9/31/42: I think it’s about time I go snowboarding. The last time I had done it was when it was very unacceptable for economic reasons. And even at that point I was not what you would call “a fish out of water.” Whenever I sit in an empty room I think of snowboarding, or, any kind of boarding for that matter. Like when I boarded an umbrella to Brisbane. It took about 5 days, surprisingly shorter than the usually 8. The whole trip was a blur, though. I brought my friend along who was still stuck in the book. All he could do was recite information, instead of maybe talking about how big the world really is, or enjoying a nice foreign meal. I believe the experience was a valuable one though, because it taught me a lot about silence. When you’re dealing with the classic “friend in a book” situation, you’re dealing with all sorts of the usual instances of silence. The silence of anger, the silence of despair, and the silence of concentration, to name a few. After Brisbane we retired to the station. As soon as I got there I went snowboarding.

3/14/56: Grapes don’t lie. It’s a common misconception that they are the most deceiving of fruits. I’ve found that they really are just another cog in the wheel of living, and can’t be blamed for any fruit related mishaps. For instance: Once I found myself in space. I was excited because it was what I had always dreamed of; nothing and everything at the same time. To my surprise there are really birds in space. Normal birds that you would find outside or in your shower. And most of the birds were holding grapes in their beaks. One bird that wasn’t holding anything came up to me looking strange. Staring straight at me. I asked if there was a problem. He said there was, but he wouldn’t tell me what. Then he flew away. It was around this time I was really feeling the effects of no oxygen so I started looking around for a way back home. After floating around for a few minutes I spotted Earth from the corner of my eye. It somehow ended up at least a thousand miles away, from the looks of it. I was lucky it wasn’t light years, though. Space was a lot like swimming. Except you get pulled from both directions if you don’t stay in the middle. I had to be very careful to stay in the middle.

3/1/56: After I came back to the present, I spent about a week and three days hitchhiking to Dallas. The fairy told me that Dallas would be the place to buy a new clarinet. It didn’t tell me what it would look like or where it would be. Just that it’ll be an imperative step to sounding more like Madonna. I got tired of swimming so I hitched a ride from this normal guy named Snake. Snake is 41 years old and just got his license. He’s a very good driver. He can eat a sandwich while also doing his makeup and he stays perfectly in the left lane. It turns out there are no clarinet stores in Dallas, at least in this dimension. I told Snake about this and he said he would take me to the next dimension but only if I could beat him in drag racing. I declined since I didn’t even know if there would be clarinets in the next dimension so I didn’t want to take a chance. I’m not a risk taker like that. I bid Snake farewell, he gave me the rest of his drink and he continued on to Spokane. The drink made me a lot lighter. It was the right replenishment for searching for other souls, in the misty way.

2/14/56: I managed to finally pull out that long red handkerchief that was lodged in my throat for two weeks. I didn’t need it anymore so I went to go set it on fire. But then I remembered that a great thing to do while on planet Earth is to give and so I went to the Goodwill to donate the handkerchief (from now on I’ll call it the “chief” to save time and space). Three minutes later I got off my dragon and walked into the Goodwill when I noticed that nobody was in the store. No customers, no employees. The music in the store was loud and grating on the ears. I went into the back room to turn it off. I couldn’t find any sort of switch for the loudspeaker so I went back out to the floor and found a used pair of earplugs. They were very small earplugs but they were only about 45% covered in earwax so I put them in my ears to block out some of the noise. Some hours later, while I was looking at the fishing poles, I noticed that the earplugs were gone, even though I never took them out. Befuddled by this new development, I looked at the ground to see if they had fallen out. When I turned my head back and forth, I noticed a slight rattling inside my head. At first I was flustered because I thought I had sorted out that rattling business a few weeks ago, but it turns out that this was a new kind of rattling, and it was due to the earplugs being so small that they fell into my head from my ears, and now they were just bouncing around in there, which they still are. I’m not sure if having the earwax of another person inside my head is safe or not but I guess it’s something I can inquire about at my next dentist appointment. No commitment, no questions, just information.