Something to say every day

Could I commit to saying something every day?

There's "the yoga blog" where I write every time I take a class, which is nearly every day. But the channel is pretty narrow. The purpose of that was to journal an experience. To journal a journey. It's less creative than reflective and documentary. The eclecticity (to fake a word) of this blog has always been sort of the epitome of "me." I don't know what I will have to say, from one day to the next. It has turned out, from time to time, that I have been either prolific or tapped-out, clever or obvious, angry or grateful, tactful or divulging. 

It's all over the place. 

In recent years, much of that bipolarity has been dampened. I thought of it as "losing my creativity" or "losing my edge" but the truth is, it might be more a case of me just settling into my place in this life. There's less anger. Less indiscretion. Less of the need to be clever or to belabor the obvious. And all of that seems to manifest itself as, what at least feels like, a dulling down. 

But it doesn't have to be that way. There are still things to say. It's just perhaps going to be less spewing and more saying. Is it bad that I'm not angry anymore? Is it bad that I am not resentful of the world? Is it bad that I am actually quite apathetic about such affairs as the Republican Primaries? It just doesn't feel important to me anymore.

Last week, I was at dinner with friends, and I started a rant about Romney. I asserted that it's hard to believe this country would elect a Mormon. My friend, who is not religious, and definitely not a Mormon supporter, jumped on me and stated that it's completely asinine to discredit a candidate because of his religious affiliation and, to suggest that Romney would try to favor the cause of the Mormon Church was also ridiculous. I wanted to get defensive. I wanted to push it. But the fact is, he was right. Who cares what religion the guy is? And who even cares if he gets in office and attempts to further the cause of things that he cares about, even if one of those things related to religious organizations? It's no different than the kind of special-interest pandering that occurs with corporate interests. How is it any different? And we get mad about that too. But why get mad?

I am starting to spin into a rant. But my point is that my friend, who has always been more liberal than conservative (and still is, as far as I know), called me out on being a hot-button liberal, looking for any reason to jump on the right for their questionable causes. He's showing me that, if I want to rant about Ann Coulter (which I have been known to do in the past), I should probably not walk around yapping like her Bolshevik counterpart.

So, rather than get mad, or defensive, I agreed with him, and decided to rant about how it's horrible that multimillionaires always seem to be running everything, instead.

But secretly, and not-so-secretly, I still believe it's complete bullshit that this country would even consider electing a Mormon (there, I got the last word).

Westbound and...

Is it up?

East was supposedly down. So, then, is West up? Is North South? What is real?

I dreaded the trip home (as usual). But also, as usual, it was much better than expected, and I leave Boston wondering where I belong. Wondering "Where is home?" I felt a connection with family. Close family. Distant family. Old family. Young family. There are people who need me. There are people who just like me.

Pizza costs half as much... the roads are not straight... the accents are not neutered... your friends challenge you, but you don't need to worry if that means they won't like you anymore...

The East Coast, for all my fear around it, and all the heaviness of the past, and family, is still my home. And I talk about the East Coast as being so dark and nebulous, but the fact is, I have had my share of trauma, drama, and instability on the West Coast too. It's not been a walk down the primrose path.

The problem with the East Coast may be that it pulls at me. It makes me wonder what I am doing out here. It makes me question my priorities.

The allure of the West may be that it is safe... remote... disconnected. Can I be connected here?

Or is home where the heart is?

Fuck if I know...

Drinking in the rich history

There are so many questions unanswered. There are so many "I have always wondereds." I can carry the questions with me, as each of the keepers of the knowledge slowly makes their way to the grave, ultimately taking the very questions themselves to the grave with me. Or, I can take every opportunity to probe, explore, hunt, gather, sleuth, glean, extract, discover, and coax precious nuggets of history from those in my family that still hold the keys to this treasure.

Not everybody remembers everything. That's a fact. And not every bit of information lives in the minds of those alive to tell the tales. That's also a fact. But there is much still out there. And some people are as willing to talk as I am to listen.

