The gauge is low.  Not on “E” or anything but it’s low enough to have me worried.  I’m watching it carefully, as if I can see that little red hand going down even though the movement is only noticable over a lengthy span.  I knew we should’ve stopped at that last place, the one amongst that forest.  What’s a forest doing in the middle of Arizona, anyway?  Isn’t it supposed to be all desert here?  Well it’s desert now.  And more desert.  And more desert.  And there’s signs saying when the next city is, but it’s too far away for this much gasoline, or at least the city who’s name I recognize is.  The other markings on the sign are vague.  Is “Cliff Dwellers” a town or a small grouping of people?  Would they have gasoline?  I try to conserve but it’s the middle of the desert and if you slow down too much people get frustrated.  I look from side to side, there’s cliffs and more cliffs.  I try and see around the corner, x-ray vision would come in handy.  I can see pretty far and not a thing indicates that petrol salvation is coming up any time soon.

It still hasn’t hit me.  I’ve walked across that stage.  Thank you.  Shake hand.  Thank you.  Shake hand.  Thank you.  Shake hand.  Receive diploma with other hand.  It’s all completed.  I have finished school, a week before the ceremony in fact.  But so far it doesn’t feel any different.  The day to day obligations are gone, there’s no where I have to be.  But I’m trying to be an adult, and I’m trying to be responsible, and that means I’m keeping busy.  There’s resumes to build, there’s people to get in contact with.  There’s things to write.  There’s lots of things to write.  And on top of all that, I’m trying to exercise.  Exercising almost seems to take up as much time as school does.  But on the plus side the running is giving me a sense of accomplishment htat’s lasting through the entire day.  After I’ve done that, it doesn’t really matter what else I do that day.  I’ve run!  But there already seems to be a dozen projects up in the air, and there’s a job out there somewhere.  I’m almost worried that I will get a job too quickly now.  How will I finish all this when I have somewhere to go?

There’s something eerie about perfection.  When nothing is wrong, we worry, is this the calm before the storm?  Or is there something more subversive underneath, waiting to be dug up or reveal itself at the worst times.  A Rockwellian feast with the perfect family: father at the head, mother in apron, son, and daughter, all smiling from ear to ear seems so implausible that it must mean something other than what we are looking at.  Clearly they can’t all be happy.  Clearly not everything in their lives is right.  So it makes sense that these types of images only appear in illustrations, or if they are photographs they are well acted facades.  Perfection is creepy because it doesn’t exist, and therefore we cannot wrap our heads around it.

And movies with no conflict are boring.  We need drama, we need clashing, we need imperfection.  So it makes you wonder: if we are unable to cope with perfection, and we only find interest in imperfection and conflict: then what would heaven be like?  Can our spirits even handle such a thing?  Just because we can’t wrap our minds around such a thing doesn’t mean it can’t exist, but what if we’re not built for such a thing.  What if we all reach heaven, and find it boring?

My attention is a grandfather clock.  It may swing in one direction, gathering force so that I am focusing with all my might at the peak of its swing, but as soon as it reaches its peak, that is when it begins to fall away.  Whatever it is I need to be doing will gradually become more frustrating, until the pendulum reaches its deepest valley at which point I will begin to casually look at something else.  Just a glance at my phone, or a tweet from the bird at the top of the clock is where it’ll start.  But soon the mail is in my hands, and it needs a response.  And then an article in the paper demands my attention.  Soon I am doing something else entirely and my focus on that is being stronger.  It is not until I reach that activity’s peak that I realize how lonely the first obligation has become and I begin to try and pull myself away form this new diversion.  The pendulum is falling once more, this time in favor of the more productive activity, but it may be some time before it actually reaches its peak once more.  The damage is done.

The War Against the Bugs began long ago.  It started small, and mysterious.  A few small flies, about the size of a gnat, that would hover around the sink.  But they multiplied.  They reproduced.  And then they swarmed.  You see the fly scouts had managed to capture an important resource that had hid from the eye of our generals.  A banana behind the toaster.  What we had once would provide sustenence for our troops became a key base for the enemy army.  While blackened and degraded beyond usefulness to us, so much so that we forgot of it’s existence, this banana was able to launch a thousand bugs.  Soon there were clouds in our kitchen.  They’d send scouts to other rooms.  The bathroom fell victim.  We tried to fend them off, but they spawned faster than we could destroy.  We searched for their source but found nothing.  Finally the winter came, and as with Napoleon and Hitler, their war failed as the cold set in.  The flies were gone.

