No Festivity

I'm not sure what to make of yesterday. It all feels like a blur of confusion and stress.  Cried twice. Stared at the sun. Wrote a lot of fiction. Significant life events—those too that happen in just one day—are certainly impactful in creating valuable memories. But it's only after enlisting that I never looked forward to the holidays or any yearly occasion. 

Great and fulfilling days come to you when they choose to. I don't believe they are scheduled like a holiday or birthday that happens every specific date of the year, every year. If they took place at some other point of the year, what makes them different than any other day? When every day is quite the same and uneventful, and you've grown so accustomed to the unchanging state, you may be hard-pressed to find significance to something simply because of its date. 

And when this special day arrives, the festivities that come abruptly will startle you. I had wished to maintain the same level of gentle uneventful boredom, but the phone calls, gifts, birthday wishes. I am grateful for them, but it hurts me too. It is a bitter reminder that you are there for me, but right now, you are not truly here with me. Loneliness, on these special occasions.

In the days and weeks prior, I had forgotten and paid little attention to the fact that this day is different than the rest. It didn't cross my mind to proactively take action by getting as far away as I could. But I did before. Thanksgiving: turkeys, family dinners, vacations, decorations, visitors. Christmas: gifts, cards, "merry christmas", red hats, bells, decorations, products, holiday, vacation, family. The yearly and routinely scheduled noise and chaos. What will I do? Go drive somewhere very, very far away. Place myself on "do not contact" for a while. Seize the day and make something out of it for myself. Reflection in silence. 

The Seven Meditations

 Nimatism is an Abrahamic religion. It was established by the Great Messiah Nimates, similarly to Jesus with Christianity. God in Nimatism is Saen, and "heaven" is aentila. Aentila is a state or plane of formless and shapeless infinite existence, within a grand, unified consciousness among all things. Prior to the current and practiced scripture (name not developed), there were the Seven Meditations, written by Nimates as received by Saen. The Seven Meditations form a basis from which the current practiced scripture was created, however, the Meditations were lost or hidden, in the Temple of Arkon, where Daega later finds it buried, after a period of fasting, prayer, and deep meditation. The Meditations are as follows:

I: BEING

Saen is. That is the primordial fact. It is in order that we may discover this fact for ourselves, by direct experience, that we exist. The final end and purpose of every human being is the unitive knowledge of Saen's being.

II: GRACE

Graces are the free gifts bestowed by Saen upon each one of us, in order that we may be assisted to achieve our final end and purpose; namely, unitive knowledge of divine reality.

III: BEAUTY

Beauty arises when the parts of a whole are related to one another and to the totality in a manner which we apprehend as orderly and significant. But the first principle of order is Saen and Saen is the final, deepest meaning of all that exists. Saen, then, is manifest in the relationship which makes things beautiful. They, Saen, reside in that lovely interval which harmonizes events on all the planes, where we discover beauty.

IV: LOVE

Saen is love, and there are blessed moments when even to unregenerate human beings it is granted to know Them as love. It is through obedience to Saen the Law-Giver that we come at last to know Saen the loving One.

V: JOY

Bliss, the concomitant of perfection, is the same as joy, not only as a fruit of the spirit, but also a root. If we would know Saen, we must do everything to cultivate that lower equivalent of joy, which it is within our power to feel and to express.

VI: PEACE

Along with love, and joy, peace is one of the fruits of the spirit. But it is also one of the roots. In other words, peace is a necessary condition of spirituality, no less than an inevitable result of it. In wise words, it is peace which keeps the heart and mind in the knowledge and love of Saen.

VII: HOLINESS

No less than in fact holiness is spiritual health, and health is wholeness, completeness, perfection. Saen's holiness is the same as Their unity; and a man is holy to the extent to which he has become single-minded, one-pointed, perfect as our One in aentila is perfect.

Conflict of Interest

    There was squadron PT earlier. Yoga. Uniform: morale shirt and PT shorts/pants. Went alright. Figured afterwards I would go rucking. I have a ruck about 25-30 lb, and to make things a little less boring, I carry a flag. Sometimes it's the Connecticut flag. Sometimes it's the pride flag.

    Once the PT was done I set to it, going up and down the main street on base for about 15 minutes before I bumped into my commander outside a shop. We stopped and chatted. Friendly guy, quite down to earth. He was there with the chief.

