this

i haven't felt this in a long time. it's weird, but somehow, i miss it.

"this" too

blag

do i value people more than right and wrong?

also

the wind blew and knocked all the leaves that were headed, eventually, for the ground, off the trees last night. accomplishing weeks of progress in a single night.

a-holes

"the more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture" - thomas paine

i've been the victim of two sad (in more ways than one) events.

first: the front wheel was stolen from my unlocked bike sitting in the front yard of my house while i was inside with the front door open. a couple kids stole my wheel... just the wheel. it took me months to get over that. "it's just a thing, just material," i told myself. "but still" i argued, "what kind of idiots..."

second: someone tried to steal my bike which was locked to itself off my front porch. they ditched it in a nearby parking lot once they destroyed the five dollar lock from walmart and seriously compromised two of the spokes and one of the ball bearings on the front hub. "it's just a thing," i reminded myself once again. "but still," i argued, "what kind of an idiot..."

my mother would say, "jacob, when will you learn your lesson? you leave your bicycles laying around unlocked, you never lock your front door and even sometimes leave it hanging wide open for a full day when you're gone the whole time, you leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition and the windows down! you have to lock your things up!"

but i think the only lesson i'm learning in all this crap is... i have too many valuable things. i have too much to lose. too much to protect. too much to be paranoid about. too much to mistrust humanity with.

small town

riverside knows it's small. it likes it that way.

center

i am the sum of everything i hate.
i am the sum of everything i love.
everywhere i look i see mirrors.
i contain all humanity inside of my own

there once was a little blade of grass.
when she turned three (insert unit of grass growth), someone came along and chopped off her top half.

so she grew it back.

starting up

when i was just a boy, my summer days were filled with running and jumping and scheming ways to avoid mowing the lawn. the most effective of these ideas was just to claim that there wasn’t enough strength in my whimpy arms to start the mower. i would wheel it out and half-heartedly pull on the chord, then give up and wheel it back to the shed. eventually my parents would come home from work and i would deliver my story, claiming that the mower was most likely broken and would never work again. however, much to my chagrin, one of them would walk out to the shed, pull out the mower, do a little magic tap dance on it, and start it up with only two attempts. as it turned out, my methods of avoiding only delayed what was inevitable. meaning i would then be forced to mow the lawn. i still remember that sinking feeling in my heart when i heard that old piece of junk start.

it’s been a while since i’ve used that mower, but today i could have sworn i heard that thing start up... several times.