Another Day Goes By. For Me.

I showered today, I carpooled with my wife to work, drank coffee, ate lunch, and realized that I forgot something for filing my taxes.  I felt love, I felt nervous for the future, I got frustrated, I was happy.  Another dreaded Monday is coming to the end as I sit on the couch, clicking away at the computer.

So much about life is mundane.  We are made up of these many mundane moments mixing together.  Life seems to pass quickly these days.  The sidekick wife and I have started our birthing classes and every time the weekend arrives it feel like it was just here.  The future of a lovely little baby boy abusing reusable diapers in Castle Black feels far away, but I suspect it may arrive swiftly like Lancelot in a Monty Python movie.

These days we want to nest but can't because we're fixing up the basement to expand our 830 sq ft grandma home.  The construction could start in as little as a few weeks or approximately as long as who the hell knows?  The bank just asked for even more documentation of income and such last week (even though we're already approved)... and we aren't allowed to start some of the pre-construction work until we get permission from them.  This uncertainty of timing is frustrating and inconvenient but it's all part of living... and not much of a complaint.

I, we, are excited for the future on a fundamental, base level.  We've been married for ten years and are finally getting around to having the children that we thought we'd have eight years ago... before we found too many reasons to continue not trying... before we were reminded of the lack of control we have over things.  I never thought I'd be 30 and childless, but after everything... this year feels like a gift, like a mercy, like a true joy.

I consider the qualities I want my child to possess... what hopes I have for his future life.  I smile at the knowledge of his loving, sweet mother's guidance.  This will be a home of peace, of love, of shelter.  This will be an attempt at demonstrating how to properly interact with the world.... how to get by without giving up that which is most important... how to worship God, not self, in every act... how to be the person we all wished we'd become when we were too young to know better... to know worse.

I fear this world.  I fear the effect it has on me... on my inner self.  I often wonder if living a good life in every single seemingly interminable act is somewhat harder than choosing to give up your life for God in a single act.  I feel confident that I could make the latter choice... and I daily fail at the former.

This world is full of joy.  It's overflowing with happiness.  There's more good in the world than could ever be consumed, experienced, and described... but there's also sadness.  It's like a dirty sheen that covers everything.  It's an oil spill in a crystal-clear ocean and we're suck trying to live in the midst of it, praying to stay clean.

Today I made it through another day.  Someone else didn't.  Another day went by.  For me.  For someone else the day ended early.  It wasn't cancer.  It wasn't a heart attack.  It wasn't a tornado or an earthquake.  It wasn't the rainbow variety of changes and chances this world offers.  It was none of those things, though they happen.

Today a once smiling child with a happy heart and love in their eyes woke up... older... twisted... deformed  by the world and self.  Today a father lost a child... not because of any good reason... just because.  Because someone else decided they should.

This is no rare act.  It's a daily reality in some places.  On the newscast when it happens to generic others... it's almost like background noise.  We've grown accustomed to that suffering, but not when it happens at home.  This one has emotion...feeling... and it isn't pleasant.

This bombing at the Boston Marathon is perspective.  It is a wake up call.  This type of death is tragic.  It is unacceptable.  It is many things and none good... and the lives lost shouldn't hurt and anger me more just because they mirrored my own.  God doesn't value an American more... but somewhere subconsciously I do.

I need to re-awaken to the reality of the equality of mankind.  I once left the US because I felt it was fine and well to wax intellectual about equality if I was always comfortable and surrounded by familiar things... but it was another thing to go somewhere different to live the reality of "different isn't worse."  Mankind is beautiful and full in diversity.  I'm realizing that this semblance of indifference to suffering around the world is the same superiority malaise from a different angle.

It's an interesting juxtaposition... my eagerness to bring another soul into this world... a world of too-oft sadness.  I think of parents who loved their children before birth, who dreamed of them before even the act of conception and who had the hopes of a full and vibrant life... like I do... and I can't imagine the burning grief and sorrow they feel today... a sorrow someone else wanted them to feel, just because.

This world civilization we have collectively grown is not sustainable.  It simply isn't.

I refuse to be satisfied just because another day went by.  For me.

Renew Year

Digit Four

pimple faced

emotionally unbalanced

millennium two

is a teenager

JB 12/31/2012

The new year rolls out before me, shrouded in mist and mystery.  Four digits, one changed.  Two-thousand and twelve is nearly spent, but the dying wroth of a bitter year still burns brightly in ash - enough to make me wonder whether a single new digit will change my fortune.

