Or wait. This is Monday.
I’m unsure what it is psychologically that occurs when I lace up a pair of boots, fasten tight Chuck’s Converse pair, or even (the rare moment) when I slip into some Rainbows. But truth is that something occurs. Barefeet is for busywork no doubt, but I’ve observed that both the quality and the quantity of my work as a freelancer take a turn north when my feet are covered, snug, and secured over some soles. Plus, the intensity of the process and product are directly to related how formal a shoe choice I’ve made.
Today, I’m wearing my shiny-black-best, ankle high and freshly manicured by the local cobbler himself.
I’ve gotta wrangle with some dirty-work today, finally filling my sink with Drain-O and covering the floorspace in my cupboard with a container for recycling. Toss in the task-list-stew a dash or two of client invoicing, a tablesepoon of typewriter hunting upon the interwebs, and a heaping, brimming cup of design layout finalization (which has been oiling my figurative gears, spinning my proverbial wheels, and making elastic my sticky, structuralish boundary-building ways).
This is all to say hello. Or that we exist. Fairweather to you, and if or if not, of course something Meaningful.
I tow along
a locust bug-
skin, knees
ankles
seen. Bare
toes in Twilight,
You do, you
are. We may
stay. Wait
To plop the locust piece
in a cherry oak tree
drawer, caulk
the cracks, make
a pie, a heron held
shingle wood and state.
You wait, why I can’t
know, dry
veiled and obscured
now clear and light, fight
to end all walls
and all the bald AWOLs.
Comptine d’un autre été, l’après-midi
Pas simplement un autre hiver crépuscule
See also:
Cupid and Pysche, or, I don’t Mean or, I Am Orual,
Compline: Sapir-Whorf or Sine Qua Non,
somewhere impossible light still shines
For the greater portion of my lifetime, I have experienced not a few run-ins with the human psychological phenomenon known as migraines. A migraine is a tough thing to describe, but at least I can say that it is nothing like a headache and therefore should not be categorized as such or have the word appended so.
As concisely as possible — and of course drawing only from my personal experience — a migraine is one of the most abominable feelings a human can experience, perhaps somewhere short of childbirth [okay, likely not even that close, but, still fairly nefarious. I think I've ruined the simile.], and spins the Spectrum in a kaleidoscope-like pattern upon the flesh-side of my closed eyelids, and usually ends in a not-light series of vomits from the vertigo.
In recent years, the frequency of migraines has decreased considerably. While when a child I experienced at least one a week [and had the prescription medication to boast], I only encounter the beast an average of four times a year. That’s not to say the pain is any less, but the reduced frequency is somewhat of an improvement.
Today was one of the days I was apparently supposed to feel the indescribable fury of the total-person-pain of a migraine, and, laying in bed for upwards of six hours left me a bit restless though unable to move. When I was finally able to fight through the pain enough to stand on my two legs, I found a way to swallow four ibuprofen and lay back down. Two hours later the pain had decreased a little, though probably because Providence saw it so more than the common grace in the medicine.
That to say, I started the work day at around 2 in the afternoon, and began my morning rhythms at that point rather than attempting to pretend half a day’s work had passed. A few hours into work and about four blog posts later [today was a day for inter{net}{action}] and dark had already begun to drip its little black dewdrops over Vickery, and before I could realize it, the sun dipped beneath the horizon laying only a few orange streaks across a purple twilight.
i’ve come to the point after five months into my new job that I am quite ready to reclaim a bit of my personal life [and it's only now that I have the opportunity to do as much]. In an effort in this direction, I picked up Chaim Potok’s The Chosen. I’d read and enjoyed Potok’s later work, My Name is Asher Lev, and thought it only suitable to pick up the book that predates it.
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Related to the Reclaiming, I’ve come to a small coffeenook on the opposite side of Interstate 75 from where I usually dwell and brood in an effort to collect some of my thoughts and organize them in such a way that so much social interaction and events does not allow.
This place is as peculiar as the workday — blonde college girls abound, clothed in their winter best, studying things like Physics, Advanced Mathematics, and Western Heritage. I’ve awkwardly made eye contact with the girl across from me a number of times — usually when I look up to think before I let my fingers fly across this little white keypad.
Perhaps she thinks I have an interest in her from our first glance shared; either that or the glare on my glasses from the track-lighting overhead is something to note. Either way, Lower Greenville and it’s sometimes-hipster-sometimes-yuppy scene has me feeling a bit out of sorts on this side of the highway.
[Again I look up when the girl repeats the phrase, "rules of liberty and justice; rules of liberty and justice; rules of liberty and justice."]
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I’ve returned from the week of giving thanks [in the Truest sense, eucharisteo] with my family. This year we took a rather unorthodox approach to celebrating the winter occasion and took to the beach for a bit of camping, and, my dad’s favorite past-time, surfing. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’d never tried my hand at the sport nor had I actually considered it a sport [it was out of ignorance, I now know].
I returned to North Texas with a sunburn, sand in my shin-hairs, and salt on my scalp. I’ve too learned that I need to stake down my tent a bit better when the wind is as much as 40-MPH off the ocean to avoid it lifting beneath my pillow all the night long. But the most important thing to be gleaned from the trip is that my appreciation could be deeper for my family and all they afford and impart to me.
But It was a perfect occasion-as-inauguration into this new stage in which I am officially and intentionally focusing on achieving and maintaining Balance in all things, as I think the further I charge into new lines of work the more important it will be to keep in the Via Media.
Even as I write this, I think about the fact that I have another vacation upcoming with said family, the same one we’ve been taking for the last twenty years of my life [!] and I am staring the body of work to be completed before that point and have become a bit overwhelmed by the magnitude. So I suppose it will be more important than ever to focus very deeply on maintain a sense of Person-outside-work, though it is definitely impossible and silly? to erect dichotomy, now, between that and home [contra anticipations at the entry into this new context].
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Since Sleigh Bells only now came on the speakers in this chain coffee store, I think it’s high tide that I seal this post with a kiss and secure my earphones where they were made to belong. It’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with whom?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it þows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.