Buried

Written last night

Consistency comes at a premium...

Just kidding; I would not drag my readers into my masochism (that's a lie, but try to ignore it) by creating some perpetual and dull theme (___ comes at a premium...).

However, today was not much different than yesterday in timbre. Solomon would say that there was "nothing new under the sun" but the old bastard is wrong: the sun never came out today. My sister, Molly, was far more accurate when she said "it's a crappy day anyway—don't worry about it. It's just the weather...". The weather became my official excuse for not weed-whacking our ditch. The truth of the morning is actually a story of relative impotence. Clad in my designated lawn-care clothes, I made my way to the garage to fetch the weed-trimmer. I was pleased to find that there were two working units available—but frustrated by the apparent lack of two-cycle fuel to put into them. I cannot remember how to mix the two-cycle properly. So, I stuck my hand out of the garage door and pretended to feel a droplet hit my hand. All that I actually felt was my ankle, still throbbing from Monday's failed chin-up experiment (my foot has turned such a lovely purple...). I replaced the weed-trimmers and grabbed a dog brush instead.

It never rained, but I did pull four brushes-worth of loose hair from my beagle-mix.

As usual, I ate breakfast and became entirely too interested in the television—flicking the remote desperately for something that will justify my lingering presence on the couch. I gave up and played my bass for some time. That was second on the list of useful things I did today. I never did break double digits. I ate and lingered. Then I visited the bank and lingered. Then I visited the dog and lingered with him. I lingered in the kitchen and harassed my sister and her friend (to the extent that asking dumb questions and pacing-around is harassment). At some point in the day I practiced my cornet and discovered, yes, I did lose most of my stamina by slacking-off for over three weeks. I reviewed the dismal situation that is my debt to Michigan State university, then showed my mother who insisted on hugging me and telling me it would be alright. That unnerved me, naturally. I lingered and talked about random things with my father while he did dishes. Then, after dinner, I finally absconded to my room to sit down at the computer! I was right on the verge of writing something...

When I decided to play my favorite puzzle game instead.

Forty-five minutes later, I opened my word-processor and... here I am. I am not the least bit interested in what I have to say, either. What do I have to offer even myself, at this point? I have remained in the tentacles of the same inertia I complained about two days ago. No, I don't like the tentacles image as well as I like one of... hmmm... a tar-pit. Yes. Cords of noxious black goo hang from my arms and chest. My legs pump in vain against the congealing surface of my sticky prison. The more I struggle... the more I like that image too much: it is getting a little melodramatic. Tar-pit accidents are contingent on searching for something, then stumbling upon the trap. [insert explanation of tar-pits and how predators are disproportionately represented in them]. No. As demonstrated by my recent 45 minute hiatus (a drink of apple-juice that decayed into watching a baseball game in the middle of writing this entry) I am not stumbling into anything. I know exactly where I am going, which is nowhere. It's a stand still. I am more like one of many curious mounds I saw in the Belizean countryside. Amidst an otherwise gently sloping landscape there might be a cluster of particularly conical hills. They are covered in dirt and vegetation like any other part of the forest but they may actually be temples. The people who own the land either cannot afford or do not care to afford (if you know what I mean) the expense of hiring archeologists to uncover the ancient structures and the government forbids that anyone else take a shovel to them. The temples were washed over by a tide of vines, then one of ground covering plants, then shrubs, then trees, etc. At every step, the assailants' roots and foliage deteriorate and add to its loamy blanket, so that with disuse each temple becomes more and more an ordinary hill. All the temples have to do is sit there and wait to be folded into the pages of oblivion.

Am I a temple underneath all of my dirt after all? Perhaps those acute angles are nothing more than anomalies. Yet, that is not possible, is it? Where do such strange things come from if they are not built? We will never know for sure without digging; this is why I need to make a motivation proclamation. Whatever it is that is burying me needs to be thrown off.

Trying to Wake Myself Up

Control comes at a premium. I think we too seldom weigh the cost of being in control of our lives. Most of the time, I am not sure that this is what we think we are after. I only tentatively stand by the notion, myself. At the same time, what motivates us to follow convention? Why does social proof hold sway over our behavior, even after faith or feelings or even rational thought have postulated the opposite? I refuse to pick on smokers, this time. This time, I am willing to turn the lens of examination on myself and everyone I resemble. A mere glance at a media rich society reveals that we do take our stimulation, too often, vicariously. To be blunt, we count on getting some emotional contagion from the tellie—I've looked to cheap fictional involvement a great deal over the past three weeks. Cheap might be a little harsh. I caught the end of a cerebral thriller with my sister just a half hour ago (has it been that long already?). The cognitive effort is less than reading—and the creative effort is nil. No risk of failure.

May is what May has been, for me. I started quitting during finals week. To say "quitting" so generally is the easiest way to describe my demeanor. Predictably, I became dull in my disciplines. It doesn't surprise me anymore, or cause me to panic nearly as much as it ought. I am sure there is a May journal entry from two-thousand six or seven or five that reflects the post-semester angst (in eight I justified is as resting before my great trip south). My prayer and music life always seems to suffer as a microcosm of my self. Unfortunately, as my prayer and music life go, so goes the rest of my self.

Thoughts go unreflected (<--there is a red squigley here {and another under squigley}—what do you want from me, Microsoft word? Professor Balboni chastised me for my hyphens, yet you insist upon one? I am leaving it as it is. SIC. There is no reason that the prefix 'un' cannot attach to the front of 'reflected'. When a thought is not held next to a mirror, even one as imperfect as text, those thoughts remain without reflection—unreflected. Word can kiss-off...) during these junctures. Sometimes, trite makes right: I'm afraid of my own reflection. I prefer not to see these telling images.

Now is where I can get waxy with philosophizing and try to break down uncertainty and control and the whole of the universe. I could bifurcate the issue: "one must gain control and beat uncertainty either by exploring and conquering or by shrinking back to a minimal sphere and possessing it—obviously the former is best!" Well, every witty bifurcation possesses a true principle surrounded by a vacuous space that every qualitative element has been driven from. What about my bed, made the same each day? Am I possessing the minimal space? What about my trip to the publishing house in Indianapolis? Was that the kind of exploring and conquering that I was taking about? Let's let it alone. Action comes after thought.

Cutting to the intrapsychic core, I know better than to shrink from my disciplines, my mirrors and the possibilities of a new day. My excuses for remaining so relaxed are growing tired. My ankle hurts. My bowels hurt. I slept too long. I'll do something later. As usual, I write myself into one of these chains, get frustrated and start looking for an end to the entry. The text validates the reality. Control comes at a premium because when we have to limit our actions to really have it with certainty. This is the self-imposed restriction I suffer under. If I pick up an instrument, or take up the keyboard, or kneel to face God, then I am doing something that convention has not provided a sure heuristic with which to cope. Spirituality, creativity, wit: these take risk. Sleep and its related states (like media stupor, for example) are easily controlled.

Now is the part where I make some cryptic hopeful remark. My will to stay with a thought fades because I know that I have explored these places in journals before. Except, I'm laughing at myself a little better, today. Maybe the aching bowels really were just an opportunity to sit on the toilet and read snippets of Thurber and wonder if anyone would ever want to sit on their toilet and read Gore. In any case (my favorite prepositional phrase, which I try to avoid like the plague), this business of summing everything up in a page has never suited me. What is global ends up being so much about everything that it is about nothing you can get your hand on or your mind around.

Oh well. At least I got onto the word processor today (though it wouldn't let me use "intrapsychicly", even if intrapsychic is acceptable). I'm still unhappy with my writing voice. Go figure.