Rain Dog @Leucrotta@awoo.space

Before we got to the Vista House there was a place along the cliffs I stopped to grab photos of the river. You can make out the Vista House at right. My friend in the car got this photo of me while I was taking these!

Here’s photos from the Vista House. The river is very low thanks to the dry summer. I’ve included a selfie in part to show how windy it was! (I’d almost always wear my shapeless camo hat on a day this sunny, but literally couldn’t up there!)

I scouted along the bridge by these other, different falls, and the hills blocked light enough the bridge cast the sort of clear shadow you’d expect from later in the day.

More from yesterday along the Hood River. Here’s the very cute mascot in a food court where we stopped but also a waterfall (two photos); the area was hit hard by fires in 2017 and you could still see some of the damage.

Stuff from yesterday. I tried to sketch the scenery along the river in a moving car because it’s profoundly difficult to get good shots of the really sudden drop off in some of the basalt cliffs. But the two photos should give you an idea of the lighting contrast.

That got me to remember how terrible it felt to lose randomly generated adventurers I didn’t care about to The Tomb of Horrors, it wasn’t that they died it felt like I was doing another adult testing if I was smart enough.

I was thinking about TTRPGs when I was a kid; how they didn’t have a clear win or lose condition, and that was really different from the rest of my life. Aside from AD&D’s level limits for non humans (and EVERYONE hated them!) there wasn’t a clear wrong choice of what to be; though oddly now it feels more that way and I’m facing that baggage again.

It'll be okay - it'll turn out okay.

okay I thought Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" might sound good in Russian. But I had no idea it'd sound *this* good.

TABASCO BAND - The Passenger IGGY POP RUSSIAN COVER - UNPLUGGED https://youtu.be/zD0OMgnWQl8 via @YouTube

And the last bit of serious stuff I thought about on the long drive home alone, was about gender. Not stuff I really want to share quite yet, but basically there were things kicking around in my head about well, you're not actually trans. And they're about my issues, but they're not really about my gender issues; me transitioning and how is nearly completely unrelated.

The other thing about the accident that effed my friend up was that another person in the same accident didn't make it, which means he's been facing a lot of self-doubt; why is the guy with a job and kids is gone, and the unemployed guy with no family is still around? We talked about this one a bit.

I am now thinking that not exactly survivor guilt is a default human experience. At some point you're going to lose people, potentially in a really brutal way. At which point you're going to run *right up against* two basic thoughts; 1) this person who you value highly is gone too soon and 2) why the hell are *you* the person still around? And unfortunately the answer is "because that's just what happens sometimes." It has nothing to do with deserving, undeserving, or how you spin the story; it's just how things played out.

This is personally relevant to me, too, because I've spent most of my life with a sense of "why am *I* the one still here?" This has gotten better now that I'm no longer so caught up in self hate but it's obviously still there thanks to covid and the steady loss of people to health issues and suicide. Much like the accident which theoretically should have killed me, much like being put in traumatic situations which have put me at far greater risk of suicide, that was just how things happened to play out. I didn't deserve it; I didn't not deserve it; it just happened.

Okay, so my mother's mobility has been restricted for a few years and recently took a serious downturn; she uses a cane to get around when she can't use a walker. I spent the weekend with a friend who was recently in a terrible accident, and at least for the present is limited to using a cane to get around when he can't use the wheelchair he got from the hospital (he's on disability, and cannot get one of the really nice chairs, so this is whatever the VA had). The accident also has his left arm in a sling, so he can do some hand stuff, but his ability to wheel himself around is currently fucked, so I spent an okay amount of time this weekend wheeling my friend around.

Between being more physically involved with my friend's movements, and how I feel safe and open to messing up around him by comparison to how I'm hypervigilant around my mother (for good reason), I found that I am now *much* more aware of how building and sidewalk architecture can *really* screw with someone mobility impaired. My mother's (and Grampa's) problems mean I feel my old age will find me facing mobility issues, but now I feel a *lot* more sympathetic to people who face those issues now, and wanting to improve things somehow isn't entirely selfish. I'm not quite sure where I go with my new information, but it's definitely there.

Neil Young, competing with the entire genre of prog rock for the longest tracks.

Across the river is on fire, and here has Soundgarden’s “Blow Up the Outside World” on speakers for apparently atmospheric nihilism.

A wolf’s howl is a deep resonant call which connects us to the heart of wildness.

Coyote howls are shitposts.

“Aaaambulence! There’s an aaaambulence!”
“I wannna buriiitooo!”
“Will you two SHUT UP!”

do NOT go to the Halloween party as your friend dressed as “Sexy Vladimir Putin and Sexy Volodimir Zelenskiy,” it’s tasteless even if Spirit sells the costumes as “Sexy Bald Autocrat” and “Green T-Shirt Man.”

so if you made a Klein bottle out of silicone, such that you could use it as a sex toy, you would never actually be fucking the inside of the sex toy

Okay so Powell’s has the signature pillar by the science fiction but I never found Ursula LeGuin’s. My friend found this board in art, and here’s LeGuin’s signature- plus Gloria Steinem, Anthony Bourdain, and more!

Over $100 of solid Dune!