bald

Though I shaved my hair off last year, when I fucked up and forgot to put on the clipper guard during my usual self-inflicted fade cut and ended up liking it, it's only been in the last few weeks (after considering letting it grow back but remembering that there are few things in the world that I loathe more than getting a haircut) that I actually got myself one of those head-shaving electric razors, and went the full monty, the full Luthor. And I like it.

I'd avoided going full Luthor not out of a fear of doing it, but out of a total lack of interest in the work required to shave my head with a razor (and out of an ignorance about the existence of such things as dedicated head shavers, miracles of miracles / wonders never cease, back in my day etc etc). Now, it takes a grand total of three minutes before I'm ready to take on the accursed Kryptonian.

Also can't discount that now that the family that were most vain about their hair – my grandfather and my mother – and by extension, mine, are dead, I don't have to think about what they think about it (though it would've been more of a "how much will I have to hear, You have such beautiful hair" sort of thing) and thus, bzzzz, far balder than the day I was born.

Maybe it's a whole "dawn of a new era" -type deal though it's more likely one of those "I hated having hair and I hated my hair and I was sick of my hair and fuck it the end" -type deals though I do confess to a sudden urge to buy a porkpie hat and inform everyone within earshot and beyond that I'm the one who knocks.

rewild(?)

First day of school (childless; small humans arrive next Wednesday) for K. Meetings and meetings and meetings and more meetings.

Keep wanting to do more text things here, but nothing coming to me, except this. With the impending workspace move to NuSanctum, my mornings will look a bit different – slower, for one – so maybe I can figure out a way to incorporate something not dissimilar to this in that space. Of course, the other end of that spectrum is as if not more appealing: a switch entirely over to a single page with the day's Attendance Card and have that be it and all, my 4’33” version of a FAR SIDE desk calendar.

On that: I might've reached a point with the internet where I have the least interest in being online since party line days and three channels. Not sure why, other than it bores me – just another pointless routine. Need to make it a wild and different place, eliminate habits of old, find a new way (pretty much the same thing I've been doing for the last year).

Maybe a single Attendance Card is the way to go? Or maybe with this out of my system, I can clear the decks for something different?

"so what do you do?"

For the first time in memory, I've been telling anyone who asks me what I do the truth: I don't know, that I'm still figuring it out – and, while I rarely provide context or qualification for my answer (after all the upheaval the last few years, I'm still learning to live without them, for better and for worse, and it's put the question of how much of my life – and theirs – did I waste on these creative pursuits), I'm always shocked by the universal reply: some variation of That's great or Good for you.

Wish I had more of a insight into what I think of that response, but I'm still figuring it out, processing the shock: Growing up, it was all "what's your plan, blah blah blah"; maybe there's a shift that happens when you reach middle age?

I was advised by my doctor to seek counseling for grief, but I've (so far) resisted it: I'm one of the weird ones who enjoyed therapy, found it a stimulating intellectual exercise and dialogue, but, unless they can give me concrete steps to find a purpose, there's no point. Perhaps now I can start to use the real answer to "How are you?": Fine when I'm doing something – moving gravel, writing weird shit that no one reads, building BabyShed – fucking awful when I have time to think.

(Unless I'm using that time to think as time to write (weird shit that no one reads): this process of processing really does help – but I wish I could expand it out throughout the day and enjoy it as much as I do in these early morning, pre-people hours but I know myself well enough to know that any attempt to do that will kill the joy of these early morning hours).

Suppose this could use a conclusion – but there isn't one. Ongoing process (of processing).

reconciliations

As I've been transitioning from two chunks of work down to one each day – summer break early, given the swirling circumstances – the toughest part is reconciling two realities: One, that by working less, I'm letting the creative part of me drift away, just a bit more than normal, the majority of the day being dedicated to non-creative (though, in some cases, not unenjoyable) pursuits and responsibilities. The second is that by working less and letting that part of my identity slip, I accomplish more in the few hours in which I allow myself to indulge the creative side before the day's run: it wasn't until I went to my summer schedule (which will, most likely, be permanent) that I found my footing with the Fictions (the former Project500, keep it simple and all) and blasted through the first one. The second chunk of work an (oft-failed) effort to assert an identity that didn't need assertion to begin with? Or, perhaps, I need the other stuff to help fill the well more than I had previously thought. Whatever it is, I'll take it – but that doesn't make it an easy reconciliation. An essential one, yes, but not an easy one; recording this as a note of the benefit of present effort.