    The commander asked me what flag I carried last time (I bumped into him about a week ago as I rucked near my neighborhood too), which was the CT flag. I told him I use the flags to make exercise a little less boring. I never really liked exercising so why not make it enjoyable and send a message at the same time? I said too that this climate I am well-informed about--I understand my heat tolerance and I know to take rest periods as often as needed and to hydrate. But that was not the topic we went into after.

    My commander found me carrying the flag to be a conflict of interest because he believed I ought to be remembered for "being a kickass airman." He gave me all due respect for everything, the rucking, my performance, my guts and my identity, but he claimed "this"--as he points my pride flag--is not what I should be remembered for.

    I respectfully disagreed. I said I do understand the two identities can create a conflict of interest, no less the fact I am in the morale uniform. (Might be different if I was in civilian attire like an ordinary graphic tee and shorts.) My position was "OK, I understand." I did stand firm, however, that the flag is in fact that important to me. Actually, yes, being gay is something I would like to be remembered for, in addition to everything else. The LGBT community is a heavy minority in the military, especially, with don't-ask-don't-tell having been a rule a very very long time ago. This is who I am. This is part of me, and while I would like to be remembered as a kickass airman, my sexual orientation is just as (if not more) important. I also remarked that I did appear in the base's newspaper two summers ago for pride month, while I was part of the base's diversity and inclusion committee.

    Neither the commander nor the chief found it to be distasteful that I was rucking with a pride flag in my morale uniform. Instead their reactions seemed to be more akin to a polite "just be aware/just saying" like:

    In the military, you must respect authority. You have to do as your superiors say. As much as I would have preferred to say, "No, sorry," I knew I could not. I didn't want to either, though I would have, if I weren't given due respect. I don't think I'd want to die on that hill either. Usually the best way to settle a disagreement is to shrug, agree to disagree, and move on without escalation. So I asked my commander and chief if there were anything I should keep in mind going forward. This interaction was a positive and respectful disagreement that left me afterwards with:

    I'd say that's good enough. I'm neither upset nor happy. What I do know is I lost my momentum afterwards. Couldn't continue my ruck with having lost my pace. I'm still gonna do this again, gay flag or not. Except next time, definitely be aware of what I'm wearing.

The Record

Holding world records for things in video games. It makes me think. What do they do? What are they good for? Everyone is always so drawn to the top, the #1s. It's flashy. It's a title. It's bragging rights. It's a natural response to become envious, but what of it, when it's all a game?

Records about games—is that all they are for? Fame? These skills may be appealing to the crowds but how would one value the skill? They typically don't bring in money. They don't do anything for survival. And except for the very select few, neither do they make you your living. Perhaps we're led to believe simply here by being on the internet, the populous loves their gaming records because in this digital world there is little to do with survival.

The internet is different from real world in that it is not something (for most) you must maintain or attend to to achieve success. The salary, the  home, the spouse, the career, and the material in general are all very well things further down on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The means to survival and living in reality. Internet is its own world, an alternative one where the pyramid is structured different. People existed and lived quite fine before the internet existed, which goes to say Maslow's pyramid for the internet is different. Video game skills, records? What are they a part of? Indicators of one's... what? Social media being a significant, if not the most significant thing on the web, fills some tier, but what? Without anyone to see, share, and speak about your record, does it really exist? And In an alternative universe, we all exist digitally and instead, roles are reversed where we manifest ourselves into physical bodies with the offline world as this alternate universe's "internet." What does this then say about that salary, career, etc? Then think life itself is the game. Level up to the max, set records, and win by having a secure and fulfilling life with all of the wealths and enrichment—no fame, but still the hero and winner of the game. 

Brightest Darkest Place

🎶 Swartz et - The Blue Light of Morning 🎶

To escape briefly to the brightest darkest place

Successfully escape just to see

That in what looks to be nothing

Contains the deepest everything

When you look, stare

When you stare, fly

Refuge within no lonely company 

For pinhole stars and crescent keep you there

Think funny how in deepest dark

There is light to make you cry 

And how beautiful you are when you cry

Mouthing the words for a moment

"I have everything I ever wanted"

Dedicated to Penny

Blade

 Silver blades ripple this tide

On a sheen like finest earth-hair

Had still been searching

For sparsest bodies on the land

Someday soon to be destroyed

On it under blinding hours

Wait for speed or wait for slow

But not a period without measure?

