5:45pm :: Tired and despondent. Leaving a snow-laden mountain again for this sun-bleached, over-urbanized environment. I wandered down a narrow, snow-covered road towards Rose Canyon, where exists an abandoned fee/information booth, just before an enclave with a rented steamroller and large tank truck, which is unlocked and has the key in the ignition. The temptation was there, but I resisted. What the hell would I do with a giant truck? I don't even know how to drive it, let alone get it down a road 6 inches deep in snow. Plus there was a big tube hanging off of it, like a tail, and it's hard to say what this tube had been used for.
Despite this, I now sit overlooking the Friday afternoon rush to get home, so that we can have a few more minutes blankly staring at our family's, or talking about senseless shit until we tire of and drive one another to seperate rooms. Rooms wouldn't exist if we were not full of self-hatred. Across the street is the Lucky Strike Bowling Alley, and lined up in front oof it are parallel-parked cars and white mini-buses, travelling between the various assisted living centers. Something very depressing about the relation between bowling and the aged.

7:17pm :: I can't seem to get that image of Morrison wandering through the desert in the movie. I kept imagining this as I tromped through the snow today, weary but determined nonetheless. The snow is like a desert: a monotonous colored landscape only occassionally broken by vegetation and/or rocks. I wonder how the snow and the desert greet each other during the rare occassions when they meet. That's stupid, and maybe I'm even more stupid.
I need to leave this country, even moreso than before. Three years seems like far too long at this point, even with an annual Coronado National Forest pass and an endless landscape to explore. There just aren't enough opportunities, or maybe there are too many. Nevertheless, I'm frustrated by these patriotic emblems, illuminated by the neon glow of unanticipated advertisement.

7:54pm :: I can't keep steady thoughts, and should probably get out of here, though this seems to be a common problem with me. No focus lacking enhancement.

1:14am :: I've heard the theory that "Everything in its Right Place" is about cows. The two colors, stifled speech; all good points. I think that there's something very violent and cursed about this song, dark and disturbing. I imagine blood, rageful stares and the sort of stark and cold silence that often follows violence. What do I know though.
I decided while lying in bed and listening to the neighbors' moan drunkenly that I will stay up all night tonight, listen to Radiohead and most likely type. I don't want to be awake during the day tomorrow. I only want to wander around in a stupor, hoping that the sky collapses upon itself in a violent eruption of worldly degradation. What??
Coffee isn't really an option, and I'm not sure I can pull this off, as I'm already tired and here it is only 1:17am. Screw it though, we all need to test our boundaries, and mine have sat in complacence for too long. type type type type
I must relay my story for the day. On the snowy mountain this afternoon, I reached a pull-off near the Palisades ranger station and decided to go walking aimlessly. I pulled behind a car, so I knew that there were people in the immediate area. I began following footprints, although not necessarily looking for these people, as footprints in the snow can remain for quite a while given the right conditions. I approached a slope and began hearing human noises, sort of a barking. On top of a hill, in a small clearing, was a man, kicking the snow and spinning around. From a distance this looked absurd, but I'm sure it was all very artistic and coordinated from his perspective. I held back and watched him for about 2 minutes, jumping and dancing around, making these ridiculous noises. After that time, I left, deciding that I did not want to be discovered by him. I wish I would have had obtained some way of proving this story, but I unfortunately cannot.

