My legion of readers must be wondering where I’ve been. Well, I’ve been on vacation to New Hampshire and Maine. It was okay. I wish I could say it was amazing, but I can’t. It had amazing moments, but I was frustrated and distracted by other things much of the time. I don’t mean to complain, but family vacations have lost too much of their charm. I rather go off alone, or with one other person. Maybe two. I don’t know.

Regardless, I’ll give a brief recap.

I left Tuesday, at 6am, after sleeping for about two hours. I was up late in some sort of discussion, and then I couldn’t sleep. I woke up and opted to sleep in the car, only it wasn’t really sleep. More like listening to really loud music just so I couldn't hear anything else while waking up every so often because of dreams. So many dreams. I seem to wake up thinking about the same stuff every day.

Later that day we drove up half of Mt. Washington, and then my sister, her boyfriend, and I walked up the other half. I’m a rather quick hiker, and I also prefer to hike alone or at least in partial silence, so I got ahead of them rather quickly and hiked alone for the most part, listening to the wind. Since I’ve done Mt. Washington so many times, it was nothing amazing for me. The views are of course wonderful, and I love the wind, so that was enjoyable. I sat alone on top of the mountain for awhile, thinking. I believe I think far more than other people, and a lot more than what’s healthy for me. This is especially true lately. Sometimes I wish I could turn off my mind.

I had planned to get to sleep early Tuesday night, as I had not really slept in two days, but then I received some bad/expected/known/disheartening/defeating/sort-of-uplifting but is it really? news that night and found, again, that I couldn't sleep. The blinding brightness of my cellphone woke me more than once, thankfully, until I just couldn't sleep. So I read most of the night, and listened to music most of the rest, and slept a handful of hours.

A train also woke me up at some point.

I woke up very tired. Oh well. Not so much different from usual. I know I dreamt a lot in those few hours, yet I remember so little, just that I kept waking again and again. This really frustrated me, as it felt like I missed something.

We drove from New Hampshire to Maine. On the way I purchased the most amazing BBQ from some guy who cooked his food within and just outside his trailer on the side of the road. It was amazing. I listened to music most of the ride, as my mother refused to shut up, and I can’t stand when people just talk for the sake of talking.

This is where I sort of went insane. We hiked a random trail in Arcadia, to a surprisingly amazing view of a valley between mountains. Really, it was one of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen. Being that I arrived there twenty minutes before anyone else, I sat on the cliff for awhile, watching storm clouds roll in. This pleased me. I hoped for rain. About ten minutes later the sky opened up and started to storm. Thunder, lightning, frigid pelting rain.

Most people would hate hiking in a storm, jagged bolts and crashing thunder and all. Most people would seek cover. I took off my shirt and laid Vitruvian man style on the open rocks of a cliff while rain stung my skin and lightning flashed and split the sky around me. And I laughed, manically, for some reason. I laughed and laughed, and maybe part of me cried. My family yelled, insisting I would soon be struck by lightning. I really didn't really care. It would be a fitting end, for some reason.

Man killed by lightning, laughing. Or is it laughing man killed by lightning?

Turns out I didn't get struck by lightning, and the storm didn't stop for the next few hours of the hike. This also pleased me, until the hike’s end, where my sister and her boyfriend and I stood beneath a sign for some sort of warmth as the storm raged around us. I pondered hitchhiking rather than waiting for my parents to finish the hike. I decided I would claim to have been attacked by a grizzly bear, but I needed proof. So I removed a thumb tack from the bulletin board behind me, stabbed it into my arm, and proceeded to tear down the length of my bicep. Like I said, I sort of lost it, and in a few seconds I had a superb river of blood flowing down my arm. The cut still looks mildly impressive. It almost looked authentic—grizzly bear. Roar. However, I never tested it on a random stranger, though my mother did freak out when she saw it.

Sigh.

I really feel like sighing a lot right now and I don’t know why. I’m wound up. Tightly.

I ran tonight—more like sprinted close to three miles—as I’ve been feeling insanely restless and discontented lately. Running usually helps. It didn't tonight.

Anyway, later that night we drove up to Bar Harbor. We arrived late—around 11pm. I should have been tired, but I wasn’t. Well, I was, but I couldn't sleep. So I read and listened to music while reading, mostly because I had the pleasure of sharing a room with my sister and her boyfriend for a few consecutive days. This isn’t the most fun. I tended to drink beer in bed and read books of better lives.