I’m surprised to find that I’m too bitter to look forward with pure hope and joy.  A new year dawns and for the first time I feel somewhat like the girl with diamond jewelry who freezes to death, never noting the irony of coal transformed and draped around her body in cold, hard glitterings.

I’m not happy with what the last year brought, but it’s hardly a satisfying experience to seethe.  I’m tired of having reasons to be angry, but I’m also tired of my own response.

It’s not the year that needs renewed, it’s me.  Now is probably as good a time as any.  I should probably work on this.

Christmas

Returning

south beckons

a home I no longer know

a place familiar yet changed

like the constant wind blowing in a sacred place

never ceasing yet not the same

JB 12/20/2012

Quiver Not, Oh Quiver Of Thought

I feel like my mind has different modes - creative, abstract, pensive, active.

It's more than just a mood, it's like tunnels that lead to different places and even though they may run parallel, between them is a barrier I pass not.  Last night I was able to pray and the focus and intent and connection I felt was like a clear river.  Tonight it's like I'm held back by a veil.  I feel like I'm searching for a connection and just saying words as my mind alternates between searching for God and wandering haphazardly.

On the other hand, I could write anything I wanted tonight and always find the words for it.  I could explain anything aptly... coherently... succinctly.

It somehow goes beyond even a frame of mind.  It is more a method of thought.  It is a daily new brain.

Some day mankind will be ready to discover what makes the mind flow along certain pathways... what calibrates it to function smoothly for specific tasks.  Or maybe the truth has been discovered and I've not yet found it.

Somewhere an Indian guru speaks of meditation methods.  Another of proper nutrition.  Another of intent and relationship with events.

Somewhere a man flexes but butt and tilts his head just a bit - voila! - the brain stopper's chain is first stretched taught and then pulls the stopper out as the thoughts begin to flow.

Learnings within learnings and mysteries yet unsolved - awareness lies over the next hill.

A Dream, Awakened

a jumble of thoughts

life is a mixed up puzzle

a dream awakened

-JB 11/14/2012

I feel like my mind is flexible today, as if I never really woke up.  Interpret this dream for me.

I had a dream where my wife and I bought our first house in a town that visually was unfamiliar to me now that I think back on it.  We were neighbors to a very large red house with white trim.  This was notable at the time.  My wife bought the house before I had seen it and there was excitement as she drove me home for the first time.  There was some sort of group meeting at our home, almost like we were a band out in the wilderness making camp, and I had to make sure that I woke up on time for work... but it was more than just going to work, it was something more significant and meaningful to the group.  I went upstairs as I explored the house.  I noticed that the previous owner had left the house furnished with dressers and beds and the closets were filled with clothes.  One room on the left had an old computer that played retro games, which excited me to play again.  That room had other old electronics that excited me to see again. There were more rooms in the house than it initially seemed, and at the end of the hall was second staircase down to the first floor kitchen that I had missed when I first came in the house.  Another staircase was next to that.  It was narrow and twisted a bit, but I could see that it went from the second floor all the way to the basement which I had not yet been to.  From the top of that staircase I could see that a light was on in the basement and the floor was red like the floor in our real home.  My wife was sometimes my brother and sometimes my wife again and all of the things left in the house, once belonging to someone I realized was now dead, were new to me and I was excited to find out what was valuable, but also just excited to have new things.

Thought Directions Awry

This is how you capture thoughts, with a net of letters and heart blazing.

I want to be the longest lived rose, well past full bloom.  I want a thought like the forcing up of a mountain and if I could run faster than sound then I'd have myself a conversation about it.  Some days I could kiss my wife and be happy forever, other days my restless mind couldn't find peace in a million joyous such.  Is there a meaning to the difference in days, a symbol of content writ in spirit?

Moments align and find synergy if you let them, but if I could see far enough then my moments would be your first and her second.  My brain rages in a cage with inadequate words, maybe you know them?  Emotion foams at the base of a fall it can't climb well enough to speak.  The summer is often full of grander dreams than cold winters, but if I could run faster than light then I'd watch my mistakes in real time and never have to wonder why the prettiest rose has it the worst.

