Mañana Blues

The problem it seems may be one of self-priming. Without priming, the well will not flow free. Without free flow, the energy goes to waste or is never expended at all. Energy without expenditure is simply potential. Potential and a few dollars will buy a large cup of coffee.

All of the above explains the paucity of posts on this blog. It explains the dearth of worthwhile photography over the recent months. It is a condition of my creative existence that I have momentum, that I actualize the latent forces within my brain. Momentum breeds momentum. Once I get going, I find it very hard to stop. Witness the time not so long ago where on this very blog I posted and entry a day for over one year.

That is a lot of posting. While some of it was fluff and fill, much of it was inspired and heartening to me. I wonder if I ever again can achieve a similar feat.

The reason this matters is because as of late the tasks of writing and photography have acquired a difficulty I struggle mightily to overcome. The energy to get started rarely manifests for long, and I wrestle with bouts of angst triggered by comparison to my past efforts. It is the feeling of "I should be writing!" that gets me all wound up.

It is a mystery to me why creatively speaking things should be so difficult. I know the conventional wisdom is that one should write/draw/photograph/paint etc every day even when you do not feel like it, to keep the discipline up and the energy flowing. I do recall that feeling of engagement and satisfaction I get when I do get going, when the ball is rolling, when the mojo is workin'.

That feeling is wonderful. Now to overcome the lassitude between me and it.

It is no good thing to think of yourself as lazy, unambitious or lacking in imagination, but that is precisely what troubles me during these short fall days. The notion that I am waiting for something to come along and knock me out of my complacency seems all too real. "Carpe diem!" shouts my conscience, and I would, if only I could get myself off the couch.

Devil's Hatband

Hot. Hot like the hell. Another round of temperatures exceeding the 100° mark, and it looks like we are headed for 110° in the next two days or so. Folks are predicting new records for the KCMO area. I am inclined to believe them. This is heat I haven't felt for some time, and never for so long. The yard is turning into brown chaff faster than sprinklers can restore it. When I look out the window I sigh and shake my head.

"There is nothing to be done," intones the hollow voice in my head. We water, we "tsktsk", we wonder: when will it rain? Rain enough to make a difference? I grow tired of waiting.

Drought conditions persist, not enough work, water or money. August is approaching. This means I am facing ten months without an architecture job of which to speak. This means that the rain has stopped. The cisterns such as I had are swiftly draining. I can see the bottoms now, this makes me very nervous. I have lost my rain-making juju. This vexes me greatly.

The lake level has dropped, you can see the stumps now. There is baked mud where used to be pond weed and lilies, frogs and fish. The trails of dying fish can be seen in the hard grey earth of the dry bottom. They flipped and flopped, gasping for air in the heat, perhaps not comprehending their fate. I can only know by imagination what they felt. The idea of suffocating in air, gills drying out, tongue blackening, is truly unsettling. I don't know it physically. I do know it mentally. My bad dreams have shown me the path into the desert.

Grim, I know. Not the sort of thing we really enjoy discussing in polite company. I try to avoid inflicting these inner terrors on those around me, and those for whom I care. I am, as you may have noticed, not a complete success in that endeavor. Witness the words I spill for you now.

I stepped out in the heat today, on multiple occasions. There were errands to run, lunch to be had, sprinklers to be adjusted. While I was out, I saw that the flower bed at the front of the house was suffering an incursion of pesky grasses and bindweed. This was a bit much for me, having been parked in front of my computer trying to piece together some fragmented areas of my domestic life. I was in an ornery state. The agitation arising from my contemplation of the figuratively disappearing lake spurred me into action. The grasses and the weeds, they didn't stand a chance.

I ripped. I pulled. I tore out handfuls of vegetation, reveling in the discharge of energy. It felt good to flex and move. The heat made me sweat profusely, but even that felt invigorating. As is often the case, the distraction of a well-defined task allowed my mind to let go of some Stuff. This freed it up in turn to contemplate some Things. Things like that slowly evaporating lake in my mind.

If the idea of vanishing water and sun-baked stumps seemed bleak, the lower level of the lake also presented opportunities. That which was once hidden by the murky water was now coming to light again. What used to be wreckage could now be salvaged. Ideas and ambitions, hopes and fears, exposed again to the light of the day-mind. Now I could wade into the shallows and drag them back to higher ground. Something good could be reclaimed from things I believed to be lost.

Cool water splashes on my calves and back. In my peregrinations around the flowerbed, I had wandered into the arc of the sprinkler out in the yard. The shock of the water reminded me by contrast, of the heat. The mirage in my head popped out of existence and I came back to this world. The sun burned like a plasma cutter and I heard the voice of my father saying "It's hotter than the Devil's hatband out there!"

