I Swear, It's Killing Me

Super WalMart: 'tis a wicked place where wicked people shop. Once in a great while I even shop there myself since it's just about the only place around where I can actually shop healthy. The apples there are very cheap and reasonably good, even though nowadays, even the smell of apples can make me sick sometimes. There's a few different reasons for that which I'd really rather not get into right now. I only mentioned my newfound hatred for Super WalMart just then because the thought had chanced to cross my mind successfully, like a little dusty periwinkle butterly on fire.

At the moment, I should definitely be in the brightly glowing glassed-in section of the downstairs computer lab in AB-Tech's Holly Library, doing some of last week's horrible online homework and studying for the big algebra-related exam we're going to have sometime later today, but I just don't have the heart to do it. I think I've mentioned before that I'm absolutely retarded when it comes to mathematics, and not too long ago as I remember it now, I actually went up to Michele, my sharp-eyed Algebra 070 teacher and suggested that she needed to freakin' come out and explain to me in normal terms how I'm ever going to have to need the kind of algebra she teaches in the future, especially since the three basic fields of study I'm heading into are parapsycology, art and novelization. I asked Michele to give me a few examples of certain jobs that might require general knowledge of such mathematics, and the poor woman couldn't even answer me. She simply didn't know. So, what good is her position as a teacher in this world, when she's spending most of her waking life teaching us information that will always prove to be completely useless to all of us? There's is not one single person I can think of in that Algebra 070 class of mine who is going to become a brain surgeon or something like that when they finally graduate from AB-Tech, if only for the reason that they won't be able to afford to study anymore after this, even with the financial loan system that this city sometimes offers.

Even so, though, Algebra 070 means a whole lot to me. I care about my current studies a whole lot more than other people seem to, including my parents. And yet I'm still just about failing the course. That alone terrifies me to no end, because if I fail math this year, I don't know what will happen to me. Everybody knows that I didn't want to go to AB-Tech whatsoever, to begin with, and for that reason, if I do in fact wind up failing the class, my parents will think that I did it on purpose. That is the way the two of them seem to hold me in their hearts, these dark and dangerous days.

Bleak Horizons

Okay, so...I'm in the dimly lit latter downstairs half of the library belonging the the community college I attend every Tuesday and Thursday, wondering if it's begun to snow once again outside. Earlier today while I was walking a fourth of a mile uphill towards the Pine Buildings for my voluntary ESL (English Second Language) tutorial, I noticed that there was a real myriad of tiny, white particles whizzing around in the air, directly in front of my eyes. That as a couple of hours ago now, and it was almost unbelievably cold and windy. I actually wound up slipping in the scanty but dangerous carpet of last year's golden pine needles and crushed leaves when I'd almost reached the Pines, and that absolutely terrified me, because when I slipped I came very close to falling right into the road, where I would've certainly been killed repeatedly by all the speeding cars. I'd like to say that my entire life seemed to flash before my eyes, but somehow it didn't.

My throat's beginning to hurt a little, and I guess it kind of serves me right for trying to walk a fourth of a mile in battering wind without my scarf properly wound around my neck, even though I was trying to hold it in place as well as possible. I've got on my favorite scarf today; it's not any one of those old ones that I made back last year when I was learning how to knit for my dreaded senior project, in the high school. My friend's grandmother gave that scarf to me two years ago when I went to visit Finland for the first time. It's decorated all over with little orange and bright-yellow checks, and I think it suits me pretty well. At least I had a bandanna around my head, as well, upon my journey moving towards the Pines, because if I hadn't had anything like that on, both of my ears would have certainly been aching greatly by now.

Today Beka, my wonderful yoga teacher here at AB-Tech, mentioned to our class that she wouldn't be here next Thursday because she had a thirteen-hour flight for Japan scheduled for tomorrow morning. I thought it to be extremely random but stil surprisingly funny, how dear Beka just came out of nowhere and told us that we'd have a different yoga teacher for Thursday. I plan to write a lot more about my great yoga class later on this month, or whenever I happen to have the time for writing aside from that, because it's begun to take up quite an awesome part of my life, nowadays...

And in fact, I plan to start writing a lot more about all of the AB-Tech classes I'm taking this semester, because I've definitely got a lot to say about every single one of them, as well as the five rather questionable teachers and professors I have to deal with. Being forced to stay at AB-Tech for ten fucking hours straight every Tuesday and Thursday for months on end is no fun, people, I promise you. There's not too much to do, and since I've even forgotten the big purple binder I usually carry with me to all of my classes at home this afternoon and my poor maroon library card with it, I'm not even allowed to borrow any good books of movies to watch or read tomorrow before I have to go to work at A.C. Moore's. (I'm going to write some more about my latest job soon, too, I believe.)

At the moment, however, I'll gladly say that I've made a recent resolution to never, ever try to shop at any of our local Super WalMart faclities again, at least for quite a long time, even though I can hardly afford to shop as healthy as I'd like anywhere else, because just last night when I was in that detestable place looking for what we beginner-yogis like to call a "yoga strap", I wasn't able to find one right away, and so I asked a random blue-aproned employee that I saw there, constantly lurking around as all of the employees belonging to Super WalMart stores always seem to do, and I approached him to ask if he knew where I could perhaps purchase a yoga strap. He told me that he "didn't know where I could buy one", and then immediately afterwards called me a "dirty hippie" under his breath, behind my back. I swear, I should have pulled out my switch and had his ass right then and there! But of course, I couldn't have, because there were so many other people around here with me, at the time, including my mom and one of my younger brothers...

Yes, I'm a dirty hippie, ya'll, in body and soul alike. Of course I am. What else would I be? The only reason why I took the slightest offence when the Super WalMart employee called me that himself, was for the most part simply because it was him calling me that, of all other people on earth: a very mean-looking, short, grey-headed old man who might have been a vetran, for all anyone knows.

In that yoga class of mine that I was talking about, Beka occassionally tells us one or two things concerning the fact that to be good yogis, we should try our hardest not to violently judge others, or even ourselves, and that's where yoga gets to be the absolute hardest for me. That's where I break inside and begin to screw up, especially when I see how very clumsy I am when compared to almost everyone else in my class. Never mind the many weird and quite unusual yogaic positions we have to do, see! Me being the harsh, judgemental person that I am, especially towards myself and not necessarily even all the other chuckleheads out there, is my greatest, eternal obstacle that I need to put aside to reach total Enlightenment.

(More on how I think I've probably already reached that total stage of true Enlightenment in some ways, another day when I maybe feel a little better.)