roles

in

Feelings of being walking death are abating to the point that I trimmed my Hughesian fingernails for the first time in a month and, for the first time in same, writing doesn't feel like a triviality.

Wish I had seen BOSCH LEGACY 2-7, for Honey Chandler's "What fresh hell is it now?" answer to Bosch's phone call: would've used it for the last two months when I had my phone glued to me at all times. Still getting used to not having to be available all the time, for better or for worse.

A phrase, swirling about: there are no more roles to play. I'm the end of his line, the end of the line; and here I am now (entertain myself). All I do know about my future is that writing will continue to be part of it, though only a part: I've wasted too much of my life on hopes and dreams and things outside my control and would rather spend it on pursuits that fascinate and stimulate, with the art and craft of writing as my means of processing all: perhaps not all that different from what it is now, though moving forward with the benefit of acceptance. As boxing and running and weights and yoga are my daily training for my body, writing is the same for my mind. Whatever chips fall will fall where they may.

Decided on one thing I want to do: purchase a motorcycle that requires me to rebuild it before I can even think of riding it. I want to learn the ins and outs of how these wonderful things work and doing it myself feels like the best way to go about precisely that.

Note: I've adored motorcycles my whole life but I'm only getting one now that he's passed because he was terrified of something happening to me on one.

Only three major – and only one's all that major – hurdles to get through over the next several days, weeks, months: most immediate (and the one that I'm dreading) being his funeral because I absolutely loathe funerals. Take it back, then: I suppose there's one more role to play - avatar of grief and memory for a town and for a county; I will aspire to be comfortably numb, though I am far from it: Uncomfortably human, being both more apposite AND the role to which I'm dedicating myself for the remainder of my days.

After that, house clearing and selling and estate settling, for which I'm only responsible for the clearing (and figuring out how to get a pool table out of there and where, precisely, the fuck to put it in our little quarters), in contrast to my mother's passing, where I had to do everything. Nonetheless, all I want this week is to see Thursday in the rearview from my chair and my comfy pants.

how i spent my afternoon

in

Little did I expect that two+ hours of my day (before picking up The Morkie from her doggie day spa appointment) would be spent in an obscenely wealthy gun nut’s panic room listening to his dissemination of each firearm in his (admittedly impressive) WWII collection. And that was after accepting his invitation to fire a silenced pistol, a semi automatic rifle, and a fully automatic rifle from his deck at a target near his woods; a memorable experience, certainly, but not one that I care to repeat - my abject loathing for those things (guns and obscenely rich white people in love with guns) remains intact.

tracks

in

The sameness of my days keeps me sane until I think about it: the perpetual repetition, the same thing day in and out. Remembering something from ZEN MIND, BEGINNER'S MIND about not looking down at the track: summers tend to open up too much time to look down.

Maybe it's that I'm jamming everything that I consider to be forward motion (writing) into a single morning chunk – basically 0445 to 0745, which I do love: not only is it the closest I can get to working at night but the knowledge that this is all I get tends to cultivate deeper focus – and the surplus of time outside of that – shock of shocks, I do want to spend time with my wife for the three months she's a.) not drowning in the needs of seventy-five representatives of the future and b.) I don't have to worry about her being shot for doing so. But she's on her break, which is necessary for her – even if I don't do well with breaks.

Also: this could be a symptom of withdrawal from social media – as much as I love Mastodon and the Fediverse and what it means and what it stands for, it's still social media – and the perception that it, social media, was part of the forward motion, my only option for opportunity in this backwoods hell. It wasn't and isn't: the only thing that moves me forward is doing The Work and sharing it here or in the NL but I'll cut myself some slack (my therapist would be proud): when you've spent the last decade and a half hooked on an addictive substance like social media, coming off of it and finding clarity in the space the release allows will take some time. It took me eleven tries to quit smoking, after all.

Head up, walk the track. Don't look down.

hours and roles

in

For too long, I realize (only) now, I've hacked and slashed my day and my life into the artifice of hours and of roles – writer, husband, dog-dad, collector, grandson, son-in-law, (I gave up on being a son long ago), caretaker, family member, etc etc – and it's done me no good: everything, every inhabitation of each, felt like a performance done by a husk waiting – desiring, only – to be swept away to the next inhabitation, the next gig, in the hopes that one of them might feel like the real me.

Reality is that they are all me and that I am all of them and more, simultaneously: there can be no separation, no selective inhabitation between them; to pretend otherwise is to live an illusion, life as a half-hearted performance on a splintered stage to polite golf claps and patronizing pats on the head.

of speculative lifefiction

in

Need to stop looking at the Insta stories of one side of the family and tuning into the relayed happenings of another as both trigger me into wondering if any of the choices or the sacrifices I've made for this creative malarkey were worth any of it as I stare down decade two of offering little to the world beyond these picayune maunderings, weird shit, and triggered speculative lifefictions directed towards my illegible journal of what could have been if only if only.

Being that I was born 10 years before any of my cousins on either side to a complicated upbringing, I've felt, for the last 30, like the starter kid of both families, the beta launch: I am a cusper, the lost generation, born either ten years too late or ten years too early – though, considering all of my friends (wife included) are anywhere from 10 to 20 years older than me, I'm guessing it was the former.

I know I can't change the past and I know how pointless any and all of this speculative lifefiction is so maybe all I’m doing here is logging a reminder to myself. Note to self tag, activate.