A story without a plot

In other news

Outside of the family situation with its mounting chaos and sad overtones I've found myself strangely at peace. I've sought out fulfilling situations and activities in the past few weeks.

I've willingly engaged people and situations on a more honest, intuitive and intimate basis. I've drank coffee and held long conversations with others about experiences, movies, news, and books.

I went to the theater on Sunday and saw a play. I have not done that since 1999 when I saw a local theater company's mediocre production of Our Town. This time I went to the metro theater with an honest-to-goodness professional production company.

I also continue to watch movies. Recently I watched Diner and Ingmar Berman's Wild Strawberries (dare I say) for the first time. A couple of more Berman films sit in my Que.

These activities constitute a small renaissance for me personally. For a while my life had become routine. My thoughts were filled with maudlin self-reflection. I lost any real creative spark. Life was drab. I did nothing more than work, meet, eat, and go home.

I don't know how long this feeling will last or where it may take me, but I feel personally fulfilled and able to contribute instead of simply taking up space and waiting.

Oh, and tomorrow, I start running outside. Three weeks without smoking and the gym is getting boring.

Enjoying the silence

Well, it is just after midnight. Gracie slept at my head on the arm of the couch as I watched Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion. I  like the show on the radio immensely. The movie was kind of melancholy There was an angel of death and mercy, and a hypothetical last show.

The premise of the movie was built on a big Texas corporation buying the broadcasting company of Companion and closing the station (and show) because it was a relic. Huh.

What was nice though was sitting in the dark under the television's soft glare in the silence afterward. Thursday had been a rough day where I was bombarded with ugly people.

Belief-O-Matic

    I woke up early this morning, earlier than the pup. The time allowed me to take this standardized quiz. After years of wondering, "What religion am I?" the search is over, and it only took 10 minutes!

What Liberal Quakers Believe
Central Tenants of this faith, based on the questions in the Belief-O-Matic quiz.

Sometimes it just takes a song

That is it. A song. Really not trying to be too dramatic or vague here but the past couple of days has been serene and blue. And not blue in the sense of some self-imposed crisis. Stuff happened.

The job is busy, life is busy, and there is some personal family matters still unfolding at the moment. A few tears were shed Wednesday night. Stuff happens.

Today on my way to work I listened to the local college radio station. The first song I heard was R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon” from Automatic for the People. The song was a request. I loved that song and that album as a teenager. The song is a bit melancholy but also up lifting. For me the album comforts while acknowledging the pain. “Night Swimming” is still a favorite of mine. “Man on the Moon” is a close second.

The familiarity of the words, the undercurrent of its message and the music were soothing. Before I knew it I was singing along in early morning traffic, bobbing my head and relaxed. The blues of the past few days melted a bit, leaving me with serenity.

“Here's a little ghost for the offering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” Yeah, stuff happens.

Meh . . .

Okay, as I repeatedly noted this week could be classified as eventful – and not eventful at all. Yes, I bought a house, but the closing went off without a glitch. I didn’t experience an overwhelming sense of buyer’s remorse either. More than anything I realized the fleeting state of most material things. What if the house doesn’t work for me? Meh. I’ll sell it.

The rest of the week has been much the same. All meh, all the time. Unfortunately I can still confuse this meh-state with boredom. In actuality it is contentment and a lack of overwhelming fear or anxiety, which is a blessing for a guy like me.

Today, I started to feel a little tug of wanting something to happen. I don’t know what, fireworks, a parade, something fantastic and unexpected. What I forget in this state is that unexpected usually comes with a price – chaos, uncertainty and eventually insanity. And if nothing happens, well I end up longing for and focusing on wants over needs, which once again equals bad ju-ju, like self-pity and depression.

At least I recognized this today. At least I stopped and paused before going full throttle into negative emotions and perspectives. I even said “meh” at whether or not the attractive 33-year-old researcher I met will actually still find me appealing after date two, or visa versa. I’ll just wait and see instead of rocking the boat by wondering.

I think I’ll just let life happen, today anyway.

καιρός

An ancient Greek word meaning the "right or opportune moment". It is now used in theologytime.  In rhetoric kairos is "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved." 

from Wikepedia

Call it what you will. Define it how you shall. Reflecting on the day I feel I lived in it almost all day. Kairos, the now. Sure, if I thought pretty hard (and I probably will right before bed) the day was not perfect. It was darn close though.

