huldrene and ran exiled into the hills screaming. I like the second of these accounts better as it provides a cautionary tale which espouses the merits of washing oneself. I'm just thankful God didn't make a habit out of these hygiene appointments or else the earth would be left ridden with great populations of bovine children, running around like over sized rats. What would the world look like, with an even greater amount of children running around on all fours than is usual? Would the huldrene be able to reintegrate into society? Imagine being asked by a census taker how many of your children are with tails and how many are without. Are huldrene children fit for a different type of work than normal children? Is their diet the same, or at least comparable? As important as these questions are, I don't know that we'll ever find the answers.

As I was saying, a civil pity. A sad feeling. The huldrene aren't monsters. They're quite the opposite. They're practically human, but just different enough that they don't quite count. Because of their tails they are forced to hide themselves in the Norwegian countrysides and valleys. According to legend, if one falls in love with a huldra and has them married in accordance with christian tradition, the tail of the huldra will fall off and they will become human once more. But will they? As with many legends, this one clearly pushes a traditional christian agenda and as such is to be taken with a grain of salt. Huldre seem like very pagan creatures, and to force such a lifestyle change upon them strikes me as unethical. Could they adjust to a contemporary christian life after living in the magical realms at the fringes of industry and society, away from the "civilized" modern Norwegians? I don't think so. Another question that arises is how would such a dichotomy be received and adapted by modern society? Would the media fetishize distinctly huldrene features? Would fashion companies appropriate aspects of huldrene culture to capitalize on exoticizing yet generalized trends? Would opposition groups rise up who oppose huldrene-human marriage under guise of ethical tribalism? Would they be drowned out by other groups who think that huldrenes should marry until there are none left under guise of ethical assimilationism? Would the process be commercialized, be expedited until it is a smoothly turning wheel? Would huldrene trafficking rings start up? Would mail-order huldrene become an option for those humans who are lonely and desperate enough to look for it? Would the huldrene themselves become complicit in their own oppression, expunging group solidarity for individual identity as they attempt to further their own financial prospects?

The huldrene are real, they just never had tails to begin with.

And if I ever have kids, they can learn to bathe themselves.

The saddest thing about being alive is realizing that you'll never get to do all the things you want to do. All the places you want to go to, all the skills you want to master, all the people you want to love, all the art you want to create. It can't happen in the course a century or so no matter how badly you wish things were different. And as sad as this is, it brings up a very important question: who cares? Who cares if you make a mistake? Who cares if you ever embarrass yourself? Who cares if you fail? Everyone else has so much on their plate that they won't judge you for pursuing the things you want.

Sometimes I feel as though I plan to live to be several hundred years old. I don't mean that in the literal sense, (I am well aware of my human limitations) but rather that at my current trajectory it would take several hundred years for all of my dreams to come true. I've lost some very important things to the pull of inaction. The pull of idleness and reflection. I've lost people. Places. Dreams. And to act as though that isn't a tremendous tragedy is itself an action of inaction. Everything goes by far too fast.

I've been told that small animals perceive time slower than people do. That is to say, in the time that you experience the sensation of a minute passing, they've experienced several. I don't know if the synapses in their brain fire off quicker than ours or if it's simply a distortion of time. To be entirely honest I don't know if they reflect on the passing of time at all given how busy they must be surviving, reproducing, and fulfilling their duties as creatures of the Earth.

Perhaps that's why my favorite animal is the shrew. I wish I could slow things down and take the time I need to process everything going on around me. I wish that I didn't have to dwell on decisions for as long as I do. I wish I was bold and brave. I wish I wasn't myself.

I wish I was a shrew. I wish my biggest concern was finding a bug to eat. I wish I didn't experience shame, regret, sadness. I wish I could fulfill my role in the universe and curl up into nothing, not understanding what had gotten hold of me. I wish my shrew children would find bugs to eat. I wish that they wouldn't experience shame, regret, or sadness. I wish they would fulfill their role in the universe, curling up into nothing, not understanding what had gotten hold of them. I wish the lineage would continue. No sun to swallow the Earth, no legacy to leave, nothing to lose. Only shrews.

There is a hill in a small town in Iowa.