4:03pm :: The discovery of free wi-fi has led me to a point where all of the hipsters seem to congregate in order to attempt to give off an undeniable vibe. I give off no vibe, only electromagnetic waves, unintepretable to the human eyes and ears, only turtles are affected.
Last night I drove to the top of Mount Lemmon at 3am, stopping for roughly one hour and falling asleep to Autechre. The mountain is silent, layered in a thick, crunchy snow, and at night, this along with the shadows of the pine trees creates a forbidding sight, giving off a radiance of ultimate seclusion. The bears are hibernating, the mountain lions are asleep (most of them), and the world is left only to the deer, rabbits, the occassional owl, and the strange, shivering bearded man crunching his way through the snow in a reflective jacket in front of bright headlights and dim, ambient music.
This is much too pretentious though. I have nothing to write about because I have nothing to read. I just cannot get into life like I used to, I can only sit through it, observantly, as opposed to analytically. I did realize last night, however, while bumping back down the mountain below the pine tops, that I am living exactly as how I had intended to live: exploring the macro-environoment, while occassionally attending to my own self-indulgence. Nonetheless, disregarding the material things, and thus my work, almost completely. The job brings me down, and keeps me down, but not to the point where I cannot still come up for air occassionally, and breathe in whatever happens to be filling the open space at the time. Today it's coffee: burned Latin American beans soaked in water and heated in metal box. This now represents $2.10 gone from my Galveston-based bank account, but no worries, I am all the more assimilated for it.
It's supposed to rain tonight, thus snowing on the mountains, and the desert dwellers will run for cover in their caves, cars, nests or apartments, seeking warmth and dryness. What would our world be like without towels? We would walk around wet, often unable to wear clothes, or otherwise unable to bathe. Really, that would allow us to only live in warm climates, since we would have to rely on the atmosphere to dry us. Funk dat. Or so they say.

4:59pm :: "And it's all about moderate climates, we want to be cold and be hot for sure"
Tonight will be no more interesting than any other night. I have no alcohol, no drugs, and really nothing to do but sit and watch bad tv or stare blankly at my computer screen in an attempt to write something meaningful and prolific, on either web site. People get too noisy and have too much fun, this is why murders occur. Without that adequate amount of silence and much more provocative privacy, we are left to fend for ourselves and find our own silence amonst perpetual noise.
I often grow nostalgic of Houston: being at UH until 3am working on web sites while strung out on caffeine, biking in sandles down Shepherd to Cactus Video to pick up a dvd, walking to Kroger down darkened streets past gentrified, brick townhomes in search of cheap alcohol. Not necessarily bad times, nor good, just memorable. I hope these things will stick in my memory for quite some time, even as I continue to grow older.
A friend in Houston asked me about an hour ago, while chatting on aim, when I was coming to Houston. This is a stupid question, especially since I really despise that place, and made so many vows never to really return. I suppose that I will eventually float downstream towards the sulfuric-chloride swamps of Galveston Bay, but only briefly for obligations out of my immediate control. I think that eventually the perpetual sinking which goes on there will drive everything into a deep slope, and suck all of the good, bad and bad about the city into some sort of void amongst the earth's more permeable crust. This can only exist in fiction though, and maybe this is a good book idea for me.
My bladder is full of tanins at this point, but I stll have no desire to leave, even though my favorite show starts in 20 minutes and it is a 20 minute drive back to the worthless hole. The worthless hole echoes with my clairvoyance at this point, as I am spending way too much time there. Probably should have hiked today, but what can you do. The sun has already sank down behind the western mountains and the sky begins to radiate the unfounded paranoia associated with darkness.

2:23pm (Lordsburg) :: You've gotta love Arby's. This particular franchise, inside a small truck stop in Lordsburg not only has wall outlets by every table, but also has roughly 4 phones with a "DATA PORT ON RIGHT" sign. It made me think that maybe someone should set up an internet cafe amongst the inauspicious desolation of the Butterfield/Gadsden/ATSF corridor, maybe even right here in little Lordsburg.
The sun broke through the grayness in an awe-inspiring blast of brightness this morning when I stepped out of my hotel room. It's a nice day, but not the perfect day for travelling; it should be a few degrees warmer, so that I can keep the windows down with a t-shirt and not have to put my jacket on, even amonst the relentless Chihuahuan winds. But who needs perfection? All we need are mountains, deserts and water...lots of water, enough to drown a dolphin.
The utter desolation here in Lordsburg is intimidating. I don't understand how normal, sane human beings could survive an extended period in a place like this: just enough people to drive away the recluses, but isolated enough to bring on modern civilization's equivalent of cabin fever. All things aside, you have a nice view of a desolate valley, and the town is slightly larger than what I remember. There are numerous abandoned hotels and gas stations along the only real street in town, Motel Drive, including some which have been that way for at least a good ten years. Not enough money for demolition I suppose, and the structures have been sacrificed to the desert, so that it will spare the rest of us from the snakes, scorpions, gila monsters, and conniving, border-jumping Mexicans.
I must also talk about the museum in Deming. The museum is unfocused, attempting to bring to life every element of every point in the past of every culture that has existed in the area, except Hispanics. Hispanic culture has a small booth on the rarely-visited second storey of the museum, although the native Mogollon culture has three large rooms. The majority of Deming seems to be white. I gather this from casual observations, as well as a the Mary Kay car I got behind (something about Mary Kay typifies the Mayberry ideal for me).