I don't want to wish I had asked. That happened with my mother. I never got the chance. There are still people who can help piece together large chunks of the voids in my knowledge of her life. Her sisters... My dad...

Tonight we stood in my bedroom, which has become the "picture room" because the wall is adorned with dozens of photos of 4 generations of the two sides of my parents' family. And today, my father had stories to tell about every photo. And memories that were triggered by each. I learned things in a five-minute conversation at 1am that I had not learned in the 43 years prior.

The loss and grieving is sort of an opening of a window into hearts and minds.

I am not going to walk past this opening because it's exactly what I need. In fact, it may be exactly what we all need right now.

Eastbound and down

It's getting dark. Rapidly. Now it is dark. That fast. When you are traveling east, everything happens more quickly. Blue sky becomes sunset. Twilight becomes blackness.

Going home seems to always have some feeling of darkness associated with it. I ran away from home, in a way. Well, I actually drove away from home. But the effect was the same. I spent 30 years there, and I decided that was enough.

After my departure, little pieces of that world disintegrated bit by bit. I feel like I am looking at a photo of Marty McFly's family in the movie Back To The Future. First my mother disappears. Then my sister.

Okay, that's morbid. And perhaps a little over-dramatic.

Still, I do feel heaviness heading east, and lightness heading west. That is the way it is. West is safe. East is uncertain. West is my life. East is my past. West is where everything now is. East is a sense of vacancy.

More drama. Oh, but it's good drama, right? I'm not pitying myself, mind you.

I am just heading east again. And this is all part of the show.

Goodbye, Ronna Lou

Nobody actually ever called her that and, to be honest, she'd probably kill me for even typing that here. But, unfortunately, that's not possible.

My sister died yesterday. Now I am sitting in an airport, waiting for an airplane to be fixed so that I can go to Boston and do the family thing that must be done when people die. 

I don't think I know how to grieve. Or maybe I do. I am not sure if I am grieving or if I am numb. I am not sure if numbness is grieving. I don't know anything. When my mother died 4 years ago, I felt numb. I did not feel the uncontrollable urge to sob. I did not feel like I couldn't go on. In truth, I felt like all there was to do was to go on. So I did. And here I am again, feeling the same way. It's not that there are no emotions. I definitely have some emotions. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that both my mother's and my sister's deaths were entirely expected. There was nothing sudden about them. In both cases, it was (to use a term that I don't usually use) a blessing for them both, that they went quickly, because life was not going to be worth living for either of them.

My sister found out that she had a neurological problem at a pretty young age. This diagnosis came as a result of a few episodes in her younger years. Nobody could say for sure if she was truly in imminent danger from this vascular abnormality in her brain. But it was always this thing lurking there, sort of like a time-bomb. Everyone in the family worried about it. There were periodic tests over the course of decades. I cannot even imagine the stress she must have experienced, knowing all those years that this was in her head, and pretty much nothing could be done about it other than to hope it didn't cause more problems.

In the end, the time-bomb didn't actually "explode," but it worked like a slow-release of destruction, always wreaking anxiety and depression in my sister's life and, ultimately, causing her to slowly disappear over the course of the last few years. The Ronna that I knew wasn't gone yesterday; she was gone a long time ago.

Because I moved to Seattle, my relationships with everyone have been spotty. I have only visited about once a year, since 1999, if that. There were periods of time where I was in frequent, daily communication with my sister. She knew everything that was going on in my life. She was my friend, my confidante. Then, there would be periods where the relationship went dark, and we didn't communicate for months. Toward the end, I did not answer her phone calls, because it was too painful. I expect there is some regret to be felt in that. I don't know. It just got so hard, because she knew how to dial my number, but when I answered, the conversation was too difficult. It was dementia. Perhaps you can imagine. Perhaps not. 

Because it deteriorated over time, and I am out here in Seattle, it was easy to almost forget how close we'd been. We did not always see eye to eye, and she did not share all the same values with me, but she loved me, and she thought I was her really cool little brother. Even though we barely grew up in the same house, due to the age difference, there was some special bond, that defied the generation gap. We were probably closer than any two people in my entire family. We had our own unique sense of humor. Things were funny to us that were funny to nobody else. We were irreverent together. 

