Gravitas...

It was still dark when I rose this morning. Normally I would snooze deliberately into the yellow wash of morning, but my cats seemed intent on tearing up the bedroom. I decided to strike fear (or more likely, curiosity) into their hearts by getting up and dressing. Almost any activity by a human takes their attention away from whatever catechisms they were pursuing. This morning is cold. North Country cold. Thermostat says 67; feels like 47. I guess that's why I have migrated upstairs to do a blog instead of putzing at my kitchen table, which sits partially inside the Eastward facing bay window. This time of year, it sees the least amount sun as any of my houseparts. Even the coffee tries to climb back up through the filter, but fortunately, gravity wins.
This is the time of year, the week between Christmas and the start of the new year, in which I tend to pull a phoenix routine. I close the books, sort the clothes, book what needs booking and generally, try to stay in sorts. It's an introspective time, more than most I suppose. I have a list of goals that I produce this time of year, every year, for the coming year. Each year I find that I failed to hit most of them, generally excepting the physical and financial goals. Those I tend to nail, which really only goes to indicate that I am largely a Scrooge who has been blessed with good genetics. Most other areas of my life in which I could advance or refine (spiritual, relational, careerial), those tend to just tread the water in my wake. I am beginning to question whether I need to put forth more effort where it counts, or if my goals simply do not reflect who I really want to be. When I consider my aims, I feel as though I am stuck at the center of a dense swarm of intentions, spread just far enough out about me that I can only reach a few of them over the course of a dozen months. Perhaps my hope is that by just breathing them into existence, they will eventually all cosmically collide at the center with me, rendering me one complete system. There are theories to explain why this would occur, not only their joining me, but my moving towards them. However, the same theories can be used to explain why my goals would just continue to orbit me forever, deviating negligibly over whatever the full time I possess will be. In this case, again, and year after year it seems, gravity wins.
I think one part of the challenge of coming up with goals is that you are trying to predict that your ideas, circumstances and opportunities will not drastically change over the year. This almost always happens. Tastes change. Interests wane. I know that mine do. I admire single-minded, focused people. People who have a 'career' and like it. People who make a name for themselves in a specific regard. I don't suppose we can all be that way (I didn't choose the name for this blog arbitrarily), but for some reason, I think such a life could be more rewarding. My wife is single-minded. She is a performer, and her best efforts go towards this with outstanding results. This year, my goals (as they are still forming) would seem to indicate that I am a writer. I intend to both manage a daily blog as well as write a children's book. While the former requires a comfortable amount of heavy ideation, the latter would seem to be negatively cumbered by it. Basically, I need to be prepared mentally to carry Marley's chains and Armstrong's space suit. I'll admit, this kind of dexterity sounds appealing to me. As usual, I will probably go after it like gangbusters. My fear is, come March, I will forget about these projects and suddenly want to be a rock star again. Time will tell.
In the end, I think the best thing is to keep it light. Given the theories I've by now exhausted in this piece, light thoughts and heavy thoughts fall to my core at the same rate, making neither more productive or efficient than the other. I'm a selfish beast, and the more fun and entertaining I am able to make something, the more likely I am to continue it. The course of action (at this point) seems clear--don the persona non gravis and try to make some words dance...

Hobobooked and Processed...

(as it appears in some random floating sketch pad you may find for sale somewhere)

It feels like years since I've picked up a pen. I won't say that is true, it just feels it. The joints respond to the first pushed with a mixture of caution and familiarity, a consequence of age. Age is a highly ironic thing--like a roller coaster: you wait, you wait, you board, you wait, then terror, then calm, the highs, the lows, self-doubt and euphoria, and in the end, you haven't really gone anywhere.

Bleak. At least, that's one way to look at it. Truth is, the world accelerates, time follows, the body slows and the mind...wanders.

I remember a time when a pen grew from my fist like a second thumb. All my summer days and winter nights were devoted to the notion that any word or phrase left unwritten or recorded could one day become a regret. Even as a young man, I was concerned about accruing regrets. So I wrote, for hours or even days at a time, taking short breaks for naps and frozen meat pockets. There were no drugs or alcohol, just electric youth. I had a companion some of the time to bounce ideas off of, swap stories with, compose schizophrenic poetry with. Other times, I was alone, burning the midnight filament in my shadowy roomcave. These are processes that I have loved and somehow lost over the years.