Remind me love to comfortably rid

Every semblance of the hands

And swim in sand

Finally days unlike the others

Run into the nearest field and

Let that wind erode you out

Disintegrated smiling dust though

Your muscles not move or face grin

You so blessedly fall

And return

Hidden Falls

 Speckling under green and wooden lightning

Rests speckled orange poppies

And bells of delphinium

What comes to think

The beautiful forest dungeon

And what will it take

Loneliest solitude there

Walk faster

Run further

Maybe they cease to be

And mute as you probe deeper

For their very being

Shatters the image

What are these cotton-like specks floating?

What fractals and lattices of green web my eyes so sacred?

Yet walk, it grows in volume

The water crashing, pouring attacking exploding

In gray-white webs and noise grained over the land

At the epicenter of the water quake

Let its roar drown your enemies

With white fervent plasma

And the body of deep stone

As you finally extend

Appears tiny yarrow canopy

And a long path, through emerald

To a clearing with sandy brown paths and silent meadows abound

And in one patch, a circle

So sit

Vibrating tangents radiate

Assemble the architects of your disk

To throw the ring of grass stars upon him and destroy his effervescent mind with light

Eyes once squinted from it now open full and

The grass reach towering as trees like bamboo

The vista's faces

So distant yet textures so brilliant like a microscopic thing

Tranquility ultimate

Serenity in silence

How sacred this vision, this view

Nature Memoir XI

Flying Saucer Attack - Make Me Dream

The sun peeks through a slit, between two walls of cloud. The top wall forms a scattered delta, a series of smaller fragments with sky between them like a checkerboard. The bottom wall is a solid and flat plane that vertically lands like a fence or shrub. It is particularly quiet in the neighborhood. But to see the sun finally and slowly come further between the gap takes an amount of patience. A perfect level of it. One plane, one contrail, sails in the sky delta much like a speedboat leaves its wake. Elsewhere there is a cotton froth waterlogged and left suspended high above.

In a passage of days the day was gray and colorless all over the sky. It is flat and without shape. Pale, stare. Stone walls filling the air. Later, it is blindingly wet. This downpour crashes down upon the earth with a powerful splash from the storm clouds wringing themselves. But as it comes, it brings flashes of light. Great camera, in the sky taking a photo, and the shutter closing with a deep metallic thunderclap. I feel compelled to go. Experience an altered atmosphere. Yet when I do, the sun breaks out in a clearing while rain falls. Sunshowers.

It is a dramatic and theatrical display of the atmosphere how fire and water come down upon the earth. On one side of the sky, bright, holy, and blue as if the clouds had been blasted apart by God's shotgun to fill the gap with light. On the opposite side, a deep slate gray. Featureless, cold, and foreboding with massive vertical stacks of clouds that seem to barrel outward with circular vengeance. And somehow, a rainbow. This rainbow is so strikingly vivid and bright. It is a neon beam in the sky that arcs across it and repeats downward, tessellating chromatic aberrations. It is a powerful thing. It is profoundly psychedelic how the colors radiate across the contrasting flag gray.

So quickly it comes it leaves. I had been convinced already by seeing it to stop and drop everything I was doing and it fills you with a wildly manic and overstimulating energy and you become restless. Fidget. Twitch. Crush. Speed. Scratch. Pinch. Noise. Fractal. Chaos. Explosion.

Nature Memoir X

This one cloud far in the distance, a boat, with a chimney-shaped sail. The edges of so many of them are fractals. Dark on their trears, while on the faces that explode outward from the sun. Its shards and fragments shatter into bristles. Specks, freckles. As the horizon grows more distant, the persepctive curve of it gathers the sky into tight layers until all that can describe it is a blue-gray plasma. In the negative spaces between these closer formations is a sea, a bay, a lake, strait, and ocean. Inverted water bodies in the atmosphere and when they obscure so slightly by a cloud and the sun--shines a corona of rainbow light. So briefly and so short, a sliver of the spectrum overflowing the edges.

As if on tectonic plates these cloud-continents shift or slide or scroll as if you were watching land masses transform over millions of years in only minutes. A temporary escape from the din. A pleasant and almost sad, bittersweet thing, that these noisome faces under them on this soil distracts and bothers me so.