8:11pm (Silver City) :: I've come to realize, after taking as many trips as I have in my short time of being able to drive, that you ALWAYS forget something, and that you can only do your best to try and make sure that it is not something overly important. On this short trip, it is my camera's USB cable, thus limiting me to 100 pictures. Tonight, I'm at around 75, and I have 2 more cities to see and explore.
Despite this, everyone seems happy at the moment. I spent an hour today in a Silver City coffee shop, reading Edward Abbey and staring out at the slow crawl of the small town rush hour. Vacations aren't to be spent rushing around, I think vacations should be spent relaxing, but also reflecting, not only on past events but also on yourself. I looked at myself in the mirror last night, attempting to see through that rough, fleshy exterior. What am I really searching for? Beauty? Understanding? Purpose? Inner-peace? Maybe all of the above, maybe none of the above. That's stupid.
Justícia está veniendo. I think that's right. No worries, Spanish is useless in our modern, isolated world. Latin America might as well be the rest of the world, to Americans, our world is here. Nevermind.

6:26am :: This sort-of morning darkness is somewhat blinding. I went to sleep at 9:30 last night, woke up at 2:30 this morning and could not go back to sleep. So, I've been downloading mp3s for the last 2 hours, albeit slowly. I'm dreaming of a magnificent breakfast this morning: tacos. Eggs, sausage, cheese and salsa all wrapped tightly in a tasty tortilla and served fresh to you. This could be made into a taquito as well, but same difference.
I had a dream two nights ago (one of my drunk dreams) that I lived in an apartment complex which was right next to a building that was used for some sort of hazardous waste disposal. In the dream, I went to this building and peered through a window as this sea of green sludge was pumped in, and subsequently drained into a small hole in the ground. A little later in the dream, I was forced out by the management, and the police blocked everything off. Just like all of my drunk dreams, this was very vivid. I could feel the heat on the window when I pressed my face against it, the anger and despair from being forced to do something and I could even feel the slight pain from running on cement. Kind of a stupid dream though, really.
These tacos are sounding better, and I'm not sure that I'll be able to hold off until 9:30 as planned. Quite a many minutes away. Maybe I should head to Starbucks as well and get coffee? Hell no, fuck them...for now at least. Why can't I write something more intelligent than this?

