Grateful Dad

Gratitude for our friends present and supportive. People who laugh with us and share the beer. Platters of loukoum and bowls of pretzels. There is fruit and vegetables too. Fine art and right solid play, kids and adults and chairs for those who need them. Friendly strangers, witty folks, quips and jokes, reunions, customers, family.
    Sometimes the organized event just brings it all together. Faces beaming and souls awash with humanity. Candy and art, Art and alcohol. Broken bottles as accidents and a dizzying maze of people.
    Thank you and thanks. What a fine evening. Bagels on the stoop and talk of romance. The evening cool and contained. Thank you.

The House

I'd take that corner out, smooth the edges. Knock the ceiling higher and clean the stairs. Rip out extra useless features and streamline that space between floor and wall. Redo the floor in hardwood, seamless. Windows open into extended patios, stairs to the roof where the deck awaits, vines growing over the whole area, making groves where tarpaper once was. Drain pipes leading right to the garden, grey water flowing back into the soil. Front door opens onto the street where friends can find us sipping tea and reading comics, can come up and join us, bringing with them juice and bagels.
    I have a room with a door and a window, the window is large and opens well, letting summer breezes rustle my papers. The door lets me in and invites others out when I need to work, otherwise sit on the daybed and chat with me while I sort through some details. My room has a desk in it, grande with cubby holes and pigeon holes and drawers for my things. One walls is lined with bookcases filled with my precious volumes, my tattered research materials and my collage piles. Another wall keeps my jars and collections. Filing cabinets keep my papers, my mock-ups and my manuscripts. I think I'll get a small table here so we can sit together and collaborate. Clients can visit and we can discuss projects.
    There is an altar in this room spilling with the objects that inspire me, it's near the window and gets dusting often enough.
    The kitchen leads into the garden of course, herbs abounding and vegetables a step away. There is a brook nearby leading to the lake. She goes swimming every morning.

Reading

Write a word, a phrase. Followed by another and another. I'm not convinced. All I want to do is read. Summer windows wide open, stacks of books beside the couch, in my lap, cool water and fruit in a bowl. Reading theory and history and folklore, science fiction and fact, fantasy and myth, Gorging on it, drowsing as if with too little beer. Luxuriating as if no one will call, for hours, for days.
    Roll me over, call me for supper, pour me a drink again and again, I have notes to take, breaks maybe for coffee and dreamy walks.
    Let the words flow into my sleep, let me start with a nod and try again to polish off the chapter before I lay the text, splayed open, on my chest.
    My yearning pulls me here, to this desire. So simple that if indeed I had days to squander, I'd be a fool and seek diversion elsewhere, forgetting this one true love and seeking distraction in some shiny, moving thing.

Slow Walking Thanks

To walk streets slowly is a gift. Every step intentional, every sidewalk crack another line in a vast sprawling poem that each new walk reveals another stanza of. The houses, the homes, the buildings themselves creak with character. The hockey stick garden posts, the porch furniture sagging, the paint jobs and the rusting banisters, bicycles teamed up like herds, chained to each other. The chalk drawings on walls and in alleys, on sidewalks are all blessings. The children are safe and they can scribble, they can add to and better the ill thought out sprayings of their elders. They can write games, inviting slow walkers to take note, reminding fast walkers to slow down. Where are you rushing off to ? Yoga ? Coffee ? Don't rush to where you can slow down. Slow down all the way there.
    The trees are waking up. The blossoms cascade over lawns. There are book boxes, sharing spaces, places that reaffirm our humanity. There are so many things to give thanks for every step on the long way roundabout  towards home. Gratitude comes with breathe, with slow and careful steps. Thank you.

Starting Right Now

Do I have the time to show up at the office and churn out a short paragraph about my thoughts and feelings ? Do I have the time to moisturize my face after working outside with sun beating down and pallets of earth moved across alleyways? Do I have the time to worry about Antarctica and the ice sheets and the people and Hydro Quebec and radical skepticism and ill informed rationalism and people who think way too much ? Do I have the time to consider and reconsider and reconsider still my contribution to what seems like a confused and collapsing civilization? Do I have the time to make a comic book and dream of a career in the arts instead of selling everything I have and moving to a small cabin in the countryside?

    Ask me what I would do if I had five years to live and I wouldn't answer 'what I'm doing now' so why am I doing what I'm doing now instead of what I'd do if I had only five years to live ?
    Tell me about it. Tell me about my choices and my decisions and my set backs and cop outs and excuses and fears and paralysis and devil you know. Devil you know will strangle every last breath out of you, five years or no. And by you I mean me.

