Charlie Brown

Uggggggh.

Well I should not be complaining. I slept through last night, even if it was not as long of a rest as I might have liked. Then today went by with only minor issues. Indeed, by the time I came home and finished a dinner of blended everything I felt as if i had energy to spare, as apposed to my usual drained and disconnected. So I switched on the treadmill and ran for seven minutes, then walked another three and a half. The machine told me I burned a hundred and thirty calories.

What strange times we live in. It also told me my heart rate, but I will be damned if I know what a good number for that. I feel a little like puking now, but I think I may start running every morning. I need to do something after all.

I have realized that I cannot do yoga out side of a class setting. I lack the discipline to move through the motions in any kind of helpful order. I just go right for my favourite positions and then get bored. It is also hard to be motivated to do anything when your guts hurt, which has been for over a year now. Have you ever had a stomach ache for a year? It is not too much fun.

I am realizing now that I really should have brought my pirate army with me, as apposed to my two painted armies. There are people who play locally, but I have yet to meet any of them. I could at least be painting.

No internet. Not much of anything really. I have exhausted my will to play any more games of Warcraft or Starcraft against the computers Ai, as I long ago mastered my build order and can now move through the motions with out much thought. In a few of the lower moments of my health I stooped low enough to stick some of the household DVDs into the machine.

I started with Inception, as I understand it has become something of a cultural staple. The new Matrix for the next generation. It did not turn out to be nearly as confusing as some of my peers had made it out to be, and I was a little disappointed that it came down to 'what is reality' but I did like that they left the question of Cobb open at the end.

I only made it a half an hour into the dark crystal. Do I actually like any of Jim Hensons work? I remember liking the Mumpets as a child, but I do not think I would want to sit and watch any of it every again. I Robot was horrible. Will Smiths character was horrible. I could not shake the feeling that they cast a black man for the irony alone. The story sucked, the acting sucked, they took one of my favourite books and they ruined it.

Troy is a fucking piece of shit. They spent the whole movie talking about how they want their names to live forever, and how fighting is the only path to ensure such longevity. We already know their names live forever, it is the future right now and we are still making a movie about these battles. You do not need to constantly remind me that these are old names. I know. But did you know Greece wasn't a desert back then? It was a tropical paradise. To look at the landscape in the movie you would be forgiven for wondering how this many people feed themselves. It was these wars, (and the glass industry) that turned Greece into the desert we know today. Why do all the buildings already look a thousand years old? Fuck. This is why i do not watch movies. How much CG did they use to make Brad Pitt look like a badass? Would it have broken the budget to make the place look like antiquity?

Then I watched Hero and I was reminded that film can be beautiful. Near perfect story telling, strong characters, all with out compromise. I nearly cried when Falling Snow took her life at the end. Ah, wonderful. So I went on to watch Princess Mononoke and was again quiet pleased. I was only a little surprised to see that it was Neil Gieman who did that adaptation to English. His language shines through the dialogue pretty clearly in a few places. Which is not a bad thing. Spirited Away was similarly pleasing, but I already knew that. Perhaps I just need to stick to Asian cinema. Or perhaps I will just go back to not watching anything. I think that is the more likely.

Blister on my toe. Well I guess i will not be running tomorrow after all. Oh skin. Why you gotta be like that? I did some yard work the other day and after only a few minutes I had worn a hole in my hand. How quickly I have gone all pink and soft. The tare proof leather that covered my flesh while i was still in the warehouse is now long gone. Oh well, it will not be too much longer now before the fire calloused mittens of my past return, with their black dotted burns.

I do not really like to think about it. Though I really cannot wait to get back to making things again. I should go out and get myself a brush and some black paint. I found a roll of butchers paper in the garage. It would be run to repaper the walls in my room and properly story board these ideas spread across so many note books. I never do any of this work online. But it is getting to the point where I should consider it.

Uugh, there goes my gut. Uuugh hello.

When the pain is not there, it can be hard to remember that I am ill at all. Ugh, what a reminder. It clears away and I feel light as a summers breeze. I want to dance across the lands and sing to the sun. When it comes, I can hardly do a thing. Like a fist gripping inside me, it takes every ounce of concentration just to speak. Every unnecessary moment is eschewed, only the most basic mechanical movements, the absolute minimum for what needs to be achieved. Which is very little when I feel like this.

I got a bunch of new underpants from the family this year, and I have not been able to wear any of it, as the bands around my waist is enough to cause much discomfort. So I stick to the old ones with hardly a band in them at all, or skip the whole deal and wear nothing at all. Which may yet get me in trouble, as all of my shorts are a good two or three sizes too big for me as well. I am three waist sizes smaller than I was in highschool. I do not know how heavy I am right now, as there is no scale in the house but last time I checked I was in the hundred and twenty five, hundred and thirty range. Which is where I was when I was in grade nine and weighed in for gym class. I would not be shocked if I was a little lower than that considering my diet of late.

