Monochromatic Outlook

There’s this Sting song on *Brand new Day* called *Fill her up* which sounds kind of annoy­ing because Sting does this imi­ta­tion of an Amer­i­can accent, but it tells a sto­ry which real­ly res­onates with me. 

It’s about a guy who works at a gas sta­tion in the mid­dle of nowhere and some city slick­er shows up in a fan­cy sports­car tak­ing his hot babe fiancee to Vegas to get mar­ried («yeah, that’s a real dia­mond»). The teller of the sto­ry resents his boss and starts dream­ing of steal­ing the cash­box and run­ning off to take his sweet­ie some­where. As the city slick­er dri­ves away, 

Some­thing about *Macarthur Park* sums up how I’ve been feel­ing late­ly. Who was the ass­hole that left the cake out in the rain? Dammit. 

I had a dream last night that I went on a road trip with Ham­mer­head, and that we went «camp­ing» in strangers’ homes. We pulled in to their dri­ve­ways and snuck in to the homes of sub­ur­ban­ites and slept in their guest bed­rooms. Some­times our unwit­ting hosts would pass by the doors on their way to the bath­room, and there was always a rush to get going in the morn­ing before we were discovered. 

Watch­ing the lit­tle pud­dles on the roof out­side Des­tiño’s win­dow rip­ple from the rain­drops com­ing down. Makes me want to find my grand­moth­er’s cake recipe,…

Love­ly mete­or show­er last night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them so dra­mat­ic. Feel­ing very for­tu­nate to have bro­ken out of my depres­sion long enough to get out of the house and go on a lit­tle field trip.

I must be in the grips of depres­sion, as I’m think­ing about the past.

I’m kin­da depressed today. I guess there’s noth­ing to be done about it or any­thing, but that’s kin­da lame. I don’t like it. Oh well. Hope…

It’s a piece of advice that’s old­er than the hills, and yet still so easy to ignore. At least for me, it is. 

I’ve been pay­ing atten­tion to how my envi­ron­ment affects my men­tal state and my atti­tude. My apart­men­t’s appear­ance has become crit­i­cal since I’ve start­ed spend­ing a much greater por­tion of my wak­ing hours here. Bit by bit, I’ve been try­ing to orga­nize and clean. 

I’m com­ing to terms with my apart­ment right now, and I hope this isn’t some phase. Basi­cal­ly, the place has been a dis­as­ter area ever since I moved in, and it’s still a mess now, but it’s start­ing to piss me off. I’m embar­rassed to bring peo­ple over to the apart­ment, and that’s no good.

[Hammerhead](http://hammerhead.livejournal.com/) has been encour­ag­ing me to do longer runs, so last night at the gym I start­ed out by set­ting the timer to 45 min­utes. There were lots of machines free, so I did­n’t feel guilty about ignor­ing the 30-minute time limit.

This is my third and final night at Tas­sa­jara. I sup­pose things have smoothed out a lit­tle bit. I feel like an out­sider, but not as much as I did when I arrived. Now I feel like a… per­haps a vis­i­tor. It’s very plain to me that I’m see­ing some­thing that is just a sliv­er of the expe­ri­ence and the rich­ness of this place, and I’m seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing com­ing back soon.