Diary

Saturday, May 7th.
Reed College.
Portland, OR.

The mighty pen is
at Clark College
Vancouver, WA
(was there yesterday. totally unrelated to this post
but what the hey, you'd never know if I hadn't told ya.
and 'cause I have no pictures of Reed College)

Spent a nice morning at a local park. Watched skinny grade school kids running football drills for their obese coach. A guy did pushups while his dog, with blue frisbee in mouth, rambled happily around him. I read some of Frankenstein. Listened to Sheryl Crow in my car CD player. Was nice.

A lady was flying a R/C hover airplane. Looked like she was video recording a lacrosse game, but every once in a while she'd turn a full circle and look up at the sky. Took me a while to figure out what she was doing, watching her from my car with blurry morning eyes.

The heat of midday sun wakes me up, before I've slept off my delirium. But I need to get indoors to air conditioning and paper towel off my stink in the bathroom. Had a frozen meat lasagna from Trader Joe's for lunch, microwaved at Reed College cafeteria. It was delicious.

A mini-horse visited campus to relieve student stress during final exams week. I got a kick out of seeing him eat the lawn while people come up to pet him.

Been pulling all-nighter's at the Reed College library 'cause it's open 24 hours, so I can. Then I move to a recreational park in the morning so as not to disturb the residential populace when I sleep in my car. I find a place somewhere close by. It's especially unsafe to drive when sleep deprived. I'm batting my eyes constantly to keep them hydrated to open up and my brain skips every other second, or sometimes blanks for two or three as I'm bout to pass out - and hopefully not become a heap of debris along the interstate.

I look like a ghost

Driving here sucks. It just feels like everyone is in my way when I'm navigating crooked narrow streets and freeways. There seems to be always people driving, even at the odd times of morning and evening when I tend to travel. So I imposed a driving quarantine on myself to the neighborhood around the college. I haven't gone anywhere to downtown Portland.

Only safe time to drive is
when the place you want to go is closed

Don't litter.

It screws up the animals.

I passed by the college gym. (It was locked, no free showers). This squirrel had a piece of trash in its mouth. Big triangle of plastic. Ran up a tree when it saw me. Now why would he take trash, I thought. It looks like he found an energy gel that someone littered on the ground. Maybe he thought the thing belonged to me, and was afraid I'd take it back from him.

He got up to a perch and had a field day eating this packet with his speedy jowls and adept paws. Maybe the food had caffeine in it or something. One thing I am certain of. If he continues this variety of diet, he will end up obese and getting his food by riding around in one of those motorized shopping carts.