Though they will soon be gone, the grass remains. The clouds still hang, drift, with their turbulent crowns still restlessly changing. The trees patiently stand watch and protect the land. And myself? The bodies around move but they do not. They slowly become a nothing, a kind of collection of creatures I give no second thoughts to. Ants, flies, gnats, things that buzz and move and forgettably vanish. It is time to go.

Nature Memoir IX

    This now, this sky, it is empty. No plume, no white billows, and nothing besides one contrail. I tis a tiny and remote lonely thing to slice the atmosphere with winged blades. When you observe it and the infinite blue around it, you would be sure you're staring into a still image of frozen tropical lagoons. Oh, how I wish I could be kept more company beyond a single platinum disk that is the sun. But it is a bittersweet thing to see. Truly unobstructed light for all visible ground to feel. Then a bird flies. It does not flap. It is adrift tilting to and fro much like a tightrope walker of the sky. The grass too drifts but in jittered and tiny violent motions. Look closer. You can see their textures. Much softer. Smooth.

Hunger

Formless din spills and choke from their lips

At the edge find a path 

Drop of a pin armed to fly 

What ropes you can take in

Deserve! No more needy than a 

punished or gray-black body

Ill of head and eye he whip 

Subject to none but mind bend 

Do not ask why a sky be so looked upon 

But by weary heads spin 

Something of an illing hunger

On Commissions and Gifts

I have taken commissions in the past, very long time ago. I did it because I was bored, that's all it boiled down to. Art block, want to do something different, so might as well try drawing things I haven't before. I was hesitant, but it turned out OK. And now as I go around and I see my favorite artists opening commissions, I can't help but feel some sting when I see the prices.

Why do people comm? To support an artist? To get a quality product? I always feel like my money could be better spent elsewhere. It has value, but no personal value. It feels wrong to ever ask for money for my hobby. I'd rather it stay just that—a hobby that I can pick up and put down whenever I want without it being a responsibility or obligation. When you take a commission, that notion is gone. You have to deliver a product for your services.

I could not put a value on my work. I'm just selfish in that respect. I do it all for me and no one else. There has to be something to gain out of it if I make something for someone. Vindication? Validated, appreciated? It's too complicated. So I just churn out everything to spoil myself and everyone gets to watch it happen. It's easy to do and it's what I've always done.

There's got to be a way to support an artist beyond giving money. Trades? Sharing their work? Somewhat of an unknown. It eludes me. But when I receive some kind of gift, or a related gesture, it's something else.

I become assertive. Not so thankful, especially when it's of a sexual thing rather than something personally meaningful. The thankful and generous feeling will come to me later. Instead, I get competitive. "Ah, so you like X? So do I. I won't sit and let you test my dedication or push closer to my throne, my metaphorical domain." So I create something myself. Use the competitive teeth gritting and knuckle cracking to prove myself, assert and show my interest is just as strong.

Gives me a motive to create something once I do receive something. Push me, please, express your interest, and I will return the favor. I'll feel more justified my ego is safe once I've stood up to your gift as a challenge instead. Eye for an eye. Works out in the end. Something good came out of it for everyone. I'm still thankful, even if I don't look like it. It'll take a moment to offer my hand to shake.

Boris - Flood

 There is an album by the band Boris, called Flood. Needs a deep listening session to enjoy at its best. So I did that--went outside to a campground nearby, pitched a tent with the rainfly off and screen up, so I can have sunlight on me. Took all my markers and laid there inside the tent listening to the album. Made art as the album progressed. Goes through bunch of movements and feelings. To describe all 14 drawings: 1) calm 2) frothy 3) hot 4) liquid 5) still 6) climb 7) crackle 8) exploding 9) disintegrating 10) boiling 11) spiraling 12) rolling 13) smoking 14) clearing.

