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So, one of the not so well kept secrets around here is that I'm planning on going back to school. And when I say planning I mean, like anything, I'm preparing to exhaustion and I'm still going to be flying half-assed. Anyhow, yesterday I had to take a math placement test.

How'd I do in this little player versus problem contest you ask?

Rocked the hell out of it.

Which was something of a pleasant surprise to me because I haven't taken a math class since high school and that was a long time ago. And, uh, that last class I took got rather lost in a purple haze, if you know what I mean (Oh, sure, my teachers said, “You just might need this someday” but they didn't tell me it would be the next time I needed to take a math test.). And my studying consisted of about a half an hour trying to remember what the pythagorean theory was. Still, I placed even higher than the college level algebra test I wanted to take. Perfect on the basics, missed one question on the algebra, and got about half right on the trig stuff that was about as familiar to me as Sanskrit. With maybe three hours sleep, strung out on caffeine and completely unsure about what I was doing. Yeah, still got it.

Anyhow, this means that I'll be taking a math class soon enough. It might not seem like it to those that have followed my career, so to speak, but I'm absolutely awful with math and I prefer to avoid it. So maybe you'd better look out because pretty soon I just might be able to throw around numbers and know what I'm talking about. All hell's going to break loose then, I'm sure.

But, at the moment I'm flying high. I've been baptized with fire and the impurities cleansed away. Time to douse myself in the cool waters of my imagination. Watch them sizzle and hiss into steam under the blazing white hot heat of creation. At the moment, I think I could pluck a start from the night skies and hold it in my hand. Lay it on the anvil and pound it into the new. Someone hand me a blowtorch, I feel like making something.

Oh, that's it. I'm so scanning my art book.

I mean, I've been meaning to clean out my closet anyway and things like this need to see the light of day again:

FeO

Harsh, immutable, and cold.
It doesn’t care, it doesn’t feel.
Molecular teeth chewing through atomic
constellations. Rotting from the outside in.
Chaos tumbling down chemical equation.
Without emotion.
The math is a cage that holds everything.
And tells me with abstract clarity:

Fe + O2 = FeO

It means:

Blossom dull orange to
fire red coated by powder,
flaking away without breeze,
rust is steel set to life.
Flare and die,
the beautiful corpse remains.

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