Resolved

General ideas of what to do differently in the new year:

1. Read before bed every night

Helps me sleep, I'm finding

2. Do more blog posts

Also helps me sleep

3. Try meditating

People who do it seem very devoted to the practice. Why shouldn't I get in on that?

4. Eat fermented vegetables every week

Almost goes without saying

5. Bike all the way to work once a week

Currently a 43 mile round trip, should make me stronger

6. Save more money

7. Improve my bread baking skills

8. Cut refined sugar consumption

Omnipresent and not necessarily great for anyone to be eating

All lined up

Family is the greatest blessing of all. We are able to be together, all together, several times a year. It feels so good to savor this time, to relax and recreate with my family. To forge stronger bonds that will last throughout the year. It feels good to be home. I feel surrounded by love, boundless love. Cats, food, games, good talks, walks, movies, cookies- these things I cherish and give thanks for.

In our post-industrial Western democracy,

Cooking as career seems counter-intuitive. Too much striving and slaving for something that ought to be magical and exciting. To prove my point, I'm making curry while I write this post. To wit, I already made rice pilaf this evening. It was simple, enjoyable, and gave me the thrill of the chemistry experiment I never knew how to do. Why beat all the fun out of that activity? This will have to be one of the places where I stand on simplicity.

When I feel like a juggler runnin' out of hands

It will be written down on a piece of paper and shuffled on a desk, meaningfully shuffled, but shuffled, forgotten except in case of a persistent person who needs something from you. She will shuffle too, to the kitchen for a quick 30 minutes. Something in us that abhors work, so we feel entitled not to do it, even while they're paying us to be here. American workers, too smart for their own jobs. Fixing, scheming, faintly conniving always to get a little bit ahead. Of themselves, really. But what would be the fun in doing something you're perfectly well qualified for, or never lying a little about what you're able to do? I have told happy, ambitious lies to employers, or tried to get them to let me do so. I have made myself out to be a fully qualified professional copyeditor. I have overstated, drawn false analogies, and talked past my inadequacies. I'm no better than anyone else.

Very important One-sentence post

Read this, if you would, since JD wrote it, and it's one of the most important things you'll read all day, and you ought to thank me for recommending it at all, for even deigning to come down off my high horse and offer you a link to someone else's blog post.

Clouds are drifting across the moon

I put all my books in a box to put them in a concrete cube and underneath more boxes hidden behind boxes I’ll get in one too


I don’t know what I want, but regardless, thanks a lot for letting me stay on your futon.


Pretty sure JD must have quoted this song in a blog post before, but let me be the second to do so, then. I was thinking about what I want a lot today. I think that's natural for we humans, thinking about what we want, and we ought to have, what benefits we most. This goes along with thinking about what we should be doing, what is most seemly for we to be pursuing. If that's self-centered, it's just how we're wired.

Make some new amends

Feeling sorry for yourself is so easy. It's a trap. Displacing responsibility for problems that are yours alone to solve offers false comfort. It's shirking, at its core. We must refuse to engage in it.

stacks

* Being in the library to work on a musicology paper that I had no hope of comprehending in my numbed, utterly distracted state. This was me. I'm still that person.

*The grimy desks are the same, the aged volumes institutionally bound are the same, the powerful musty smell of books has not changed. Why should it have?

*I remembered that I had loved this place powerfully as a sanctuary, a place to play at being an academic and reading and writing for long hours till the bubble of restlessness burst.

*It always feels good, still, to pick out a volume or two, take them home for free. They might never be read, but say, what if one day I take a sudden, strong interest in John Donne? I must equip myself ahead of that day that we await with faithful anticipation.

en briques

Koller/Saroyan

Maniac is me
want it now
and perfect
like bricks
one
on top of the
other.

the mason's plight,
ours too:
No thanks
for making what is perfect.
Does his job too well,
dies unhallowed.

intricate machinery of mortar
all that's left
to put to our faceless names

Windwhistle sentences, Part Two

*I had trimmed my beard in preparation for receiving visitors.

*His observed indifference to photography seemed callous at first.

*Michael wondered if they had yet marked the sound of his felt-tipped pen rasping against the page.

*It was unfair, now that she mentioned it, for him to have expected that the profession would be received in any other manner.

*The autumn was coming soon, the sweater season, and with it innumerable chilly days until the spring anniversary.

*He fingered his joints in mournful anticipation of the arthritis that was to come decades hence.

*The clips on the line continued to rap their senseless cadence against the flagpole long after the families had departed.

how do you vary sentence structure in a cover letter?

