theology&geometry

… and my mustachioed friend Zach was kind enough to publish it over at The Great and Secret Thing.

It’s a very short story. A glimpse, really, into a moment in a life that may or may not exist somewhere in some time.

Please ignore all the incredibly flattering things Zachary says about me (“drunkard,” ha!) and my notorious (?) champagne habit in his introduction. He is accustomed to drinking whiskey distilled from the sweat of fat, nomadic carnies, and therefore wouldn’t know a delicious, reasonably priced sparkling American wine if it was drizzled seductively down his throat.

Anyway. If you’re not already checking TGST every day, bookmark that shit or put it in your feed reader! It’s new creative content every day of the week. For free. Freeeeee!!!

“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.”
— W.C. Fields

[Project 365]

I’m writing right now. It’s good. It’s solid. The first thing I ever wanted to be in life was a writer, but at some point I realized how impractical that was as a profession, so I moved it from the career column to the hobby column. Muscles atrophied and confidence withered. I became crippled by my inability to end stories. So I stopped for a while. And then I started back. And then I stopped again.

It comes and goes, it seems. I wrote a mediocre blank verse poem about my fickle muse once several years ago, about how the desire to create worlds can evaporate when you let other things get in the way. Or even if you don’t. But I know that it’s something I’ll never be able to give up. It’s just that I’ve got to figure out how to get better at it. How to do it more often. How to move it from hobby column past career column to obsession column.

There’s just so much happening right now. I’m giving off light and heat and none of it’s for me and I’m afraid it’s all happening in a black hole anyway.

Today was awful, just awful. And for no particularly specific reason. It seems kind of silly now. But not entirely. I am letting conspiracy theories run amok in my head. I am imagining the worst about everything and everyone. I am so angry at so many people and so many intangible concepts. I bury my doubts because I am never sure they are real. I am quick to grimace. I am full of self-loathing. I am not even PMSing, which makes me so angry because it means it’s not just a matter of waiting it out. It’s a very real matter of feeling small and at the same time feeling unable to hide from everyone’s judgment. I feel guilty and embarrassed about things I’m not even sure ever happened. I feel fucking psycho lately, to be honest. Psycho and scared. Because whatever rotten thread has held all this together so far is about to snap. This I know.

And that’s fine. Nothing good ever happened without a catalyst.

Nothing bad ever did either, though.

So I wait.

And, in the meantime, I will try to write. It feels so goddamned right sometimes that I could cry at the way I lay words together — like bricks and mortar — to craft reality. Other times, it’s all too contrived. But right now, things need to be said, things need to be written down, things need to be chiseled into the marble of posterity, and I need to stop stalling.

Programming Note: This week I’m challenging myself to shoot only with my fixed 50mm lens, since I rarely ever use it. Let’s see how long that lasts!

March is racing past us at a clip I’m uncomfortable with, and 2009 so far has kicked my ass in ways both good and bad. Last year was complete and all-encompassing madness from March until June, and it seems like that’s going to be the case again this year. I’ve been spending money like I’ve got it to spend (I don’t) and wasting time like I’ve got it to waste (I don’t), ignoring tooth aches and wonky ankles and sore backs, eating crap food, drinking like a fish that drinks, and thinking agonizing thinking GOD the thinking that never stops. I’m a whiny 10-year-old in checker-pattern spandex bike shorts, trying to get five kites into the air at once. Projects — for work, for myself, for other people, for no one — and things that feel like homework are stacked and teetering. It’s fine. It keeps me alive. I’m best when I’m busy. It’s just that I still haven’t done my taxes and I’m not sure I’ll ever really be in the mood.

Mom told me a couple of days ago that my dad found out at his heart-doctor checkup that he has apparently had a heart attack sometime in the recent past. Guhh? That’s at least what they suspect. Obviously my dad is such a hardcore badass that he didn’t feel said heart attack and probably just went on about his business, banging away at a post-hole digger or whatever it is he does all day busting his ass on that farm. He’s got to go back for an echocardiogram and a bunch of other tests to see if that’s actually what happened, and how badly his heart muscles may have been damaged. The doc put the whole household on a low-fat, heart-healthy diet, which is great and all, but will probably be impossible for my family to ever actually stick with long-term. You have seen my family. We are a hearty people with a hearty aversion to vegetables that haven’t been either fried or coated in butter. We do not generally eat meals that don’t include artery-clogging amounts of meat and/or cheese. To suddenly wake up to a world of steamed broccoli instead of broccoli-flecked Shells and Cheese is going to be a major adjustment for my dad. But he has to do it. He has to.

Last week my youngest nephew turned 12. The mind boggles, it really does. It happened on the day of the layoffs at work, so I was so distracted that I completely forgot to call him. Totally blew it. I called him the next day and he didn’t seem to care too much that I’d forgotten, especially when I’d told him I had something for him. I have nephews that are 12 and 13-soon-to-be-14. WHAT. THE. HELL. This crazy fucking globe just keeps slingshotting around the sun over and over again and with every trip I make to the mirror I notice the toll the journey is taking on me. It’s not all bad. It’s just actually happening and I’m powerless and hanging on and hoping for the best. And every now and again I have to check in and say that aloud or write it because it helps me convince myself that I’m okay with it.

I’m okay with it.

[Project 365]

There are lots of creative things on my plate that I’m working through. Suddenly all these feelings of foreboding and inadequacy that I struggled with in college are coming flooding back. Deadlines and the thought of being judged by peers and superiors.

It sucks. I wish I could say I thrive on that kind of thing, but not when it comes to areas where I feel like I need a lot of work.