informed indecision

answer sheet

Drive out of the city. Drive until the only reminders of civilization are the car that you sit in and the road beneath your tires. Drive. Drive. Stop the car. Get out of the car. Leave the car running, unlocked. Leave your wallet and phone in the passenger seat. Look out and reflect upon the landscape. Reflect. Reflect. Realize that you don't know what is out there, across the horizon. Realize that your reflections have no meaning because they have no foundation. Realize that your philosophies, your thoughts about the symbolic significance of the landscape are based solely upon what you would imagine the landscape to be. Realize that the car behind you is your life. Realize that the landscape and beyond is your truth. Realize that it is the first glimpse of truth that you have ever had. Be comforted. Be confident. Walk toward the horizon. Walk across the ground that has never existed. Accept your new place in the world. Accept the wind in your face, the dust on your shoes, the dry taste in your mouth, the warmth of the sun. Fight the desire to turn around. Keep your eyes fixed upon the fleeing horizon. Accept a beginning. Accept. Accept. Regret nothing. Just walk. Just look. Just drive. Just reflect. Just accept. Just walk.

wasted
days

Liftoff
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

-from Blood Meridian
(Cormac McCarthy)

I don't want to do this anymore.

This is the end
please end it for me
it always seems hotter when I'm up on the ceiling
I know that always is a long fucking time
when do you think it will be time to sit down
I know that the clocks run backwards down under the sun
please come on down and join us
I will never say please again
and again and again and again and again
peas and rice for me
If it wasn't for me I would feel nothing
we have always said that I should do something

On the jungle

[On the jungle] Kinski always says it's full of erotic elements. I don't see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and... growing and... just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they - they sing. They just screech in pain. It's an unfinished country. It's still prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking is - is the dinosaurs here. It's like a curse weighing on an entire landscape. And whoever... goes too deep into this has his share of this curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here. It's a land that God, if he exists has - has created in anger. It's the only land where - where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at - at what's around us there - there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle - Uh, we in comparison to that enormous articulation - we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban... novel... a cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the - the stars up here in the - in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle.

It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.

-Werner Herzog

this point

feb 14

I wish you weren't here. greenhouse 9

EVERY
QUESTION
IS
A
TRICK
QUESTION

I feel like it should be easier than this.

Robert Ryman

I painted the interior of a house today.
I painted it white.
I made $104.00.

Why I went to the woods

One of the main reasons for my coming back to Kansas was to experience the familiarity and peace that I have always found in the woods that surround the house where I grew up. The ice storm in December downed trees such that the old paths and trails, the ones that I have always followed, are gone.
Things are a little less familiar.

run for the hills

Polaroid drawing (power lines)

'We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up. You have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the same state. I do not think there can be much pride left in you. You have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you have screamed with pain, you have rolled on the floor in your own blood and vomit. You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?'

Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears were still oozing out of his eyes. He looked up at O'Brien.

'I have not betrayed Julia,' he said.

O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. 'No,' he said; 'no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia.'

The peculiar reverence for O'Brien, which nothing seemed able to destroy, flooded Winston's heart again. How intelligent, he thought, how intelligent! Never did O'Brien fail to understand what was said to him. Anyone else on earth would have answered promptly that he had betrayed Julia. For what was there that they had not screwed out of him under the torture? He had told them everything he knew about her, her habits, her character, her past life; he had confessed in the most trivial detail everything that had happened at their meetings, all that he had said to her and she to him, their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings against the Party -- everything. And yet, in the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had not stopped loving her; his feelings towards her had remained the same. O'Brien had seen what he meant without the need for explanation.

'Tell me,' he said, 'how soon will they shoot me?'

Keep it up and see what happens.

Keep on truckin'. Keep your head up. Keep the faith. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Panic on the streets of London
I wish you weren't here.
The crowd goes wild
I wish you weren't here.
I can barely hear myself think
I wish you weren't here.
Traffic is at a standstill
I wish you weren't here.
That's great, it starts with an earthquake
I wish you weren't here.
It takes all kinds
I wish you weren't here.
I wish you weren't here.
I wish you weren't here.
I wish you weren't here.
I wish you weren't here.
I wish you weren't here.
I wish you weren't here.
wish you weren't here.
you weren't here.
weren't here.
here.
.
You're not here.