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:: 10.30.2003 ::
As far as I know, the fires are still burning. With at least 20 people dead and whole communities destroyed, it seems almost disrespectful to point out that the smoke has cleared itself from the sky that I see, and has been replaced by swirling, healthy clouds. We all whined about the smoke and the ash while it was here, and I whined a lot before I read about what was happening elsewhere and saw the pictures of the hills and houses burning. The truth is that those of us who live in this small section of Southern California have had it insanely easy compared to our neighbors. Me, I breathed a little smoke, but I can still feel joy in the sky. But even when things clear up, will anyone standing in the charcoal remnants of their home, looking across the street at the bitter, shattered skeleton of a grocery store, be able to see that all around them the once-black skies have been restored to everlasting, shimmering blue? What does it take, this sleepy boy wonders, to burn everything so completely even the sky disappears under the ashes once everything else has been burned?
:: Aaron Humphrey 2:07 AM ::
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:: 10.28.2003 ::
I guess those fires all over California are getting worse or at least not getting much better, but it all seems very distant to me, somehow. It was raining ashes this weekend, and I've talked to people who've seen the fires and I've even seen pictures but somehow it still remains unreal to me, like it's still a hypothetical "oh that could never happen here" kind of thing, when it very clearly IS happening, and not too far from here. I feel like there's an protective shield of school and suburbs surrounding and shielding me. I guess that's true on a lot of levels, actually. Anyway, on Saturday I woke up to a very different world on account of the distant fires and I thought maybe it was Armageddon. "That's strange," I said to myself, "I didn't think it would happen so quickly. huh." I wasn't worried though, and I'm not entierly sure what that means.
I wrote this Saturday morning when things were the worst:
It's ashen all over the county. I woke up with strange smothered sunlight falling through the window and when I went to the bathroom to shave I could see the sky overcast with grey and the sun glowing neon red. Light on my face reflected unnaturally, like the end of the world. When I step outside I feel like I need to take off the sunglasses I'm not wearing in order to see things the way they really are. The green of the grass and trees is ten shades brighter and normal and the bulidings are all tinged sunset -- at 11 AM. I tell a girl in the laundry room that it looks like the end of the world and she agrees with me. When I go downstairs I notice little white specks drifting down from the sky like dirty snowflakes cut from paper. Ashes. They dot the sidewalk and are hidden in the grass. Cars in the parking lot look like they've been abandoned in a run-down carnival parking lot for at least 10 years, untouched. As I walk across the basketball court the ash specks scatter from my footprints.
I'm back inside now, but I was out there long enough that it's in my hair, my throat and on my skin. You can't see it, but I can feel it when I swallow or talk. Instant sore-throat no drugs will cure.
I guess there are big forest fires somewhere nearby and the winds are blowing the ash all over orange county. but that sounds like a pretty normal explanation for something that is so strange to be living.
I found this today: The World Rock Paper Scissors Society. It's pretty amazing and I'm thinking of joining if they'll let me. It's been around since the early 20th Century and they have actual world tournaments with thousands of dollars in prize money to be won. I spent just a short time reading about RPS strategy and already I feel like I know more about the entire WORLD.
By the way, sorry I didn't update for a while. I honestly didn't know it had been this long! Fire and daylight savings time I guess will do that to you.
:: Aaron Humphrey 2:07 AM ::
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:: 10.22.2003 ::
Today I woke up earlier and walked to class,
leaving my reckless wheels and board at home.
All the kids wound through campus on walkways;
concrete paths through the land of landscaping.
Today I took it slow
And my hair didn’t fly
Or dry into a wild tangle.
Today I looked up as I walked
And saw only one student who dared to get out of line,
to cut across the hilly campus lawns.
But I followed him.
A strange empty greenness rolled beneath my feet, intersected only by leafy shadows.
I want to lay face down the grass,
Spread out,
Enjoy the verdant company of every blade
And look for little bugs
That crawl up and down
On random, unknown missions.
But class is calling.
And I must study silent cinema.