I wipe the sting from my eyes. There was curse making its way to the tip of my tongue, but I swear I could taste a little lake water there, so I bite back on the epithets. The Devil's hatband might as well be on my brow, the sweat pouring down my face in direct contradiction to the drought all around me. The drought, though, seems less threatening. It's change that creates difficulties which can be hard to overcome. Still, with change comes opportunity. The heat may brown the grass and dry the leaves, but this time I'll save the seeds I've gathered, in anticipation of the rains I know will surely come.

Bloating Down The Stream

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dogs and cats, big news: Irish Gumbo is expanding.

Is it a web portal of my own?  Is it the burgeoning of a publishing empire?  Is it the long awaited launch to fulfill my dream of owning a company that corners the market on t-shirts with snarky or ironic or just plain odd slogans and fake advertisements?

Sadly, no.  What is expanding...is mah belleh.

I have noticed more than once in the past two weeks, that some of my shirts and some of my pants are now bit more taut than usual when I put them on.  One of the shirts, a sort of shiny wine-colored number that I've been wearing for a few years, now gaps out at the buttonhole closest to my waist when I sit.  This perturbs me.

I am fortunate to have a metabolism and body type that, while not exactly svelte, I have not had to fight to keep from becoming too heavy for my own good.  In general my health has been pretty good considering that I do not get enough proper exercise* to stay toned up and fit.  So in general, I've managed to squeak by on the maintenance side of things.

But, now?  Perhaps I need to reconsider.  Exercise will have to brought on board.  Diet and nutrition will have to be improved**.  I will have to find a way to tame the cravings for le cuisine junque to go away, as my appetite for the salty-chippy-cheesy snacks has been fierce lately, and I think it is beginning to take its toll.  Also (and this could be really tough) I need to cut back on my indulgence in sandwiches of the Italian cold-cut variety.  I loves me a hoagie, no doubt.

I have also been possessed of an increased appetite in recent weeks, something I don't have a good explanation for at the moment.  I feel most days like I may not be eating enough, as my trade deficit with the company snack box would seem to indicate.  I need to get a handle on this soon, though, or there will definitely be handles on me...love handles.

And I'm not convinced anyone wants to see that on the Gumbo!

---

*Unless you count running around the office like my hair was on fire.
**Try as I might, I cannot figure out a way to get Doritos and potato chips to be defined as 'pasta or grain'.  Damnit.

Friday Night Is All Right For...What?

One of the smartest things I have ever done is set down the glass before it is too late.  Years bring wisdom, of sorts, to them that cares to pay attention.  And I do.  Most of the time.  But I wonder, yes I do, what I would be if I didn't listen to the voice of reason as much as I think I do.

Ahhh...it's not reason, perhaps?  Cowardice, maybe?  I cannot say for sure.  It is dangerous to listen too closely to the ego.  Ego wants what it wants, and it can talk itself into anything in pursuit of its own gratifications.  Or delusions.  The ego is ruthless.

I am learning that sometimes I should not listen to myself.  This goes against the very fiber of my mind, because I have long believed that my mind was Me, and the only thing I could trust.  Ha.  I was wrong.

So I sit here, on a Friday night, quietly and at home with the television as company.  And I know this is not a bad thing, not for now.  Better than flogging my brain cells with barley pops, surrounded by people I am afraid to talk to or with...and believing my ego when it tells me I'm a boss.

Trust me, I'm smarter now.

Ad Hoc Industries, LLC

Caleb Stine has a fine song called "I Wasn't Built For A Life Like This", off of the album of the same name.  It's sad, but beautiful, and it just about hit my frame of mind tonight.  It knocked me off my pins, what with the great weather and the gainful employment I have been experiencing.  So it was disorienting to find myself watering the flowers on the porch, shoulders slumping, and asking myself "What's wrong with this picture?".

A puzzle, really. There was no obvious reason for melancholy.  I was home from work, safe and dry, with a full belly to boot.  The cool quiet evening was just the thing for a tired mind.  But...

There is a hanging basket on my porch, the plant it contains is surely dead.  The shriveled blossoms hang limp over the sides and looking uncomfortably like hair.  It used to be a pansy.  It is dead because I haven't watered it in about two weeks.  I'm slightly uneasy about that, but it didn't get watered because a robin built a nest in the pot and promptly laid four eggs in it.  I know that because I peeked in it once when the mother bird was absent.

Fatigue surely played a role here.  Maybe it was the faint music on the air, too.  I stood and watered the flowers, peering at the bird perched on her nest when something coalesced out of the air and wrapped my heart in a faint, cool hug.

Like that bird nest suddenly appearing, things in my life have this tendency to take me by surprise.  And this past year, especially this past winter and now spring, feels like it has been full of surprises (some good, some bad).  The net result is frequent change of course, reconsideration of options, sudden outbursts of epithets.  The daily fabric of existence gets woven out of living "on the fly", and I've never been too good at living an ad hoc life.

Or maybe its all been ad hoc to this point, and I've been laboring under the misconception that there was a plan, an order to the unfolding of my life.