For a majority of the day my mind was comfortably occupied in the moment. It is hard to explain. Everything just seemed sharper; the world a bit more real and positive around me and actions just flowed. I listened more than I spoke. I felt love and deep gratitude for the world around me and the people in it. I might call it a rush, but honestly it hasn't been tinged by some great manic excitement or estatic emotion. No, words like "peace" and "serenity" begin to describe the state of being I've been in. Kairos is calm and quiet.

The last time I think I had this sensation, and it is a sensation of mind and body, was for a few brief moments a few weeks ago as I walked up a hill to a friend's house for dinner and a hair cut. I didn't recognize it then but that is what it was.

In the right now there is no thought of yesterday or tomorrow, of worry, remorse, self-pity or manic glee. There just is. The full description just kind of escapes the lips. And honestly, it usually follows a period of pain and indecision followed by a set of vigorous actions that get me outside of myself.

Today I'm grateful for it. My mind does not allow it to happen often enough.

 

 

Rwah-rwah

I hate to say it but I’ve never been a really good cheerleader – not in the classroom, at work, or in other areas of my life. Because my own anxieties, procrastination attempts, neurotic thoughts and experiences are the stuff of legends I’m not equipped to give the obligatory pat on the back where others feel it is needed for motivation.

After years of painful experience my philosophy, ripped straight from the words of a geriatric Yoda, boils down to, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

This is why I can’t stand the sniveling whines from people who say they don’t understand how the task at hand is possible or how things aren’t happening the way they should though they feel as if they are trying.

Do or do not. If it is something you’ve committed to following through to the end and you come across a roadblock find another angle. The new approach might actually come up with better results.

If you absolutely do not believe the task or situation is doable, well then admit defeat guilt-free and move on. Find something else to pour your energies into. Perhaps pause and reflect upon why you couldn’t accomplish said task or challenge.

This is why I’m not a good cheerleader. I hear people give justification and reason for failed attempts, late projects, or stuff that just falls off the map. Fine, okay, you didn’t do something or you were defeated somehow in the process of doing. You did the deal or you didn’t. This is not necessarily good or bad, though you best have something to take the place of a failed project. But please, don’t hand out a bunch of justifications; they will get you nowhere. Plus, they tend to reflect poorly on you later on.

And when you do finish something, well don’t expect too much singing of your praises. Great, you reached completion on something. You did your JOB, HOMEWORK, or kept a family commitment . . . etc. Awesome, so did I and I rarely seek praise or receive it. The reward, for me anyway, is the sense of accomplishment and completion. I followed something through, my conscious is clear, and I can reflect on the rewards of my actions.

Of course I’m not really that harsh on others. I put it as kindly and as tolerantly as possible – much more so today than when I taught class. When I dealt with students who whined I actually brought a few of them to tears. I was harsh because I misunderstood that do or do not is the result of maturity and experience. I don’t have too much, but I have enough to know you either get it or you don’t.

If you do, great! I’d go to about any length to help someone who is doing the deal, whatever that deal might be. I’ll give freely of my own energies, experience, and time to help DO something. If a person’s not willing to do something, if it’s a halfhearted attempt to try to placate . . . well, um, move on bub because I will.

I do and I do not know what sent me on this rant today. I can’t really share the details of it here. I do know though I had to push it out here. If I can’t necessarily say it to someone’s face, as I have had it said to mine on more than one occasion, then I can at least write about it here. The act of putting it down crystallizes a few things for me and perhaps keeps me from beating someone, myself included, to death with a pair of pom-poms.

The letter

My mother and I went through a nine-by-15 storage unit packed with the accumulated stuff I gathered over the past decade living away from her home. The apartment where I live right now is mostly filled with my sister’s stuff – dishes, furniture, and decorations. The situation is a result of last year’s, “my sister is moving back in with my parents and I need to move the hell out.”

So, I went from living with my parents to living at my sister’s apartment mid lease. Since then the lease lapsed, I pay month by month, and now I’m going to move into my own house. In that time, nearly two years now, my Oklahoma accumulated stuff gathered dust. Some if it also garnered a fair amount of rust.

