Rainy Day

The cool thing about writer's block is the completely lightning-strike way that you inevitably get shaken out of it.

I started this blog oh-so six-or-seven posts ago to lean on outside pressure to keep me writing, and more importantly, to keep me writing in ways that, well, didn't suck -- or were at least on a trend away from that-which-sucks. But it hasn't really worked. The first posts were, alas, really riffs on the few ideas that have stuck in my head in the decade or so since I last took writing seriously. I cranked them out, flashed a wry smile, and then found that everything I was writing -- and I have actually been writing quite a bit -- since my last post was falling flat. Attempts to opine led to no point. Introspection slid into self-importance. Even the humor seemed mean-spirited.

Sometimes writing flails because the mouse-trap mechanisms that connect mind to keyboard are all fubar. Sometimes writing flails because the keyboard is just faithfully tapping out the notions of a head that is all fubar. I think writer's block is the cheap way of blaming the writing skills for not having anything to say.

I have had nothing to say.

With all the historic events swirling around me, I have only reactions, not opinions. I feel like a brontosaurus looking up from a pleasant over-sized frond after hearing a massive boom, wincing at a brilliant flash, and then thinking wtf? as the last thought of my species. (And even there I pop an over-stated metaphor...)

When I take the step and admit the fact that I don't know what is next, that the world right now is too close, complex and concentrated to have any rational insights of any use...well, then I turn to my reactions and they are...limbic.

So tonight, I'm getting that there are times when getting through shit might mean that you don't try to put too many words around said shit.

So tonight, I am getting that my trash-bin writing sounds self-absorbed...because it is. And that is not a problem with my writing, it is a problem with the writer.

So tonight, I am learning that sometimes getting through things requires a little distance from those things until it is done. Real-time is not always necessary. Or good.

So tonight, I am thinking that I never really knew why my dad taught me to save for the rainy days, to put things aside for when life stumbles. I've never really stumbled. I've never felt a rainy day that was anything more metaphorical than wet.

So today, it rained.

And tonight, I finally admitted that it is the proverbial rainy day. And I am glad I listened to dad. Even if I never admitted it.

So tonight, I wrote.

Skipping Stones (Original Cut)

Since my first post (all those, like, four days ago), I have been nagged by the memory of a poem that seemed to get at what I was trying to say much more succintly. Found it. Keats. Clearly, there is a missing line between the last two that would reveal that, in addition to thinking, he was chucking rocks.

52. When I have fears that I may cease to be

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be   Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact’ry,   Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,         5   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace   Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!   That I shall never look upon thee more,         10 Never have relish in the faery power   Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. http://www.bartleby.com/126/52.html

Skipping Stones

Blogs are largely self-serving activities. To be clear, this one is entirely so. Whether anyone actually reads this or not, my purpose is served merely by the possibility that someone might. I’ll try to explain…

I’ve spent the last few decades hard-driven forward-focused, trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, taking the corners up on two wheels when I think I finally have a sense of where it is I need to be going. I’ve been successful, but hardly linear. I’ve had an amazing array of experiences, but haven’t reflected long enough on many of them for most to make me any wiser. I have been fortunate to know some of the most amazing people in the world, but haven’t been smart enough to invest in many of them to truly call them my friends.

A rough couple of years leave me right here, right now realizing that something needs to change about how I go forward from this point. I have been blessed with a rich life, but I need to know it a little better. The change I am noodling on has something to do with defining myself less through where I am going and all the things I still have left to do, and more by what got me here, the people and places, the achievements and fuck ups, the constant values and goofy whims that got me right…here. It’s a balance thing, I guess.

Writing is key to figuring this all out. Not necessarily what or why, but the simple act of just…writing. I don’t write to simply reflect what I think and value as much as I do to actually give form to the mess that is in my head. Writing is less a passive expression of who I am, much more a creative way to actually build out who I am. And I could use some design and remodel work these days.

But I can get lazy, and I tend to lie to myself if left to myself. So the idea that some of the folks that know me much better than I realize might actually stumble across some of this stuff and call bullshit…well, just that mere possibility will keep me much more honest than I ever would be just typing away on some password protected file on my laptop. Plus, this will force me to try to keep the writing interesting, perhaps amusing. If successful, perhaps I will become more of both along the way. As conceded at the outset, this  blog is a totally selfish act, a random trip through some rather loosely connected wires.

Since junior high, every time I have taken the time to reflect on what I need to do to get my head straight for some reason or another, sitting down and writing in some form or fashion has always been the first thing I commit to doing. It is also always the first thing I stop doing when habits and distractions settle back in. I am better when I am writing something, writing anything. After a couple decades of this dance, I need to accept that this is just a part of me, a place I go, a thing I do, something I need to figure out how to weave into my life for real and for good. I need to find the places and times to just write, and occasionally I might find some of it is not all that bad. Hell, as I kick through random musings, I might even find that I have something…to say. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.

***

Much of what I have to say, here and elsewhere, revolves around my three kids, Emma, Max and Cole. Emma is about to turn 6, and the boys (twins) are about to turn 4. One very cool thing I noticed this summer is how utterly content all three of them are to find a body of water, be it lake, stream, ocean (and, yeah…fountain, pool, bath tub, sink), and just stand on the edge and throw things into it. Once I showed them how to drop down side arm with a nice flat stone (a la the currently most famous Auker, Elden, a Babe Ruth-era submarine-ball pitcher) and actually skip the rocks…they can stay at the water’s edge for hours, just searching for the perfect rocks, rearing back and letting them fly.

Of all the structured activities and play dates and organized lessons and kid-friendly events I have taken them to, I really think, in the end, they would prefer the simple peaceful time chucking rocks into the water over almost anything else.  

Looking back, I think I spent a good bit of my youth doing just the same. I think I should spend a little more of my adulthood that way…an old, comfortable, reflective habit, just watching the ripples mingle with the waves. Even the best skipping stones can sploosh straight to the bottom, and if you try hard enough, you can pretty much make any rock skip at least once. But there is something elegant, something in-the-moment satisfying when you get a dozen skips on a clear glass lake, pulling off a smooth throw worthy of that perfect round flat rock.