Dear Alien

I frequently sit down at my computer bursting with things to blog about. I open blogger with naive anticipation and... and... and then my mind goes as blank. Poof and everything is gone. Everything. My motivation. My stories. My desire to articulate myself in a way that others can understand and maybe appreciate in some way.

So I've come up with a solution. Well I hope it's a solution. I have yet to put it to the test so I guess I'll find out.

Here's my plan.

Write my blog as a letter to an alien. From another planet. Who doesn't understand life on Earth. Before you think I'm completely bonkers, let me demonstrate.

Dear Xty'Alm,

Thank you for you recent correspondence. I'd be delighted to help the people of planet Zebrine understand the humans of planet Earth better by writing to you about my daily experiences. I'll try to be as uncensored as I can, sparing no gritty detail so you can have an accurate picture of what life on earth is like.

I feel like I need warn you, though; humans don't all experience the same thing. My life doesn't represent all of humanity. You mentioned that you and your .... er... people? kind? have the ability to tap into a "shared consciousness" whenever you want. Wow, I don't even know what that means, but I'm impressed. Where I live we pretty much worship our independence and are proud of our ability to think on our own, even thought it gets us in trouble sometimes. Asians, on the other hand, would probably love to learn about this ability. They show a lot of promise in communal thinking.

Your request for "human stories" couldn't come at a better time. My life feels a little dramatic right now. Last night I spent an hour writing out my schedule for the next five days hour by hour so I could keep track of what I'm going to do. Of course I blocked some hours together, like sleeping and driving long distances....

(I'm not sure how literal you Zebrinese are but you'll discover that I exaggerate sometimes. My exaggerations are actually a more accurate representation of what I'm experiencing than a clinical description of the event. That means I use words like enormous and gigantic and bigger than Mount Everest to describe spiders because that's how I'm experiencing the moment. So my exaggerations are actually more truthful to me than the scientific fact. Spiders are in fact bigger than Mount Everest).

Back to my schedule. Last night I spent a gazillion hours writing an extremely detailed account of what I'm going to be doing the next couple of days because my poor brain can't keep it all straight.

Today, my schedule and subsequent reality went like this:

8:45 Wake up and drink coffee and tell my friends about the really weird dreams I had about my car. My subconscious is probably nervous about picking up my car from the Russian mafia mechanic later today (see 2:45).

10:00-1 pm Go to Walmart and the DMV and go downtown to try and sell books that are cluttering up my storage unit and then go to Victoria's Secret where they're having an awesome sale... because there's always time for that.

1-1:30 Devour a quick lunch and pack for an overnight stay at a friends house and clean my crap out of the communal living space.

1:30-2:45 Pick up car from the mechanic who is in league with the Russian mafia. You need to plan at least an hour of nice, innocent small talk full of "da" and "nyet" and "spasiba"... especially that last one in reference to when he's telling you that he's decided not to kill you this time.

2:45 Car swap! Switch my newly fixed car with the famed KIDNAPPER VAN and proceed to drive the hour from Salem to my Portland storage unit looking extremely shady. Wearing dark sunglasses and tailing people helps this image. This van is industrial sized, has no windows behind the front seat and has some strategically placed dents that make it look like people are trying to fight their way out from the inside.

3-4 Get stuck in traffic.

4-5 Arrive at my storage unit and dig through my remaining boxes. How can one person have so much stuff!

5-6 Pack the Kidnapper Van with all my earthly belongings, a huge bag of stuff I've decided belongs to the dumpster and two overflowing boxes for Goodwill or YWAMers.

6-10 Enjoy a relaxing dinner in Portland with some of my good friends who, like the game Whack-a-Mole, have a tendency to pop up in the most unexpected places, which is definitely a good thing. Homemade crab cakes, bismati rice and kale for dinner and creme brulee for dessert. YUM!

10-11 Drive Kidnapper Van to an appropriately sketchy part of town and perform a drop that could look equally sketchy... but it wasn't. My friend came out of the dark church building to give me a key so I could get into her place. And then I sped off into the darkness.

11:30-1 am Let myself in to my friends apartment and dye my hair. It needed to be done. Desperately. There's no other time in the schedule for it. I checked.

1-2 am Write a blog about my day to the alien Xty'Alm from the planet Zebrine.

2-.... The conclusion better end with me time traveling backwards two hours so I can go to bed at a decent-ish time.

Well, Xty'Alm, that's my human experience for the day. Let me know if you have any questions. And actually, I have one for you. You mentioned your a professor of Humanology. What, exactly, is that?

Until next time,
Spacibo and goodnight.


Well, I'd say my writers block has been successfully squelched. Take that brain!