Aimlessly aiming...

    Do you ever look in the mirror, and feel like you're losing grip of the person on the other side?

    "It's an irony that strikes the mind with such intensity -- one does not believe in God, one hates God."

    In a half-conscious state, I woke up at 4:14 AM to reach out for my journal and write the previous.  What was going on in my dreams...?

    "Oh my gosh, this stupid hat!"
    The girl's bathroom is full of girls shifting around each other to see their reflections in the mirror.  Endless straightening, girls tossing bobby pins to one another.
    "My hair, does it look ok?"
    "Yeah, it looks great."

    We find ourselves getting in line for the ceremony.  Some administrator is marching up and down the building's long hallway, "GET IN LINE!  A CLEAN SHIP IS A HAPPY SHIP!"

    Some guys grin at each other,
   "I bet someone is naked under their graduation robe."
    "--What?"
    "Yeah."
    "Yeah."
    "There's got to be someone."
    "Hey guys, I'm stripping it ALL off - GOIN' NAKED!"
    "If you're doing it, I'm doing it."
    "That's what I'm talking 'bout!"
    "If our group leader falls, we all fall!"
    "GROUP 8!  2008!"

    "--WOOOOOOOOO!  WE'RE MOVING!  WE'RE MOVING!"  Someone near the front yells.  People in the back join in, "WE'RE MOVING, WE'RE MOVING!"  After a long wait, we begin proceeding from the houses.

    We're crossing the field and some guy I recognize from my senior English class is in the line to my right, his hands up in the air - victory - "I'M ALMOST THERE!  I'M GRADUATING!  I'M GRADUATING!  I'M ALMOST THERE!  I'M ALMOST DONE!"

    It all happens so fast.

    I was wandering down an empty street at 5:00 AM, this morning in fact, twenty-four hours sans sleep, feeling strangely more coherent than I actually was.  My high school graduation and grad night were better than I ever expected them to be. 
    But a phrase hit me then, something from my subconscious, or perhaps something I already heard before:
    "This is where everything fades into nothingness."
    And I can't begin to tell you, how many things this meant to me but one.

    She lowered her gaze to the glass of water sitting on the table between them.  Inwardly she drew a breath, then looked away, "The glass... is three-quarters empty."
    Suddenly in corner of her eye, a swift flash of his hand - cutting through the air, hitting the glass -- it descending from the table's edge.  Instinctively her body jerked back at its collision with the floor -- shattering.  Time moved slowly then: shattering pieces separating, water separating. Her eyes watched the shards of glass and drops of water pushing out from each other.  Individually, yet collectively.
    "--Is this what you want?" he demanded.
    Her eyes focused on the shattered glass, the irregular breaks, water splotched across the floor.  Chaos...  Something in her mind was separating then, pushing away from itself -- Insanity.
    She looked up at him and caught his eyes, grinned perversely, "That is exactly what I want."

    "WOOO!  I'M TWENTY-ONE!" some girl has her hands up in the air and is dashing through the women's athletic apparel at Target.  She's there with two friends and they start chattering, all weaving through aisles and inspecting merchandise.  The "twenty-one year old" leaves to go check another section and the two friends are talking to each other with a clothing rack between them.

    "Hey, has she ever been kissed?  I don't think she has."
    "I'm... pretty sure she has."
    "Um, I'm not so sure."
    "Oh wait --yeah, she totally told me about making out with some guy."
    "...Really?"
    "Yeah."

    Five minutes later one of the girls, perhaps the twenty-one year old again, goes, "I'M GOING EXTRA EXTRA LARGE BABY!"  She pulls an XXL top over her M torso and sprints around.
   
    That's when I realized: social bliss is what I want.

    Yesterday I was a walking back from engineering, off to finish my dreaded physics problem set due at five, when I saw that there was a religious fanatic dude preaching in front of the administration building again.  A gaggle of students were in a circle around him, serving as an audience to feed his moronic self righteousness, him shouting, "REPENT FOR YOUR SINS!  JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS!"
    I really didn't feel like going to work on my physics, so I decided that for the first time in my life, I'd watch one of these hopeless wastes of time.
    The unemployed redneck thrust his bible into the air, "IF YOU ARE A MASTURBATOR, STOP!"
    The expressions on the students faces were priceless.  One boy humorously shouted out, "NO!"
    The man thrust his bible again, "IF YOU ARE A FORNICATOR, STOP!"
    One girl raised her hand to pose a question and I had a horrific realization: these students were actually here to argue with this guy.  They actually thought they'd be able to have a battle of intellect with this lunatic.  Or maybe they were just bored... procrastinating like I was... hopefully that was the case.
    The short girl with a curly hair up-do went four minutes with her hand raised, then proceeded to enter the circle of idiocy.  Clutching her coffee mug, she solemnly asked her question.  Damn, she thought she was an intellectual.
    Anyone with half a brain would have known the religious fanatic's response to every question: "I AM OUT HERE PREACHING THE WORD OF GOD AS THE BIBLE COMMANDS ME TO!  I AM HERE TO PREACH TO EVERY LIVING CREATURE THE MESSAGE OF GOD!"
    I left at this point, deeming the physics problem set more entertaining.
    And to think, that guy is driving next to you on Speedway, standing behind you in line at Safeway, and probably using the computers at the ILC to look at porn.

"Dude, what time does your thing say?"

"Six minutes, forty-two seconds.  What - does yours not - Dude, is yours even turned on?"

The guy looks down at his cycling machine's blank screen, "Uh, I don't know..."  He starts impatiently hitting the quick start button and the screen flashes with the words: "Paused".

"Dude, yours was paused this WHOLE time?"  They both break out in laughter.

- "Hey, hey, let's race!"

Both guys start furiously pedaling, their machines going nowhere; sweat accumulates on their faces.

"Dude, I'm done."  The guy who had the paused machine gets off and wanders off to get a paper towel of cleaner.

When he returns, his friend is begging, "Hey, hey, five more minutes."

He's walking away, his friend still persistently calling, "Hey, five minutes, seriously man, I'm almost done, five!"

The guy still on the cycling machine guns it for five minutes.

I try and hide a smile from overhearing their conversation.  I'm sitting on the cycling machine two down from them, feeling bad ass: reading and cycling at the same time.

Some overweight guy plops down on the machine next to me.  He guns it for three minutes and I skeptically glance as he hobbles away.  He's not coming back.

A rational mind can calm irrational thoughts.  That's all this is.

Clear the mind and just work.