Library Scanners (and other adventures.)

So I finally found a library with a scanner today. After going to three separate branches in the same town. Long story short: I haven't slept since about 11 last night and libraries need to keep more resources in their main buildings so I don't have to run around a city wasting gas when I should be sleeping.

I eventually got the stuff scanned, though, which I guess is the important part. And honestly, if this is all I have to complain about as a runner, I guess I'm doing pretty well. Not that it'll last...I only have two hundred dollars or so left. Trying to stretch it out as long as possible, but with gas prices the way they are, it dwindles fast. I'll probably have to switch to a freegan diet (aka living on dumpster pizza) soon. Or start busking.

Anyway, scans. There's honestly not much of it this time around. It's enough, though. Just using blogger's hosting services since I only have a couple of hours until tomorrow.

First up, the note I mentioned:

It's pretty self explanitory, except for the P.S. bit - that's a weird little personal thing. See, when I was twelve or so, I was really into stories about time travel. I decided to come up with a little phrase that I'd never tell anyone else about, so if I wound up talking to my future self, I'd know for sure it was really future!Aimee. Who knew it would actually come in handy.

The "meth addict" bit is also interesting, considering this post. Makes me wonder all sorts of weird things about memory loss, but I kind of doubt any of it's relevant.

...I'll admit, I'm kind of lost on this one. The "deal with the devil" bit obviously implies I got into one of those agreements with Slendy that's so popular with the kids these days. Not sure exactly what it entailed, but it probably had to do with publishing this stuff. Which would probably be why my life depends on it and all.

 I think this was written much earlier than the other two. I don't honestly have any idea when, but there aren't any quotes and it's a lot more theory-ish than the other two pages (if a bit dramatic). Other than that, like the first page, pretty self-explanatory.

Here's where it veers away from your typical crazy slendernotebooks - this was in a CD case I found in that weird armrest-that's-also-a-storage-area thing in between the front seats. The CD was still in there, but it was pretty scratched up...not that I didn't recognize it as my own. Yes, I listen to Radiohead. No, not since I woke up a few weeks ago. No, not Pablo Honey. Yes, their more recent stuff too. But I guess me-before-I-lost-my-memories somehow thought that listening to this kind of music while being chased by an eldritch abomination was a good idea. Obviously, it wasn't.

The only thing on the cover was the publishing date. None of the actual album art was touched, either - only the blank pages with lyrics.

...Okay, there's some stuff to look up here. And honestly, I need sleep, so I'm not going to do it tonight. I posted what I needed to post. I'm going to bed. And by bed I mean the backseat of my car. Tomorrow I'll edit this with some commentary, and possibly try to get the scans on photobucket so you can see legible versions that don't stretch the page.


Goodnight, I guess.

I feel kind of awkward giving these things titles, like I'm being over-dramatic. I guess it doesn't really matter, but giving them titles makes this whole thing more story-like, and I'm not so sure I want that.

In any case, I've looked through most of what's in the back of my car. Most, but not all: there are a lot of books, most of which I've read, but a few I've never seen before. A wide variety, too - everything from House of Leaves (which is so horribly cliche for this kind of thing) to pulp horror to children's books to YA. There's a ton of notebook paper, about half of it in actual notebooks, and everything there seems to fall somewhere between vaguely comprehensible and batshit crazy. A lot of pages are blank or scribbled-out. There are also CDs and prints of old surrealist art.... It's been a lot to take in. It's hard to believe that much stuff accumulated over the course of two months.

What it actually contained, though...trying to understand everything at once leaves my head spinning. It's like going to a church or a seminar or seeing some public speaker. You can't hope to remember everything covered. You can only grasp the basics, and even then, only one or two at a time. The sheer bulk of information makes understanding it all in one go nearly impossible. A lot of it would have been hard enough to wrap my head around, even in smaller chunks.

The strangest part, though...I'm supposed to publish everything. There are specific dates, sometimes even times, written on everything. And I found a note, in my own handwriting, that pretty much says my survival depends on me posting this shit when I'm supposed to. I guess I was making "deals with the devil." Yippee.

Earliest date I've found is the 22nd. The note, along with a few other things, will go up then (I'll probably have to get a photobucket, but I'll put as much as I can here). Let's hope I get to a library with a scanner before then so I don't die.