And for a time, there was peace.

But now, as spring approaches, a new rebel force is beginning to build up it’s forces.  It thinks it is hidden in the cabinets, but every now and then I catch a scout flying out.  I try and torture information out of them, for the most part they keep their mouths shut.  But one thing has become clear.  The moths are coming.

Mornings do all they can to set their trap.  Lucky for me they choose to make these traps as enticing as possible.  No when I wake up I am not dodging flying spears or running from oversized boulders.  When I wake up I find myself in a a position I don’t want to leave.  I feel as though I am melting into the bed, falling into it, as Alice down the rabbit hole.  My eyelids slowly close away the light, just as she must have seen the sun get further and further as she descended towards Wonderland.  The bed feels like sand, but not nearly as rough, it’s as if the bed were sand that’s made of finely ground feathers instead of glass eroded over centuries.  I sink into it.  Did I sleep-walk into quicksand?  Certainly quicksand would not be so comfortable.  I consider getting up, but it is so cold outside these covers, and so warm inside.  Why go out there, where all that effort would have to be exerted, both mentally and physically, when I can stay here and rest some more.  Just five more minutes?  Oh wait, an hour just passed.  Wasn’t it 9:30 a minute ago?

Last night I had strange dreams.  The first one was similar to the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.  For some reason my parents had a child, I have no explanation of what the circumstances are that would bring about this now, but it happened.  Unlike the movie, the baby was born as a normal sized, normal aged child.  Unfortunately, like the movie, a sort of reversal happened where the child became younger and younger as time went on, which meant that it shrunk and became more fetus-like.  Very quickly it shrunk to almost nothing and died, and it was sad.

As if this was not enough my bad dreams did not end.  The next one was on a plane.  The plane crashed in the water, and I fought my way through the water to get to the shore.  After everyone was safe, it was required that we go on another plane to get from the island that we had made it to, to home on the mainland.  Unfortunately, as rediclous as it sounds, as we approached the mainland the pilot flew very close to the water, so close in fact that the smaller waves touched the bottom of the plane.  To our horror, a much larger wave approached, and we had to watch as impending doom made its way towards the plane.  The wave impacted, and pulled the plane under the water, crashing it.  I don’t know if we were able to escape the ocean diving fuselage, for I woke up at least partially at this point.

I want to commit myself to write a little bit every week (or every day would be even better), and in turn would like to find something that will not put a lot of pressure on me to write a lot or to write anything of some great quality.  iFanboy.com is a website I go for editorial articles about comics, and they also host my favorite comics podcast.  One of their columns is “200 Words With Paul Dini”, a weekly column written by the producer of the Batman Animated Series and writer of many comics, Paul Dini.  Basically every week he tells a story in 200 words.  I was impressed with what he was able to do with this number of words, and realised it would be a good amount of writing to commit to myself, so I will be trying to adopt this strategy.  Here’s my first attempt:

Santa Ana winds always give me an indescribably strange feeling. It’s discomforting to think that the weather can have such a strong effect on one’s emotions, especially when visibly it is not so drastically different from the regular California. There is no bleakness here, the sun shines as it always does, illuminating the rich greens and blues of the Conejo Valley and presenting an altogether picturesque vision of our landscape, and yet, something just feels off. Is it in the air? Do the winds themselves bring some sense of dread in their arms and drop it as if releasing some bomb from a plane on high? If so, where do they find it? The wind is howling at me now, pushing the branches and leaves of trees aside, making way, as if in some great hurry. Where is it going? And what’s its rush? This is the one time of year that I do not need to feel stress, that there is nothing important nudging me in the middle of my back, reminding me that I can’t relax, but the wind has taken it upon itself to make sure that I am always slightly off kilter. Always looking over my shoulder.