Rereading my journal entry, I switch tones very quickly! If you want to hear about my vagina, scroll down. there's lots more rambling before.

SLO was pretty lovely. Visted Wine Country (tm)(k), the kind of place where the sommelier can go on and on and on and on until I get my appetizers. And then go on a bit more. It was nice to go there, to be reminded that I constantly remain ignorant about the nuances and pleasures of California as a state. Granted, there are many well-known problems about the state, but the diversity & multitude of cultures is quite pleasurable. I must admit that i consider myself someone who is... well, like Ava on Green Acres, to connect this to a pop culture reference. I prefer tightly compacted areas with culture oozing out of pores. What a delightfully inchoate metaphor!

Something which really struck me were the stars. About one am I snuck out, bundled up (their house is on a 5 acre lot... they've planted an acre of lavender which hasn't grown in yet, so it looks rather barren so far)... and once again, I have to reiterate that I'm not used to the ability to see stars. Mars, as we all know, is phenomonally close to us right now, glowing ember... the milky way, looking deceptively coiled, snake at the base. And I have to wonder if I have the capacity to understand the complexity of the systems which exist in this universe - not to mention the possibility of multiverses (versus parallel universes, of course). Even the speculation makes my throat a little dry. I'm too uneducated on the subject to speculate very much -- but jesus, that's an amazing view. Made a few wishes, too.

On a girly note. My hair isn't going back to purple. Fucking fuck. I'm so sad about that. Anyone who doesn't allow me to bitch about the state of my hair deserves to be roughly sodomized with the tip of a spear. 'Everything else is wood behind the spear'.

The preceding is a quote from Cryptonomicon. I'm going to see if I can finish it by next Monday. I just picked up Crimson Petal & White so I need to read tha ttooooo. It's a good book. It's interesting, to see the constant emphasis between past & present... there isn't really a specific bleedthrough (which I'm not surprised at, seeing as it's a book focused on technology -- no references to the metaphysical, strictly on physical). But I appreciate it. Generally it's a fairly straightforward narrative -- I'm surprised at the clip that it travels, being 900 pages. Of course I've accustomed myself to reading things like les miserables, famous for being a 1200 page epic with 100-long digressions. On the other side of the spectrum, most popular fiction travels at a relatively fast clip. The major exception I can think of, of course, would be Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

---

(let us go now you and i
while the evening is spread out against the sky
like a patient, etherised upon a table.
let us go though half deserted streets
the muttering retreats
of restless nights in one night cheap hotels
and sawdust restraunts with oyster shells.
streets that follow like a tedious argument
of insidious intent
to lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
let us go and make our visit.)
I suppose that there's no particular reason to post the first verse of Eliot's Lovsong of Alfred J Prufrock (jotted down by memory, thank you) -- certainly I'm not some old dude, fearful of his withering sexuality, his vitality, standing outside of the door of some young virile woman, skin glowing radiantly. Or am I? In the series of grand allegories, to whom should I look?

In retrospect, I can tie my inclusion of this poem to my earlier lament about my hair. There's a section in the poem in which the narrator frets about his bald spot. Similarly, I lament my hair - a sign of beauty, virility. (although I also did a cellophane so maybe my hair will be blue later)

I'm on the rag so I'm not doing my kegel exercises. One of these days I'm gonna be able to crush CANS with these muscles, man. Well ideally I guess I'd able to shoot ping pong balls, or something. At this point I've figured out the muscle contractions. But barring my lack of experience and my lack of a ping pong ball, this will remain safely in the realm of speculation.

Gettin' to portland in ten days. Fuckin' brace yourselfs, y'all. Stormy has promised to sex me up VERY severely, and I plan on chilling with PDX freaks quite extensively. Get me out of my school's social buble (which, of course, I do dearly miss. As bosonuser pointed out, i'll appreciate them more. Or as Trevor Goodchild said, What doesn't kill us only makes us stranger. And the fact that I know Aeon FLux quotes must be impressive, given a) their dearth of dialogue and b) the general unremarkable quality of most of it. So there is going to be some scylla-love going on very soon. If you want to do the scylla and you are going to be in PDX, line up here.