080118 some things seem to be self-conscious, ritualized or formalized markers of alien-ness: having two heads, being a “little green man,” etc. They are ideograms or glyphs, representing a host of otherness, but the problem with glyphs is you can’t stop them from evolving away from your original intention for them. They begin to have a life of their own. No thing or perhaps even idea or word is content to merely represent some other thing or idea or word for long. (There are no synonyms, as the feller said.) So the next time you meet a two-headed guy in a gutter somewhere, remember that... “he’s just zis guy, you know?” and maybe show a little respect, and resist the urge to assume anything about his morals, his attention span, his temperament. He might not be a tragic figure, howling for love. He might have a family and a pet mouse. Likewise with the little green man. Maybe wait and listen first, before you try to mouth your exaggerated, patronizing version of Martian at him. He could be from Ontario for all you know. What? “Anything at all that’s not pure nonsense” kind of takes on a special meaning when you realize that there are people whose full time job it is just to sit around and ponder and debate about what exactly is nonsense and what isn’t. For now, I think we can agree that dfkj0w djfc d;sp awjdon dfjnkdjksh sdq0 csjdkfkjdcpv oldf asioiwjn lsdk. Well. I feel good. Actually, it’s weird, but true. There is definitely that hump of getting out of bed, and it, so far, has been one hundred percent worth it every time. And I think I may be into my second week of this already. If I can keep this up, I really think I will feel a difference. I’m sitting here at my desk with jeans and no shirt, and I’m not quite completely hating myself from the waist up. I mean, I’m partially hating myself, but that’s at least a slight improvement. I’m actually enjoying the feeling of air against my skin. Some things seem to be self-conscious ideograms for being alienated from one’s own body: “old,” “fat,” “flabby,” “gross,” “disgusting,” “pale,” “pathetic,” “saggy,” but the next time you meet a middle aged man, he might be me, and he might have actually, for whatever weird reason, have found just barely enough of a spark of motivation, in the damp expanse of the suburbs, to start getting up a half hour to an hour earlier than absolutely necessary, and he may actually keep it up. He may not want to say “this time” because he may not want to jinx it. He may have made friends with the dragon on the foot of the bed, on the back of the chair, in the bookshelf, taking a long complicated shit in the bathroom, eeking out of the tea kettle. How did so many dragons get in here? Jesus. He looks around. Well, at least they eat mosquitos and fruit flies and mice. And they are sort of pretty, with their soap-bubble colors and their grins like ancient, intelligent stone chameleons. There are five dragons in here specifically this morning. Wait, six. The last one is the little translucent one that is so slippy I sometimes forget to notice him. Their names are: Gkilwatoo Ygmahita Dorothea Cefficalpu Xescuoli, and Ham. Ham is the one, of course, who likes to speak with an *ACTING* voice, who doesn’t seem capable of just talking normally and seeing what the words actually end up saying on their own. He’s cute and annoying and loves carrots. Gkilwatoo is the one who always wants to go for a walk. Ygmahita his big muscles and would, honestly, probably pound you into a pulp if she could, and she could, except for the fact that she promised someone she wouldn’t. Dorothea is a sweet kind old dragon who kind of acts like a mother to the rest of them (and to you, in some ways, at least you’d like to think so, but you’re a little embarrassed to tell her that in case you’re reading the whole thing wrong). Cefficalpu (Ceff for short) swirls around the rafters and makes clicking noises, and Xescuoli is so sensual you can barely even look at him without getting those little anime-character flushed blush lines under your chagrined cheeks. So what? So you have a bunch of supernatural, ephemeral pests in your house, and you’re tentatively OK with that. What’s that to me? Burning question of yesterday, that’s not really burning, more like smoldering the way the fire pit does after a bunch of shirtless young men have pissed on it: What makes a story interesting to other people? What makes it something they would want to read? Does it have something to do with what makes it something YOU would want to read? I think it probably does, but I think knowing where the two overlap is a developable skill, kind of like learning how to shift your perceptrons back a few inches and squinch/not-squinch your eyes just so until you see the convex-concave image suddenly coalesce out of the carpet-pad design of those 3D-design books from the 90’s. Right Ham? Mix an elephant and a rhino. So yeah. I’m worried about a lot of things. Like, can I run without running a marathon and still be a runner? If not, is it too late to run a marathon? Do I have the help I need? IS there just something fundamentally inadequate about me, such that I really have been fooling myself all these years, as I always sort of suspected I was? Why haven’t I completely given up yet, then? Insert ideogram for self-deluded old alien here. My two heads get to arguing like this, and it’s no wonder we don’t actually get out the door to go the gym. Somewhere out there is the little green man who could be my teacher, but I’m not going to find him by sitting in here thinking up synonyms for “fat” and “soft,” now am I? See you in a few hours, Dorothea.