It's not a very large hill. It's actually quite small as far as hills go. It was put there artificially. Dirt was brought in from somewhere and piled there. It's for sledding in winter. It's at the south end of a park and a walking path loops around it. It's a nice place to go in the evening after a draining day of classes. If you see more than one or two people on your walk over there it must be a very busy night. Go there in winter and you won't see a soul.

The hill vibrates. I don't know if there's machinery in the storage sheds nearby or if it has something to do with groundwater beneath the hill. You probably won't notice it unless you take one of your shoes and socks off and stand on the hill barefoot. But if you do this, sure enough. It vibrates. It's pretty light but it sends a sort of buzzing feeling up your leg. If it's really quiet (a night with no wind) you can hear it vibrating in your skull a little bit. It's sort of like your ears are ringing but it definitely has to do with the hill, because when you lift your foot of the ground the buzzing immediately stops.

Also on quiet nights you can hear drumming sounds coming from the northeast. At first I thought it might be connected to the industry around the town (some factories, pylons, etc) but when you really focus into the sound it's distinctly drum-like. Not the mechanical sound you might expect, it's low-pitched and percussive, albeit a little muffled. It's pretty close to perfectly timed but every so often it'll stumble a little bit, maybe change tempo slightly. Human error.

It would be nice to have a third little anecdote about the hill to satisfy the rule of three, but I don't. With the exception of these two things it's an entirely normal hill. Nothing else weird goes on there. At least nothing else that I've experienced or been made aware of.

I wouldn't call the hill an attraction. I wouldn't recommend you go out of your way to see it on your next road trip through America's heartland. But if you're in town and have a spare minute, go see it. Go barefoot. Go alone.

Standing outside your hotel

Having messaged you on the phone

Lisboa

I hope you are well

In time

You prove it to me

Warnings all around.

Was I welcome where I was?

Western winds prevail.

• The concerned

Visions of his brother

Visions of his wife

An unidentified person sitting in the corner of the room

President Roosevelt (unknown if Theodore or Franklin D.) called with very important business

Visions of a great wall with no door. It was only a few days (around Thursday-Friday) before the end (Sunday evening) that the door was reported to have been found in the wall

• Non-concerned

Inexplicable trouble sleeping

Focus on death in creative endeavors, wandering mind turns to death and related things

Unlikely coincidences, the pen incident

• Logistical

All bills paid in full before new payment cycles began

Meteorological last day of Winter (which itself represents old age)

There is value to be had in not having conventional experience in a field. I was recently turned on to the world of "outsider music," a genre of music defined only by the fact that those who create it have had little to no classical training or connection with conventional musical institutions. In being wholly disconnected from the music establishment, "outsiders" are able to create "music" that is entirely disparate from anything trained composers could dream up. There is freedom in knowledge but the adverse is also true; there is freedom in inanity and ignorance. To study existing material is to shackle yourself to it, to fill your mind with it and to drown in it. To create without know-how or wherewithal is to truly create anew. I like to think that this applies to my creative endeavors.

Omar stood in his kitchen. The neighbors were still asleep and hadn't begun their weekly lawn-mowing ritual as they so often did on Sundays such as these. Hold on, was it a Sunday? He checked his phone to confirm, indeed it was. On his lock screen the text message from the night before still lingered, he hadn't yet swiped it away. He closed his eyelids and gently pressed on his eyes with the backs of his hands. It was a technique his mother taught him when he was young. Rather than attempting to stifle the tears, pressing on the eyes as he was doing relieved their tension and allowed the tears to flow more freely. This is exactly what Omar wanted. Not to prolong the length of this tragic episode but to expedite it. To assist his body in moving through the pain rather than away from it.

Allowing himself to cry was only one of two things he wanted to accomplish. The other was to pack his lunch. It was surprisingly difficult to see his kitchen through a pair of misty eyes but within a few seconds Omar had located a pack of crackers and a small block of cheese and placed them on the kitchen counter. With heavy hands he picked each cracker up, inspected it as though it were the last cracker he would ever see, topped it with a slice of cheese and stuffed it into a plastic baggie. Upon finishing, he was surprised to feel how light his lunch was. He would have thought his lunchbox was empty had he not just put food in there with his own hands. Man cannot subsist on cheese and crackers alone. He needed carrots, too. And apple slices, perhaps. He removed a few full-length carrots from the bag before deciding that slicing would not be worth the effort. He rinsed them in cold water, snapped the ends off with his hands and threw them in the lunchbox alongside two overripe apples. Repeatedly Omar had been warned by his doctor about the intestinal disturbances brought on by drinking coffee on an empty stomach, but he didn't care. Omar brewed himself just a little more than he needed and put the keys to the door.

