refinement thru zionitry

Currently in Editing class, and I just got hit by the Shakes of Exhaustion. Went to bed last night around 1:00, and my roommate’s alarm clock went off at 5:15 and continued to blare morning radio at 10 minute intervals until 7:00. I left the apartment feeling light and springy, but something was wrong. A burden was missing. I spun around at the mailbox to run back for my laptop. Atlas’ sentence has been served, and I am next in line to take his place.

The rest of my morning has been fine, but the burdensome walk to editing class was too much for my frail body. I can’t keep my hands still enough to take notes, so now I cling desperately to the laptop for support.

Battery is at 78% charge and dropping quickly.

The ever changing Dane: Ryan brought a newspaper to the Wooch! lounge today, and read it for about five seconds before we dismembered it to make hats. With help from rubber cement and a cross of red construction paper I made a Pope hat, and pinned a name tag to my chest that said, “Hello, my name is Pope.” As luck would have it I was also wearing “Jon’s” International Harvester Racing Team shirt to authenticate my identity.

Thus armed I went out into the UMD Commons and chatted with representatives from Kai Alpha, everyone’s favorite religious organization on campus. We talked about many things, including the Lord Jesus, the Word and the far-reaching consequences of misspelling the word ‘kool’. Soon a few people from the Habitat for Humanity display came over and requested I pound a nail into a 2×4 to show my appreciation of their efforts. I blessed their cause, and signed the board Pope. Class soon beckoned, and I wore the hat for the next two hours until I stepped outside in the rain/sleet/snow/hail, which made short work of the hat’s absorbent fibers.

This pope soluble in water.

Talked over our philosophical video with our prof today, and it seems we’ll have a very nice start if I can get my computer up again. She was particularly pleased with the video of lights flashing by in the Silver Creek tunnel and our underwater footage from Tettegouche. I’m having a lot of fun with this project and I hope to maintain the interest in video long after the class ends. As the future director of Twin Peaks II, I need to start somewhere.

This afternoon I slid on my stomach like a penguin through an inch of slush across the Stadium front yard. Repeatedly. Until completely soaked and caked in mud and grass. Then we did it again so the RA could get some shots for his photography class.

Then Matt broke a bass string during this evening’s Sunny Wicked concert, and I saved the day by telling a bad bass joke. People laughed out of pity. I left for Wooch!.

My Zion article ran in this week’s Ripsaw, and everyone should read it now, now, now because it’s so good! I almost wept in joy when I saw what a wonderful job they did with the two-page spread layout (and that they spelled my name right). It made a beautiful complement to my arrangement of letters and words, all of which gleamed with genius.

It’s more than finally getting published in a legitimate newspaper. To me it is the culmination of my writing to date. The Zion article echoes with my college essays, journalism exercises and (perhaps most importantly) Cromlech. I’ve been at this profession little more than a year and I already sense a greatness condensing out of the air. I’m at a point where I can reach beyond familiarity and actually carry the undisclosed reader to a new place. Zion is progress and accomplishment; two wonderful things that college only allows me to glimpse indirectly. Here I am beyond college, interacting with a real and full world of character and possibilities.

My thoughts and perceptions have been refined to the point where I can pour them over the masses, and with any luck they will eagerly lap them up and beg for more. Soon the entire Duluth proper may cry foul when I miss a day at Cromlech. I really won’t mind such responsibility if it means I can justify shirking things that don’t interest me so much.

I am chopping wood.