please excuse the following babble: I feel pretty crappy right now and i'm sure my drawing is a reflection of that. my head is hot, my arms are cold and i keep coughing up thick reserves of body waste it's impolite to spit out. However, scribbling in my journal has done me some good, i think. it's taken my mind off my body and focused it on the chaos that is this tree. it splits in different directions like i do, pointing limbs at suspicious characters and screams in silence. the tree can never run away to another country, sleep or drink away its troubles. it's stuck breathing in college student cigarette smoke and bus exhaust fumes. granted, if i were a tree stuck at ut for the rest of my days, being in front of the hrc ain't a bad choice. there isn't a fountain within ear shot, but the kids here are mostly nice and the shrubbery keeps most of the pigeons away from its roots. there's rather a sharp contrast, i'd say, to the tranquility we students exude while tracing nature and the actual bumbling noises in our heads. i may be going out on a limb (budumchink), but that square building with its right angles and straight lines seems the only reasonable backdrop to nature's own masterpiece. the hrc houses fine works of art and so shouldn't be completely extravagent, only stable and aesthetic. if i'm not making any sense it's because i'm high on tussin. anyway, it's too noisy here. cars passing, grackles chattering, a squirrel to my right is eating a muffin wrapper. probably not too good for his constitution. he's a fat one, too.