You know, I think I am going to go lay down.

Eleven hours later.

Ugh. That was not helpful. It is now a new day, and i feel far less rested than I did when I went to sleep. I did not manage to sleep really, it was more like sitting on the edge of sleep. Never really falling, but remaining balanced between this place and that, that which would allow escape, a temporary reprieve.

My smoothy tastes nutty this morning, I am going through these hemp hearts far too quickly. At thirty one fifty a pound they are more than three time as expensive as rib eye steak. Which retails around nine fifty a pound locally. I do not think a steak smoothy would be very good, but I am going to quickly destroy my food budged if I cannot find another source of protein to blend into my diet. Maybe peanut butter. Hmm. That could work.

Cutting soy from my diet has had no notable effects as of yet, but I am not going back to it any time soon all the same. Between soy and gluten i have cut out more than eighty percent of the grocery stores selection from my consideration. Which is not that bad of a thing, most of these things are rather unhealthy things to be eating anyways.

It has started to rain. Well, I would hardly call it rain, but it the most precipitation i have seen since my arrival. Which is too bad, as many of the local birds hang out in the same spot most of the day, leaving stretches of the side walk inches deep in droppings. It is pretty gross. The birds are one of the things I really like about McAllen though. Waking up to the sound of them screaming back and forth at each other is something that has been sorely missing from my life these last few years. They have many different birds that I have never seen before, many with vibrant colours, and while I have not seen any myself I am told that parrots make their homes in the area.

The squirrels here are huge, and pretty funny. I cut the grass the other day, and left the cuttings to sit on the lawn. The squirrels then spent the next few hours running through the bunches of cut grass, grabbing at them and tossing them into the air looking for what ever might be hidden underneath.

Yup. Feelin like shit.

Worst

Vent,

release,

escape.

I have no idea what to do. I can hardly move. I cannot tell if it is my kidneys, or just my back muscles. When I was younger, I would be gripped with back and shoulder pain to accompany my chest pains. When I changed my diet, it vanished. Apart from the return of my mind, it was my greatest relief. Now the pain in my intestines is intense, but the contractions in my back muscles are far more debilitating.

This cannot be good for my mind, but I feel that I am dealing with it a lot better than I was when things first started to get really bad. All the suffering I endured over the years has hardened my resolved, and expanded my capacity to carry this new burden. I am sure that if it had simply started this badly that I would not have had it in me to endure.

Just over two weeks of being in the Rio Grande Valley I had my first bowl movement, fallowed by sixteen hours of the most debilitating pain I have ever been in. This would worry me more if I had not been vomiting so much. Any time I get too hot, I puke which does not bode well for the coming season. I am on a mostly liquid diet at the moment, but I am having a hard time finding a source of protein I can handle. I asked one of the employees at the grocery store if they carried hemp hearts, and she sent me to the valentines chocolate section.

I cannot think.

Drinking water gives me heart burn.

Three hours after eating anything I am rendered unable to move.

Lets try and think of something positive. I have seen three possums so far, one I fallowed for a block or two before it made its escape. The second went up a tree as soon as it saw me, and we stayed looking at each other for good while before I went on my way. The third was laid out on the side of the road. Poor guy.

What I really want to see is an armadillo. Since I arrived I have not made it more than 2.2 miles from the house, when I went to deposit a check at BoA. So I may have to extend my range before I see anything more interesting. I am have been lucky in many regards so far with this trip, I cannot drink the tap water, but there is a water store with a reverse osmosis machine sitting out front for twenty four hour service. Twenty five cents a gallon for water that doesn't smell like it came out of a pool.

The games store is only two blocks down the road, but I have only been well enough to visit three times so far, and I have yet to play a game with any one who was not once in, or actively involved in the military. I have been asked how I feel about being a visible minority here in McAllen, and I usually reply that it just like being in Vancouver. Winter Texans are rather looked down upon by the locals here. Much the same way the hooker hates the John, they know we bring in the bucks they just wish they had a little more respect.

Half the houses are empty. Half the store fronts are empty. But they are clearly building more all over the place. The whole area I am in is rather new. It used to be citrus trees until a frost came and killed most of the trees years back. At that point it would have cost too much to replant everything and wait the years it takes to bring production back online, so they paved the place and sold the land for real-estate developments.

