I thought I would dust off the blog, and in the process of the house-cleaning I came across these two drafts of posts that I never published (till now). While inarguably from a different period in my life, I found in re-reading them something, something latent worth sharing – or, if I am to be honest to say they are worth exposing – for what they are: purpled and incomplete. Like any draft, they are forever dying from a lack of words and lucidity. Nevertheless, when has a parent ever not loved their own children over all others?
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
DRAFT February, 2011
Calm thyself, little pollen. The great river flows and we are just here as spectacle and spectator. Oh, how we languish amongst the many eddies and tide pools believing it is our own gravitas that so conjoins the river’s waters into these turbulent times when instead it is the river in its buoyant, orotund song that carries the melody that is our life. I am often reminded how spectacularly fortunate, lucky, even spoiled much and most of my life has been. Even amongst the innumerable hallmark moments that capture my own picture-perfect postcard moments of auto-perfidy still I find a humored malaise that belies my contentment in sordid slices that sluice over me.
I As Coward
DRAFT May, 2011
I as coward? Yes. Coward. I am a coward. I wish it were different. I wish I might be truer to the many multitudes of words in my mind and in my mouth, spewing out the very shadows of lies that stand resolute to the image of my self that I wish I were. But I am the Napoleon on fears and the Caesar of defeats, I stand here resolute to say I am coward.
I remember myself as child in front of the globe, as well as standing in front of the many maps that can be found at Metsker Maps on First Avenue in Seattle, wherein in the five-year-old child in me screams to me over and over again “I want to see that and That and THAT!”. But I go deafly, even mutely, from the store knowing that I live here in Seattle, a displaced central New Yorker amongst the dander and down layers of PNW life. Here I am. Coward. Do you remember when I did not climb Kilimanjaro, starting out on the plains of Africa trekking my way to the summit where, even in this remote land, the steel cans puncture the azure skies? Do you remember when I did nothing on the treadmill while the planes slammed into the towers, the debris that fell in rag-doll time from heights meant for angels? There is was not much for me that I knew how to do when my grandmother died; just breath and hope there was nothing my absence would suspend. I remember fondly the road-trip I did not take to New Zealand in a beat up VW van, a sojourn to revere the sites that disciple Peter Jackson has, with 35mm cellular uncture, wrought now most holy. How many times I have not stopped to introduce myself to the smile wrapped in sunshine and water falling hair? Were there not nights I would have been better home with friends than trying to cram one more line of code into a source code that will never be there to help me when I am sick? How many times have I dared to not deviate from the marks on the door that everyone is trying to match? And when she asked for my hand for life, did I not willing give her mine because I believed any hand, even a cold dead hand, was better than no hand at all? I am a coward. But then so aren’t we all? Are we not all the compromisers and usurpers to our needs? We step to the beat drummed by The Others, and follow with musket resting on shoulder to do our duty and die. Cannon fodder us all. We cowards.
