Really makes a difference.

I’ve been sleeping on this futon for the past week or so and have just gotten used to the metal bar running through the middle of it. When I first got here I would wake up throughout the night to move to one side of the bar or the other, but now I don’t really notice it.

In the mornings I water the greenhouse and high tunnel, during which the sun makes its way over the mountains and it gets about ten degrees warmer. For sure, it’s something to look forward to. Also during this time I listen to Dr. Dre and try to rap along with him. Then I weed the strawberry patch, which seems to expand the further I work into them, because there are so many weeds and it takes so much time to carefully dig around each strawberry plant. During this time I listen to NPR’s Ted Radio Hour with Guy Ross. Sometimes I think about finding where he lives and going there with a sharp pocket knife and a bouquet of flowers and deciding in an instant which to throw at him when he opens the door.

After the strawberries I clean up the green house, prune the plants, rake leaves, look at cool bugs. Then I go on a run or I put the GRE book on my lap and sort of stare at it until I get bored, and then I make dinner in my tiny cabin that goes bump in the night.

Today I went to a neighboring town called Ligonier to hunker down in a coffee shop and study for the GRE but alas, their annual fall festival is happening this weekend, and after wandering the crowds looking for something to do I went back to my car and took a nap. The next town over had reputedly amazing ice cream, so I went to this little Mennonite-owned shop to give it a go and ended up buying gummy bears and sitting in their parking lot, watching the highway. Now I’m in a Starbucks, looking at a bunch of teenagers who just strolled in from their Homecoming. The girls are far more glittery than I remember high school being. Good for them.

Sometimes it feels like everywhere that I am, I am just there, existing in the simple way of occupying space. I do one thing, and then it’s done and I do another thing, and I move about in a way that feels incoherent because I’m not actually doing anything. Then I’ll think about what it is that I’m doing, and it’s like I’m not thinking about anything because I’m not doing anything. Like a word that loses meaning with repetition. Does everything lose meaning with repetition?