Life is so fucked up.. Or maybe it’s death that if fucked up. Or maybe they both are.

♫ Seven Mary Three - Cumbersome ♫

I'm fasting again today. Not really achieving any spiritual enlightenment, and I'm sure as hell not loosing any weight. I've seen one ugly greasy fact, and I'm party to it. We are a society obsessed with food. You already know that, I already knew that. But somehow, being a little hungry just makes it all the more clear. Every other commercial is food, I pass 3 restaurants on my short walk into work. Every 3rd person that I pass on the sidewalk has food in their hands, or a soda, or both. All people at work talk about is food. It's not "how's the weather?" any more, it's "how's the line at McDonald's?" It's sick. And I'm so a part of it. I'm not breaking free from it. Fasting just makes me think about food more. And when midnight hits I usually cram a whole pizza into my face and follow it up with a couple cans of soda. I'm very much considering ending this experiment.

♫ AFI - Silver and Cold ♫

I found out that Mike Carmody, a former trainee of mine, has cancer. He's not working right now. And I'm having a hard time getting details. I know that it's melanoma, and that it's in his back, and he'll be going in for surgery very soon. And I know that the prognosis is not good right now. It hit me harder than I would have thought it could. I trained him at the beginning of this summer, he was in one of my bigger classes. It started with over 30 trainees, we had to take the partition out between two separate rooms. He was unique. I'll saw that. And he broke every preconception that I formed, just when I thought I was getting good at judging on first appearance. He's one of those trainees that ended up teaching me more than I taught him. I hope that he's going to be okay. I want him to be okay.

Barb from church died. It doesn't seem possible. I'm in a study group with her. We are all reading a book on Matthew. She was at the 50th anniversary celebration for the church. She had a part in a little game show thing we put on. She was so... alive. I can't even imagine her as anything else. I guess she had been doing yard work all day, and said she felt very tired. She went home, went to bed, and passed into the clearing.

Everything feels like it's out of perspective. Slanted, off kilter. Cliché. There's no insight, no moments of clarity.. just long questions into the night, a dark ceiling and a spinning fan and wind rushing by an open window.