impressions of size

i'm a little lost again. i went on vacation. i bought a guitar. lindsay and i finished veronica mars last night. i applied for a few more jobs. i got sunburned, but just a little. i had a dream i was flying in a small plane over a clear ocean filled with giant fish and one enormous alligator. the weirdest part about the dream, i think, was not that we landed in a ruined city filled with broken televisions and microwaves, but that i absolutely knew that it was an alligator and not a crocodile. it was the size of a city, and it left a deep trench in the ocean floor when it shuffled away from us as we passed overhead.

rarely do i remember specific images from my dreams, but the shining blues, purples, and greens of the ocean floor have been stuck inside my head all day. the alligator itself was a very dark purplish-brown and was nestled in a wide sloping plain of purple and green grass that waved around as sea grasses are wont to do. we flew in our tiny plane for a long time, i rememeber, and i can vaguely recall a few other images, mostly of huge fish the size of skyscrapers and neighborhoods. interestingly enough, there is really only the impression of size remaining; there was nothing i could scale them to, i just remember thinking my god, that alligator could eat a city.

what i do remember often about my dreams are these kind of ideas: not images, exactly, but the impressions of them. often i'll wake up and remember that i had a wonderful dream but not be able to remember anything about it at all; other times i'll wake up terrified without knowing what was chasing me. anyway, along with the images of the crystal-clear ocean came an overwhelming feeling of being completely alone. interestingly enough, i know there was someone with me in the plane--two someones, i think, one to fly the plane and another next to me--but the feeling remains that we in the plane were over an ocean that no one had ever seen before. finally landing in the ruined city i realized that we were the only ones left in the world. i wasn't scared or even particularly dismayed, i just felt like there was a big world out there and i was the only one in it.

this world had moved on.

now, of course, i realize that i've just been reading the dark tower too much, but that's okay, it was a neat dream. i haven't really had very many of them lately, at least not the kind that i remember upon waking. i think that sort of goes hand-in-hand with not being able to sleep. the other night while tossing and turning i did something relatively impulsive: i rolled over, grabbed jenny, went online, and bought a guitar. it didn't cost me a whole lot of money--only a hundred and thirty dollars--to get a not-too-terrible acoustic guitar, some extra strings, a tuner, and a self-teaching book, so i think i made out okay. it got delivered to my house in poway and i picked it up when lindsay and i stayed there on thursday night. i tuned the guitar--the first lesson--and learned how to play six whole notes--the second and third lessons--before putting it down and going to bed.

so why did i buy a guitar? have you ever seen or read high fidelity? of course you have, you're my friends. anyway, somewhere in there there's some mention about being a music critic and always being an ass to people and not knowing what it's like to actually make music. how can i really know what rock and roll is if i haven't ever made it myself? this will probably find its way into the pile of things that i wanted to do with my life that will never get done, but i'll never know until i try, so there's my guitar sitting in the corner of my room.

i'm posting this because the people who read this are the people who see me every day, and i want those people to bug me about playing my guitar. this is one of those things i'm going to have to get on myself about, and it wouldn't hurt to have you guys get on me too. jordan remains the only person to actually make me feel bad about not constantly updating this here blog, and for that, i thank him. seriously, though, annoy me about it.

in other news, veronica mars is the greatest television show in the world. it's going to have to have its own separate post, but it needs to be said. expert writing, perfect pacing, a phenomenal cast (with special consideration for kristen bell as veronica and jason dohring as logan and the exception of teddy dunn as duncan, who is not a very good actor), and a fantastic setting in sunny san diego. it's the most wholly entertaining thing on television since firefly. if you haven't seen it, ask me for some episodes and get to work; the new season starts at the end of september and attempting to watch it without knowing what's going on will ruin you.

hey look, my first lawrence arms reference (i stand corrected; this is actually my second, thank you jordan)

i knew it would happen. here's a blank page all over again. knowing it was going to come didn't seem to help me avoid it any more than it ever has in the past. every little piece of my life is a metaphor for the rest, and my writing is no different. inspiration will hit eventually, and it will last for a night, or maybe a whole day, or even a whole week or month or year, but eventually it will fade as quickly as it came.

perhaps it's just a consequence of living the intensely overdramatic life, but nothing ever comes gradually to me. i began the last paragraph by saying that i knew it would happen, but, like i said, knowing it was going to happen doesn't mean it didn't surprise me. because, like everything in my life, it came fast and hard. it's very cliche to say that one's life is like a rollercoaster, but there's a reason people say that: it's a very accurate metaphor (i guess technically that's a similie). i go up, i go down, i go faster and faster, i'm burning the gears, my tears are streaming back into my ears. i constantly refer to myself as bipolar; perhaps histrionic is the more accurate term, but either way, my interpretation of my own life is the only one that i'm going to follow, and if that's the case, well then, i guess my life is like a rollercoaster.

so what's the point of this rambling? didn't i begin by talking about how i was having trouble writing again? oh look, there, i've written a little bit. here's hoping i keep at it.

and here's an edit before i go to bed from something i found on slashdot and thought "that's awesome:"
Study Finds 1/3 of All Studies Bullshit