Going through the boxes stacked upon boxes was like taking a trip into the way back machine. Yes, sadly my time in Oklahoma now seems like a lifetime ago. I looked at certain little trinkets and bits that I kept when I moved out of the ramshackle rental house in Enid with bemusement. Why, for example, did I decide to keep old copies of lease agreements or photos of my ex-wife and I? It just made no sense.

Mostly my organizing and not-discarding policy had to trump one vital question: if I haven’t used it or missed it in two years why keep hold of it now? A lot of stuff, four large black garbage bags full, did not make the cut. Growing from here to there, slipping out of old skin, and change was measured in those bags that were placed into a dumpster. This, I believe was cathartic and good.

There were some items though that I kept. One was a letter written on yellowing paper from a friend. The letter was one of hope, a reminder to hold on. The writer was the wife of a buddy of mine from Stillwater. She wrote the letter on the same day my buddy picked me up on a street corner with my belongings in a paper bag. Let me say this, it is never good when your essential belongings are all in a paper bag and you have no ride home.

The letter was a lifesaver. Written nearly five years ago it came at a time when my life was spiraling. I wouldn’t admit it then but I was still experiencing the blunt trauma of separation from my soon-to-be ex-wife and being generally powerless in all aspects of my increasingly unmanageable life.

As my stomach somewhat churned as I stood in that storage unit (I still can’t believe I’m getting a house with all the added responsibility and demarcations of settling down and growing up) the letter acted as a reminder that all that really matters could be found on something as simple as an old piece of paper. What matters of course is hope and the intangible belief that everything will be okay if only I hold on and let it.

So, for a moment, before I threw away the heaps of garbage and separated out the plates and silverware to keep, I sighed. I wondered about the new dwelling and foundation that I have to build upon and store things in.

No matter what, for another moment in my life I was reminded that everything was alright.

It's all right to be little bitty

    Well the deal went down, much quicker than what I thought and strangely much calmer too. The bid on the house I looked at on Saturday was accepted by the seller. She was happy with the terms of my offer. I am happy and surprisingly calm. I know this is really just the beginning of the process of the house purchase but for me it was the biggest hurdle. I calmly made a decision.
    That first part is always a dilly for me. Faced with the option of having to decide without knowing the outcome always causes me to stall. I try to fingure the angles. On Sunday I just let go and did.
     This is what I should be getting:

A lurvely little home

with a lurvely little kitchen,

a lurvely (and newly remodeled) bath,

a lurvely little dining room,

  and a lurvely little living room.

     You should see the lurvely little porch swing that I also got out of the deal. Of course it is smaller, with only one real bedroom, than what my parents initially thought I might buy. Most importantly though it is well within my price range and I'm tickled at the idea of living there. Here is hoping.

Keep it simple

    Do to forgetfulness and an easily distracted mind I added  a new category to my invisible list of categories. This one is entitled Simplicity, or K.I.S.S. if you will. I went with Simplicity because of my still lingering fear of being un-intelligent. No need to remind myself to "Keep it simple, stupid."
    Anyway, the first entry under this new category, the first of many hopefully, I thought I'd write myself a simple post-it. Walk. more.
    The other evening I opted to walk to a friends home who lives less than a quarter mile from where I live. Typically I drive there since that quarter-mile is mostly uphill. Plus, I'm generally lazy. I don't know what motivated me to walk. Perhaps a bad day or some distraction in my thinking that needed to be worked out.
    On that small walk, replete with trees and sidewalks, I fell into the now. The now as I am sure we all know is that moment where one becomes aware of the objects, sounds, and smells surrounding you. I noticed the green of the leaves, the sent of flowers still in bloom, and the birds chirping and cars passing by. I saw people were friendly. They waved to each other on the sidewalk and a person I knew drove by me on the road, honking their horn and waving with a big smile. All worry and thought flowed out of me by the time I made it to where I wanted to go.
    I was able to stop, listen, and enjoy the company. My friend's wife is a hair stylist. She cut my hair in this little impromptu space they made downstairs. Another friend stopped by. We all ate hamburgers, potato chips and baked beans. Conversation went on until about 10 p.m. The friendship and conversation was warm and pleasant. I left with a warm glow.
    As I walked home thunder began to rumble on the horizon. Small cool drops of rain began to fall. I didn't get soaked, just damp. The rain felt cool and cleansing. I went inside, read a little, and experienced a very peace filled sleep.
    Since then I continue to find excuses to walk, slow down, and take a little more in instead of spewing things out.