ALready, the thoughts and memories are sliding around inside the back of my mind like stray marbles, and the surface gets warped depending on where I'm standing.

If I'm in my room, the memories have competetition from all the other Jared-timeline relics scattered in a room that hasn't changed since 3rd grade. While I could be thinking of the night in Rome when the waitress made us serve our own table, instead I have to not look at MC Hammer telling me "HAMMER TIME IS READING TIME!".

I just finished filing photos of Italy into my photo album, and the memories aren't distant, but are easily hard to equate to the same boy looking at them.

I find sometimes so aggravatingly in-between. I can barely, out of the sides of my eyes, see the chair that my dog used to sleep on, before she died. My brother comes and goes and you can still smell the faint whiff of forest fires seeping through the house, sliding like a cat's tail around furniture, under door cracks...

I don't feel "constantly" in-between, because I can make choices and I also don't find myself really, really hung up on a lot of things. But there are parts of my life that are not hopping in line to a chronological system. I still feel emotions that should be dead rustling around frim time to time, I still can't shove away crushes that kick at my shins like a 4 year old trying to make me mad. I can still remember every word from all Richard Marx albums. When do memories trade in their time in my active imagination and simply slide to where the other memories go?

I do wonder how much we can actually remember. In dreams, they surprise me. I'll dream of the most random faces that I haven't seen in years.

It's almost 11:00. What do I do with myself?

I'm a little tired but I shouldn't be.

Well, heh, maybe I should. A little wine will do that. I can't let wine go, either. It's easily an aqquired taste but now it won't let me forget it. heh.

Now listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists To the Sky like Antennea to Heaven. Track 1 is the first movement, track 2 is the second movement, and it's 2 CDs worth of long, sometimes pretentious, slow, moving, post-apocalyptic strings and wonderful sounds. This band has been a favorite for a while. And hey; they're Canadian! I'll be damned.

Sigur Ros is the best band ever. I thought I'd reiterate that fact because some people have started saying that it might be otherwise. No. You are incorrect.

Today I decorated a speed cone to look like a violent hybrid between a human being with abnormally large teeth and, obviously, a speed cone. Justin was talking about throwing it away and I really didn't want him to. Hopefully, this will grant it some personality and give it a fighting chance.

I think I'm going to go for a drive. Boulder tomorrow for a friend's birthday, and then, who knows. Maybe tomorrow will put some money on the table so I can feed the family. If not, well, it's back to the mines for me.

through the valley of fear,

Jared