Day hike at Granite Creek

Day hike in the Owyhee Mountains

Amos and I went camping at Goose Lake

Despite the name, we saw no gooses. Geese. Goosen. Whatever.









There was solitude to be had there, and except for the fucking cattle making noise almost constantly, it wasn't a bad place to go.

Amos is getting old. :-(

I took a test on Wednesday.

I should have studied more. Of course, I am guessing most everyone feels like that after they take a test. I also need to practice my penmanship.

Fortunately, I am fairly unconcerned about the outcome.

Red wine before sunrise

It's early here in Idaho, just after 5:00 am and the bottle of cheap shiraz on my desk is getting empty. The day passed in an ignoble manner, with napping, masturbation and sushi dinner being the high points of the day, which only further drove home the fact that I am so far removed from what it really means to be human, and alive, that I can scarcely imagine what it must be like.

I watch 'primitive' people on TV and while I understand my 'quality of life' is probably better what with dentists and toothpaste and chiropractors and health insurance, I feel a twinge of envy in that they -touch life- with every breath, and I only get gasps of it here and there in my submersion into middle-class imprisonment.

Oh, well, there's work to do, money to earn and tests to take.

And so it goes...

Letter to a friend

Dear Joey,

It's a little before 0400 here in Garden City and I have been up for about a half an hour, trying in vain to bank down quiet-desperation-induced-wanderlust, and not having much luck with that. In an effort to burn off comp time, which would have been 'swept' on to my paycheck the first week of September, I have taken tonight (which was Thursday) and tomorrow (which is in fact today, but because I work nights, it's all fucked up) off.

I would have loved to shoot over to the coast and spend some time out there, but since you're not answering my pleas to go out on the water I've decided that I am probably better employed studying for the sergeant's exam coming this Wednesday. I expect to do well on the academic portions, of course, but the "peer review" of my application will go badly and the "management review" will go even worse. My dream of mobile penury in 2218 more days seems to slip farther from my grasp with each passing day.

That said, I am not unoptimistic. I have developed a weird sense of freedom and serenity of the sort I assume is only felt by men who are about to take a risky chance on something that will be either turn out as a great success or a monumental disaster, maybe like Col Doolittle's Raid on Tokyo.

Such is life as I am seeing it through my darkened lens of depression and stagnation.

How goes the work on the house and other stuff?

Let me know.

-m