This particular morning is chilly and gray. The few leaves remaining on their branches are being slowly bullied down by errant raindrops. My street is quiet, almost secretive. It is lined with dozens of mildly distinct town homes, conjoined in sets of 3's and 4's. Many are vacant, as is the one to my left. It is like a twin that has passed but whose weight cannot be cleaved. Two black cats live with my wife and I. They spend most of their time staring through windows and storm doors at a small stretch of yellow, blue, green and endless gray. They were rescued together, blind and starving from this merciless, vast colorpot at 1 week of age. I've always been curious if they look out with simple curiosity or with familiarity and disdain. Perhaps somehow, somewhere we will be allowed to discuss it someday.

The coffee I drink is mildly flavorful, just this side of burnt. It's effect, though slowly realized, is a bit exaggerated. It has been 3 weeks and nearly as many surgeries since my last cup. Despite being underweight and organless, I am determined to resurrect myself one comfort at a time. I suppose one can use that to determine when death is finally approaching: the winter doesn't yield to balmy threats of thaw, the body doesn't twitch in rebellion of idleness and the great comforts that define us never regain appeal. My wife has made comments that she is beginning 'to get her husband back', and I would have to agree. It seems that I am destined yet to mend.

For myself, I had always figured writing to by my chief comfort, perhaps my definition, a part of it. If that is so, why have so many years of seasons passed and all I seem to do is chip away at the tundra? No answers. Just a hope, or as my companion would call it, a thawt: the sun can surprise you...

Harmony and Holy Smoke...

Well, I'm 22 days into my month off, what I thought could be my Mejuwrimo, and yet this is the first time I've really sat down to write anything. I think I have been undergoing a paradigm shift, perhaps my internal, pre-adolescent version of a midlife crisis, of late. It is not such a bad thing, I'm finding. For years now, I have struggled to reconcile the thoughts that 'I should be doing something more with myself' and 'I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing; if I wanted to do more, I would'. The former seems a little self-sabotaging and that latter just like an excuse. It is only recently that I have begun to recognize the harmony of these impressions. One thing that I have been doing quite a lot of this month is reading. I love to read, and have done so since it was cognitively possible as a toddler. However, reading is one activity that I find tends to take the back seat to a multitude of other activities, such as work, running, keeping up with television shows, tending to the home and writing. All of the former activities are perfectly reasonable ways to spend your time. Writing, in fact, is often described as if were a protected parkland, with the land-grabbing juggernaut of Reading always threatening to tear into its borders. In other words, writers shouldn't waste time reading. It stifles the muse, I suppose.

I will say this, though--lapsed author or not, I've read some great books this month. "A Dirty Job" by Christopher Moore was a darkly wonderful romp. "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel deserved every bit as much tout as it received. "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer could not have been more gripping. I think I actually had some frost bite in my toes by the end of the two days it took to read it. Anyway, I digress. I digress in writing, which I suppose serves my point about the shift: Harmony.

Ultimately, I have been a lot more generous in allowing myself to do whatever I want to do of late. I haven't picked up my guitar or written a song in months, and I am not feeling bad about that. I just auditioned for a play after nearly two years of saying with certainty that I did not want to perform any longer. Last year I ran a road race that I haven't run since high school (half my life ago, to give some perspective), and haven't stopped running since. I recently went through a couple months of writing every day because I thought that was the direction I was supposed to be heading, and yet, as I said, it's been nearly a month since I did that. There is a circularity to it all. God is in the roundness of things, as I believe Wally Lamb wrote.

It makes me think of cloud bursting. Clouds are water vapor, sometimes soaring, sometimes falling. At times they appear to have a very definite form, blowing in a specific direction, and others, amorphously vague and aimless in every respect. I remember the picture of the sky in my head from this past July 4th celebration. Once a few more substantial fireworks had been set off, the smoke trails in the sky resembled pale and languid jellyfish, lazily drifting over a cumulus reef. If you've gazed into the North Atlantic waters in August from virtually any New England coast, you will know what I was seeing. Aimless and vast, yet definite and finite. Such is our experience. Mine, anyhow.

Cheers....