Yoga and Discord In The Choir

Renaissance

I journeyed east in the morning.

My eyes strained, battling against the sunrise.

Tears welled and I blinked them away

as the world was lit on fire.

That shining and stunning morn

That majestic and breathtaking dawn

A spark of awareness within me rose with ever increasing force

until my entire being was joyously consumed.

Crying out, I raised my voice in discord to the choir of dust

and turned west in harmony and alignment with all that mattered.

The sun, the earth, and the direction of the future

I have become a rider upon the primal pulse.

-JB 06/25/2012

I often find myself walking down the same mental roads.  I don’t think it is a habit so much as a lack of ability to discern alternate possibilities.  I’ve been told that my sense of humor suggests at a creative mind and maybe that is true on one level or another, but in terms of the habitual problem solving that we all undertake as part of daily life… I’m far more boring and analytical than that.  There are just so many things that I would never consider until they are brought to my attention and, usually, such answers stun me in their simplicity.  I think it is this reason, my penchant for thinking too linearly, that abstract concepts seem to hold so much meaning.

I was doing yoga last night, and the meditative portion caught me off-guard despite that I had heard it before.  In Jamal’s world, one relaxes the mind and the body… though this is easier said than done.  Telling me to relax my mouth, my throat, or my fingers is likely to blow my little mind.  Who thinks of their fingers as tensed?  I don’t, and yet imagining my fingers releasing pressure that I don’t feel somehow serves to inspire the creative thought I associate with the relaxing of the mind.

Left to my own devises, I would likely try to focus intently on not focusing, in the hopes that somehow it works and my mind relaxes in the same way that focusing radiation (poison) at cancer somehow manages to permanently kill the cancer (for a slim few) before it kills the person with cancer.  It’s like I am plugged into myself and can’t stop the electrical flow as it inexorably cycles round and round in a perpetual loop.  It isn’t until a concept comes along that is completely unlike anything I could ever independently conjure, and it serves to capture my attention long enough for the flow to ebb and release me.

The meditation from this yoga video is nothing special.  It isn’t long.  It isn’t grand.  It probably isn’t even very unique.  I don’t think it is profound; so much as the specific angle it assumes as it departs from a more traditional train of thought is somehow well-aligned for me.  Like a switch in the track, it changes my direction and, once released, my brain can wander for a brief time in the vastness of possibility.

“Feel the pulse of the earth,” it said. “Be that pulse.  Be the earth.”
 
I don’t know or even care if there isn’t a single other person alive who feels moved by those words, but they take my level of thinking and sink it deeper.  I long for that depth of thought.  I need that depth of thought. 

“I would rather be ashes than dust! 

I would rather that my spark should burn out 

    in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. 

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom 

    of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. 

The function of man is to live, not to exist. 

I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. 

I shall use my time.”
-Jack London

I’ve written before that there are some people who are electric. They serve much the same purpose as meditation in that they sink my thinking deeper. I suspect that I do a decent job of recognizing such people, but I do a downright poor job of connecting with them, of emulating them, and of taking advantage of the fortune of knowing them.

I once knew a man and whenever I spoke with him there was a sense of magnetism, like the feel of the air as it gets chased across the country by a storm. I think of him often, and how his mother described him as a renaissance man when he died. I don’t yet think of myself as old, but I’ve lived longer than many who deserved it more. Sometimes I wonder if it is not those who do the least that survive, if we are not the embers, slowly cooling long after the fire passed.

Some may feel that’s a sobering concept full of morose tendencies. I don’t. I think it’s empowering. The fact is, if you get your thinking down deep enough, every ember longs to be renewed in flames.

We could all use a renaissance in our lives.

Neenah, WI and Perception

I took a walk with my sidekick wife down the streets of Neenah, WI.  “Perception is a funny thing,” she remarked thoughtfully.  I agree.

Neenah, which almost sounds like my childhood neighbor’s nickname, seemed quite a beautiful town that night.  The wind was blowing softly and the May air carried a chill that felt almost like fall.  Would it have felt as electric on another night?  Probably not, but this will be my lasting memory.  Perhaps it was the wideness of the streets, the styles of houses, the age of trees, or maybe the “somewhat run down but not really” industrial feel of it… I’m not sure what it was exactly, but I was reminded of Lafayette and wondered what it would be like to live there.