erasure loops

An understanding that the frustration I've felt as I stare down yet another trip into legal erasure of a person (tangentially this time) – perhaps worth noting that, both times, I've been reading Proust – isn't over the death: think I said yesterday that, while I obviously feel bad for my wife and her family, my mother-in-law's death really doesn't impact me emotionally: I liked her, and, for the most part, lucked out in the mother-in-law department, but she hadn't been well for a long time and her relatively quick passing (at home) was a gift for her. What's bothering me is that my grandfather's estate issues and such are still going on – nothing bad, just a lot to dismantle – and, now that I'm dealing with (though not with the same level of involvement) another one, I feel like I'm back at the beginning of the process with my grandfather – down to the nursing home my father-in-law will be going into. It's an utterly exhausting loop, but one that begs the question: in these morning hours spent toiling in The Paintshop, writing things that no one reads only for my own belief that, in order to communicate to a nebulous someone, they need to exist, am I being myself for the only time during the day, or am I visiting the mausoleum of a previous iteration of myself, as others visit a grave?

meetings and visitations

Two more of the standard meetings and visitations in the interregnum between death and funeral today though this is my first in a long time when one spouse survives still; I'm used to dealing with total erasure, step by step, bit by bit. Will sit and be silent and offer support when needed; for some reason or other I've come to view these meetings and visitations as an integral part of the grieving process (though, in this case, I don’t consider myself to be grieving for the deceased but for the grief my wife is feeling) – probably because I've handled them myself for so long and prefer to do than feel; in this case, I do the lawn and write the obit.

shake

Fascinating recognition, thanks to a much-needed convo with a great friend: that part of my present creative problem is that, while I want and need to move on to different moods and forms, the inputs – life swirling, doing its thing –, the toxic waters that are gurgling into my well, are holding me in the same soul-sucking patterns of the last 14 years. Shaking things up is the only way out / through – trick being to figure out what, exactly, to shake: while I’d rather pursue requisite shaking with surgical precision for now, I do accept that “scorched earth everything” might become unavoidable.

patchings

Finished patching the pond at 2000 last night and the water will begin flowing shortly – and hopefully staying in. But, before I turn it back on, will have to rework the waterfall stones again so they don't let water escape. Best guess as to the source of the two holes in the pond liner: since it started happening last year, the first one is probably from Kirby chasing one of the his Derbzballs into the pond and clawing back up; and the second, is, I know, from my use of a rake to get muck and grass and all sorts of Swamp Thing regalia out of the pond last weekend. First one may be from me as well, IDK.

In order, however, to reach the bottom of that second tear, I had to further drain the pond. Behold the beauty of my improvised drainage system (pond pump duct taped to 1"-piping duct taped to a hose held up on shepherd hooks), using it to further nourish the new grass I had to put into the Derbzball field:

Note: I did not put it into the flowerbeds as a.) I have a tendency to kill plants and, b.), I tried but it ended up flowing back into the pond which really defeated the purpose of all of the effort.

Related truth about Amazon delivery: if you order something for a project (ie patch kit / tape), it will arrive not early in the day when you need it, but after dinner, when you can barely function but must, nonetheless, to finish.

The war continues.

It's been 20 years now since I left music school and my creative, for want of a better word, process still clings to my music composition methods: hunting and pecking for melodies, for transitions, transpositions, chord changes, sounds that fascinate, that lead from themselves to the next to the next and, while it's not always the best process for speed or for my own creative well-being, it's the way things eventually show up – with fiction at least. Fiction is music.

Slowly, slowly returning to the mindset that this writing thing is less a cosmic joke that I've borne the brunt of for the last 20+ years and more an essential part of who I am, for better or for worse: part of the frustration – and this need (rational – though perhaps too rational) for some nebulous "else" – is that I get up so early (which I prefer) that I'm mentally tapped out (read: old and tired) by lunch if not by the end of the morning run and that I'm incapable of mustering the requisite focus and/or willpower to push ahead creatively through the remaining 10-13 hours of of my waking day which – while the smart thing to do would be to view those 10-13 as a time for replenishing and restocking my creative well – nonetheless feel more like a further drain on my limited-to-begin-with mental and creative acuity but hey, at least I'm not using this space to bitch about how busy I am (which I'm not which might be part of the problem though I'd never bitch about it because that's just fucking lame): no, I get to bitch about other things (like how T1D is nothing if not a disease of damned if you do, damned if you don't) so IDK pfffbt, fuck it, the day awaits.