So I’m blogging alot. I’ve been writing, too, in mediums other than this one, trying to make a “story”. I didn’t go to college so sometimes the concept of making a “story” (you know- beginning, middle, end) eludes me. I’m trying to make one. It’s about a ruby-colored box and a freight train and some open windows and the smell of rotting apples tumbled in the grass. I’m not sure what happens yet, but that’s what it looks like. Maybe nothing happens? So then it’s not a story? But nothing happens in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek! I can write that way if I want to! We shall see.

I wanted to write a story about my craigslist ride to Alaska because I had decided that the car accident we got into on the Alcan would make a perfect metaphor for the collapse of western civilization, but whenever I try to manually insert a concept as large as that into my writing it just ends up sounding dumb, like I’m trying to be Derrick Jensen or something. Mostly I just write stuff and it ends up being about what I want it to be about anyway, without me even trying, because I’m sort of thinking about those things already. Or something. Whatever it is, I can’t look straight at it or it’s gone.

Creativity: Don’t look straight at it or it’s gone.

I just had lunch. Spicy pinto beans and brown rice and sauteed cauliflower. Breakfast was fried egg and mayonnaise sandwich on injera bread. This morning at work I did sudoku and read a chapter in my Native People of Alaska book.

Alaska: Dear Cauliflower, you’ve come far.