There’s Just So

Much. It can be difficult to cope with. I guess that’s why I write about it. In any given week, there are so many things (and I use ambiguity for a reason here) that can happen. If one were of the appropriate skill level, they could take all the action around the world and comprehend it, but I don’t think that’s possible. Stephen Hawking be damned, nobody could understand the strings affecting the day-to-day. Come close…maybe, but full comprehension? Not a chance.

And Michael Phelps has seven gold medals.
And suddenly you’re on your way to Korea.
And without warning you owe Cablevision a thousand dollars.
And then you find the depths of your father’s irrationality.
And you have the worst sunburn of your life on the bottom half of your thighs.
And you are scared.
And the weight of history suddenly becomes too much to bear.

So many ands. To be blessed and cursed in the same moment, simultaneously in fact. How does one begin to pretend to see the sublime? The ability to ask questions is a big one, I think, having recently discovered that there are indeed people in the world for whom the questioning of information is an unused faculty.

“Kobe’s thirty-five and he’s been playing for like sixteen years.”
“Actually, according to Wikipedia he’s thirty and been playing for twelve years.”
“The days of spouting quote-unquote facts are over. Prepare to be checked.”

But then there is a feeling that washes over the epidermis, and thoughts flash through your mind about how perhaps you are precisely where you wanted you to be. You’ve been asking these questions of people for so long, and now you are asking it of yourself, even though you’ve already answered it. It’s time for the next question: “What do you plan to do about it? How do you plan to achieve this goal?” Good questions. I’ll get back to you sometime soon, I swear. I just need some time to think. A little quiet time with me and my psychosis to tighten things up a little bit.

“You know that I only live when I am near you… I have said that before, but I don’t think I ever came so near meaning it.”

--Kate Chopin, The Awakening, Chpt. XXXIV

Everybody has to find you. That’s the big quest isn’t it? Your love. He had it right all those years ago when he said, “Follow your bliss,” didn’t he? The words speak to me as nothing else ever has, and I am reminded each time they beg me to play with them, that it is love I have for the act of writing. It is a doing worth doing. There are so many doings worth doing, though, it’s about finding the right doing to do. The capacity of the human character to do is incredible, and it is possible that we haven’t even come close to understanding the peak just yet. Human technology. Athletes, academics, salt-of-the-earth: they are all human technology. Proof positive of evolution. The only real difference is that in this new era where we understand things like evolution, we can begin to see it happening on a very miniature scale. It took the human form almost five million years to figure out how to walk standing completely straight. We can see humanity develop under our eyes, and the funny thing is that it is moving in ALL different directions. A very wise professor once told me that that quality comes from quantity. He was by no means saying that a book or story is better because it’s longer, he was saying that the more material and more variety you have to work with, the better the end product is going to be—and anybody who has ever written a paper they are actually proud of would probably agree with me. The more material you have to work with, the more you can take out without feeling bad, the more you can develop into a recognizable mound, the more you can build a mountain range.

Cheap wine gives me headaches. Bummer.

On russet floors, by waters idle,
The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
In leafy dells alone;
And traveler’s joy beguiles in autumn
Hearts that have lost their own.

--Housman

To steal somebody’s attention is a precious thing to take. You’d better be able to give a pretty damned good reason for it when you’re called up to answer for the things you’ve done in this world, and if it’s done for good reasons that turn out good, then sobeit it probably needed to happen. But if it was done for selfish reasons, or even if it turned out badly with the correct motives—which means that the stealer was probably unaware of the nature of their victim—there will be hell to pay. Maybe that’s what worries me. “Well I got that ol’ travelin’ bone, and I feel I got to move…”

Disjointed is funny thing to understand fully. Fuzzy connections looming up through the time fog: executioner’s singing, Orpheus’s emerging, models for writing, powers in their imagining, vanity’s fairing, new world’s braving, and in fuzzy relief they connect, but only to the one disjointed enough to make it make sense. This will be true because I will it so.

Can you see me? I can see you. I bet you’re sitting at your computer right now. I bet you’re a little bit confused. I bet by now you might even be shaking your head. You’ve gotten this far and you can’t see me yet. See me sitting in my basement domicile pecking away at my tiny computer, next to the ancient lamp acquired from my boss in Des Moines. Hear the ceiling fan whirring gently (it’s only set on medium). Taste the awful, cheap Livingston making me feel lower. Smell the smell of stale cigarettes on my fingers as I lean too close to the screen in an effort to make sure I’m seeing things as well as I ought to see them. See this morning’s coffee cup. Hear the Incubus come through the tiny speakers. See the books on my shelf. Taste the cool, circulated air-conditioned air. Feel the goatee with me now. Feel the closeness of my breath in the words. Feel the closeness of me in action.