I watched an episode of Sherlock on PBS and something about the introduction reminded me of watching television at my Grandmother Agnew’s house.  I remember watching Nick at Night.  I remember the uproar when we realized that they might cancel the Cosby Show for that (not as good) cartoon the Simpsons.  I remember Count Duckula, and David Letterman, and the thrilling knowledge that I was staying up too late.  Now there's no time of the evening that holds the same sort of magic.

I dreamed of highschool soccer in Lafayette again, and a friend and former teammate who died when he, his little brother, and his mother jumped off a parking garage on Purdue campus.  I learned a song about Comet Cleanser riding with them to a game during happier times, and have for years been somewhat haunted by my failure to win a youth league when his father sponsored the team in their name.  I remember my father choking up while relating a story about him that year, during the annual end-of-year soccer dinner at Jeff High School.  The Broncos… a team that had been my life growing up, a school whose halls I walked more than most students ever did, a building I almost felt a sense of ownership for, and a mascot and color scheme that still holds more sway in my dreams than the team I eventually played for years later when my father retired.  One moment you think you know it all, then your friends die and you play for your enemy.  In the end, it’s just a game, but sometimes it feels like life was stolen.

I never knew my Grandfather Agnew.  He died of a heart attack at the age of 50, long before I was born.  I hardly knew my Uncle Dan, though he gave me religion before dying a vagrant on the streets of San Diego - a brilliant mind dedicated to drugs and alcohol.  My living aunt and uncle don’t speak to one another.  My mother tries mending those fences, sometimes, when life and rejection don’t leave her buried in sadness.

I knew my Grandmother Agnew before she passed a handful of years ago, though some would say I never truly knew her.  To me she is cookie jars, television, and over-cooked meat.  To me she is laundromats, euchre, and a woman well-versed in the Heimlich maneuver that once saved my life as a child (I don’t eat butterscotch candies anymore).  To others she was a poor mother, irresponsible, selfish, weak willed, and needy.  To others she was about as bad an alcoholic as the world has ever seen.  To others her failings allowed a fractured family to further splinter.  To me, she is a long-recovered alcoholic, a staple of AA meetings, and an inspiration of how far back up the ladder of self-respect one can climb.

Yes, perception is a strange, transient, inconstant thing.   Are we best defined as a sum of our actions, an average, or a point in time?  Often, I wonder if it is not the latter.

To me, Martha Agnew is best defined as a woman whose last living word was “love.”  I hope to follow in that path.

Storming Into Life

There is an electricity in the air that precedes a real shit-kicker of a storm.

It's a sense of energy so strong that it's almost alive, and breathing it in is exhilarating.  It returns me to my core, lending an awareness than seems to otherwise blend into the background on a day to day basis.  Then comes the storm, fully of intensity and screaming out life and existence in the almost primal sounds of thunder.  Eventually the fury eases, but for awhile the drizzle remains and I find peace listening to the rhythmic rain and now distant booming out of nature.  Finally the storm is gone, but all around the air is fresh and renewed... and I am content.

Some people are like storms.  Seek them out.

Wound Up Like The Wind

outbound
for places old and new

wound up like the wind

restless and insatiable

the mind is moving ever on

returned
yet not the same

recomposed every instant
each one a revelation

JB - 04/13/2012

I often find my mind drawn to the wind. Maybe that's because they share three letters, while the fourth is just flipped on it's head.  More likely, it's because wind strikes me as an almost mystical entity.

As a child I wondered where wind came from, and I'll admit that I still struggle to get a good mind-wrap on the subject.  For some reason, absent the childhood depictions of a face in the sky blowing air around, it just doesn't make sense to me where wind finds its impetus.

There's something fascinating about being able to take a substance like air... so near unreal that we use it as the basis for weightlessness and how soft a thing can be... yet a simple flip of perspective (it moves) turns it into something completely different.

We all think we have the world figured out, at least well enough to manage with the necessary things of life - but how dramatic a change can be brought about by a shift in status.  Sometimes we forget that all is relative.  The same glass of water is cold or hot depending on our body temperature... the sun is rising or setting depending on where we are... happiness and joy, sadness and despair come and go... even people themselves are alive or dead, given enough time.

Everything in this transitory world is inconstant, yet we must place faith upon it as it is the entire basis for our physical existence.

My over-active nerd-brain finds that a strange contradiction.