I'm rambling now, aren't I?  Is this now ad hoc, in and of itself?  Should I cease and desist on this idea of an order to everything, all the time and embrace my inner Rube Goldberg?

It makes me wonder if I was built for a life like this. If not, I need to rebuild or reconfigure.  But how?

On The Art of Eating Alone

I have noticed them
glancing at me from the corners
of my eyes

I wonder if it is curiosity
or pity or anthropology
that makes them look

Almost certainly, not intrigue,
not desire, maybe just wondering
what it feels like

to know the only mouth
at the table
is your own

The Blizzard is a Conspiracy to Let the Terrorists Win. Really!

A long day here in the Republic of Gumbolia, culminating in a slow commute home to a turkey sandwich snarfed down in front of the tube.  Because I do not get a newspaper anymore, most of my news comes electronic form, and I have recently fallen back into the habit of skimming the television news while I eat dinner and decompress.

This troubles me.  Television, and its cousin the Internet, have a way of becoming a digital briar patch.  Filtering becomes critical when faced with information 'push', 24/7.  Effective filtering becomes increasingly difficult in proportion to the degree of weariness on my part.  Ergo, I too often get sucked in.

Or irritated.  The news has really been taking a bastard file to the raw ends of last nerves, yet I find myself too tired to stop watching.

Since I am very tired right now, I'll keep this rant short:

"Dear television news people:  please stop running feature stories on just important the holiday season is to retailers across America.  Sure, shopping is fun, but its just another business, and I don't live life waiting for the next big sale.  If the headline stories are to be believed, if retailers don't have a good (i.e. lots of money in the till) holiday, then life as we know it will crumble and we will have to live in the stone age or something.  And please, please, stop running continuous stories about how the recent horrible weather will have an negative effect on retailers, thereby leading to the stone age scenario again.  Here's a tip for you: money doesn't disappear just because a blizzard kept people from going to the mall, it only rests. Don't worry, it will be spent, one way or another.

Oh, and as far as bad weather ruining a day of shopping?  I think stories about strangers and neighbors braving the weather to take dialysis patients to treatment, or helping someone get food and heat, trump another puff piece about vacationers in Disney World complaining because they had to buy a jacket.  Enough already!

Thank you,
IG

P.S.:  An occasional story about kittens or puppies romping in the snow would be nice."

Here endeth the rant.

Summer's End

The end is always a little surprising, and a little expected.  Mostly its wanting it to be over but not having the energy to care, to get riled up.  Which is good.  Maybe.

It's like a Sunday of 31 days.

It's that sensation of waking up with a hand on the car door handle, and not comprehending if you are getting in or getting out...with no recollection of where you have been.

Me?  I'm not sure.  I'm standing in the middle of a sun-baked meadow, wishing the treeline was closer.

No.  That isn't it.  I'm just...I don't know.  Any suggestions?

More to Clean

There is a room in the house, a room unused for days at a time.  The house itself larger now than it was then in those flush days of cheerfully made decisions.  "Salad days" the old-timers call them.  The man shuffles his way through another empty room to stand in the doorway of the hollow/not hollow space.  He holds a small book and a sleeved CD in one hand, the other hand massages his temples.  The man pauses and considers that the salad days are over, if they ever were, and the space he would have eaten in contains no furniture.

The salad days are over.  The rain stopped coming for visits, and the creek beds are sere and forlorn.

To say that the room is empty would be a misnomer.  To say that it is desolate is true, in the same way that mesas in the desert appear desolate.  Tortured terrain, dry, sun-baked and littered with rocks.  The room has a single bookcase, the only representative of the species furniture.  The floor is crowded with a few boxes, but mostly stacks of books and magazines awaiting a home.  Mesas of paper populating a desert of unrealized hopes and wishes.

The floor is faintly gray under an irregular patchwork of thin dust.  The man sighs and reminds himself to clean it.  He swallows hard on a weak bittersweet backwash of plans and predictions that he once mistook for certainty.  The dust had no place in the original scenario, it was unnecessary, it would have not collected because the room would have been thrumming with activity.  There would have been music, and the unpredictable squeaks of the office chair.  Light would have poured through the windows, providing light to match the strength of the creative ferment arising from the occupant and books and computer.

He sighs and forces himself to cross the room.  The scrape of his feet on the wood floor is loud in the silence, accompanied by reverb off the plaster walls and ceiling.  Diffracted through the venetian blinds, a faint glow of cloud-swathed sunlight trickles weakly through the tree out side and washes the room in pastel luminance.  A bird warbles softly, which makes the man long for a home that is complete.  A nest, safe and dry.

The man places the CD and book on the top shelf, and tries to ignore the piles of books.  He avoids looking into the far corner.  There may be a phantom, there, the wispy outline of a desk that may never be.  A desk, the man reminds himself, he was counting on to provide a port in the storm of his life.