The drive to the beach was surprisingly nondescript. It was a short drive through downtown, the streets were reasonably full of churchgoers as is to be expected for a Sunday morning, and Omar didn't run into any foolhardy drivers. If anything, it felt a little too normal given the circumstances. Like when the plot of a book resolves too quickly. Or when a film has silent credits. The other drivers that Sunday may have noticed something strange, though. In his distracted state Omar had left his travel mug of coffee on the roof of his car and it had long since slid off. The mug was in his driveway, lightly dented and mostly drained. The rest of the coffee was dribbling down the outside of his driver side passenger-door window, glinting in the sun whenever Omar made a turn.

Omar turned into the beach parking lot. He got out and grabbed his lunch box and day-pack, stopping to admire the curious brown drip patterns on the window of his vehicle a pigeon must have left. He removed his shoes and changed into his flip-flops there, continually hopping between each foot so as to not let the hot asphalt burn him. He then went to the parking meter and began to deliberate for a short amount of time. He knew for a fact that no parking officer was set to check the meters this hour. Not until 9:00am at the earliest, depending on precisely when Mandy would begin her route. He wrote the schedules as part of his job. Omar reminded himself that the $1.25 parking fee could be spent on much better things, like a cup of coffee. Like the coffee Omar frantically scanned his dashboard and front-seat divider for, only to realize that he must have left at home. However, what kind of example was he setting by not paying the very fees he helped to put into place? He was the Senior Executive Parking Management Officer for the City of San Mateo, California and a scandal of that caliber would certainly cause him to be reprimanded, or perhaps to lose his position entirely. Omar had made many enemies during his time in Parking Enforcement. He grabbed five quarters from his dashboard cup holder where a mug of coffee should have sat and reluctantly fed them into the machine.

Omar could tell the ocean was cold from looks alone and he didn't have to submerge a single one of his toes to prove it to himself. It was only about 60 degrees by that point in the morning and Omar knew from experience that the ocean still provided cold temperatures even in midday late-August heat. He spread his towel on a sterile stretch of sand and sat down. If it was too cold to swim, should he just wait for it to warm up? What a long and arduous process that would be. Few else were around, primarily just a few elderly people and churchgoers who had stopped to stare at the sun as it meandered its way up the eastern sky. If he were to allow a strange little shriek to leave his lips upon contact with the water, who would notice? Who would care? In addition, Omar had read an article about the benefits of early-morning cold showers for energy and circulation. What was a cold swim but an extended cold shower? This would be extremely healthy for him. Omar hadn't yet had his ill-advised coffee on an empty stomach, either. Omar was full of great choices this morning. He fished out his swim trunks from his day-pack and changed into them in the beach's park toilets.

Omar was correct in believing the water to be cold. He could only get up to his knees before he felt a cold wave of electricity emanate from his sternum. However, unlike other people in his life Omar did not live at the mercy of his nerves. He bent forward and allowed himself to topple over, front-first into the water. All at once he was brought to life in a way that coffee could never. The coldness zapped his fatigue from him and Omar soon found himself raising one arm over the other, bringing them down and around him in a perfect front-crawl. He had not swam since High School but it came to him so naturally now that he expected it would be the last thing he would ever forget. He pulled with his arms, arching his back for maximum reach and kicking his legs in a polished rhythm. He turned his head to come up for air and each time he returned it to the water his tears became one with the salty ocean spray. He lost time within himself.

 As he passed the third buoy from shore, he felt his arms flush unrelentingly with the kind of pain only the most elite athletes have sustained. But he had no intentions of going back so early. He had the whole bay to explore. He had the entire ocean to explore. Omar paused and tread water in place to survey how far he had come. He looked for the beach and found that he was no longer in sight of his car, or his lunchbox.