Ronna was wacky, sarcastic, clever. She was also shy, anxious, alone. I feel like I was always on the inside. There was an outer shell around her that was all those negative energies, but I was comfortably inside that wall, enjoying the relationship with "The Real Ronna." Not many people got to see that. A few of her friends. Her daughter. Her husband. 

Seeing our parents die starts to make us realize that nothing is forever. Seeing our siblings die starts to make us think about our own inevitable mortality. I'm not a big fan of that concept. I've been fortunate, especially compared to some of my friends, in that I have not lost many people who are close to me. I realize you can't outrun that forever. 

When I do think about my own death, it is terrifying to me. I don't believe there's anything else out there. I believe that the end is the end. That all we leave behind are memories. I hope that I can at least make those memories be good ones.

Long... long... short... long...

Today finds me shunted to a new track. with no destination. just always on the track. moving forward, and eating up the miles. occasionally stopping in a station, and blowing the loud loud horn, with the pattern.. long... long.. short... looooong, just like the many trains that pull me into the moment day and night in my home in downtown Seattle.

Another of those blog entries from the past where I can't even tell you what I was thinking. I don't even know what my struggle was. I guess it was probably 2008. So I guess I know what influence I was under. In fact, it sheds a little light on the regret blog as well. 2008. Not a good year. If I were a winemaker, I would have burned the grapes from that year, because the memories didn't age well. Okay, I'm being melodramatic. I actually have come to terms with most of what happened in that year.

2008 was the year my mom died. I was likely lamenting the revolving door of relationships that I had during that period of time. I had likely just exited one of those doors, and was feeling adrift. It was also the year I joined the band. I might have been in a phase where I was drinking more alcohol than I typically would ever consume. There was a little window of time where I was slightly more "dark" for lack of a better word.

I felt lost in 2008. I felt lost in 2009. It was two solid years of being lost. And I never attributed it to anything. Well, that's not really true. I definitely experienced a lot of rough times, and I certainly attributed them to all kinds of things. But I never realized that there was a big continuous window of being lost, except perhaps in fleeting moments that might have been captured in some journal entry, but were eventually forgotten. I think I was actually getting lost before that, and remained lost after that.

For my first two years here, I could not help but hear the sounds of the trains. Some people love the sound. But I found it to be irritating. I know what they're doing, and why they're doing it. I know what long... long... short... loooooooong means:

"Wherever feasible, train horns must be sounded in a standardized pattern of 2 long, 1 short and 1 long.  The horn must continue to sound until the lead locomotive or train car occupies the grade crossing."

But I still believed that the horns were there to vex me, and that they were largely unnecessary, driving back and forth, unloading their cars, in a purely industrialized neighborhood. Surely, there could be no need to iterate this call endlessly. Why?

And over time, I've stopped hearing it. It is still happening, I'm sure. And if I try to listen, I will hear it. But my brain finally decided that it wasn't an important stimulus.

I didn't feel lost in 2011. I am on a new track. I don't know what the destination is, for certain. But I know that there is one. I am moving forward, but not merely eating miles. I am going somewhere.

No regret

"I will always regret so many things regarding us." That's what she said. I won't tell you who she is. And I won't tell you when she said it. And I won't tell you why she said it. But for all of the possible explanations for such a statement, from all possible sources, at all possible times, I will respond with the same assertion of certainty:


There is no regret.


Things happen, and we accept them. No matter which side of the action we are standing. If we cause pain, we must accept that we did it, and try to understand why we did it. And learn from it. And try to hold ourselves to a higher standard the next time. If we are the recipient of this pain, then we need to accept that we steered our lives along a path.


Again, I find words from the past. And I do not even know who they were about. It's strange to me that things from only a few years ago can have blended into some sort of mosaic of memories such that the same words could be true about many people. I guess the common theme among all possible subjects of the above was none other than me. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that I was struggling with regret.