There is room in the house, mostly unused, and he avoids spending time there.  Keeping the door closed on memory and desire is a strenuous job, but necessary.  The house is bigger than it looked, and emptier, than it was in those salad days.  It holds dreams there, and desires, but rarely is there enough energy to clean.

Tomorrow, he says, I'll dust.

A Joyful Noise...I Wish!

Do you ever find yourself wishing you could do something you cannot do, and do it well? Wishing it so much it gets to the point of obsession because you think about it so much?

I do. I've got it bad right now. Aside from jonesin' for PHOTOGRAPHY these days, I also really, really wish I could sing. Seriously. I don't need to be a virtuoso, I would just like to be able to hit the notes well enough. Why, you ask, do I want to sing?

Damned if I know. I just do.

I suspect it has to do with the creative impulse, and the inability or unwillingness to ignore those voices in my head and heart that say I must, or that I should at least try. The problem with singing is that I have no talent. No real talent, anyway. I can on on occasion sound like I can sing. I can do a credible imitation of Metallica's James Hetfield* when I set my mind to it, and I do enjoy that. Sometimes, I can sound like Johnny Cash on his cover of "Sea of Heartbreak". Actually, I don't know if I sound like Johnny Cash so much as I can almost harmonize with him on the chorus. Plus, I usually do that while driving, and the road noise covers up a lot of the flaws I'm sure.

This does not mean I want to do karaoke, an entertainment for some that I just do not get. The very thought of singing karaoke-style, on purpose (like in some sort of misguided team-building exercise, or after a heavy dose of liquid courage) makes me cringe. Any sort of overt public performance also has always been anathema to me. In high school, once, I took an 'F' grade rather than get up in front of class and recite a memorized speech, with memorable results**. Even to this day, I abhor the thought of public speaking, although I've had to do it in limited form as part of my (former) job.

So why the obsession, the singing badly, loudly but with gusto when no one else is around?*** I return to the creative impulse. Writing, photography, singing...any creative endeavor seeking manifestation eventually wants to express itself, and that means exposure and vulnerability, both things I typically avoid. But lately, things have been wanting to get out, working their way to the surface. I still don't want to be vulnerable, I don't want to be rejected...yet true and honest expression requires risk. 

I think writing opened the gate a bit, photography pushed the thing wider, and I realized that it doesn't matter if I can't really sing. I'm not going to be a professional singer, anyway, so I should sing primarily because it makes me happy...similar in effects to the writing and photos.

The saying goes "Dance like nobody's watching" so I suppose the corollary is "Sing like no one is listening". It is a good lesson for life, I finally realized, because it can take me out of myself and learn to enjoy the act of creation simply because...that's all, simply, because. It helps shed the fear engendered by self-consciousness and allows the creative mind some room to grow. It helps me stop thinking so much about myself, paralyzed by the fear of error and too timid to show myself. This is all good, my heart gets it, even if my mind hasn't quite embraced the concept.

So these days, I've been listening and I've been thinking, and here are a few songs I wish I could sing:

"Fuel" - Metallica

"Unsung" - Helmet

"Sea of Heartbreak" - inspired by Johnny Cash

"Oh, Darling!" - The Beatles

"Gasoline" - The Airborne Toxic Event

"Hard to Handle" - Otis Redding (with a nod to The Black Crowes)

"Feels Like Rain" - John Hiatt (with a nod to Robbie Schaefer)

No particular order there, and I suppose it doesn't matter. All I can hope is that I can keep singing, pushing away the fear of my self and of being alone, holding out until I can find at least an audience of one.

*James Hetfield himself once described his singing as "yelling on key", something I'd like to do. I can growl like him sometimes.

**A post for another time, dear friends.

***I have discovered that I can embarrass Wee Lass, if I sing a certain way. She sometimes gives me the stink-eye and says "Daaaaa--aady, stop singing that way!" Okay, dear, but just wait until high school, hehheh...

Beach Glass

For all that the waves roll in, it is so quiet here. You know that? I do. This silence, or vacuum or what-shall-we-call-it...neglect is too strong a word. It comes close, and I would find another word, but I'm tired and too lazy to get off the couch and get my thesaurus.

I have left this garden untended for what seems a long time. I see the link for it on my computer screen, but lately I have rarely felt the motivation to click on it. This is for a lot of reasons, foremost of which I have felt little in the way of needing to write.

It is true: I haven't felt like writing. This is a disturbing state of affairs, for me.

The flow of ideas has lessened a little, but is still there. I have not managed to put them to paper (or electrons). It is not writer's block, so much as a problem of mojo.

My mojo hath fled. It didn't storm out of the house, cursing and flipping me the bird, to drive off in a screech of tires and haze of dust. No, it faded away like a slow leak in the tires. I knew something was going on because I could hear that funny noise in my head, akin to the one that tires low on pressure make when driving at highway speeds. WahWahWahWahWah...My solution was to turn up the radio and keep driving, hoping nothing else would go wrong.

