082118 Wow! this is definitely a test of the emergency broadcast system! Why? Because I’m all jittery. I got chuff and scribble and tweak and wow and flutter. I got a resonant peak right around 2KHz. I got port noise. I got banana nose. I got hippos in my stomach. I got it all, babe. Why? Would you like to know the various reasons for this? For why this little 15 minute session, this ordinary little 15 minute session, is a great opportunity to practice totally being unfocused, unmotivated, pulled away, reluctant, foggy, antsy, itchy, and ready to bolt, to find any excuse whatsoever to not have to sit down and have the session? OK, I’ll tell you. As far as the parts I know of go, they include: - the weird convo between Megan and Millie last night where Megan seemed to lack empathy and be hard and hypocritical and judgmental - although that’s slightly ameliorated because I was able to have a follow-up convo with Millie today that I think helped a little - Megan’s decision to go see that fuckboi that was so shitty to her last year - although that’s slightly ameliorated because I was able to have a follow-up convo with her in the car on the way back from picking her up, which at least helped me a little - Megan’s two friends that I haven’t met, that don’t go to MHS, that are coming over here in a little bit - slightly ameliorated because they are the people she’s going to go to the cat café with, so at least I’ll get to get at least a little sense of them before that - the enervating effect of working on AVID class building, feeling that I have such a long way to go - ameliorated because at least I’m working on it - pot still in my system - ameliorated because I haven’t had any today - which of course that whole chemical dynamic is part of all this too - wistfulness every time I walk past the elementary school with the FOR SALE sign in front of it; our childhood memories are for sale or something, I don’t know - what else? There’s something else. I’m just not sure. So yeah, there’s all that, plus the invisible thing that I’m not letting myself see or hear or articulate right now. So let’s take a little break from that, and just write down anything else at all, anything that’s not about me, that’s anything except for anything that’s pure nonsense. Gotta keep coming back to that; that’s like the fundamental rock in your pocket. It’s nice too because, walking along, should you suddenly discover that your pocket has a hole in it and you’ve lost your rock, it’s not a big deal. It’s not the rock per se; you can just pick up any other rock and imbue it with the same spell. Magic is cool that way. Material components are pretty interchangeable. They’re like electrons splashing against a computer screen? They’re like the bricks and plaster and glass and paint of a school, after the students and teachers, yelling and smiling and nodding and quaking and shivering, have all already moved out on the last day of the last summer, and you can practically still hear the echoes of their hollers and cries and goodbyes, hanging caught in the tree limbs like so much TP, drifting across the abandoned playground, and you can see the inspirational message painted on the wall inside the locked front door in the cool dark of the hall, already, already even after only a few weeks of being the school that *used to be,* already collecting silent, minute layer after layer of microscopic dust, testament to the way time passes in our world, in our human world, why did we make this thing, this time? Why did we make this world this way, to have such a thing as time in it? But so yeah, if the rock in your pocket is like the walls of the school, it should be OK, right? Shouldn’t it? Couldn’t you walk along down a leafy valley between two oak and maple studded ridges, down toward the creek that’s inevitably at the bottom, singing its chaotic little jingle da cappa al coda, on repeat, on loop, forever and ever until you grow up my fair child, and grab another rock with your grubby little hand, your hand i love to hold, even in the summer, even when it’s sweaty and antsy and agitated and busy and full of a million bugs and frogs and seeds and berries and sunlight, the sunlight itself, which you still know how to hold, until you grow up, until time takes over and lets the sunlight go, and lets it go, down the stream, and we let the goldfish go, and the goofy frogs pop off a loud PEEP, giving themselves away, as they jump in ahead of our clumsy feet, and i love you and your grubby hands and clumsy feet, and couldn’t we just pick up another rock to put in our pocket? Couldn’t we have school anywhere?