Flood 1-3, from start to 24 minutes in

Flood 4-5, from 24 minutes to 33 minutes

Flood 6-11, from 35 minutes to 42 minutes

Flood 12-14, from 42 minutes to 53 minutes

memory unlocked

 

you will not fucking believe this oh my god i remembered this game then i looked up the soundtrack. then i found it and i listened to the song and saw the level and i was like holy fuck!! HAHAHAHA I REMEMBER THIS

i had this game when i was a kid. my mom put a bunch of games onto cds and i had this shit as sfucking ancient computer that played this and i would make my own puzzles where it was just a machinima. i put enemies and npcs in it that would have dialogue and i had to stop this big evil dude from being really evil and it was such a fucking delight hearing this and unlocking that core memory of rping in some vg when you were a kid lmao

The Way Back Home

The way back home was dark and unknown
She walked it alone
In search of who she was
For many years she lived with the earth
And like the things in the dirt
She hid herself from the light, because

She didn't want to heed the call
Coming from beyond her walls

An innocent child when the nightmare began
Of ambulant skulls carving paths in the land
With the memories of her past locked away
She quietly carried her legacy, until one day

She heard it far beyond her walls
A melody that she could recall

Wanderer, your story burned slowly
But you aren't the only one
Warrior, azure is the memory
Endlessly searching
To find your way back home

With crown of bone and cape burning red
And goodbyes left unsaid, she left it all behind
The friendships made decayed one by one
And as she presumed, they plagued her restless mind
But in time

She was searching for the call
Now she's following the call

Wanderer your story burned slowly
But you aren't the only one
Warrior azure is the memory
They never stopped calling
To guide your way back home

Camping Sucks

    I wanted to go camping yesterday. It was going to be a 3-night thing from arriving on Thursday afternoon and leaving on Sunday afternoon. I had a bunch of supplies with me, everything needed for camping, and drove to a place called Cowboy Camp in Williams, CA.

The bend that goes into the camp, and the main area with two toilets. That tree there in the second photo? That's where I was.

    The place is pretty decent. The camp site was a bit smaller than I thought. There's a small paved lot that is not for camping but nearby is a gravel road that goes out and goes about the length of a football field or two and loops back around. There are two vault toilets here. This section is the main lot. It's just the toilets and empty, grassy land where you just set up your camp. It's dispersed camping--no hookups, no power.

    Another grassy path about the length of half a football field branches off of the gravel one near the start of the camp, literally a minute walk from where I would camp. I parked my car under a tree and set my camp there. It looked like the perfect spot. It felt very thrilling to find this spot and start to set up. Felt like a settler laying down new territory. But my complaints would soon follow.

Me alone to make the ideal campsite. (Maybe on the top of the hill, but still.)

What actually happened.

    I thought this place was gonna be larger. More separated and apart from each area. My neighbor was about 50, 60 feet away. Another woman and a dog with a school-bus-turned-camper are also the same distance away. I'd have much preferred to have been out of sight completely from anyone. And my camp was not horribly far from the gravel road too, about 20 feet. I could have moved but... where? I still would have been pretty close (within eyesight) of a person no matter where I was in this campground. These thoughts only came to me after I had set up my tent and canopy. I'll just settle for now.

    I tried using curtains hung around my canopy to give me some privacy. Nope. The wind kept blowing them around. Rocks to weigh them down only made it more cumbersome. I wasted time trying to put those up. (In fact, I didn't know what time it was at all. I scrambled the clocks on my phone, laptop, and car. According to my phone, it was 7 AM in American Samoa. But I'm certain it must have been 2 in the afternoon. The scramble was to try to live without time and... I'll go into it later.) Anyway, those curtains were not worth the privacy. I gave up on them.

   I stopped fucking with the curtains, got my chair, and an MRE and sat down to eat at the folding table I brought from my house. It was after those curtains that I thought, "No. Stop fucking around. Just get things as you need them." My journal entry says, as I waited for my food to heat:

    It feels a bit... It takes a bit of getting used to to begin letting go of responsibility, obligation. Even as I was setting up camp, I did not give much to stop and get things only when I need them. Sure, set up the canopy and tent but... leave it at that! (This is where the RV's convenience would have been nice...) But I have a lot of time to reflect.

    More on the RV thing later. But the journal follows as I write about how I'm tired of the voices of people at work. Meaningless, stupid conversations. Me enjoying only speaking when spoken to, but at work, I have no choice. Those conversations mean nothing. Every day is the same. Need new people. New places. Somewhere I choose to be and somewhere I can call home.

To coworkers and everyone in general: shut up and leave me alone.

     Back to the time notion. We ought to reassess our notion of time. Abandon connection--even temporarily--to one of the several things we are always concerned about in some way. Waiting, and wanting time to pass faster. Stress, and wanting time to pass slower. It is so typical to be burdened by having too little time or too much time for something to happen. So abandon that altogether and eliminate the numerical measure of time. No clocks. Just exist now, follow the sun as your clock, and do things only as you wish for them to be done at that moment, with no deadline or date to do it by.