:: Aaron Humphrey 11:31 PM ::
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:: 10.20.2003 ::
My name is Aaron. My girlfriend's name is Erin. My roommate's name is Aaron. If this trend continues, eventually everyone I know will have the same name and my life will be like
(pick analogy based on depth of cultural knowledge)
a). a real life Ionesco play, minus (hopefully) the rhinoceroses
b). an episode of the Smurfs where everyone runs around telling everyone has the same name (Smurf) and they have to be known by the roles the play in society (ie Clumsy Smurf, Baby Smurf, Artsy Smurf, whatever). I figure as long as we don't start saying everything this "Aarony" or "Erintastic" everything will be ok. Holy crap, do you guys think the Smurfs were
(once again, pick based on knowledge of literature)
a). Using Orwellian double-speak?!
b). Really stupid and only knew one word?
Anyway, I will now update on behalf of all us Aaron/Erins.
Aaron (my roommate): earlier today he dived around the room for about five minutes trying to catch a fly that had flown in the open door. It was a beautiful day, though, so no one even thought of closing the door and blocking the sunlight and blue sky. There is essentially no where to walk on his side of the room, as he seems to have adopted my inability to put things in PLACES. We just set them down. It's like a special handicap I think, being unable to properly order stuff in three-dimensional space. Really the only reason his side of the room looks worse than mine is that he has more stuff than me. Also, there is no place for him to study except the middle of the room, which we have to keep clear to get to the bathroom. So he spends a lot of time on the floor. He is cleaning the bathroom now though, to his credit. I hope he never becomes infected with my inability to do THAT. Wow! Now he's cleaning the fridge. What a good kid!
Erin (the girl): I have been dating her for three months as of today! Over two of those months have been spent apart from her, but the days that I spent in the same geographical states as her were rich and full . . . it seems like it was longer than a month. She lives in a Minneapolis dorm room above a library and when I called her tonight she had returned from studying in the basement and was reading to her stuffed elephants. Yesterday she went to an aquarium and petted some stingrays. I think it must be cheating to like someone as much as I like her.
And finally Aaron (me):I found the sky to be full of great swirls of clouds today and less like wallpaper than usual. Also I went to a Bible study at a Presbyterian that I’ve never been to before and when the other kids asked where I was from, they didn’t all go “what??” when I said Dallas, Oregon. One girl actually said she relatives there. I asked who they were and she said, “oh, they’re all old.” I said “ha ha, they probably go to my old church then.” She said, “actually, they’re Mennonites.” And I said, “actually, that was the church I went to.” Crazy crazy world we live in. Her family actually had reunions in my tiny hometown. She and I reminisced about the park with the creek and the big green bridge.
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:19 PM ::
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:: 10.18.2003 ::
Relocation! I talked about re-vamping this page from basically the first month that I got it, but it wasn't until now, over two years later that I ever got around to even changing it from the blogger template colors. I hope to add more new stuff and take down the old stuff that doesn't make sense eventually. But for now, at least there's an the updated archives from back when I wrote more and seemed to be more clever. Tonight Chapman's football team is playing some other school's football team. I went to the game with my friend Christina because her boyfriend Josh plays on the team. We got cheap food from the (shh, don't tell) McDonald's drive-thru and then headed out to sit in the concrete stadium under those giant false lights. I wore her spare hooded sweatshirt and was thinking of Erin, and somehow it felt like highschool -- keeping warm with my mind on an absent girl, all that latent energy buzzing around me and always something I don't understand going down on the field glowing green. It was a strange nostalgia . . . in highschool football games were always the place to feel that anything could happen while still being fully aware that nothing really would. Lying on a concrete bench in the half empty stadium watching white and black uniforms scramble on the field in configurations that I realized that while I was disappearing into myself, other people were more than just vaguely interested in what was going on. They came to watch. I just came to be.
Christina, though a dutiful girlfriend, is tired and can't take any more of the inexplicable spectacle. She's laying on my bed now trying to sleep as I try to type. Zwan plays on my laptop. She complains that the chord progressions are repetitive. But they're still my favorite.
:: Aaron Humphrey 9:37 PM ::
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