There have been a few times in my life where regret has become a major factor. These days, I try to see things as: "If I am happy with where I am right now, then how can I possibly regret anything that has led me to this point?" And that's a cute little romantic view of the world. Basically, I am glad to be where I am right now. And I know that some of the things that I went through that triggered the greatest regret at various times are also some of the principal catalysts for the major choices I've made that landed me where I am.

But still, it troubles me... "I will always regret so many things regarding us..." What troubles me about it is just how many people it could have been who might have said that. How should I feel about being attached to that much regret? Maybe this is just the way love goes; the way life goes. We try things. And sometimes (usually) they don't work. And people regret. At least for a while.

Can I look back with no regret?

Can you?

Things you don't see anymore, or someday soon won't

A cord between the part of the phone that you hold in your hand ("the receiver"), and the part of the phone that attaches to the wall (I don't know what the hell that was ever called).

The expression "leaving the phone off the hook".

Gas pumps with mechanical numbers that flip over to indicate how many dollars you spent.

Postage stamps (okay, I am an oddball here, because I already don't ever purchase these anymore - but someday, no one will use them).

Film.

Unattractive middle-aged commercially successful pop/rock musicians with talent, who actually write and perform their own material.

Cathode ray tube televisions or computer screens.

Local banks.

Video stores.

News.

Television programming that involves professional actors.

Trivia questions that cannot be immediately answered.

Things that are paid for by taxes.

Phone books (we can only hope).

Libraries (sadly).

Fair elections.

Cassette tapes.

CDs.

Saber-tooth tigers.

Fear of mediocrity

I wonder if it's better to never really try at anything at all, than to go all in on something, and never be great at it.

In my newly found strategy of completing old blog entries that were sitting in "draft" mode, I come across this entry. There was nothing but the title, and the first characters above that you see in red. So, I am left to pick up where the story left off, little story that there was, and take it in a direction that means something to me now.

Truth be told, I do not even know what I was talking about. I do not know if I had been discussing music, or if I was just in a phase of self-deprecation, where everything seemed bleak and pointless.

But how is this true today?

I can say for sure that it is not better to never really try at anything. But I do experience fear about trying and being mediocre. That's something that is incredibly important to me. I want to be good at everything I do, which means that I either have to work really hard, or choose really carefully.

Lately, I started exploring "art." I have never thought of myself as an "artist." In fact, even when I look back at the things that I did as a child, I have to say that there is little evidence of a budding creative genius. I could start telling you about how maybe it's because my mother never let me play with the Play-Doh because it would make a mess, but that is probably best left for a different blog entry.

The art interest started when I dated Denise, her being an artist and all. I had always known what I liked when I saw it, and had fairly strong preferences in particular directions. I was not what you'd call an art appreciator, but I definitely enjoyed Art Walk when someone would invite me to attend one. Dating an artist, I became attached to a collection and a style, and took an interest in what was involved in creating these works. I appreciated not just the work itself, but the fact that a person could have a vision in their mind, and then just set out and CREATE something. Seeing Denise walk up and down the aisles of an art store, sometimes briskly, sometimes in a pensive meandering way, I could tell that she already had an idea in her mind of what something was going to be, and it was just a question of finding the ingredients; almost like cooking. During our relationship, I had the luxury of having all of her "art overstock" hung on the walls of my place. The walls would have been barren, since I owned not a single piece of art, but instead they were filled with at least a dozen, maybe more, paintings of hers. It made my place look like someone lived here. Of course, after we split, most of the art went back to her, except for the few pieces that had been gifted to me.

But I think that planted the seed in my head about liking art.