All of this came back to me this evening as I strolled through my new neighborhood. I had that "wellhowdidIgethere?" moment again. Past flowerbeds and streetlights and lawn furniture and mailboxes...I was overcome with lassitude. I would have said ennui, but I don't know if I was bored, exactly, as part of all this non-feeling.

Non-feeling. Not as in numb, but as in an absence of feeling. I was tired, under the weight of loneliness and anxiety, probably brought on by job-hunting activities which had absorbed my afternoon and early evening. There came a point where I decided on the walk as a self-defense measure. Unplug, disconnect, not think, just do.

It all came back to me in a rush as I returned home, and it was the fault of the mailbox. My mailbox is mounted on a post. The post, in turn is embedded in a large flower pot, more like a small barrel. As I paused at the gate, I looked over at the mailbox and it hit me that I have been in my new house for nearly two months...and I have not yet changed the name on the sides to mine.

I stood there in a daze, not outwardly seeming any different. Inside, however, I felt myself collapse a little, hollowed out by all the losses I have incurred in the past months. Job. Marriage. Friendship. Brother. Money. Money. Job (again). Peace of mind. I thought back to the resume and small portfolio I had sent out earlier, how much it took out of me to do it.

I never, ever thought I would be saying anything like what went through my head at that moment: I'm getting too old for this crap. And I am. Chronologically, most folks would say I am in mid-life, and would say that perhaps the best is yet to come. I hope so.

Standing there with my hand on the gate, feeling dizzy and tired, I knew it in my bones. I am getting too old for this crap. I lack the energy and naivete of my younger self, and reality has been too dynamic. The Year of the Tiger is taking the starch out of me, and subsequently taking the starch out of my writing. The Tiger is feasting on my mojo.

If life is a beach, as the slogan says, then I am glass tumbling in the surf. Pounded and abraded, never resting, I roll back and forth in the water. I can only hope that loving hands will pick me up and take me home, to be turned into art. If not a work of art, then at least placed in a sturdy bowl with the other beach glass, the iridescent fragments of a fractured life.

One In A Million

rain falls outside on greening grass
birds chatter and the sound,
a dreich counterpoint to human song

that claims "I'm a million
different people,
from one day to the next"

heard it all before
still split of mind
as to that million:

afraid I'm infinity plus one

Runneth Over

Please forgive if you can

It isn't that I don't want to remember

That I don't want to reciprocate

Its that I can't 

No matter how hard I try

How much I try to recall

The river has flowed too fast

Flowed too long

My dam has not burst

But the cracks are showing

My abutments are detached

Water gushing out, the occasional fish

Lake Memory is draining fast

Exposing stumps and roots and rocks

Names, faces: fish flopping in shallows

Drying, dying in the sun

Please don't take offense

If I don't get back to you

The dam has too many holes

And I have too few thumbs

House of the Broken Heart

It is quiet out there, mostly, the silence broken by animal sounds and the occasional scream of anguish. It could be said that the screams were also animal sounds, if Homo sapiens were classified as an animal. The screams originating, from the throat of a two-legged being, scratching at the floor.

There is a dirt and gravel track branching away from the narrow paved road snaking its way over and through the folds of the mountainside. The trees and undergrowth crowd in on it, all the while threatening to take over. They hover over the track like jealous lovers or hungry jackals, seeking to protect that from which they feed. Driving past the track, it is easy to miss. It does not seek to advertise itself. The number of people who need to find it totals…one. That person isn’t the same person every time the track is found, either.

Perhaps the track only reveals itself to those really in need.

It matters little the vehicle of choice to traverse the terrain. No matter the weather, the dry or the wet, mud or dust, snow or rain: the wheels will find purchase. The track facilitates the traveler in the inexorability of this journey to the house waiting at the end of the road. The mud may seem deep, the drop-offs terribly steep, but they really are not. The light in the valley has a way of tricking the eye and magnifying the feelings of the traveler.

The task is to persevere, until the vehicle comes to a halt in the gravel driveway fronting the house. And it will. The journey is inevitable.

No matter what time the trip began, it always seems to end at twilight. There is just enough light to get a quick impression of the house, but it doesn’t last long enough to thoroughly study it before entering. The outlines are blurred anyway, due to the encroachment of trees and vines, and a curious lack of color. The primary feature, though, is that the house straddles a ravine that angles through the site. It is the first thing that grabs the eye, and almost makes it seem as if there are two houses perched on the slopes. Stepping out of the vehicle, the ear is greeted by the low murmur of rushing water. It is possible there is a stream at the bottom of the ravine. Low light and the tricky acoustics of the forest make it difficult to tell.

