I realized something today. I'm more solid. Reality is more solid. I exist, in the past few weeks.
Please don't go away.

Wake up. Topology. Paella. Zeb. More topology. Calculus. Lecture=torture. Jamba juice. Some intense...yoga (my legs still feel funny). Shower. Watermelon. Twin Peaks season 2 premiere. Some less intense yoga. Oatmeal. More oatmeal. Construction site. Tunnels. Graffiti. (I fulfilled my dream of writing some!). Levers. Frosh. Colors. Running around tunnels in underwear. Hot chocolate. Gangsta nite!

Make up a story involving the above, roughly in that order! It will probably resemble my day.

And... climbing tomorrow!
And Sunday... I won't think about right now.

ooookkkkkk. note to self. don't eat old produce that made my car smell funny.

5/6 and it's only... 8:47 pm on Thursday night!! WHOA!!
I'm in such awe that I had to stop before I look at #6 and announce it to the world.
Watch me spend all night on this one... it's weird. It doesn't seem like it should work.

Whenever I remember that jtree is this weekend it makes me giddy inside!!
Even though I was just there! hee hee

Whenever I remember that my math GRE is this weekend it brings forth a rising feeling of impending doom. Which is promptly overshadowed by excitement for what comes after. I totally have my priorities straight!

But I just realized, this is much better than feeling like I am the least real person in the world. But in a way, it's exactly the same thing.
...it even made me feel the same way.
But I'm smarter than before I think.

All that circularity, and opposites being identified, it's a pattern underneath the secrets of what it means to be a person. cause=effect

There's also a hidden thing that prevents me from crying. Sometimes I really, really, really want to cry, I start to physically feel like I'm about to cry but then I just get nauseated.
Not out of sadness, I'm not sad, I can't even feel something as simple as sadness nowadays, anything I feel is a tangle of a million different, probably contradicting, emotions.
I want to cry like I did at drop day, it wasn't a cause of any emotion, it was just that my mushroom trip managed to open that hidden window for a while so that the torrent could come bursting out, as described in the Evangelion opening song. ("should you betray your memories" but I would say betraying them locks them away, but maybe they meant that one day it will catch you by surprise and come out, you can't bury it forever, anyway they don't really imply that it's undesirable) I feel like there are so many things hidden in me that I can't identify, that create labyrinths, that tie emotions into knots, that make realities shift and slip away, that make it impossible to trust myself.

I am the realest, least real entity in the universe.

Today when I was sitting in my new secret place I felt like I was the only real person in the world, because nobody else was even real enough to be in a place like that at that time.

Now out of procrastination I started talking to a guy on omegle, who claimed I'm the realest person he's talked to all night and then wouldn't stop talking about how he wants to talk more after this, he has insomnia and talked on omegle all night and he sounded like I was deeply hurting his feelings for wanting to stay anonymous, and unless it's a joke which wouldn't even make sense, this encounter only reinforced the sense that I'm the only real person in the world.

I'm OK with that for now, for tonight, because I'm about to sleep so the world is about to end for awhile so no matter what state it's in, everything is all right.

Half of me just shut down.
"There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying."
= suuuper spacey. It perfectly describes that feeling. Maybe I got closer to the secret, of why it happens. It happens when I can't keep up with things around me.
The screen is too white. I broke my ears, the car was vibrating with the music. I have a secret place now, I always wanted one of those.
Pink Floyd. How can they have such wonderful lyrics? It's like a kind and wise old man speaking into my soul. And the music, of course.
I'm eating so many cookies.
Letting go of this death grip I had on my world...
That is the only way I can ever hope to keep up.
And there are things, like Pink Floyd, that can catch me.
And the living organism that is Los Angeles at night from far away.
And David Lynch.
In other words, things that speak to me directly, whereby I can verify my own existence.

11 pages!
rounded down.
silly elliptic curves.

Since the weather yesterday couldn't have been more perfect, staying cooped up in the house on my day off had zero appeal for me, so it was off to Walter Hall Park for a good few hours of ambling beside Clear Creek, taking photos of my surroundings, and playing with other people's dogs. As an additional bonus, I could see fighter jets flying in formation and doing stunts overhead for the Wings Over Houston Airshow that was some distance further down the road; I'd actually forgotten till then just how close Ellington Airport actually is, especially to this particular park.

