No Direction

Well, I suppose that for what is the first time in a long time I have opened up a word document having no idea exactly what it is I’m going to write about, but it seems like something needs to be put down on the page, and there is no time like the present… ever. With the smooth beats of JJ Cale singing me along, a cup of Earl Grey warming up my insides, and the memories of a full, rich day floating around my head, there’s got to be something, right?

My day started with my possibles. What is it really possible to accomplish in a single day. Obviously my thoughts were turned to Joyce and Ulysses and the accomplishment that is contained in that single day—literally and metaphorically. Then, I was thrown into the realities of my days and the amount of things I manage to get accomplished in a day, and my head started to spin with the awful realities of our real, uninhibited possibles. This can kind of be a dangerous place for me to be, if only because I am well aware that I can be overwhelmed a little too quickly. Sometimes the sight of a sunset is too much for me to take. Sometimes the words on the page, their simple presence brings tears to my eyes. Sometimes things happen to fast, and in my desire to make good decisions, I am disallowed the opportunity to look at the big picture, and I make awful, abysmal decisions. Sometimes, it is too much to think about sometimes.

But, all of this was laid aside (kind of) when I set to the task of writing. Well, I’m working on a book, and it is sort of my habit to sit down every couple of days and knock out a few more pages. I plan to have 365 single-spaced pages at the end of the year (a nod to those serialized authors of yesteryear), and then edit it down to a manageable book-length work. It’s funny writing something that you are pretty sure is just going to be edited out later. There are times when I’m writing that I get really serious, serious déjà vu, like now. That was unrelated but somewhat important. They’ve changed something. In a way, I like writing things that I’m going to edit out because at that point I know that I am making conscious decisions. When I go back through it, it might wind up making the cut, it might not, but it is probably one of the first things up on the chopping block for consideration. Contained in this same idea is the work that I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that WILL be in the book or there won’t be a book. These are the parts where, as I’m writing them, they mean the world.

I guess that all relates to the relationships we have in our lives. The reason I love writing so much is precisely because when I am interacting with the language in this creationary mode, what I am really doing is interacting with myself and learning about myself and getting to dig around those parts of my mind where I am otherwise usually unwelcome. All that being said, I have often returned to a metaphor that basically runs “our life is a book we write ourselves.” As much as we want to say that somebody else wrote this or that piece of us, the fact of the matter is that, consciousness being what it is, we accepted or rejected whatever it was that person was giving. In a way, we know when we meet somebody, pretty much, whether they will be significant or not, and, many times, it is this feeling of life-worth that guides our direction into relationships. Aristotle was right on with his “kinds of friends,” and I’ll even give a nod to my father for distinguishing between friends and acquaintances. One of the strangest relationships then, is the romantic relationship.

Romantic relationships have been a huge struggle for me lately. Where do these relationships fall in the realm of friendship relationships—if it is granted that the primary mode of the romantic relationship is being “best friends” (the Aristotelian Friends of Goodness)? Maybe I answered my own question, but I think I asked it poorly, because that is the ideal modality of the romantic relationship: a relationship of goodness toward each other; however, what happens if, god forbid that kind of pain on anybody, the relationship has to end? There are a couple of options, and I think it depends largely on what the people in the relationship decide in terms of how important the friendship is to their current and future existence.

For my part, I have trouble letting go of my friendships, especially if they were romantic, and perhaps this is a character flaw, or maybe it’s the human condition. Anybody that affects a person that much will forever have a place in the consciousness because we are what we were. I am the man who was with such-and-such person. And yet I am plagued by the idea that sometimes the reason I can’t let go is that I am deathly afraid of being truly alone… if only because of my possibles. One of the possibles that has cropped up in nearly every relationship I’ve had is that the other is probably better off without me as the object of their affection. Put another way, I am a lost cause in relationships. I am too addicted to change, and the reality is that relationships are built on stability. It seems as though when I’m in a relationship it becomes algebra, and I am probably most appropriately represented by the X: 2X = ?

That was probably the largest part of my day (the above cogitations) and they occurred while attempting to play (and being only moderately successful) Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It was too much for me. I was overwhelmed, and I carried it into my teaching, which I regret, because it was the students that suffered. Surliness is a terrible attitude for a teacher to have. I barked in a way I haven’t barked in a long time. I used to yell at these kids because that’s what Bone always did, and it seemed to be effective, then I remembered my education theory and I refused to talk over top of my students: when the teacher’s tone is low, supportive, and pleasant, most of the attitude and behavior issues solve themselves. It is a tribute to the power of voice. But, I did bark, and reminded me that I shouldn’t, and that I was affecting these kids’ lives, which kind of turned the whole day around. Focusing on work keeps at bay three dreadful evils: boredom, depravity, and poverty. I was bordering on depravity until I re-focused myself.

Then, the culminating ninety-minutes of my workday was pretty fantastic. I got to teach writing to students who really wanted to learn about it (my adult students are just starting on their writing journey, and it pleases me to an absurd amount how I see them grasping these new concepts). I introduced a roomful of Korean adults to Garth Brooks and “Ain’t Goin’ Down ‘Til the Sun Comes Up.” “This is a very big part of America,” I said while singing along—I am a simple country boy from Missouri after all. Then, I got to see light bulbs going off in the minds of my writers as they stared in wide-eyed wonder at what they could do.

What is possible in a day? Seriously. I’d like to know, and I plan to find out.