February

Well, I missed February for posting.  I really didn't--I've started transcribing a journal I kept in the summer of 2007, but that's all grouped together under the 2007 label, so according to my judgy little calendar on the sidebar there, I missed February.

I'm tired and grumpy, lately.  Uncharacteristically so: short with friends, snapping at my sons for wiping the Earth on my clothing as it passes through their nostrils, needlessly cold to my wife when there's a lot going on.  Mostly, it's sleep deprivation.  Partly, it's the stress of having little time to myself.  Between moving in, fixing all the little things around the house, organizing all the nooks and crannies, and having a jolly stream of hilarious friends and family come party through my house, life is always moving.  It's good to remember to step away from the stream from time to time and breathe for a minute.

There's no need to write this.  Previous generations would balk or sneer or criticize this behavior.  Future generations will roll their eyes.  The current generation won't read it anyway.

The thing is, I'm just trying to balance out the internet in my own way.  Every time I read an Op-Ed, someone is blaming a system or another person or Some Thing (But Not Me) for something they don't like about life.  Well, in contrast: I've been an ass lately, and it's my fault for not managing my time and mental health more responsibly.  Just so you know, Internet-at-large.

Similarly, I've started trying to drive courteously on I-95 lately, even though inevitably it only ends with people blocking me in a slow lane or some other annoying scenario.  When someone in a hurry winds up riding my bumper, I look for a spot and change lanes to let them through.  When someone needs in front of me, I let them in.  You know.  Normal driving things that Northern Virginian drivers do not, ever, under any circumstances, do.

Today, while letting the 5th driver through in 10 minutes, I started to wonder if my behavior had any chance of impacting other drivers' behaviors.  Probably not.  But the happy thought of starting to drive courteously, and by doing so consistently, slowly encouraging a culture change (in a city of several million--yeah, nope) was tempting to consider.

Then several other people let me through, further down the road, and I wondered--what if we're all actually, subconsciously, already being affected by some other very courteous driver out there inspiring positive change in our behavior?  Who knows, perhaps there's some superhero of polite driving, inspiring us all whether we know it or not, and in 20 years we'll all be driving kindly and we'll all have that one hero driver to thank.

Actually, in 20 years, humans won't be driving anymore.  So the problem's fixed one way or another.

Brain dump complete.  Have a happy evening.




March 2017

Pools

At night my infant son sleeps in a pool
of dim light (like the human race)
which keeps the terror of the dark
theoretically at bay.

After all, night-lights (and suns) do not
truly remove the inky dead black of space:
illumination is only done to other things.
Not Space-night itself:

it is forever invisible, clear, is blank-black;
is the absence of seeing, is null data; but
as adults and extinct species learn,
null data can be wrong.

(The asteroid, or alien, or thief, may not
distinguish itself from the dark null
outside our small dim pool of light until
they are upon us.)

In the vast expanse of our small house
my son is lost without his light, and cries
for me, for safety and comfort; but even I
cannot save him from the dark.




Jan 2017

Dishes

If you happen to find yourself breaking and entering into someone's house, and you suddenly realize they are home, they are armed, and they are probably going to come kill you, one good idea is to head toward the kitchen and start doing the dishes.


They might still decide to kill you, but no sane homeowner would ever kill someone doing the dishes. And while they wait for you to finish up, you have a few minutes to either figure a way out of the situation or put your spiritual house in order.


Just a thought.

The common cold

"Poor guy," I said, regarding
his crusty nostrils, and
she said he's doing much
better today, he slept a lot--
but when I heard him coughing
late in our darkened house
my mind became a slave
to how sometimes children die
in the night, for no good reason!;
and like a spy I slipped away
with grim urgency, determination,
only once betrayed by a creaking
step while creeping to his door
and listened to his breathing,
head inclined, un-moving until
several minutes in I realized
my heart was pounding
like a marathon, like war,
like shooters in the street
see the child in my arms.




jan 2017

in a little while, i think
i won't be able to even taste:
--or back a step, even to smell--
victory or failure or defeat.
the end of sleep is the end
of color, flavor, sound;
everything fades off-white
to an ignoble gray, more
washout than stormcloud.

then, sleep.

and in the morning we find
the smell of coffee reminds us
of the rich velvet browns in dirt,
the red piece of ribbon
on a package of something
in the pantry; our feet make
soft padding noises, bare on
the tile, the wood, the carpet.

unless--

i have friends, perpetually, who
cannot sleep, to whom the
harsh-washed gray is all life,
the self-specific silence and
muted Everything of Unsleep is the
only Thing there is. unlike me, who
stays awake to play, and read,
they bolt upright with a scream
part way through and
never finish.

nightmares.

for my son, at acorn-bud youth, it
was rain: thunder and light flashes
against the window in his dark room;
for one friend, a battlefield
he'd long survived, but never left;
for another, a horror memory
that worsened with each retelling.
"where am i, in that dream?" i once
so arrogantly asked--insert the god-like
dream-sequence Self descending here,
rolling back the rain cloud, calming all
bullets and bloodshed and child-borne horrors.
i replace the sound and smell of war
with the quiet of a forest in the morning
on an expectant, pleasant summer day.

but does it fade?

like my conscious body slipping away
from sensory perception, does Time
in all her majesty remove these scars and
mend the wound?  will the war or childhood
be further behind next year, or the next,
or have these memories and fears slipped in,
like splinters in a young, uncalloused hand:
too near the heart to be let go,
too rehearsed to ever leave the stage?
dream-sequence giant though i am, my power
cannot overcome its source; the mind has cut
its channels deep, and seldom leaves a bed
to dry.




december '16