Every one keeps honking at me. I think I would cut my hair shorter if I was getting out at all. I see many of the men tense up becoming notably uncomfortable just at the sight of me. My gut reaction when ever i see this is to make them even more uncomfortable, but I lack the energy and I am a little concerned with how many concield weapon permits they have issued locally, so I have settled on avoiding eye contact.

The three places that are listed as yoga centres by google have all gone out of business. I have only seen two women that looked like they may practice, and I almost went up to them to ask but going up to strangers, "Hey! Where do you do yoga?" is just a little socially inappropriate.

They have well over fifty brands, taking up more than thirty feet of shelf space, and only a single offering of organic yogurt with fewer than five ingredients. I spent half an hour reading labels. The FDA has noted no difference between cows treated with rBST and cows not treated with growth hormones. Well I do not care what you think FDA, I am not eating it. I also cut soy from my diet. Which brought my already limited choices down half again.

I feel like shit.

I am going to go.

They Keep Honking At Me

At first I was sure to be mistaken. Yet there was no one else around on foot or in traffic. Perhaps her hand had slipped? The second time however there was no mistaking it. The overabundance of face and fleshy limb protruding out the window howling a cat call with the other hand firmly planted on the horn. The women here are objectifying me. Little more than a week into my adventures on the boarder town of McAllen, it has now happened enough times that I am growing accustom.

However my appearance garners me a considerable amount of attention from both sexes. No one has hair like mine and I have to be in the bottom 0.1% of the populations body mass ratio. I took a picture of the passing post man while he was on his route, and ended up being questioned about what the hell I thought I was doing. But he was at least two hundred and fifty pounds and driving this little US postal service van right up to the mail boxes and dropping the letters off through his window. I guess he thought I was a terrorist on account of my strange looks and picture taking as I had to answer for my actions and explain that... well... in Canada the postal workers walk. He ended up laughing it off and talking to me for a while about the van and how awkward it is to go from a auto with the wheel on the right hand side of the chassis to his own car with the wheel on the left. Every one is very friendly, and no one has any issue trying to start a conversation with me.

Walking down one of the main roads past an out door car wash I noticed one of the workers call to another to point me out as I past. I turned to face him full on and started waving before he managed to spot me and when he did was completely perplexed as to why I was waving at him with a shit eating grin on my face. This happens often. I will catch half of a couple pointing me out to the other(s) and then do my best to be staring them down before they manage to make eye contact. I love to watch them freeze like a deer caught in head lights. Yes I know you turned to look at me, and I am staring right back at you.

I feel pretty good today considering.

The night before last set the bar for worst night of my life. I knew it was not going to go well and tried to go to bed early in the hopes of sleeping through it, but lacking my preferred method of distraction I found myself unable to ease my mind and lay wide awake for nearly fourteen hours hardly able to move. It felt like a full sized pencil was passing through my lower digestive system, as a whole new section of my guts lit up with white hot pain. In short contracted gasps I lay hardly able to breath, as the movement of my diaphragm placed nearly unbearable pressure of my digestive system. I never cry, or call out. It always seemed silly to me, even when there was some one around to hear me. So I lay still and wait, while my brain bangs on the inside of my skull begging for escape.

It is in these times that I miss my old friend the most, but it always surprises me how simply it slips from my mind. There is no underlying tug, or feeling of emptiness brought on by its absence. Indeed my brain has been far more demanding that I get Reddit back to feed its need for novelty than it has been for more familiar company. I have also found to my disappointment that my chronic fatigue is not linked to these rituals. I am just as exhausted as ever.

I miss you greatly, but it is 26 °C s here, and a full forty nine degrees colder back there.

So you know. Fuck all that.

McAllen Texas

I am in agony.

Not even my nightmares are this bad. For much of my life, my greatest fear had been a slow and drawn out death. Slowly crippled piece by piece until finally falling to a cascade failure. This fate of mine now, I fear is much worse. For this is not going to kill me.

Not directly at any rate. I am down to less than seven hundred calories a day and it is starting to show. I cannot sleep, and I am exhausted. It feels like my guts have not rested in months. The muscles in my back tense to the point of causing involuntary convulsions. Hardly able to stand I lay in child's position trying to take any extra pressure off my digestive system.

This all said, getting here was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. The day before I left I ate twice as much as I would have normally, so that when i woke up in the morning I would get by on a half bowl of cornflakes. I would have ate more, but it was all i had left. It got me until the next morning when I had a half cup of fat free yogurt (yuck) and an apple. Aside from being weak, and starving I felt pretty good. It was on my third day when the hunger got too much and I baked chicken and potatoes that everything really started to get bad. I can still feel it moving through me, scraping along the tattered lining of my lower digestive system a full three days later.

I spent all of yesterday in bed, or the bathtub.
this is no life.
it is a nightmare.