Alas, my camera battery chose to die on me just as I was attempting to snap a photo of the jets doing their thing, ( but I managed to take plenty of pics before said battery went kaput )

I went to check out a local coffee shop of the non-Starbucks variety on the way home, only to find it completely dark when I peered through the door. As it turned out, though, my timing wasn't too shabby, because a young woman who helps run the place with her mother pulled up only a minute later and invited me in, apologizing for closing so early on Halloween and calling for "Moooooooooooom" who was somewhere in the depths of the shop. Nice Mediterranean decor, from what I could see in the dark, and they apparently sell hookahs in addition to coffee and tea; that should appeal to Momfer, no doubt. Oh, and they make truly glorious cupcake balls, as I discovered when they offered some to me free of charge. ("Do you like nuts?" "I love nuts!") I will certainly come back when they're open, hopefully some time later this week; if nothing else, I'm curious about what the place looks like when the lights are on!

Then I went home and shared the cupcake balls (red velvet cake covered with fudge and pecans, mmm) with Momfer, and we ate sushi together, and I tried eel -- for the first time, since I'm a fail!Japanese -- and loved it, and we watched border collies on Animal Planet and laughed together and waited for trick-or-treaters who never came. All in all, it was a rather sweet Halloween, even if there was nothing particularly Halloweenish about it.

Happy Lantern Night to all of my Bryn Mawr friends!

Guess what I did on halloween!

I fulfilled a fantasy I had freshman year and forgot about in between then and now. Decided spontaneously to get up and drive away to the desert!
With the person I most want to be with. And (this part wasn't in my fantasy back then) to do my favorite thing to do: climb!

So we went to jtree and then got really lost for a couple of hours and finally left the park at 11pm! It was an epic day. First, GW and a friend of his were supposed to meet us in the morning, but we got a message that he overslept and would not make it. So we set off to Wonderland of Rocks, and were going to climb some stuff on a place called Astro Domes, which is these two domes that are (thankfully) very distinctive looking. First we did some climbs near the parking lot, I hadn't trad climbed in a few weeks so I was kind of scared, but I did a 5.7, but overcammed a lot of my gear so that it was hard to get out; in particular there was a tricam that was in way too deep so that Jack couldn't reach it so he had to lower me from the top again because I have smaller hands, and I finally got it out. Then we toproped this 10c and he decided to lead it. There were 2 bolts on it and a tiiiny fingercrack, which he put a piece of gear in, and fell on, and it popped out. Fortunately he caught the rope as he was falling because he would have probably hit a ledge otherwise. Then, he tried it again and nearly fell from even higher, but he didn't and so in retrospect it was a good thing. But it was scary to belay! Aaand, then we set off looking for the astro domes, it was kind of a long hike but we finally found them, but the climb he wanted to do was in the shade and windy and cold, and reeeally crimpy with super sharp holds so that it stung even after 2 minutes of resting after the first clip, so we decided it wasn't worth it and we would look for this route called Mental Physics with 3 stars. But we weren't sure where it was, so we scrambled around for awhile, and then finally right before sunset, we found it. I started leading it, and halfway through, it got dark, so it was my first trad climb in the dark. It was long but not at all difficult, but still scary. It's annoying when I can't get my legs to stop shaking. And it's even harder to place gear in the dark (with a headlamp but still). Then he followed and we hung out up there for awhile; it was quite spectacular with a full moon and hanging off a high rock wall together. Exactly my idea of a romantic date! And then we rappeled off but I fail at throwing the rope far enough so I got it stuck, and then while trying to pull it I got it stuck again... I was really tired and cold because earlier I halfway fell into a cactus and my pants were full of spikes, so I was wearing just my shorts at that point. Oh and hungry. We made some tea then which was perfect. And then set off back to the parking lot. But we didn't want to repeat all the scrambling from before, so we went in the direction that seemed the most likely. After an hour or so of scrambling we finally made it to "solid" ground my head was ringing and light, my legs numb, my stomach growling... but the area did not look familiar. There was a trail type thing and we started walking in one direction for 30 minutes or so, and things looked less and less familiar... so we went back with the intention of getting to where we started and then trying again to find the trail to the parking lot... and then I recognized the astro domes, I was soooo happy! And so we made it and nobody died or starved or anything. Yay!

But so my problem of not having a halloween costume solved itself. Because we got back to campus sometime around 1am. Somehow, I hope my grad school dilemma will solve itself similarly. Am I saying I hope I don't get in so I can avoid a decision? More and more I feel like I want to be a teacher at least for a while. And then maybe I'll miss academia again, like Lori. She actually actively wants to go to grad school now. Maybe that's better. Maybe instead of writing essays I should be getting a teaching license. Um in any case instead of musing about it at the moment I should take a shower and do my math set! Oh I am so gross right now! I haven't showered in 2 days, I'm covered in dirt and sweat and blood. Whee!