Typing this from the inside of a McDonald's. This isn't going to be a full-blown post, mind. It's just...a resolution. A little something to keep me from chickening out, I guess.

I've made up my mind. I'm going to go through the shit in the back of my car, no matter how long it takes or how weird it gets. I'm sick of having nothing to work towards, sick of lacking purpose. Survival is kind of pointless if you don't do anything with your life, and for all I know, all those books and papers might contain something that could help someone. Sure, I might regret this later, but tragedy is better than complete lack of a story.

Speaking of stories, I'm almost caught up on the blogs I'm following. It's...it's strange, seeing how so many lives can go to hell in less than two months. It's even stranger when you realize that there are people, actual, real people behind the words. It's mindblowing how much has changed, how much I should remember but don't. I'm not really sure how to describe it.

(Also, Elaine...thanks for the push.)

Drifting

I've settled into a strange kind of routine. I go to sleep around noon and wake up around ten or eleven. I climb from the back of the car, over semi-organized sheathes of paper, get in the driver's seat, and get on the highway. Sometimes, but not often, I stop at one of the few restaurants that're open around the clock and get food. It's usually drive-through stuff, because I get antsy and paranoid if I try to force myself to sit down and eat, and even though I know I have enough money to last a while dine-in food is expensive. Vegetarian pickings may be slim (I've officially given up on veganism) and full of gross iceberg lettuce, but I don't really care anymore.

I'm not here to talk about fast-food vegetarian dining.

Problem is, I don't know what I'm here for. I'm aimless.

Get up, drive until sunrise, stop somewhere with internet, read blogs, maybe attempt to organize your car, fall asleep, lather, rinse, repeat. Ignore the prickling paranoia that's always at the back of your mind, ignore the thing you see out the corner of your eye whenever you're near trees, ignore the fact that you're a smelly, jobless teenage hobo with memory loss who somehow managed to screw up her future via internet meme. Ignore the cowardice that keeps you from looking into the hidden posts people tell you are on your blog or the papers in the backseat of your brother's station wagon. Don't write any more than you need to keep from bursting, don't get attached to people because they're eventually going to bite the dust, and don't assume you're safe.

I know I'm in it deep. I've read enough blogs, seen enough videos to know what this is. I'm still reading and watching, in fact. It's like an addiction I can't break, methamphetamine in the form of a memetic monster that may or may not actually exist. I know it'll tear me apart eventually, but I can't help prolonging the inevitable by way of ignorance.

I almost want to dive in, find out what happened while I wasn't myself, but I'm too conscious of the fact that I won't be able to dig myself back out.

Is this self-preservation, or simple fear?

Out of the Woods

I'm still not quite sure where I am. This town's called Carthage, but that doesn't really narrow it down - there's actually a Carthage near where I live (used to live?) but this isn't it, and wikipedia says there are at least fourteen different towns in the U.S. alone with the name. Unless I happen by somewhere with tourist information or something, I've got nothing to go off of. Not entirely sure I want to reveal my location on this thing, anyway - bad things tend to happen when people do that.

I found some money tucked away in the car's glove box. A lot of money, actually, which means I'll probably be set as far as food and gas go for a while. Once the sun came up, I went into a McDonald's and got one of those weird cinnamon-roll-in-a-takeout-box things, which was disgusting, but it was food and I was hungry. I spent a bit poking around the car, attempted to catch up on blogs (which is a pretty daunting task), and mulled over Angel's post - which I'll get to later.

The station wagon is...more organized than I expected it to be. Back seat's full of papers and books and notes and crazy. I'm not looking through it tonight. The trunk has some sort of nest-like bundle of mismatched bedding and a pillow, but none of it's mine. It also holds my violin and guitar, which I'm guessing is how at least some of the money from the glove box got there. After I ate, I kind of sat in the McDonald's parking lot, and eventually fell asleep in the wagon's trunk around noon. The car was a convection oven, but my clothes were already gross so I didn't really care. I wouldn't be surprised if I'd been wearing the same set of clothes for the past two months. They're disgusting. I need to eventually find a place to shower.

