thankfulness

we have so many things to be thankful for that it's a cliché. we say we're thankful for a roof over our heads and food on the table, but it's hard to really appreciate things we pretty much take for granted. house, food, clothes, indoor plumbing, a world free of polio.

anyway, before i veer completely into cynicism, i wanted to talk about a few specific things that i feel actual gratitude for.

1. yesterday at thanksgiving celebration, i spent an hour or so playing legos with my nephew who not long ago was battling cancer. there he is, cancer free and now nearly off the prednisone, a delightful five-year old boy with health, patience, stamina, a budding sense of humor, and a fascination with legos that granted me a measure of peace from the family fray.

2. every morning, i put on eyeglasses. some days, i'll end up inserting contact lenses, and some days i'll stick with the glasses, but on no day to do not correct my vision. without correction, my vision is so poor that it's not an overstatement to say i'd not be able to live an independent life, but with these simple corrective devices, i'm able to do whatever the remainder of my body will allow.

3. now, i realize being thankful for a yoga app presumes thankfulness for everything from electricity to smart phones, but i am trying to be specific. for the past few weeks, i've made good use of an app i got for free from starbucks. if i'd known it was this good, i'd have happily paid for it. i've told lots of people about it and used it lots of times. it's great to be able to do quality yoga at home.

4. whenever i see them, i am thankful for cedar trees. their charlie-brown-christmas-ish scraggliness belies an unparalleled inner beauty, and their ability to grow in the most unlikely places is a testament to the power of sheer determination. cedar trees spend centuries breaking rocks to dirt to make way for more showy deciduous trees. and, they just smell so damn good.

5. at the time, i didn't think it really mattered - i thought it was a guy thing - but when we were house shopping, my old man held out for an attached garage. let me tell you something about attached garages: they ARE all they are cracked up to be. not have to wrestle the weather whilst boarding and deboarding cars, and not ever having to scrape an icy windshield - these are real luxuries.


okay, yes, i am thankful for family, friends, house, food, clothes, job, health, et cetera and so on and so forth. all of that and more. but sometimes the enormity of the blessings mute their individual worth. there's so much to be thankful for that it's difficult to be truly thankful for any of it. i don't want to be numb to the riches and the beauty around me, and i find it helps me appreciate everything if i get specific about a few things.

is it wrong

is it wrong of me to love you so

to never want to let you go

to want to only hold you close

and not to eat and not to sleep

and just to keep you here with me

anxiously eager

somewhere along the way, i learned to differentiate eager and anxious. they both speak to a looking forwardness, but while eager is an optimist, anxious is all bunched up. the only reason i can figure that this difference would have stuck with me is that i must have lost points on an essay over using the wrong one. or more likely, lost points more than once.

another thing about eager and anxious is that you can simultaneously be both. i know this because it happened to me.

just over a couple months ago, i decided to make the appointment. i was in the strip mall anyway -- to register for a 5k -- so i just marched on down there and made the appointment. thuswise was the initial step complete.

what followed were two weeks of anxious eagerness. i wanted the results, but never having done it before, i had no idea what to expect. would it hurt? would it leave scars? would i regret it? would it end up costing more than they originally said? bottom line, i was anxious that it wouldn't be what i expected. i mean, i thought i wanted the results, but what if the results were ineffective, disappointing, or (yikes) detrimental? i wanted the results i imagined when i dreamed about the process, but i had no way of knowing whether i'd get those results. pluswise, never having had those results, what if i got those very results and even those precise results i thought i wanted turned out to be something i didn't want??

ack! anxiety alternated with pure pollyanna eagerness in a way that made me nearly bipolar. i was a regular dr happy and mr OH MY GOD WHAT AM I GETTING MYSELF INTO!?

so. two weeks passed and the day of the appointment arrived. i had scheduled this activity for after work so that either way it turned out, i could go straight home afterwards. i chose my wardrobe carefully that morning - it had to last me all day at work and then be just right for my appointment. oddly enough, as important as it was to me that day eight weeks ago, i now have no idea what i ended up wearing.

so, bottom line, the day has finally arrived. all day i'm vacillating -- eagranxious to anxeager and back again. i leave work early to get there on time and end up getting there early. turns out there's less traffic before the masses get off work. who knew?

anyway, i go in and they're ready already. who's eager now, eh? they're nice and all, but they're expecting money from me later, so they should be nice. i fill out a few forms and they smile at me and take me back to a room. the whole thing takes about 30 minutes. it hurts, but not like you might think, and when it's over, i feel good about it. i'm glad i did it, and i am relieved it's over. i can still feel it for a few hours after, you know, like a pain echo, but i can tell that won't last till the next day... and i can know i am really pleased the results.

so ends the story of my first full facial waxing.

is love here?

smooth celadon
turned in upon
itself:
a frilled fold,
furled,
forms a shield
to the world.

clean curl uncurling,
shy soft stalk peeks
into arid air
as if wondering...
is love here?

would have had been going to be doing

we were to meet at 11AM.