Then, in the past couple of years, I finally decided "I am going to buy art." I am not sure what triggered it. I was in a new relationship, with Melissa, and we had gone somewhere that there was art, either to a cafe with things hanging, or a gallery, and I saw something that I really liked. Actually, it might have been that she was buying a gift for a friend of hers, and she wanted to get a small painting. Seeing that she was buying art made me think "Well, maybe I should too." There has always been this feeling that, if I have no art, then the first thing I buy somehow says everything about me. And it felt like that was a lot to say about myself, and I never bought anything. But on this particular day, in this particular mood, I decided it didn't matter if these were the first things I had ever bought. I am now not even sure I'm correctly remembering this, but I believe the first pieces I bought were tiny landscapes by Jennifer Phillips. They looked a lot like what's on this page. I saw them, and I could afford them (truth is, I could afford most art that I see, but these were only $60 or so, and it felt "safe" to dip my feet in the arty waters with a small purchase rather than a big one). And most of all, I liked them. I felt comfortable with the idea that, even if someone might think I'm defining myself, that these are pieces that defined me.

And that broke the ice. I have purchased a fair amount of art since then. Some of my favorite local artists, whose work I own, include Deborah Stachowic, Jacqui Beck, and Kelly Rae Cunningham. While there are several different styles and media among the pieces I own, I have a bit of an inclination toward encaustic. I didn't mean to buy like ten pieces of encaustic, but it just happened. I'm attracted to the texture of it, and the bright colors, and the crispness of the lines that the colors create.

So... all that brings us to the original topic, which was fear of mediocrity. I decided that I'd like to learn to do some art (this long story will become rather short at this point). A couple of months ago, I took a mosaics class with Melissa and her coworkers. I felt like the piece that I made was nothing special. I felt like it could have been done by a third grader. I felt like anything anyone said about it that was positive was probably just some platitude to make me feel good about myself. But, after letting it be for a while, I decided that maybe it wasn't that bad after all.

So, now I am taking an encaustic class (actually, with Deborah Stachowic). I've had the opportunity to make a few pieces during a 4-week class. Again, I don't really know if what I'm doing is mediocre, good, great, or what. I will post those pieces when I get them back. I learned some things, and I know some of the mistakes I made. I had some struggles, which I wrote about in my other blog. But I also had the experience of coming in with an idea, and having it become something completely different, and better. I took something that was originally going to be closer to imitation, and transformed into creation. I guess I feel good about that.

I do fear mediocrity. But I also realize that sitting around and doing nothing because I don't want to fail would be a miserable way to live.

Aloneness

I don't like to be alone.


I am an extrovert. No matter how much socializing I do, there always seems to be room for more. That's true. But the type of aloneness I am talking about here is more about the "being with myself" variety. I do my best to avoid it. And I am not entirely sure why.

I wrote that first couple of sentences probably at least a year ago. And over the past year, I have oddly seen myself making a turn inward. Case in point, it's Saturday night, and I am home alone, with no plan. It's not for having tried and failed. I never had a plan. Never considered making one, except perhaps passingly, I might have considered reaching out to this or that person. But here I am, completing a blog entry from years ago, about Aloneness, in a rather ironic twist, because I know where I was going with it, and it seems to be less and less relevant to me than it ever was before.

I am not sure what it means. Am I becoming better with "being with myself," as I commented above? I don't know. Am I becoming an introvert? I don't know.

There are fragmented thoughts and connections here. I recall my mother speaking of my father. She would occasionally say to me "When your father and I first got married, we had so many friends. We would get together with them regularly. But over the years, one by one, he decided that they weren't good enough, and didn't want to be friends with them anymore."

First of all, I would not under any circumstances take my mother's assessment of my father's actions as a reflection of reality or underlying intent. I think she only observed that he became less inclined to get together with others, more okay with isolating, and she overlaid her resentment, and decided that it must have been because he felt they weren't good enough. But maybe it was something completely different? Maybe he decided that he wasn't good enough? Maybe he went through changes internally that just caused him to feel less connected with people? He's still alive. I could ask him. But I suspect that he would tell me that he doesn't recall. I should probably try to ask him.

I'm not sure any of my father's experience is necessarily relevant to mine. But I do see that I went from frantically scrambling to never not have something to do, to now being completely content to have nothing to do.

What's different with me? Have I decided that people aren't good enough? Have I decided that I am not good enough? Am I just cherishing the time alone? Am I in limbo deciding what connections I want to maintain? Am I creating space for new things that have not yet arrived?

I don't know.