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Broken motifs Clouds hid the light of the moon as I drove through a warm mist on my way in to work Saturday night. The unseasonal warmth of the day had carried over into the night. Hidden in the dark were the usual assortment of police cars, which I am starting to think I should count on my nightly commute. Sunday morning was nice and slow at work. It was the perfect way to end my work week and start my weekend. For the most past I just passed the time by either talking or just sitting and thinking. I don't have enough nerve to blantantly read a book while I am there, but the thought does cross my mind every so often. The book that I am reading now, The Land Remembers, is a memoir of growing up on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin in the 1920's and 1930's. Its a time when I imagine that the small farm could still exist in Wisconsin, but sadly I believe those days are over now. Since I lived in the country for a time I know that more and more small farms are going under, because being a farmer just isn't a viable way to live anymore. More often than not, a farm is sold and made into another subdivision. I also wonder who would want to stay on a farm in the age we live in today. Maybe I am missing something. Maybe that is a better way of life and I just don't know it. None of what I just said detracts from the book though. The fact that Wisconsin can be a wonderful place to live definitely comes through in the book. The author captures all of the charms that the landscape has to offer and I know that these are true. If I really hated the state I would have left long ago. Some of the books I ordered a while back should be arriving sometime this week. I decided to spread my interests around and ordered a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. One of them is the account of the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica that I mentioned a few weeks back. Something about living on an ice shelf for close to a year interests me. Maybe it's the way people can push themselves when they want something bad enough. Another book is about the founder of The New Yorker, while another is about the Roman Empire. When they get here I should have plenty of things to read. Lately I have been thinking about stopping the journal like others have done before me or maybe switching to a weekly update instead of a daily one. The times when I just don't have much to say are becoming more and more frequent. Words and more words fill my head, but it all seems less compelling when it hits the screen. Then I start to think about what bothers me some more and I realize that not every day is going to be exciting. Life is not always high drama no matter how hard I might try to make it that way. There will be lulls and it may very well seem to be monotonous. Fashioning an interesting essay out of me moving from here to there in my house is not easy. I also believe that the small throwaway entries are still true. They reflect the days where I can't think. These are the days when everything seems uncertain. These are the days when there aren't any clear answers to what I want from life. Confusion and longing are a part of life. Some of this might get muddled in the words, but some of the emotion is still there. The mood from Friday night has left me. I think that I was craving some human contact. Usually I get along just fine by myself, but something happened for a moment there. Maybe I just needed to hear a friendly voice. I will freely admit that there are days when the only people I speak with are the ones from work. Then there are the days when I don't speak to anyone at all. I'm not sure if I am looking for someone to talk with about myself, but instead I want someone to tell me their story. Online journals fill this need to a degree. There is a certain level of intimacy there that is missing from reality. Very seldom do people I know talk that way. Spoken words do not match the same careful thought out eloquence of the journals. Words in our day to day existence are spoken in haste. Emotion mangles the syntax. So I start to dwell on what I can do to change my current situation. One option might be a girlfriend, but part of me feels that a girlfriend at this time would shatter my world. I'm not in the mood to be entertaining anyone, but I want someone to entertain me. Maybe this is shallow, but I don't want another girlfriend like the last one that I had. After falling asleep for a few hours this afternoon, I called my friend Dan and worked out some plans for my birthday next week. It'll be good to see him and I think that it'll be a good way to spend my birthday.
written input at the moment: The Land Remembers - Ben Logan
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