    And that RV thing. The thing about an RV is it is equipped with much more amenities/commodities natively. Your tent on the other hand? Less resistance to the elements. A tent does not have wheels. A tent is not a moving vehicle either. It is equipped with bounds more luxuries and comforts than a tent campground. Some of them even have showers and toilets. Incredible! You get movement, hygiene, nicer sleeping quarters, and more in one convenient package!

Looks better than a tent, don't it?

    I imagine the scene from Breaking Bad where Walt is out in the middle of the desert with the RV. No sight of a soul anywhere. No cars. No signatures of human activity besides the one dirt road over the hill, barely or just out of eyesight. This would be perfect for me. I don't even want to be reminded of humanity at all. But here at my site in Cowboy Camp, they're around and too close for comfort. As long as you're within my eyesight, you're too close to me.

Perfect. Not even a trace of people in my sight.

    So eventually I ask: what was any of this for? Fate has bent itself so against my desire. I am out here, but oh so conveniently enough, a horse race is taking place here too, on Saturday. As if my wish for solitude weren't enough, God or the universe or whomever conspired against me by placing a huge public event here in two days. This explains the 4 horse trailers that drove into the campground the time I was camped. Man, why? I can only expect this place to be massively crowded and noisome, the entire antithesis of why I came here in the first place. What does it take to get away from everyone? And despite my effort, it still went against me. Worse still, 2 strangers interacted with me. One said "nice tent!" Another greeted me and talked to me when I went to the bulletin, then conversed how I had a nice spot and something-something-got-a-horse and not from around here. Mission secondary objective failed: Speak to no one. Also woman with that school bus and her dog yapping. Shut up, dog. Fuck.

    The moments of sitting and trying to let go was not that easy. I really did try. Sat, wrote in my journal a lot, but... this just wasn't the right place. And, oh! That comes to my mind. The spirit of camping: going somewhere else! Yes. I can leave at any time, actually. This area may be nice, it really is. The mountains are beautiful. I'd like to explore those but I hoped for a more solitary and untouched experience. The horse race too? It would be better to vanish somewhere else. I don't know where, but just not here. It'll be swamped busy soon. On Friday, I thought, I'll go somewhere else, and Saturday too! Awesome. Traveling!

    Time passes.

    This sucks. Y'know what, fuck camping. Fortune favors the bold, right? I'm certain this would have been a more positive experience, and I guarantee it will have been if a) I had more comforts, b) I was further away, and c) no fucking horse race. I like being close to nature, but this is too close. Bugs in my tent, too, had to clear it out and move it. All this equipment too. So cumbersome, even with it just being in my car and not on my person. Hiking is better. I always liked hiking. Just... hike then! Less stuff, and just close enough to nature that when you're good, just head on home. (The ideal is my house is already close to nature so I get nature and comfort all in one place.) And if I'm less keen to the physical activity of it, I'll just hike a little, then break off to set down a chair or mat. The three idle movements: standing, sitting, lying down. As long as you can do those, you can rest. Long as I fulfill those and draw, write, read, eat, etc., I'm good. When I'm done, just pack up and hike outta there. Perfect.

    I overheard the people at the school bus campsite say, "That guy's smart, he's got a dugout!" Yes, I do. I'm lucky. But I don't want this site. I don't want to be here either. Oh, and now I smell weed from their campsite. Great. Now I really don't want to be here. (I do like weed, yes, but the smell of it just... pisses me off. Ruins my immersion.) This whole camping thing was a wash. Next time I decide to do it, I'll pay for the convenience of an RV or whatever and go far with it.

    I take a photo of the mountain with my Polaroid and as dusk grows, I take down my canopy and return all equipment to my car except my tent and bed. I thought, "At least try. At least sleep in the tent." But no. I lie down in it. I'm dirty. I badly need a shower. Great, as if I had few luxuries or comforts now, now I have to bathe. If I were more remote as I had thought, I'd comfortably just stand out in the open nude and bathe. But I'm already irritated. I'm already fed up with this place. So I nap. I feel sad afterward. This really could have been better. I'm upset that it wasn't. But so what? Be grateful for your comfort.

    And then... I went home.

    Fuck camping. (For now. I still want to try again. But next time be more... cognizant.)