If it can be said that the house has a front door, it is approached by a short bridge leading away from the packed gravel driveway. The bridge crosses what looks like a shallow moat filled with the jagged bodies of rocks, grey and bluish-white, most about the size of Jack Russell terriers. The bridge deck is thick timbers on a framework of black-painted steel, all of it patinaed with moss and the slow corruptions of rust. The railings are also of metal and wood, a weathered grid of steel with thick round handrails smooth and shiny from the passage of myriad hands. The deck trembles and groans as the visitor crosses the bridge.

The door is weathered wood, bound with iron. The metal has stained the wood with fat streaks of ferric tears. To be expected, from so many years of exposure to the weather. There is an ancient lock mortised into the door panel, but it is rarely used. It is easy to forget to lock the door when wrapped in so much anguish.

Push the door open on hinges surprisingly quiet; there is only a faint rasp of metal on metal. If there is one thing that has not been neglected in this house of coagulated ruin, it is hinges. It does not make sense if the doors can't be opened at will, and sometimes it is best to enter with as little noise as can be managed. Step inside, into a damp, cool space smelling of wet stone and heartache.

It is a long narrow hall, terminating in a jagged window. A slit, really, in the far wall. The floor is of metal grating, narrow spaced, and between the bars can be glimpsed (if the time of the day is right) wet stone, ferns, the glistening rush of a stream at the bottom of the ravine. A skylight, pearly in its glow, parallels the hall. The sky is seen dimly through its frosted panes. Upon closer inspection, it can be observed that the walls have a delicate framework of steel bars stretching from below the hall grating all the way up to the skylight. As the eyes adjust to the low light, one can see the faint, green wisps of a vines growing up through the floor to reach toward the light above.

The walls are of stone, slightly rough. The color is that peculiar gray to be seen in certain kinds of slate. Oily in one view, wet in another. There are copper sconces at intervals down the hall, faintly green and emitting a surprisingly warm glow. At the midpoints of the hall, the sconces flank two doors, opposing each other. The doors are of bronze, and are closed. The hall widens at that point, just a bit. Just enough for two people to stand facing one another, and have someone pass between them.

Pick a door to open. It probably matters not which is chosen; there is a feeling in the air that whatever is behind the doors will be nearly identical. The door swings into a room of modest size, facing a wall without windows except for a small square opening opposite the door. The opening is filled with thick, solid glass blocks. the light coming through is greenish and distorted. To the right is a wall, plaster, seamless except for an arched opening leading to a small room that appears to be a kitchen. To the left, there is another wall, pierced with three large windows divided by thick mullions between them. The windows are framed with steel,  divided into lites, like those in an old mill building, and the paint is beginning to flake away. The glass is intact, slightly rippled. The light spilling through the window reveals a small, iron framed bed and a worn wooden table against the wall. The floors are of thick wood planks, scraped and burnished by countless soles.

The bed linens are rumpled and in disarray. On the table is a stoneware pitcher standing next to what appears to be a leather-bound journal, an ink bottle and two fountain pens. Slightly back from the table is a mahogany ladderback chair. The wood is worn and polished to a sheen, not from cloth but from the comings and goings of the occupants. Despite the chill, it invites one to sit, as many have, and many will.

Visitors will find themselves sitting at the table, thumbing the pages and fidgeting with the pens, all the while not understanding how they came to be there. They will be filled with the urge to write, in that peculiar shade of blue-black (if one is on the east side of the hall) or brown-black (if one is on the west side of the hall) ink that inhabits the bottle on the table. They will find themselves writing, perhaps, or with head in hands over the table while teardrops trickle down to add to the circular stains in the dust. The browned pages of the journal are pocked with such stains, which sometimes dissolve the words into novae of ink.  They will sit, and write, and grieve outside of time. Out in the hall, the slow swellings of green life enrobe the the trellises, in time with the beatings of the sore hearts.

It will not matter how long they stay. The kitchen always have just enough to eat, no more and no less. The house takes care of its own, no matter what. Visitors are never invited here, but are always welcome to stay as long as it takes.

The visitors come, their stays governed by the dictates of the soul. The green things grow, the stream rushes on and time has no meaning here in the House of the Broken Heart.

From The STFU Files: Tiger Woods Edition

Alright, folks, time for a short rant:

Tiger Woods doesn't need to apologize to his 'fans'. He doesn't need to call a press conference to tell the world that not keeping his dog in the right yard is "unacceptable". In fact, apologizing in such a manner doesn't seem much like an apology at all. It just seems like a page torn from the Plastic Persona Media Guide to Reputation Damage Control: Spin. The apology reeks of nothing more than a transparent attempt to avoid losing the endorsement deals because of public 'outrage'. That is obscene, just like the sickening amounts of money that companies dole out to "superstars". As if blinding talent and ability in an extremely specific skill set automatically translates into good judgment and discerning intellect when it comes to choice of soft drink, fast food, wristwatch, cell phone, or any other ephemera of modern life.

