described below

To try to help ensure that at least nathan and i go hiking in virginia a week from tomorrow, some tales of the last shenandoah adventures (previously relayed in gmail form, but always intended to end up here one day anyway)

WATERFALLS, RAPIDS AND DISPOSABLE SHOES

haha, you're right about the cowboy cool names. i forget what adam's was, but i'm brad riker, always am, always have been. i gather you recognize the surname, or whichever part of the name that means the part with the name riker in it.

and i forgot. i wore some kind of boot the first time and nearly had my feet amputated. but the second time i just wore sneakers and was fine. so...

quick story. the guide led us across some wadable rivers, or so she thought. day one brought the first river alongside a rocky cliff waterfall of death-causing proportions. this was when adam hiked down the cliff alongside the raging river to try to find an easier way across than the felled tree bridge. after 20 minutes or so i went down after him. i went as far as i dared (the cliff got sheer steep and realized i had no idea where he could have been. i began to realize it was at least a 50-50 that he'd fallen down the cliff and was injured or dead. i headed back to where i started thinking that there was nothing else to do. it had been a very dangerous trip down for me as at the very beginning i slipped and began sliding down through the deep woods towards the water but my foot slammed into a sturdy rock. i'd only slid a few feet and still had not completely given in to fear - thinking i was still in control of my slide, but it was close. and so it was a long hard trip back up from where i'd begun searching for adam. i had to jump from giant rock structures up to other ones to avoid my legs falling down in between the rocks to the dark, damp forest floor, where no one knows what kind of bitter reptiles called home. managing not slip into those cracks i still had to creep past dense spider webs and avoid losing my balance when surprised by the slithering speed of thick, spooked centipede. amazingly, however, adam was back where we'd started, almost unbelievably we must have passed each other along the narrow area near the waterfall. but anyway, we ended up carefully walking across the fallen tree, giant packs swaying us from side to side as we picked our way around large obtrusive branches situated dangerously in the middle of the 'bridge'.

as we relaxed on the other side, reveling in our dangerous feat, the only other human contact we were to run into over the next 4 four days, materialized itself as a gang of teens, lightly burdened, who, without hesitation, darted lithefully over the tree, across the river and past us up the hill we sat at the base of. hmm..

the other noteworthy crossing was a muddy river that reached our waist as we, choosing not to wait for any indian assistance, forded the river with gusto. the peril here presented itself as a raging current, which quite nearly tipped me and my large pack over several times. death would have probably been the result. that or at best i'd have had to struggle my shoulders out from under my pack, abandoning it, and hope that i'd resurface before gulping too much water. i had a walking stick i carried throughout the trip and trusted it with almost all my weight many times during this crossing. earlier rivers, i'd waded barefoot, but the surprising unknown textures below caused me to use my flip-flops this time. they worked well. adam however, waited till i finally made it to the other side before he started his trek because he'd lost his flip-flops somehow, or something, and so after i crossed, i loaded up the flip-flops into each other and gave them a toss across stream to his eagerly stretching hands. well, one of them detached from the other, hit the water with a plop, and raced off down stream and deep into the woods, never again to be worn by my foot.

so, don't lose your flip-flops, because anything can happen when one throws them across a river..

ladder, slide, ladder, slide

i just tried to reread the post below. if i didn't know what i was trying to say, i'd have no idea what the fuck i was saying. it's so confusing.

i remember, months after writing them, rereading my papers from college or long things i would write on scrap paper for no reason at all, and i'd realize that i had no idea what i had been trying to say.

but when it's fresh in my head i don't notice that i'm not making it clear, hah! it's almost like i just write encoded phrases that signal a corresponding meaning in my head. and so when i reread something right after i've written it, i don't recognize that what i wrote didn't say what i wanted to say, it just made me remember what i wanted to say.

basically, it's me not being a good writer.

and somehow though, i want to cling to that bad habit.

eh, whatever, as my cousin danny used to say



on to this:

actually, it's basically nothing. it's something that i want to remember but can't but seem to have resolved myself to just writing what it was concerning instead of what it was. but last night, it, for some reason, drunk and plus, hit me so hard this realization about why it is so important spiritually whether you believe in evolution or creationism. shawn said something about something at some point and it caused me to draw a linear line of thoughts making the significance of that said debate so clear. it was something concerning the idea that if it's evolution then we're not to blame for our faults. something like that but only in a specific situation maybe. i'll try sleeping on it.



anyway, maybe that had something to do with my (congratulations in order), selfless (though of course in a way very selfish) decision to go to church for the first time when i had been given leave to not go if i didn't want to. and let me tell you, i really really didn't want to go. it's been many months since i've remembered i had a problem with anxiety, and if you don't count easter service, it's been around 6 months since i've had any mental anguish at all. let me also tell you that i'd rather get beaten the fuck up than experience an anxiety attack, and the point is, i now only experience them at church, e.g., easter sunday.