we both have prior appointments and are running late. well, i am running late and since it's his modus operandi, i figure he's running late also. i'm out of production briefing at 11:05, dump my stuff on the desk, grab my keys and wallet... i'm out the door by 11:10 or so. the weather is gorgeous - startlingly blue sky, air so crisp it crackles. the so-colorful-last-week leaves are nearly all down, but the grey branches are no damper on this lovely day. it's about 40 degrees or so, and i pull on my gloves for the walk across the street.

i arrive maybe 11:20 or so. he's not here, but that's not a big surprise - like i said: late is his MO. i make small talk with the doorman, check words with friends, stroll far enough in to view the art posted in the entry hall. 11:30, still not here. i don't have any terrible sense of foreboding, but still, he should be here. i text him. nothing. call. no answer. call again, and this time i get his wife on the line. i struggle through an awkward (even for me, this is awkward.) conversation with her about how he left his phone at home, followed by her lamenting she can't operate his "not apple" phone but managed to answer it, followed by a replay of all his proposed stops along the way to meet me, followed by a bit of consternation on her part, concluding with her advice to me -- "well, just do what you think is best."

hmm. no shit.

while talking to her, i've decided to go back across the street to my office because [drum roll] that's what i think is best. upon my return, i notice my deskphone message light is on, and i know right away what's happened. sure enough, the lobby guard left a message to say "your party is here now" -- except my here was not his here and his now is now past. an hour ago, we were both in separate heres.

when i finally talk to him, he's apologetic, but i cut him off because it's not his fault that our world has so quickly become so very used to immediate communication that last-minute confirmations are second nature. see, we had not firmed up precisely when or where we were meeting, and didn't notice the infirmity until it crippled our appointment.

we made a plan to (try to) meet again, precisely two days from today, precisely at 11AM, precisely in the lobby of the art gallery across the street from my office.

and, we promised to call and confirm.

our life together is so precious together

believe me, i read other blogs. i see the funny stuff and the deep stuff, the recipes and the book reviews, the amusing anecdotes and running logs and political essays. i know what's going on out there, and i am perfectly aware how all this time spent watching everyone else do what they do contributes to my periodic blog nuking. (what tripe! blow it up!) i know this because my being a watcher is not confined to my bloglife. i am a watcher because i am a watcher. observing and comparing are so ingrained in me that it's not possibly not genetic. the productive side of O&C is a competitive nature that drives me to success. the negative side is, you know, blog nuking and suchlike.

that being said, it was time to nuke this place. (i mean, of course, "nuke". please see sidebar for links to old content.)

now. at the risk of taking myself too seriously, i am laying down some principles this time. not rules or fences or anything binding - just some principles to help me remember that writing is a part of who i am and it's okay to write how i write and it's okay to share no matter how i think it turns out.


PRINCIPLES OF YOUR BLOG ARE YOUR PALS P-L-E.

1. quixotically quotidian. at the risk of taking myself too seriously AGAIN ALREADY, i came up with this little slogan to define what i would like to try to be doing here. someone once called my blog "quotidian" and i was quite insulted (WHAT THE HELL, PRETENTIOUS BLOG SNOB?!) because i associate "quotidian" with dull plodding, but all it really means is the nuts & bolts of daily life, and after much ponderous pondering, i have decided to embrace the quotidian -- WITH A TWIST. that's where "quixotic" comes in. i don't want to be a dope or go all pollyanna, but i do want to explore the everyday with eye towards the universal. everyday plus. everyday for everyone. i want to delve into our blazing individual uniquenesses and reveal how they make us all the same in the end. quixotically quotidian.

2. serendipitously serene. i won't be nailed down to a genre or a subject matter. i won't only write about one aspect of my life and i won't only write in one format. there'll still be poetry. there'll still be movie reviews. the only thing you can be sure of here is not being sure of what'll be here. or, for that matter, when it'll be here. i'm going to try and post at least once per week, but when i put too much pressure on myself, i emit empty air like a leaky balloon. i don't want to produce mere filler. "serene" is sort of just there for the alliteration... but it's also about how peace comes in unexpected ways and represents my attempting to encompass the whole "you never know until you try" thing. serendipitously serene.

3. diligently discoverable. every other blog in the world gets comments. why don't i get comments? the only logical explanation is that no one reads my blog. okay, maybe you're reading and not finding things commentable, but that's what #1 (#1 -- hee hee) is supposed to remedy. how to fix that i am who'ing up a storm and no one is out there horton'ing in return? @acePeriwinkle to the rescue. i'll be tweeting new posts and if something's worthy, i hope you'll retweet. diligently discoverable.




...and away we go!

that's what she said.

okay, here's the thing. i am running out of stuff to say. the daily adventures of me are wearing thin.

so.

the choice is: stop writing or get some better daily adventures.

i prefer the latter, and i am going to work on it, but until i have some sort of plan or i am ready to say something new... well... thing is... there will be a bit of a hiatus here.

now, now. don't get upset. this is not The End.

i promise.

in fact, i more than promise.

i do hereby and herein most solemnly and steadfastly swear to each and every one of the four of you, my loyal readers: i am not abandoning you.

i'm not saying when, but... i'll be back.

(cute sign, huh? yeah... it's sort of pathetic how many different types of these little "blog hiatus" placards exist... and of course, by pathetic, i mean, you know, comforting to me.)