I have a hard time dealing with confrontation, a hard time to make a decision. I use humor as a sort of social lubricant, smile and laugh at all the right places, but it doesn't always work, and it makes me feel fake sometimes. I'm never not hungry. People's parents usually like me. I don't do very well at meeting new people, but I like to do it. I can't stop starting new books. I ask unanswerable questions of my television. I make jokes that only I would get.

These are the things that maybe you don't want to know about me, but maybe you should.

I am a person. I am a whole. I am not to be used only for good times.

I worry a fair amount about everything. I go hot and cold sometimes and am short with people I love. Inevitably regret it, but still, I think it's how I am. I know too much about living cheaply, but I always live well. I scoff at people who can't spell, but forgive the fault at will. I love talking to old friends, even when it makes you miss how things were. I want to tell people how much I love them, but usually can't. I like knowing smiles. I'd like to hold on to being 19, or 22, or 24, but not cling desperately. I mouth words when I type them in personal communications; this may look unseemly when I'm in public places. I'm not very good at sleeping anymore. If I'm serious, it's probably because I don't want to be the guy who always tries to be funny and is never serious. I tend to hold doors for people all the time, but I'm nervous about the interactions this entails. I don't know how to look at people in the hallways at work. I pray for things that I think I need. I want to write effortlessly. I want to live a good life, and be loved.

Shining steel, tempered in the fire

Truths (subject to debate)

=Stop trying to make me care about college baseball, ESPN, I continue to not give a rat's ass. There is just no more room in my brain for caring about more and more obscure and meaningless sports. Clearly your business plan involves expanding forever ad infinitum, but I cannot be bothered to care about the College World Series and the "Road to Omaha". I mean, come on, they use metal bats. What is this, Little League?

="There's laughs and fun up where the conversation flows". I used to think about this song in a completely different way, in a wishful thinking kind of fashion. It's different now.

=You can't make coffee strong enough for me. I will not fall in line.

=Obviously everything will be fine. Obviously. Why can't I remember this, though? When I need it most, I forget it.

=I bought two CDs yesterday at Newbury Comics. Jeff Buckley and Saturday Looks Good To Me. Does that make me anachronistic?

=A place where the temperature is forever lingering between 65 and 85 degrees F with a cool breeze whenever you need it. This would be a lovely place, a place I would gladly call my home.

=There are a lot of bookstores in Metro Boston. A ton. It's sad when one closes, but I think we're dealing with an embarrassment of riches here, really.

=Haven't you ever wanted to cry, just to get rid of it? Happens from time to time, and it would be nice to be able to cue it up and cry at will. I'm not ashamed to say that it really works. It's a concentrated flush of emotions leaving you all at once, and it feels great when it's over.

=Dirty Old Town. The Pogues. It is beyond lovely. Give it a chance, in spite of the bad teeth on display in the video. The note of defiance is important, otherwise the song would dissolve into gooey sentimentality.

=Bullet points make things easier, but they feel like a cop-out.

=Thanks for the kind blog words, JD. I wish my attention span was long enough to write the nice long-form posts like yours.

=Reading, how important it is. Don't stop reading! Television is fun, but it's mostly junk food. Feed your brain with books.

untitled

The time is flying, going away so fast.

I want everything all at once. I want more time. I want to run as fast as I can the whole time, not just in spurts. I want to look into the water, and see what Roni Horn sees. I want more than I have, always, and I always will. I want it all!

Humanity is not enough. Perfection I desire. Perfect life, perfect body, perfect job, perfect relationship. It's not there yet.

A stream of consciousness flowing forth. Good company.

This is bad.

I got more than I wanted, and then forgot about that, and now it's not enough. Why can't it be enough? Don't you remember wanting these things [that you now have] more than anything in the world? Don't you remember promising that you'd finally be satisfied if you could only have that one thing, that one time, please? It's not enough, it can never be. I want all, all the time.

lots of stuff

shower

blogski

basketball game

the bruins better not blow this

Alex: no dont worry

just look up outside tomorrow

it should look roughyl the same

I feel good though.
Can't help but feel so good. Things fall the right way sometimes, they really do. I just can't handle uncertainty. It throws me, and I can't catch myself quite fast enough.

Alex: coudl the players vote to get it changeg

If she is, I need a bit of info, like what grade level and subject area.


I refuse to explain myself.

Am I asleep or awake?

It's beautiful today.

It's OK to cry.

It's wonderful when you're here.

It's a crime to forget these lovely things I've known.

It's a letter you ought to write, to let someone know you're thinking of them.

It's your life.

It's worth it, and worth fighting for.