11:28pm :: Just barely made it. At least...I think I did. Tonight I am imagining a cracked earth, like we see from pictures of Death Valley; a landscape divided into non-symmetrical shards. I watched Nova tonight, a program about how, in a hundred years or so from now, the earth's magnetic field will shift: north will no longer be north, and we will have possibly eight poles. They say that this would cause no catastrophies, but would in fact cause a slight increase in the number of cases of skin cancer near the equator, since more of the sun's gamma rays would be let into the atmosphere instead of being diverted along the Van Allen Belt (damn, I'm glad I took Astronomy in college). I've always been fascinated by this magnetic field. I think it effects us much moreso than any of us will ever be able to admit to. A couple of minutes ago, as this was shooting through my head, an idea hit me. Possibly a rise in violence, maybe even certain types of diseases, changes in personality, and other seemingly random changes in historical humanity over the course of the past century can be attributed to this change in the earth's magnetism. We have no way of really knowing what, if anything, is being affected by this change. This requires further study, right? I think I need to go see the Aurora Borealis. They say that by the time I'm long gone, people will be able to see the northern (or southern, depending on your perspective) lights from London.
I think the whole point of the above rambling is that nature likes to fuck with our little arrangements. We think that we can harness perceptual and immeasurable things like time, distance, and now, even directions. As for perceptual cardinal directions (why are they called "cardinal directions" anyway? what does the cardinal have to with anything?), the idea of north, south, east and west are ridiculous in the first place; a radius line from a circle can be achieved using any relative angle, and to choose one as "straight up" or "straight down" can be completely off-set by a simple turn of the circle, in either direction, in however many degrees. The only thing constant in the circle is the center and the diameter/radius length. Any measurement besides this cannot be considered constant because of the inherent nature of the circle. Of course, the earth is a sphere, and this throws everything up in the air even moreso.
But damn it, I'm not a mathmetician. I can only speculate on, and be fascinated with geometry. Maybe I should have been a mathmetician. I've always been interested in how much math effects our lives, and how certain aspects of these lives can be traced back to it. The Golden Ratio, Pythagreous (sic) Theorum.

12:53am :: Drinking and sleeping have led me to here. I think a car was just a mid-way point. This is the unproven theory though. I saw a co-worker walk into the woods towards the river today. I thought he was going for a car parked on the street, but he passed them and disappeared amongst the shrubs. Disappearing is not really a trick, and involves no skill. The only attribute needed is anonymity, and that actually takes effort not to obtain.
I remember finding when I was wasn't looking. That's nice I think.
Friday I think is going to be a long hike into a deep Catalina canyon, seeking my friends the javelinas; they invited me for coffee but I haven't had the time yet.
I wonder when the Canadian lifestyle will overtake this senseless Americanism. Geography may keep us apart, but the Westernization of the world may actually be Canada's slow, but increasing progress to take over the world. Canadians are far too docile. But who am I to single out...
This is useless. There's no point in rambling, and I may as well, at this point, be typing randomly-spaced z's. The neighbors are making noise; the soft voices of youth in their post-sex banter. I can't be sure about the sex, it seems to makes sense. There are 3 empty cans of Pepsi and 3 empty bottles of beer on my desk. They are roughly evenly-spaced, especially the bottles, which I deliberately, but at the same time sub-conciously arranged in this way. I think I'm an obsessive-compulsive by nature, but it has been repressed by my ideas surrounding death. Whatever that means. zzzzzzzz zzz zz zzzzzzzzzz z zzzzzzz.

11:14pm :: So the New Year has arrived uneventfully? I did not see the ball drop, nor the typical overly drunk crowds scream in 2004, only a repeat of a giant acorn in Raleigh. The New Year is really just a repeat, another in the general stupor that is this decade. No one really knows what is going on in the larger picture, and this is the problem; we are only concerned with our smaller, much more petty picture, painted with charcoal and granite. The insane 2003 has passed, and I am so much older for it. 23 approaches like an abandoned mistress, reeling. Whatever that means.
I am reminded now of when I used to go in the morning to the newly-rebuilt (post-flood) University Center Satellite at the University of Houston to the over-priced taqueria to buy warm tortillas with salsa in the mornings, and sometimes tacos with beans and cheese. NO reason.
Who won these senseless bowl games? Who is the national champion? No one really cares I think, because next year, these same teams will compete for the same meaningless bowl games, winning superficial trophies and no one will ever know who is the real champion of the world of college football. But I suppose most sports have a senseless aspect to them.
I am also reminded of the time I went to Galveston with Nadia and we ate ice cream on the Strand in the same place where my ex-girlfriend and I had passed on eating. I need to email people, but do not have the means to do so: my dial-up is rejecting my password. I logged into my webmail today, so apparently the authentication server is down: what a bitch, but oh well. I have become far too reliant on the Great Internet recently and need to ween myself from its troubled boosom. AHHHH