Lately some issues have come to me that I seem unable or unwilling to finish. They linger like the odor of three day-old pizza in the fridge. They have no resting place, no garden in which to be buried. I am not sure if these are existential topics; maybe they are just the flotsam and jetsam about which we all ruminate...
I am fearful that I will run dry of tears. This weekend I saw the "Senior Follies" stage production in which my wife participated (she's in a tap dancing seniors group). It was stupendous! Each time she came out and danced, I started sobbing. The tears were made of pride, of joy at seeing hers, and of my sense that this is what life is really about. I want to remember that. I want to never stop tears of connection and understanding.
I finally fixed the bathroom toilet paper dispenser, which required some wall anchors of the heavy duty kind. I felt a sudden surge of testosterone; clearly the metallic roll looked an awful lot like a Gazelle on the Serengeti. Such a small job, that one. I procrastinated months and months over it, until the task became equal to the erection of the Sphinx. It's always like that; the avoidance becoming more ominous than the reality. I have always been a procrastinator, and although procrastination is its own reward, the price is steep...
The number of views of this blog has topped 700. There are some folks from Singapore, for God's sake, from Finland, from Canada, from Russia and Norway! Did they read one entry or many? Did they accidentally link to this site and quickly run without reading any of it? Are there hundreds of people or only dozens? I can't tell from the stats.Why should I care? Oh, but I do...
I really feel full of life when I teach. I am elated, mentally energized, devoid of any bodily awareness in ways nothing has ever provided me, not even orgasm (but don't ever make me choose.) I wish I had found this life decades ago. But then I would not have had the necessary mountains of experience I needed to be good...
I have worked as an effective proofreader, a terrible security guard (I frequently hid in the hardware section), a passable printing press operator (family business), a dishwasher (Woolworth's at age 16, summer, 1968), a therapist (four different places), a husband (more times than you might find credible), a reasonable but irritable step dad, a would-be gardener (some years good tomatoes at least), a house boy (my fourth marriage), an angry landlord, a graduate student times three, a lover (jury will remain forever out on this, but I imagine a verdict of selfishness is looming), and a writer (never good enough). Of all these, the dish washing gig taught me the most about people...
On my tombstone I want the following: I lived, I died, I didn't always do my best, but I accomplished a few useful things, like scraping the crap off lunch plates, placing them onto green plastic trays and sliding them into a steamer...
I am fearful that I will run dry of tears. This weekend I saw the "Senior Follies" stage production in which my wife participated (she's in a tap dancing seniors group). It was stupendous! Each time she came out and danced, I started sobbing. The tears were made of pride, of joy at seeing hers, and of my sense that this is what life is really about. I want to remember that. I want to never stop tears of connection and understanding.
I finally fixed the bathroom toilet paper dispenser, which required some wall anchors of the heavy duty kind. I felt a sudden surge of testosterone; clearly the metallic roll looked an awful lot like a Gazelle on the Serengeti. Such a small job, that one. I procrastinated months and months over it, until the task became equal to the erection of the Sphinx. It's always like that; the avoidance becoming more ominous than the reality. I have always been a procrastinator, and although procrastination is its own reward, the price is steep...
The number of views of this blog has topped 700. There are some folks from Singapore, for God's sake, from Finland, from Canada, from Russia and Norway! Did they read one entry or many? Did they accidentally link to this site and quickly run without reading any of it? Are there hundreds of people or only dozens? I can't tell from the stats.Why should I care? Oh, but I do...
I really feel full of life when I teach. I am elated, mentally energized, devoid of any bodily awareness in ways nothing has ever provided me, not even orgasm (but don't ever make me choose.) I wish I had found this life decades ago. But then I would not have had the necessary mountains of experience I needed to be good...
I have worked as an effective proofreader, a terrible security guard (I frequently hid in the hardware section), a passable printing press operator (family business), a dishwasher (Woolworth's at age 16, summer, 1968), a therapist (four different places), a husband (more times than you might find credible), a reasonable but irritable step dad, a would-be gardener (some years good tomatoes at least), a house boy (my fourth marriage), an angry landlord, a graduate student times three, a lover (jury will remain forever out on this, but I imagine a verdict of selfishness is looming), and a writer (never good enough). Of all these, the dish washing gig taught me the most about people...
On my tombstone I want the following: I lived, I died, I didn't always do my best, but I accomplished a few useful things, like scraping the crap off lunch plates, placing them onto green plastic trays and sliding them into a steamer...
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