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I'm writing things that don't make sense.
Righting things that don't make sense.
Writing things that don't make cents.
Right in, thin, sat down, makes ends.
Write in things a town makes, ants.
Righting things at own expense.
Writing things at own expense.

Plutonium.

Up a storm.

If I read over the last number of entries here, the first thought I have is: This needs to get more serious. So here we go.

When (if) I make it through all of these papers and into the Christmas break, I plan to learn how to cook or bake some wonderful new dishes.

So I am requesting for you to share with me your favourite recipes.

Here's one of mine:

Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso coffee powder (or instant coffee ground into fineness)
1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together, and add the egg and vanilla.
3. Sift together the remaining dry ingredients, including the coffee powder. Stir the dry ingredients into the butter mixture and mix in chocolate chips.
4. Roll into balls. use your fingers to flatten onto a non-stick baking sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.

Makes 2 dozen cookies.

Who even needs meals if these exist?

Lights, he said.

"The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion."

The beauty of the myth is that its characters are so large their qualities never change. They are forever illumined and are far enough away that you'll not stoop and your hair will not tangle, for those figures are miles beyond the earth.

But we are right here, you and I, separated from beauty by seeing the other's breath.

The staff of this bruised reed.

There is an old story about a pole, tall and thin--a post, really, made pale with age by the sun. The story is not told often anymore. Or maybe it never has been told often, but, of course, I have not been around long enough to know myself. But it is on my mind and I thought I would tell it. It appears to be quite simple.

The pole was put in place where all people travelled by foot. At the time, no trips were made by vehicle or by horse, not through this area at least. Everyone walked, sometimes with heavy packs sticking rigid to their backs. This pole, then fresh and coloured a soft gold, was planted in the very middle of an area of an unornamented plain, placed for people to lean on and rest awhile amid their lengthy travels. Yes--a leaning post in the midst of a vast emptiness. It did its duty well, helping through the strength of those walking, keeping hope in their eyes.

Time passed and, as we hear, a small community grew around this pole. First a farmer, whose family provided small gifts of meals for those passing by, then a quiet restaurant, a hotel, and on. Things change. The post stayed, but with all these establishments now in place it was no longer found to be needed. A school was established near to it, however, and this old leaning post was turned into a pole for that game called tetherball, also now not often played. What an odd game.

And it is interesting how this tall post, sturdy in young dirt as it aided many trips before, with all passersby leaning close against it, their sweat and scent left on it, was suddenly made into something requiring those around it to remain distanced in a circle, focused not on the post itself, but on this object strung up and dangling from its head. And the back and forth knocking of this object, its rope twisting around the pole, made it loosen in that older dirt, dried and deadened over years. The pole, gaining the same character through age as any living thing would, looked tired of the absurdity of play and wanted once again to be leaned upon, to carry and make sturdy the heaving breaths of those passing by.

The string broke, the game ended. The post is still there. Leaning out uncomfortably neither looked at nor leaned upon, no one there knows its purpose. But it stays.

That's an old story I know, and I don't know. There might be some sense to it, but maybe not.

...only read the title.

"Well, alright. Okay.

"Enough for now. I'll be real.

"None of those usual written cycles. Instead, the election is finally--wait, but have you ever tried to see your surroundings in only two dimensions? Maybe you should look up for a moment and try. I mean really try, for several minutes straight with unprecedented perseverance, sitting still so your eyes harden. The objects and the walls behind them on the same plane.

"Your facial expression might turn into something buggy and your roommate might walk in on you. Even if such an embarrassment does not happen, which it didn't to me, mind you, no, not at all, you might almost get there but will find it impossible to remove yourself from your three dimensions. (And maybe your fourth, too. Sort of.) Even though I can't remove myself there are still times (like at present) where I feel as though I am sitting upon objects that have been tugged out from a sketchbook, and that I myself have the same pair of flat aspects. If I move it is upon only two axes.

"Now I'll tell you something about myself, something that I have taken the time to decide to give out. All I really want to do is ask people questions. Many times it will be to get to know them but, after a point, many times it will be to try and see a change in how they view their selves or their pasts. Kind of like a work of art will do, just sitting there while your depths talk to it. Inserting my own outlook into your hindsights. Some things, though, I can not inquire. Some art does not present its most desirous questions outright, instead it stays still in the hopes that you will say of your own will to say. It is at times a fortune, at times a misfortune, that not all questions are bound to be asked.

"But these comparisons are dreams of the tartest vanity: to affect an envisioned virtue; to make seeing different and likened to mine; dreams spent out while leaning on my bed as if it were a pad's paper.

"And yet the question is whether some little thing in a sketchbook is really art.

"Oh, whoops."