Thought That Came Unbidden

He was the sweetest guy you’d ever meet. Always a smile, interested in what you had to say, ready to talk about things that interested him, devoted to his daughter, who is really a little angel. Loved his wife, who in a very convoluted, extended family way is my cousin.

And now he’s dead. For no good reason at all.

Fucking idiot picked a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I’m going to miss him, a lot, and I’m so angry because there was just no reason for this. None.

He was the sweetest guy you’d ever meet.

I heard someone say that hurricane Frances is now the same width as the state of Montana. I think that might be an exaggeration. Not that it matters, though. There’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

My uncle has been boarding up windows since yesterday. My aunt went to the feed store Monday and then again yesterday so their three horses and the four they are boarding should be fine (how much valium do you have to give a horse, exactly?)

In this instance, living in the middle of the state isn’t going to do them any good. They’ll be safe from storm surge but half their roof is already gone thanks to hurricane Charley. The important thing is that they, and all the animals, come through it OK. The house can be replaced.

More information about Frances:

• National Weather Service Tropical Storm Prediction Center: Frances
• Frances from space, 27 August
• NOAA Buoy Data Center radial search
• NASA’s Global Hydrology and Climate Center(animations)

Kids know how to live in the now. Right up until they’re about thirteen or fourteen years-old you can ask any kid her age and you’ll get an exact figure: 7 and 3/4, 4 and 1/2. Ask an adult the same question and nearly invariably you’ll get an answer that goes something like “I’ll be 32 next December” or “I’ll turn 28 in April.”

Are kids really that much more in the present than adults or does our attitude toward aging change that much as we do more of it? Instead of offering more priviledges — higher allowance, later bed time, more freedom — do we as adults come to look at it as a chore, just one more year closer to the inevitable?

I think kids are just better with the present, probably because they don’t have any responsibilities to speak of; there’s no worrying about when the mortgage is due, or when the Visa bill is due, or how the retirement fund doing? Their lives are more immediate than an any adult’s.

Someting to remember as I get older.

This was one of the headlines on NBC’s Olympics website:

Team USA trounced by tiny Puerto Rico
Americans outscored 28-7 in second quarter

Now…the U.S. Postal Service considers Puerto Rico to be domestic mail.

Puerto Rico has the same representation in Congress as the District of Columbia (though residents of Puerto Rico pay no federal income tax)

So…why doesn’t DC have its own Olympic team?

Maybe if we start training now, we can field one for 2008.

Go Team DC!

What does it say about me as a writer and a thinker that someone else has captured perfectly what I have been feeling?

It probably doesn’t mean anything at all.

I stumbled upon this essay that made me shout “Yes! That is it!” inside my own skull. Some would call it fate, some would call it the collective unconscious that illustrates the human condition and binds us all together, some would call it utter coincidence.

It probably doesn’t mean anything at all.

Or perhaps it was simply the goad I needed to crystalize what I’ve suspected but been too afraid to say myself.

I lie in this journal. Not that I tell untruths, for every word written here is true as I see it (after all, what is opinion but truth with a perspective), but I do not tell the whole truth. I hold back because I know that I am read.

I started out looking at this as a place to deposit those random and somewhat clever thoughts that were frequently thrown up by my over-worked, over-tired, over-bright mind. Ha ha, isn’t that dry and droll and if I make you laugh enough perhaps you won’t really look at me and see all the flaws that I see, or perhaps you’ll see them but forgive them as “quirks.” You’ll invite me out for coffee and spend your time with me and perhaps we’ll be friends.

Neat trick, eh?

The reality is that I don’t have confidence in myself, that I am more inclined to see my flaws than I am to see my strengths, and I do have strengths just the same as I have flaws.

External validation means way too much to me which is ironic given how little respect I have for my fellow man as a group. It’s also ironic given how much external validation I actually do have; my life is filled with love and support, albeit impassive, from my family and from The Girlfriend.

Do I really have anything to say or is this all sound and fury signifying nothing? A friend tells me that my perspective is unique and, ergo, valuable, but I’m not sure I believe her.

I suspect I am not worthy,
or special,
or unique,
or talented in any way.

I do know that I am frightened, scared of possibility, of taking advantage of it and being hurt, of not taking advantage and regretting it. And I have regrets, lots of them, and they aren’t the “damn, I wish I hadn’t done that” kind either. Is one kind better than the other? The commodification of cool that passes for American culture says yes, it is better to regret what you’ve done, to have taken the risk, except that you have to be damn careful who you take your risks with because if you aren’t you’ll get punished in some way like the degenerate pervert you really are. And if you aren’t careful enough, there’s always rehab, or the long, slow celebrity death, except most of us aren’t celebrities.

I learned a long time ago to embrace failure, to learn from my mistakes. Except, that’s really a lie. I secretly resent failing having been sent out into the world with the firmly implanted idea that I could do anything I set my mind to. This limitless possibility has made me not bold but cautious, afraid to disappoint, afraid that if I do fail then just maybe I can’t do anything at all and my whole life has been a lie.

So, I am unhappy, not to mention sleepless, and I’ve lately been contemplating playing in traffic, an easy thing to do when you are as aggressive a pedestrian as I am, because part of me is convinced that no one would really notice if I weren’t around any more.

And yet, I have plans, I have things I want to see and do and taste, people I want to meet, jokes I want to make and laugh at. I want kisses given and gotten and I want to feel grass poke up through my toes and warm winds caress my skin.

I feel so much, and want so much but my life is so pale in comparison that it makes me unhappy and paralyzed. If you asked me to define what it is I yearn for I wouldn’t know where to begin.

But feeling only gets me in trouble. It leaves me raw and tongue-tied, choking on the need to do something, to be something more, something better, something different, knowing that I need to make a change and not knowing what to change first.

Thinking just seems remote and dishonest and the more I work to craft these words into some acceptable shape and structure the more the truth leeches out of them.

Something has to give.

Something has to give very soon.

That something will not be me.

I do not want to get to the end of my life with nothing to show for it, with no friends, no memories, with simply time passed.

Now, I just need to figure out how to live. Now. I need to figure out how to play again, how to look at the world with an adult’s wisdom and a child’s delight.

My gift-from-the-cosmos mystery writer is quite correct: it is about passion.

It is about lust.
The lust for life. The lust for experience and laughter. The lust for learning even if it is through trial and error and not getting it perfect every single time.

It’s about answering that one simple question: what would make me happy?

Maybe I don’t have the answer to that now, maybe the meaning of my life is figuring out the answer to that question.

What I do know is that I have to find out, and I have to find out before I turn into someone I could hate rather than just being someone I dislike simply for not being perfect.