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Bahh. I'm sitting there in class getting more and more tired and frustrated and my functional training does not mesh with the quasi-formal training of the other students here, not in approach and not in depth. And I'm thinking again and again about how a little education is a dangerous thing, a little education is a fucking annoying thing. You learn a little and think you're hot shit and then you say stupid things without realizing that there is SO MUCH MORE you have to learn. Your knowledge is tiny. But you don't know that, so there you are, saying stupid things, conclusively. Speculation? Come on, speculation + self-assuredness =/= truth. I'm sitting there in class thinking about the four miles I have to run tonight and I get up for a break and realize that I'm just getting sorer, sitting still in class. I should walk home right now, limber up, go take a nap or something. Or just stop by the rec center on my way home, run the four miles, and go home and go to bed. I wake up this morning to the radio - my alarm - 8 a.m. - and I have no idea what's going on. I manage to listen to the news but start dreaming about it. What again? Oh yeah, what day is this? Is this a weekend? No, it's Tuesday. I'm thinking about other things, about the realities I knew, Seattle, the places, the shows, the times, etc., and what was real and what wasn't - and what was real even though I've now convinced myself it wasn't. It was. And I've forgotten and abandoned it. I am very good at leaving. As M. Ward says: She's got one magic trick, just one and that's it. She disappears. I used to live in Ballard, do you remember? But do I remember? And all that entailed. I used to ride the bus, I used to get paid every Friday... dot dot dot hurtling further back in time... Every morning I'd take a rickety old schoolbus up a mountain, get off, enter a winter wonderland. The views of the lake from up there, I'd have Nick Drake playing and the world was quiet. My sister and I would go to dollar beer night. And there were all these boys around, until I left for Seattle... I got off a trans-Pacific flight and went running by the ocean that afternoon, despite the lack of sleep... I was in some hotel, middle of the night, lying on my bed, thinking, smiling. I had to leave the next morning but I fell asleep without any covers over my head or ear or neck and I was fine... I'd have these philosophical discussions in German with my host family, I'd go down to my room and listen to German radio... I was swimming with my best friend in these clear clear waters, deep, you could see all the way down, we were next to her uncle's island, trying to swim around it... Walking to school, wet hair frozen, carrying a trumpet... Cats, the cat had kittens in third grade. She'd come in through the window every morning, and one morning she wasn't so round and tubby. Her kittens were under the house next door. There were four of them... I watched a video, years later, of some boys up snowboarding. One fell, laid there laughing, looked at the camera. What happened to that boy? I thought. What happened to him? But I answered myself: He went home. He went home that night, and got up the next morning, and fast forward fast forward fast forward he is who he is today. It happens like that. ... After class I went home. I stopped by the rec center - they're open until 11, I'll go there at 9:30. Four miles, forty laps, or a treadmill, if there's one free. It'll take half an hour. Come home, shower, and I'll go to bed tonight, maybe a little earlier than last night, maybe not. Tomorrow when I wake up it will be Wednesday.
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