July 8

Mr. Overshankey Nuzz, why are you being so insane?

My heart's generating energy like a fusion reactor! It's making that much heat, too!

Do you need to go to the hospital?

I'm just gonna make some more plans.

And then he fell asleep. Please?

I know what I'll say to Pigwonzadreppy: "You don't need to go through with this. Your family has true love for you inside, and it won't come outside until they make an effort to learn to do so themselves. Let's call them, there's no need for you to sacrifice your soul. I'll take you on a sobriety retreat myself. I hear there's a mountain." Nono, I don't want to worry her, I'll say: "I know your inner fire. It will shine brightly against everything. Feed it daily! In the darkest times, Hope is something we give ourselves."

Really? You're going to quote Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender?

What other Avatar is there than the last Airbender? Anyway, I'll have you know that show is very meaningful to me. In fact, this sleepless heartbeating is actually giving me an idea about what Aang and Zuko felt when they learned firebending from the sun warriors. Which is awesome, because that episode was really unclear about what was going on.

So now you know firebending? Good, now you don't need a sleeping bag.

No, it feels like things are coming together in my heart. Like hydrogen at the core of the Sun. And completely different weird things and energy are coming out of it. My friendship with my brother that was lost. My feelings of self-anger whenever he was beaten up, because I couldn't do anything about it. My inner self that I focused on after I thought God spoke to me one night. The self that I lost trace of when I hurt innocent people by shooting my mouth off about them, regardless of the love I felt. I think I'm finding it. I'm not sitting down for anything that might be harming Pigwonzadrep. I'm feeling emotions. It hasn't happened in a while. I'm becoming me again.

I'm reluctant to become you again. This narrative style no longer serves the blog.

I decided to take a hot shower to ease my heart. I finally did get to sleep after a half hour rolling around restlessly, giving me three hours of barely relaxing sleep. My mind state when I got up, was, however, much quieter, and my heart had stopped writhing around in nervousness. My dad, who was as willing to drop everything for anyone as I was, switched his work shift around to drive me to LaGuardia. He slipped some much-needed cash to me, without me asking. But refusal would be ludicrous. I was mostly silent, playing through more and more schemes, twisting my heart from greatest fears to greatest joys and loves. The music on the radio were very standard, popular songs on an oldies station. As a teenager, I wouldn't have noticed them. I was in a sense that if most brains in the country were processing that information, I should go for much rarer things. But right now, I was looking for something to center my mind, which practically felt like it was burning right now, no doubt a searing mixture of adrenaline, worry, tensness, and my constantly racing pulse.

There are some who think the mind is excellent about acting according to past, present, and future simultaneously. The music my brain would soak up on that car ride would serve me later ("In My Life").

The plane ride was more of this, minus the music, plus a dose of feeling at once shy and curious about fellow passengers, silenced by the creepiness I perceive in myself as a bearded stranger. I managed to get much more sleep, and felt almost human by the time it was over. But I felt like an alien when I stepped out of the airport. It was twilight, and the breeze was perfect. The temperature was amnoitic. Speaking of which, I did feel a bit buoyant. Everything about the air was different.

It was on those wings I sailed misguidedly about town. I was looking for Joshua Tree park, which I learned soon enough was acessible only by a multi-thousand foot tram 10am-9pm. Whoops. Fortunately, in my ever-northerly path, I ran into a huge stretch of unmarked desert. Or semi-desert? I think so, because there are bushes all over the damn place. Businessmen like the word "desert" more than "semidesert" for obvious reasons, and poor people agree with them, as "semi-desert" understates their trials dealing with 120 degree heat and wintertime feet-tall floods. I planned on being careful, and walking out of earshot from the road, but I let my fatigue sit me down less than a quarter mile away. There was no prep, just plopping my space bag down on the clear patch of sound and snuggling on over its soft surface. And I was far out enough to get a healthy eyefull of stars.