I asked you how he's doing, the day before he died
You said, "He's doing fine, we're all just doing fine . . ."
Wowie, I've been absent for a long time! The current contentious state of American politics is one reason; I stay engaged, immersed in the political drama unfolding the past few years and participate now as a local poll worker. (That's the most useful and fun part!) As the 2020 election, 2022 US midterm elections, and election year 2024 approached, I've spent way too much time reading books, articles, and blog posts, viewing news highlights featuring various pundits on YouTube, and listening to various podcasts. Then there's the obligatory daily dip into social media - sometimes dipping several times a day when some particularly important news drops. I'm a Gemini info enthusiast, so there's no way I'm not gonna read up and comment on issues. As an introvert, commenting online is a way to develop my thoughts for real world conversations. Maybe I'm just weird like that. For me, there's no clear dichotomy of cyberworld *bad* and real world *good*. Both the cyberworld and the real world have their illusory and limited qualities. Community and communication happen at both levels too. But sometimes cybersurfing seems like gigantic waste of time that could be used for real world socializing or recreational pursuits. I tend to live in my mind - a dreamer, as my mother used to say, though she meant it as criticism. On the other hand, I've lived through family-rearing, working years in which I've limited my online time to an hour or less per day. I can be quite disciplined when push comes to shove.
Sadly, I'm not one of those writers who's able to churn out creative writing while the world feels like it's descending into chaos. I so admire authors who have planted bottoms to chairs and fingers to pens and keyboards through the tremendously distracting ups and downs and changes of the past decade - the Trump years, Covid, and the current uncertainty that affects both our nation and the world as controversy surrounds the first Biden - Trump debate, shadowed also by recent US Supreme Court decisions that range from questionable to biased to corruptly influenced. Beyond the shared national and international news, everyone alive has personal challenges, obstacles, or dramas to quell too - life is a path with built-in joys and sorrows, so everyone negotiates these against a more sweeping backdrop of local, national, and world events. We also experience empathy and consternation when our loved ones are dealing with challenges. It seems lately than any personal peace is suddenly turned upside down because someone near and dear is experiencing a crisis - that's how it's been for me lately, anyway. Every aspect of our lives are part and parcel of our human nature and fodder for growth and wisdom. It's intriguing to consider that we might choose these crazy lifetimes for particular learning situations when we enter the physical realm.
Despite my distractable nature, I've kept up with editing projects for clients, written close to 300 book reviews in the past five years, and regularly answered some thematic questions on Quora since 2016, but feel as though I've had the creative juice sucked right out of my physical and spiritual bloodstream. My creative charge has been next to nil since early 2018, though I've tinkered a bit with revision of a handful of unpublished poems, stories, and essays. Re-visioning and re-envisioning old work. I think now and then about the memoir I put on a back burner not long after I began jotting notes om 2014, crafting an introduction, and one early chapter draft. I now have another decade of growth to work from. I have some new, exciting ideas about the memoir composition and structure, inspired by some author pioneers who have recently penned and published speculative memoir. I've not yet implemented these ideas in reality and am still considering how this writing technique will mesh with my childhood recollections. There's a dream-like aspect of my childhood that's naturally surreal, so word-weaving that alternate reality through the more ordinary narrative should be a cinch. I'm anxious to get started, yet don't feel like the time is right. I'm revving the engine and popping the clutch but not in motion yet. The only certainty is that I don't know how much time I have left. I really should get cracking to beat the mortality clock. I can't afford to live as if I this life is infinite. I'm at an age where one begins to gaze beyond the beyond!
I'm not sure why I'm sharing these thoughts at this particular moment, especially when I've not created a large following here and nor posted regularly. I took down my old website and bought a new website template, thinking to stop blogging and post a detour notice here, but I haven't built the site. I've been in life review, questioning everything I've ever accomplished writing-wise. I've considered quitting for three years now - I mentioned that in a previous post and continue to drag my feet indecisively. Part of me doesn't want to keep writing at all and could walk away from this interest that morphed from hobby to profession and back to hobby level again over the past twenty-five years. I've been awaiting some definite sign or some special inspiration to help reveal what I should do with my remaining time on the planet. Maybe no strong answer is a sign I should simply relax and enjoy life more. Time to get out of my comfortable but limiting home zone and have some bucket list adventures before it's too late!
I feel tonight as if I'm casting words to the wind like seeds seized by air currents, darting, twisting, and drifting to potentially fertile gardens or rocky, untillable ground. I release thoughts from my mind, from my life, from my ownership, not really caring if my word seeds grow or even if they matter to someone, somewhere, somehow . . .
Are any of our thoughts unique? Do we all think many of the same things randomly? I wrote the last phrase in the preceding paragraph spontaneously. Then googled the phrase someone, somewhere, somehow because it feels like a fairly common, universal expression. The alliteration sounds good and the thought is plaintive or romantic. I knew a plethora of links would come up in a search, both English grammar practical stuff and daydreamy creative stuff. I figured the phrase would come up in poetry or a short story first, but the first few results related to the song lyrics from which I quoted above. Do you or I think about or express anything now that hasn't been considered before? We seem to inhabit billions of different bodies over eons of time, each experiencing universal events with random personal reactions that also seem universal in essence.
The history of humankind is short in cosmic terms, but seems lengthy to us because we're in temporary containers with an average lifespan of seventy to eighty years. A century seems like a long time to us, let alone a millennia or more. The total number of humans and humanoids who have existed throughout the ages on our planet is probably incomprehensible. So must be the number of thoughts and utterances from these innumerable beings. The root of human communication is our natural ability to compose and share story. We are all talented storytellers - we tell one another about our days, our dreams, and our struggles and sorrows quite often. We're lucky we humans have an innate capacity for storytelling, otherwise life might be far more drab without this gift. Lately it feels as though humanity's most wounded people are pitching fits and sucking up all the oxygen in mass consciousness. Our emotional outlet when confronted by things that make us uncomfortable is the ability to share our feelings and tell our stories.
How are you dealing with the juxtaposition of your dreams and the realities of daily life in this precarious era? What are the stories that you're sharing now?
I've been too serious for a long time. I think I just wanna have more fun.
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| Ziplining - Ensenada, Mexico |