but as my mental state is improving, easter sunday wasn't that bad. there were moments when i'd start to get light-headed and times when i'd have what seems right to describe as hot flashes (unless that can only be used for those menopausal). i woke up this sunday, father's day, in a sensitive mood, and realized that for the sake of my soul, i needed to go to church with my dad, no matter how much i feared it. it went better than it's gone since i first got the problem two or three or so years ago, but it wasn't perfect. still, i was completely relaxed for maybe half of it, and i probably haven't been completely relaxed for more than a minute or less in a row at church over the last few years. weirdly, the last two times i've gone, though both better than before, a new problem has arisen, that that i no longer can sing the hymns without almost passing out. something about matching the calm breathing patterns with everyone else in there.

it's almost like the good will aura at church is trying to heal me but i can't handle being healed all at once and so i have to tense up some and stop the process. in fact, the prayer i turned to this sunday was to ask god to heal me but please, in small doses.

well, everything's well. and how did i reward myself for doing something healthy like that? i drove to pittsburgh and got completely fucked up just like a good little alcoholic. too bad i don't like my alcohol like i like my healing, that being in small doses.

ok, later.

hopefully i'll remember the string of thoughts that had me so convinced that i understood the most primal ramifications of the creation vs evolution thing. i mean, i could outline the reasons that people say are the important things, but it was something about the feeling of truly understanding it. it was something weighty.

but the trick is the 'and plus' that i mentioned earlier that i did with drinking and that, in those times before, i've written down the thought process of other things i've felt i truly understood but then when i read it later, sober, i'd realize that it might not have been a different perspective with which i had seen the problem but rather just simply the deeper feeling that was the result of smoking. before, i've written down something that seemed so important but it turned out the next day that it was something about how matt kuhar and i like the resetting of strategy in hockey games when there are faceoffs. i understood that next day what i meant when writing it, but i also realized that i just couldn't access the feeling about it that made it seem so important. if anything, it was just like being a kid again and it was the feeling of seeing and understanding something simple and purely and without the desensitivity that comes with being older.

you die when you no longer have any senses.

ok, so, what i'm saying is, it was probably nothing.

thanks

quick update on a new stage of quitting drinking

when the drinker tries a drink only once over 11 days, he encounters a clearer realization and a clearer problem. me, being the drinker, i, thus now making this a first-person account, have noticed something that makes quitting drinking all the harder. when i'd go a few days to 5 without drinking, as i've documented many times in other posts, each day got better, i'd feel better, giving the promise that stopping for ten days would mean ten times the good feeling. instead, it plateaus, as would be obvious, and so when it was hard not to drink after five days, because i felt so good anyway, it is always going to be hard to not want to drink after 10 or fifteen.

but not just as hard. in fact it's been much easier for me to not be tempted and i actually feel like i'm now reaching the realm of the healthiest social binge drinker in that i only feel like drinking if something great is happening - like a friend riding his bike from pittsburgh to ebensburg. so this is all good. i'm just not pumped about not feeling a lot better, quickly.

but i am happy about not drinking. so it's just, you don't feel better than the last day, but you still feel pretty grateful that you don't feel bad when you wake up, and that's enough for me. for now.

anything else?

hmm, oh, a few posts ago i noted that i was thinking i should be worried that i stopped excercising and working out and stretching even less. then i said i wasn't worried. also i ran out of vitamins and my vitamin world store closed in altoona.

anyway, point is, i've had a migraine headache everyday for the last 11 days. starting with my last night of drinking. the pharmacist at weis' market says allergies

absent birds

there was this spare second as i was getting into my car today as the sun shone. i immediately and instinctively put that moment away in my memory as a moment that needs written of. there are these moments like this that you run into intermittently that just seem more full than others. i want to pursue these moments as passionately as i don't want to pursue some kind of career. why do these moments seem so important. it occurs to me that maybe it's because i'm vacant for those few seconds. i'm doing something habitually and my mind's free for once to close it's eyes and let me see what's in front of me unskewed, undirected.

it makes me want the restrictive bonds of habit and tradition in a way. racing to be first doesn't seem so important to me anymore, however it still is in my habit to act like that when presented with the appeasing situation.

it's a fine line right now between dropping my competitive drive (which wasn't socially created necessarily) and accepting where i'm at. i don't want to be where i'm at because it's not secure for the future but anyway i hate hate where this has gone.

fuck this.

it was about that moment. the moment was unexplainable in the sense that there was nothing fancy about it so i could only describe it simply as it was. a simple description that you might read in first grade to teach you grammar or spelling, so it doesn't seem like it can be explained with flair. great moments seem like they should be written of with great flair. or so this one had thought before.

the car was hot to the touch glinting brightly in the sun. the man looked downwards at the black tar parking lot, green grass and the corner of a red building. the heat surrounded the man so that he felt like he was in a tiny room. he felt like he'd been standing there forever, until that thought occurred to him.