Thursday: Bar Harbor is quite impressive, more so because you have a coastline view in almost all places. I’ve always loved coastlines and the ocean in general. Someday I hope to live on it, where I can sit outside and just stare across the water, at waves breaking against the shore and whatnot. I wish I could write more elegantly tonight. I don’t feel elegant. I feel like. I don’t know.

This was my favorite part of the vacation—hiking across perilous rocks near the shore; nowhere near to the actual trail, by the way.

Fuck. I forgot about breakfast. Maybe I was exhausted and half asleep during it, or maybe I’m just going crazy, or maybe it was really was this fucked up. Breakfast was surreal, and not in the good, see someone, actually see them for the first time and find yourself drawn to them like a moth toward flames, and no matter what you do, no matter what you think, you can’t seem to make the flames burn a little dimmer, a little cooler, and you can’t forget or fail to remember sort of way, only you pray it doesn’t all end in fire. You know, how moths burst into flames.

You just want everything to work.

One aside into another aside.

Breakfast: that fucking case about the chick killing her son or whatever is on television, and some lady keeps turning it up louder and louder, and it’s early and I don’t want to hear about this shit, and my toast fucking sucks and the raisin brand fucking blows, and all the people on tv keep saying is temporal shift temporal shift temporal shift, and I’m just there holding my hands to my eyes and thinking about temporal shifts and why the lawyers have to use such fucking stupid wording, and then this lady walks into the breakfast room, and she’s fucking dressed from the 1970’s, hair and all, with this weird white dress and a black belt and black hair done all 1970’s, and maybe she’d be sort of cute if she wasn’t so fucking strange, almost in a good way but this is just too much because it’s so early and there’s temporal shifts temporal shifts temporal shifts, until I finally can’t take it anymore and I announce that I have to leave.

This is too much.

Walking up the stairs, the sign reads Please Use the Handrail. My sister is walking in front of me. I tell her to please use the handrail. A second later she trips, spilling her hot chocolate all over the wall.

All day I think about temporal shifts and why I am doing any of this and what any of this means and if it’s sometimes easier to just not care, but I can’t make myself not care no matter how hard I try.

At lunch the picnic table fucking flips over onto myself and my parents. Like, an entire fucking picnic table, food and all, and for the rest of the day I’m covered in BBQ sauce.

Breakfast: I forgot something, and I’m too lazy to go back. I had never heard of this crazy lady killing her child and whatnot case before Wednesday. I don’t follow the news. My sister asks me if I knew what they were talking about, and I’m like, “I don’t follow the news. Oh wait, I just heard about Hurricane Katrina? Have you heard about it? That’s horrible!” I found that very amusing. Thank you.

Later that night, after all the hiking is done, I’m pissed off at my book for ending and I really don’t feel like starting the sequel just yet, so I decide to listen to music I haven’t listened to before. This starts my Christina Perri section of vacation. We’ve all heard that Jar of Hearts song. I’ve even mentioned it here—me playing it on piano. I thought the CD would suck, that she’d be a one hit wonder. Just as a reference, I have an extremely broad taste in music. Mostly, I just like emotion. Anyway, I’m listening to it, and the first song is amazing, and then the second is equally good, and the third is just okay, but the rest of the CD essentially fucked my brains out on that hotel bed.

The next morning we’re leaving to go home, thank god. At this point I’m rather sick of people—no offense anyone. It’s just that I like my alone time, and I had so little of it. I don’t mean to sound anti-social, but I’m just bogged down at times. I have enough going on in my mind; I don’t need more. So to continue my Christina Perri section of my vacation, I listen to the CD for something like the next six hours, again and again and again, until I’m rather sure that she knows who I am, and has decided to write music that pertains, and somewhat pertains, to my life at the time of my listening. I find all of this very disorientating and jarring and breathtaking and somewhat appropriate, and I think about temporal shifts and I don’t know what to make out of anything I’m thinking.

I slip in and out of sleep as Ms. Perri sings her sirens songs to me, and I dream amazingly pleasing yet taunting dreams, and life feels strange, and right now it feels even stranger. I think I’m suffering from exhaustion.

Last night I experienced some of the most vivid dreams I’ve had in a long time. I wrote them down, to remember them…just in case.