Don't Stop Dancing, Don't Dare Stop

The youth of the world, and I'm assuming this riverine bridge graffito was penned by someone under age 20 given the text message nature of its delivery, certainly have things on lock. "Hey, anyone notice the house was on fire? Oh, okay, you did. That's good." It's like the meme of the dog enjoying his morning coffee as everything burns around him, to include himself, as he notes that "This is fine." That's one of my favorites and I wonder how people go through the world somehow blithely ignorant of how fucked things are and I marvel at their sense of stability and seemingly stable relationships and employment situations. Increasingly, I feel like Dennis Hopper's character in Apocalypse, Now when he's ranting to Captain Willard, "Look at this shit we're in man!" and then goes on to quote Rudyard Kipling about keeping one's mind about them when everyone else has lost theirs. I wonder what side of the fence of that aphorism I fall into but I have a feeling that everyone already knows where I'm at. Hell, it's not like we keep secrets around here.

Again, also at the river, the youth have the solutions to the above pic. The rock was my contribution and, apologies for the potato quality of the picture, the heart shaped lump of granite was found out on the riverbed and was intended for placement in the apartment or for painting even but I left it with a more important message. Conversely, if you shock a dog in a cage enough and then give them the possibility of escape, the dog will not flee torture. As in Fall Out Boy's new joint, So Much (for) Stardust, (which is an absolute banger) he screams on the mic that "Heartbreak feels so good" and I'm inclined to agree with him. The record contains any number of great lines but the track that contains that line makes me weep like I've been opened up and all the raw parts of me are poked and prodded for the edification of a gallery of surgeons interested in the absurdity of the human condition. Needless to say, it's been on repeat in the earbuds.

These are, I think, forget me nots that I found at the river. They were a little more purple than I expected but I pulled up last weekend, fortuitously in front of them as I parked, and I trod up the embankment for a photo. I cried, natch, but at what I could not explain. Beauty? Sadness? The interbeing of both? The teminability of existence? The chaotic nature of sentient life? Art? Evil? Who knows? I certainly don't. Later, I walked the river and didn't cry but rather marveled at the absolute stupidity of existing. Then, I went to the bar and watched hockey and went back to the apartment and cried myself to sleep.

Look at this guy right here. Broken, yet persisting. I found this just today outside the Palmer museum. Then, I went to visit the Virgin Mary at St. Michael's and the arboretum. Someone had broken off the Virgin's hands and she stood in her blue alcove with handless arms outstretched as if she would still welcome you into her, hands or not. She stood there, looking crushed, with a garland of flowers gracing her head. At the arboretum, as noted previously, the spruce bark beetles have taken their toll of the population of spruce trees and seeing the naked stumps of felled trees like snaggletoothed grins gave me pause. There are very few spruce in the arboretum now and I went and visited with each of them, inspecting for signs of beetle invasion. Many of the remaining had early signs of infection but one in particular was near the end and I went and touched the trunk and wept like a penitent. Then I went to the bar. Natch. Gavin turned 18 last Friday. Everyday I beg for God to end me.