It's a sham, it's arrogant and it makes me want to invoke the Right To Privacy From Celebrities Personal Lives. Frankly, this falls in the category of things I don't want or need to know. Another incredibly talented athlete, awash in money and adulation, free from the daily grind of having to truly work for a living* gets found out on his infidelity?

Someone needs to explain to me why this is important.

Mr. Woods is correct in that what he did was unacceptable. What he did, however, is not new or different. It has been going on since men and women have been men and women. That he did it makes it no worse and no different than any other schmuck who committed adultery. It certainly does not make it more interesting.

How many people really know Tiger Woods? How many people are really his friends? You can be a fan, you can be interested in what he does as a golfer** but if you let it influence your life to the point where you feel you need an apology because of his bad behavior, it is time to reconsider your own values. Why are you looking to Tiger to be your moral compass?

The only people Tiger should be apologizing to is the wife, the friends and the family. In  private. Press conferences do not count. 

Go home, Mr. Woods, sit down and STFU for a while. Then look your loved ones in the eye and tell them you are sorry. That is the only way it will truly be meaningful.

*Please, spare me the crap about how much practice and travel and oh how hard it is to get that ball in the little cup. Boo hoo. Golf is not hard work, no matter how much time you spend in the sun. My father was an auto mechanic for 45 years, and a good one. Did he get a multi-million dollar endorsement deal because he could change a head gasket? No. That's difficult and dirty work, to do it every day for that long. Dad had the calluses and the grime under the nails to prove it. No one carried my father's tool chest for him.

**For the record, I think Tiger Woods is astounding at what he does. So is Michael Phelps. I can't do what they do, nor do I judge my self-worth by what others are good at doing. However, I don't know them, I'm not their family or friends. Whether dipping a wick or taking ill-advised hits from a bong, it really has no bearing on how I live my life. I don't look to them for validation or support. Why would I? That is what friends and family do. Friends and family also call you on your bad behavior, and forgive you if you sincerely admit to your transgressions.

Yellow Sky Blues and the Panic

Man looks up on a yellow sky

and the rain turns to rust in his eye

Rumours of his health are lies

Old England is dying

It wasn’t too different than any other Monday, but these days I can’t take that for granted…

The sunrise was grey through the blinds, weak and oyster. Sleep the night before was just this side of being okay, which for me is saying a lot. Sleep. An exotic locale that looks good in the brochures, but getting the money to travel is a different story. I shook it off, as I am wont to do and bootstrapped myself into another day.

His clothes are a dirty shade of blue

and his ancient shoes worn through

He steals from me and he lies to you

Old England is dying

I count my blessings when I get to see my daughter in the mornings, now. It is brief interludes of sanity preservation in between fits and starts of trying to ignore the pressure of self-dissatisfaction on one side and corporate obeisance on the other. No matter if she is trying my patience on chatting on about how she prefers her Cheerios without milk. The princess speaks, and I strain to listen, ignoring the sick betrayal of my workaday mind.

Still he sings an empire song

Still he keeps his navy strong

and sticks his flag where it ill belongs

Old England is dying

I’m numb to a lot of the commute, or getting that way I hope. Occasionally the old me rears his big noggin and barks out a curse at the stupids on the road, blind weak anger at the absurdity of sitting in traffic on the roads supposedly designed to make transit easier. It just doesn’t make sense sometimes. Well, most of the time. Aside from my daughter’s voice, music is one the few things in the world today that I take refuge in, find some space to breathe.

"You're asking what makes me sigh now

what it is makes me shudder so"

Well, I just freeze in the wind

and I'm numb from the pummeling of the snow

that falls from high in yellow skies…

There was a bit of a yellow sky that Monday, but not the kind of yellow that Mike Scott would be singing about later. I didn’t really think much about the difference when I sat down at my desk. Computer on, headphones alighting on my ears. The gnawing in my gut fluttered a bit, as if I had swallowed a sleepy bat. My hands trembled slightly as another workday began. Press the keys, and no one needs to know but me.

…where the well loved flag of England flies
where homes are warm and mothers sigh
where comedians laugh and babies cry
where criminals are televised, politicians fraternize
journalists are dignified and everyone is civilized
and children stare with heroin eyes
heroin eyes, heroin eyes
Old England !

The iPod was on shuffle, which seems is my modus operandi in the present. I’ve tried listening to albums in entirety, or groups of songs by the same artist, but…it wearies my ears, I have no way to explain why it just does. Too much, I guess, and it pushes me into impatience. A signal it may be of the diffracted and diffuse nature of my thoughts, a grayware cloud that won’t condense into rain. Until that Monday, when I had my first (near) panic attack in months. I say “near” because I’ve had some full-on panic attacks and the awfulness of those is unmistakable in its rapaciousness. This was not the same, but close. A half-brother to the real bastard itself. The memories it stirred up were unpleasant enough that I had no desire to repeat it.