As far as the other post on this blog, well...I actually recognized most of it. The title, "Of things Present", is a bit weird, and I have no idea where it came from, but the rest of it...
I had to google the first bit. Turns out it's from a Portal comic, which is weird because I never played Portal. The comic itself, though, was good. The quote shows up within the first few pages. Other than that, though...I don't think there's really a deeper meaning. Reality isn't what it seems to be, yada yada...I know it's important, but I can't bring myself to read too far into it.
Second one's obviously from House of Leaves. Which is definitely a good thing to read while you're running from an eldritch abomination, yeah? It's more stuff to do with reality, and I think it's also referring to the fact that she's speaking in quotes. It's just another layer of cryptic to hide behind, really, but it's a lot harder to wrestle meaning out of than simple codes.
The third chunk's where it gets interesting. The italicized phrases are from a proverb Robert used in the earlier days of White Elephants (you can use Google Reader to read that if you haven't - just make sure you're following the blog), and the plain ones are from Life of Pi, a novel about religion and a boy who survives hundreds of days in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. I can't say much more than that, or really explain the quote, without spoiling the ending. At the very least, though, if Slender Man is a metaphorical tiger here, it's disturbing stuff.
The last bit is from Markus Zusak's I am The Messenger, which has a weird metafictional twist at the end that I'm spoiling as I type. It's more REALITYZOMGWTFBBQ mumbo-jumbo. Really, as vague as all this stuff is, it's pretty damn self-explanatory. It's easy to get what Angel was trying to get across (I think), but harder to understand how it relates to this mess.

It's past 1AM, and I'm starting to think that my best option at the moment is to get on the highway. Staying on the move is supposed to help, and even though it might not work, I've got nothing better to do. Reading blogs this late will just get me worked up and paranoid, which is a horrible idea considering the circumstances. I might be driving myself into a funky sleep schedule by doing this, but I don't really care any more.

Catch up with you guys later on, I guess.
(I feel so awkward not having a cool sign-off)

What the hell?

Seriously, what the bloody fucking gorram hell? Everything's so screwed up right now I can't

Okay, Aimee.
Calm the fuck down and try actually explaining things.

It's August. August. People don't just go to sleep and wake up two months later. Never mind waking up in the driver's seat of their brother's station wagon in the middle of the night somewhere you've never seen before in the middle of the fucking woods when you last fell asleep in your own bed in the middle of May.

There was a laptop - my laptop - in the passenger's seat on top of a bunch of fast food wrappers. I don't even want to think about what's been in my digestive system these past few months. I mean, I was trying to go vegan. Guess that's out the window now. I'm not even sure why there's wifi out here, but the computer's already connected so I'm not complaining. It's also completely charged.

So I checked blogger, and I was logged into this Angel person's account. The profile picture was a greyscale version of mine, which was freakish enough, but they were following a few blogs I didn't recognize so I thought it was someone different. When I tried to log out and get to my account, though, it took me back to theirs...and I don't like what that implies one bit. Especially since I found out that I'd apparently lost two months worth of memories. And I guess I got a blog during that time, two, even though it's only one post and six followers (Lucas, you're the only one I recognize). So I kind of decided "screw narrative causality I need some help here" and now I'm writing this and - ugh, I need to keep calm. Why doesn't my brain understand that?

The rest of the car, as far as I can tell, is as trashed as the passenger's seat was (which is incredibly trashed), but the headlights were on and the keys were in the ignition when I woke up, and the gas tank's full. I keep staring at the forest around me and the dirt road ahead of me. I'm seeing things that aren't there dammit because people say it feels different when he's there and why the hell would he be gone the second I focused on one area.

Good god, I'm abusing italics. Guys, I'm pretty sure this is what sheer panic feels like. I'm going to get the hell out of this forest (backwards - the road ahead feels a bit sinister because I keep seeing things, and I'm pretty sure I'd have to have come from that direction to be parked like this) and find a place to calm down. A place with concrete and possibly people and no trees. I think I'll check back in once I'm more calm, probably in the morning, even though I doubt I'll be sleeping tonight. Things tend to be slightly less terrifying in the sunlight.

If any of you have any idea what's going on, please, speak up.

(two months)
All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed.
(joplin)
You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling!
(fiveslashtwentytwoslasheleven)
Think about it a while. The end ain't that bad.
This is a call it ain't mine not at all
And the world can sit tight and alright
Taking your time and get right back online
It depends it depends and it comes back again
Yes things that everybody would say
Believing is hard
Believing is art
Things everybody should know
The end will come slow
And He'll break your heart.
(happyanniversary)