He was so glad he had the foresight to bring the extra carrots and apples. He may get hungry. As he turned his head to see the sun rising over the opening of the bay, he began to tread towards it. It was as a seagull flew low overhead in a stoic silence that Omar cheerily decided he would be swimming for the rest of his life.

At some point in your life you stop being a child and instead become an adult. It isn't a sudden change. A myriad of meaningful and memorable events accompany you in your slow and steady transition to adulthood. At thirteen you stole your brother's cigarettes and took a single desperate pull from one before it spit poison in your mouth and made you throw up underneath the schoolyard bleachers. That was the beginning. Your heart pounding in your ears, you experienced an exhilarating thrill that you would then bitterly build upon for the next six or seven months of your life. More then a decade later, at twenty-seven you moved back in with your parents briefly to save money while you found a new job and hopefully a new partner. That was the end. Your heart sinking in your chest, you saw the age of your parents reflected in their face and the stress your presence put on them outweighed the comfort of being home in the guest room.

Suppose you had to choose a point in time with stifling accuracy, a point at which you became an adult, the adult. At what point were you certain you would never again feel like a child save for moments of drunkenness or confusion? When did that part of you leave?

I have created many drafts of a paragraph which would personally answer that question, but no matter how many attempts I write, the final product does not satisfy me. Thinking and reflecting on your childhood as a whole is itself something exclusive to adulthood, and the more I reflect on the past the more I find my view of it changes. Things are often simple in childhood, less so in adulthood. But the experience of evaluating your childhood as an adult produces feelings and thoughts that are unknowable and indescribable. So for the time being, there will be no paragraph. The details of my childhood are relegated to photographs and memories, memories in which I can clearly and objectively relate events without describing what I thought, what I felt, or how I would act differently.

The feelings are fleeting but the afterimage is unmistakable.

Trying to beat JAY's high score.

Another half of a pill meets my dirty fingertips.

Everyone, myself included, wanted to be so much less.

Telling myself I've given up at the ripe age of 22.

Making action is like moving a broken leg.

Quick-witted anything is out of reach.

As am I.

I am haunted by the ghosts of the living. They summon themselves through most unwelcome song.

Changing playlists on the on-ramp, I'd rather crash and burn than hear their next taunting verse. 

The sun burns a hole in my rear view mirror and it is there that I see it. 

Soria Moria, 

wonderfully winged castle, 

rookery.

And its lone visitor, a frigatebird scrambling over its frozen walls, firmly in the moment yet with no plans to spend a winter it cannot survive.

I have no time to ponder.

I perform miracles at the gourmand's grotto. 

Loaves to ashes, fishes to dust. 

My working, wandering mind couldn't have it any other way.

And when the songs return,

and ring radiolessly,

it is then that I push the ghosts onto the heat of the grill and they rise into her empty nest above the clouds. 

Once or twice

you tried your hand at gift-giving.

It was strange to me,

often my love language,

rarely yours.

You got me a translucent plastic ball,

an ice-cream maker.

I haven't used it yet,

I may never.

But perched on my desk,

in low light,

its warped surface makes for a better crystal ball.

Because as much as I try

to keep my eyes from it

I see you

within.

I wonder how many people in history could have accomplished amazing things were it not for their lack of self-discipline.

That is one area I feel I suffer the most. I am naturally gifted in many areas of my life and yet I do not particularly feel the drive to fully immerse myself in any one skill and become the best at it, rather I choose to dabble endlessly in random whims and fleeting moments of intrigue until I get bored of one subject and move onto the next. I think my parents are both the same way. They are praised for how good they are at so many things and how many eggs they have their baskets in. My father is a lawyer, a carpainter, an electrician, a plumber, a brewer, a poultryman, a bassist, and so many more things. My mother is a planner, a seamstress, a knitter, a gardener, an interior designer, a caregiver, and a veritable encyclopedia of who's who in the neighborhood.

I like to think of how I will be described when I am their age. Not a master of anything, not an expert career-driven software developer or actuary. But a mediator, a linguist, an explorer, a songwriter, an artist, a diplomat and a friend.

There are worse ways to live a life.

I recently learned about the "Reminiscence bump." It posits that people 40+ have an unusually high number of recollections from two distinct periods in their life: Adolescence and early adulthood. 

I would say I'm forming an unsually high of memorable experiences during my early adulthood. to be cont -EBOB