not a list

I had the unusual urge tonight to write a list of things that I did this week, which is unusual because I don’t generally feel “list” urges. In fact, I have a thing about not writing lists. Like not writing them is a small rebellious victory every time I avoid making one.

I equate lists with “people who get shit done” a lot of the time, even though I know several wonderful people that swear by them, and even though I used to have to make them all the time so that I could “get shit done” back before the life inversion started. But when it did start – the inversion – list-making was one of the things near the top of the “things I’m not going to do anymore because they carry with it an association of losing my soul” list. Which didn’t actually exist because, well, I stopped making lists.

If I had created such a list, however, of those things that I wasn’t going to do to avoid having my soul sucked, list-making would have been up there with tie-wearing and all forms of non-organic, manufactured marketing (of self or anything external).

So, there cannot be, for the reasons mentioned above, a list of things that I did this week. However, if there were such a list, created for posterity because it felt a bit like a minor internal tectonic shift kind of week, it would have included some or all of the following:

I hiked a local (small, not really even a) mountain in the city where I live, and did it in the dark, which allowed me to see the twinkling fake lights of the remarkably boring-looking city below me and the far more brilliant lights of the clear, endless, indigo-dark sky above; I assembled a home gym and a treadmill (for money – a new thing that I hope will allow me to escape the infuriatingly stubborn gravitational pull of working in fucking casinos for a living); there were continued fifth revisions of THE NOVEL (too important not to highlight, but not ironic enough for quotation marks), which go well and are heading in new and exciting directions as I pour through the beta-feedback I’ve received while simultaneously remembering how I wanted to write something with a strong plot and action that still aspired to be faintly literary in scope and theme; I finished Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, which was delectable, invigorating, and heartbreaking all at the same time (and which was also the perfect novel to read as I embarked on THE NOVEL revisions, a reminder that great writing can and should sneak up on you at least as often as it hits you over the head; I also blew through The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield (the guy who wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance, [which I loved way before the movie] – who knew?), a book that will require subsequent readings to fully appreciate because it’s so simple and profound – profound in its simplicity and, not surprising, simple in its profundity; I spent an entire day doing maintenance on my POS Jeep (oil and filter changes, chassis lubing, and chasing down miscellaneous squeaks and rattles) during which I found a sizable rock partially lodged between my transfer case skid plate and the case itself, the removal of which resulted in a rattle-free Jeep – a minor miracle; I went climbing and did some trail jogging and some yoga as part of my effort to get back into decent enough shape so as not to die of a heart attack come the advent of hockey (playing) season in September; I dealt around 300-400 hands of poker, a fact that I find both continually amazing and slightly depressing.

If I’d have written that list (which I would, heaven forefend, nevereverever do on account of the aforementioned aversion to list making), it would have been an incomplete list – obviously – but still a list of marginally-yet-personally interesting things that coalesced into a pretty damned good week.

All I can say is, it’s a good thing that I didn’t (would never) write it, or it might have resulted in a self-indulgent, frivolous post that was more about having fun with complex-compound sentences and semi-colons than saying anything remotely worth saying.*

p.s. I’m going to start Stephen Elliott’s The Adderall Diaries next week. So. Stoked.

* Unless you really read between the lines AND read stuff into it that probably isn’t really there.

random check-in

Wow, it’s been a while.

I’ve been a bit confounded by Mom lately, just making sure everything is up to date, chasing clarity and clarification. Truth is she’s doing okay right now. She’s settled since the last couple symptomatic episodes and we’re basking in the eye of the storm for the moment.

Also I was, I think, desperately missing the manuscript. I spent some down time, while I was waiting for beta advice to come in, working on a synopsis (I may actually hate them, synopses, for all the magic they take out of a story), starting the second volume of the saga, but they felt like cheating, like I was being unfaithful. Or maybe it just felt like hubris, as if I was presuming too much. Finishing the first one, making it as shiny (or gritty, as the case may be) as I can has become (appropriately?) a holy grail of sorts.

Anyway, I got the beta critiques back last weekend and started on revisions, possibly the final round before I actually consider it ready for agents to look at, and the clouds broke as I began. You’d think I’d learn.

…

About Mom, one of the things that got me down was the thought that diagnosis of degenerative dementia, probably like any degenerative disease diagnosis, is essentially a call to start grieving now. It’s a time bomb with no counter – it’s just going to go off, a bit at a time, until the final big boom. And there’s not much you can do about it. We can only work hard to try to stay in the moment. And sometimes, often even, that works, mostly when we’re together and laughing and talking. But there are the quiet times and, in the silence, sometimes, the idea of a clock ticking down feels a bit overwhelming.

It’s all the journey though, right? Good goes with bad, darkness with light, the bitter makes the sweet taste better.

…

I was thinking about how it’s our cultural nature to make things as difficult as possible. We create our society based on the square, fighting nature. We make things straight and hard, all roads and stairs and sidewalks, doors and walls and ceilings. Even when we absolutely have to bend to accommodate nature, the goal is still to minimize the incline, reduce the curves as much as possible, tame the topography.

And then I thought about hiking, being out past the manicured paths. Out there you follow the line that makes the most sense, often following in the footsteps of animals. The lines aren’t straight, nothing is manufactured – it’s organic, and logical in a way that only the wild can be. Intuitive.

And hey, when you find a pause on the path, whatever the reason, the view tends to be fucking awesome. Double rainbow awesome.

P.S. Don’t you love how rioters in the UK are either all stupid, selfish looters and hooligans, OR all politically marginalized and disenfranchised citizens expressing legitimate rage? Why don’t they use AND in that equation? How can they not use it? How stupid does one have to be to not see that there’s legitimate rage AND selfish violence in the dynamic? And why is the UK so goddamed different than Egypt or Tunisia where the frustration was lauded?

P.P.S. I’m reading Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad this week. And loving it. It’s as brilliant as a Pullitzer winner should be. I read Neil Gaman’s American Gods last week (AG was on recommendation from Judy Clement Wall – how did I miss that one?) and loved it too. It’s been a helluva good book month so far.