Evening has fallen

The swans are singing

The last of sunday's bells is ringing

The wind in the trees is sighing

and old England is dying

I sat there, blinking, stunned, sweating and wondering what just happened. I think no one noticed the sudden bolt upright posture, the rapid breathing, the confused blinking as I tried to figure out what was happening. For once, I was glad of cubicle walls. It gave me a chance to recover gracefully. I tried not to think about the cause. On the drive home, it finally dawned on me, and I felt stupid and ashamed.

I know Mike Scott was singing about a different kind of empire when the Waterboys played in my headphones, the fading and troubled England that had lost its way when that song was written. But when I heard the lyrics Monday morning, I started thinking of the empire that used to be me, and how my borders have shrunken and my flag is flying low. I was overwhelmed by the fractures in my earth, and the losses incurred, and how it came to be.

*Lyrics used w/o permission, from “Old England” by The Waterboys. The version I’m diggin’ these days is a live take off of ‘The Best of The Waterboys, ’81-‘90’. I hope Mike Scott will forgive my impertinence, but that line about ‘rust in his eye’…damn, I wish I’d written that.

Some Things Will Never Be Finished

A New Pair of Shorts

I had the realization recently that I find it difficult to write a short post. So here goes. Enjoy!

I'll Stop The World And Melt. Not With You, Just Melt. All By My Lonesome.

Can I just stop for a moment? Or a long series of moments? I need to, in a bad way. Dislocated is no way to wear one’s head. I don’t like living life that way. The way things are going I’m feeling like maybe, just maybe the Universe could use a few moments of stillness. If not the Universe, then the Planet Earth. And if not Earth, then at least my head.

My poor, aching headbone.

Layoffs. Wars. Economic meltdown. Recession. Personal crises and generalized anxieties and change. Not knowing my ass from a hole in the ground some days. It all seems too much, sweeping the legs out from underneath me. Sticking my head into the torrent of information flowing around me is akin to drinking from a firehose, or walking through a high-speed wind tunnel. I cannot drink that fast, or walk effectively into a hurricane. It’s exhausting and too much is missed.

I am tired of missing things. Picture sitting in a boat, on a broad and swift river. The wind is blowing hard, chop is on the water. And try as you might to stop it, cargo continues to fall overboard, and you watch helplessly as it falls to sternward and forever out of reach. There is no turning back. It wouldn’t matter anyway if you could turn around; the current is too swift and turbulent. You’d never catch up to the stuff you lost while trying to comprehend the new stuff coming at you.

I find myself weary of even trying anymore, to understand the vast cloud of sensory impressions swathing me in overload. Pecked to death by lunatic chickens. Trapped in a tent with hyperactive angry bees. The mere act of filtering such quantities becomes a tremendous task unto itself. The sheer time and energy involved easily robs me of the ability to comprehend that which I have filtered.

You know those movies or videos where one person is on screen, moving real slow while people and cars zoom by at manic speed? That is me. Feels like that all the time. I’m trying to catch up, or at least comprehend the people and events zipping by. It makes me feel…lost. Sort of “in” the world but not really “of” the world. Does that make sense?

Perhaps I am looking at this from the wrong direction. I keep looking out but really I should be looking in. The dislocation I feel could be coming from having gone down the rabbit hole in the center of my head. Sort of like turning a sock inside out, or maybe a Möbius strip in the guise of a human body. If I drew a line down the middle of myself, would I return to my starting point having traversed all sides without crossing an edge? Ow. Ow. Ow. Mistake. That just made my head hurt even more.

All this data, coming at me at light speed. Why did I ever believe that I wanted to know everything there was to be known in the Universe? When did my head become such a strange attractor for information? Somewhere along the line my brain collapsed in on itself, incurring an accelerated process of densification, the grey matter congealing into a black hole with an event horizon defined by my skull. Data goes in, but where does it come out? Some days it feels as if nothing leaves only to increase the pressure threatening to blow the top of my head off. Wouldn’t that be spectacular! An exploding black hole! One can only imagine what that would look like. Maybe it would create a white hole, discharging the accumulated contents of my overheated brain into another universe, or into a different place somewhere else in this one.

If only I could stop time. No, stop motion (but isn’t that in some ways the same thing?) on a molecular level. Climb inside my own skull and scoop up the quantum goo and pack it into some kind of snowball. A grey matter snowball squeezed between my palms in a desperate effort to quell the vibrations, bring time and space together in a hot-cold singularity. Freeze it at the level where even the atoms slow down, doing a languid Brownian dance of slower and slower rotations while time ceases to pass.

I know the Universe does not revolve around me, I don’t expect it to. But just once, even if only for a few ticks of the atomic clock that keeps Standard Time, I would like everything to just stand still so I can cool off.

I need that. And a beer. A beer would be nice, too.