    Here we are accumulating garbage for the big parade. Accumulating garbage to tuck into the loose corners of our coffins. And coffins ! What an extravagance. We'd be so lucky to get a nice lacquered wooden box to rot in. Some folks never get the option. They sink into the field where they are struck down, maybe thrown into the ravine with the others.

    Sure, go back to school to get a masters degree, join the post docs in line for food and clean water. Wait for the corporate overlords to have their ghost of Christmas past moment, wait for Dick Cheney to shudder at his reflection and take it all back, take it all back, restore the droned children to life, restore the forest to it's majesty, restore the women to their humanity.

    Let's work a tad harder, let's do a little spring cleaning all year round, let's whip it out and get it on, let's high five until the sun rises, let's sort the recycling, reuse the reusables, take out the trash, forgive our shitty neighbours, rejoice with our cousins and see where that takes us.

    This is a moment of missives, this is the time for all times, we've made so many children, let's scrub the sidewalks for them so we don't have to pick glass shards out of their kneecaps. Let's turn off the power so they can breathe. Let's stop with the filth so they can eat some decent food and make their teenage parties something not tinged with ragged desperation born of hopelessness.

    We'll turn around in circles until we straighten out this mess. We'll pull the plug and wear extra sweaters in the winter. We'll collect family members to live with us. We'll turn this boat around, I swear, and plant gardens in every cop car.

    Starting now, starting right exactly now.

And Baby Makes Writing And Drawing Happen

This is the fifty-sixth instalment of a daily writing practice. I started with the intention of doing it for one month. I'm now nearing two. It was been a good thing. Sometimes I have no idea what to write about but to date I have yet to skip a day. This exercise has allowed me to hone a skill long desired but generally dormant. I've wanted to do this for a long time but never made the time for it, never showed up to the office, so to speak. Now I am showing up and even doing some work.
    Six months ago my son was born. I never really imagined that being a parent would be part of my life but alas, it is so. This parenthood has forced me to face several pressing issues in my life, one being my penchant for putting things off until the boiling point. With a baby one can't really change the diaper later or make some toast for your hard working partner later. One gets out of bed and jumps into action at a moment's notice. One does things now in groggy states, in wakeful states, no matter.
    When I embarked on a daily writing habit, I wasn't sure what would happen. Several things did. The first thing I noticed was a severe release of pressure. Anxiety long slow-cooking in me and raging out at inopportune times was slowly dissipating. I was not fully released from it's grips of course but I was palpably helping myself. I was doing something good for me that didn't involve hedonism. I found that I was organizing my thoughts and feelings. I was expressing myself, first with memoir and later with personal essay. I reached into my memories and dragged old stories out, nothing earth shaking, nothing dramatic. It felt good, though. It was still a release. I'm sharing the occasional link on social networks and am getting the very occasional page hit or compliment. This is practice. If I pull off a year, I'll have more than enough raw material for some sort of book. If I don't have a book, I'll have a bunch of stuff I wrote.
    Two weeks ago I decided to add another small task to my already over full plate. I started a daily drawing routine. I would cut some four by six inch piece of card and draw a cartoon bunny on it with pencil. I would use a smudge stick to render it. When the drawing was finished I'd stamp my name on the back side, sign it and scribble the year. Then I'd slip it into a plastic collectors bag meant for manga books. I've sold two of these things for forty dollars each. This feels like I've already written about this. I cannot real whether I have or not and the last thing I'll do is slog through previous blog posts to see if I have.
    The drawing is keeping my hand limber. Bunnies are easy and fun to draw and come in a variety of moods and styles. It's all pencil so far, which I enjoy. It's less committal than ink and lends itself to fast techniques of shading.
    So I have a baby, a business that I am not neglecting, a new writing routine and now a daily drawing one. I don't go out as much anymore, I certainly am not drinking or getting high anymore. I have time, I have energy. I'm trying to work towers a plan that will continue to change my life for the better. So far so good.

Food

Emotional eating is a concept that has come to me recently. It fits the bill perfectly to describe some of my habits. I've always been a lusty eater, piling on the gusto. One bird-like ex admitted disgust watching me eat. Others claimed to salivate seeing me hunker down with the perfect sandwich. As the years went by I realized that I eat much too quickly. What might be fine and good for a young man of twenty five seems off putting and unhealthy for a man of forty.
    I always knew that I ate too much. I would hover over snack tables at parties and eat continuously. I was the guy at the art show going back for more cheese and grapes every three minutes. I could show up at your house unannounced just when a cake was being pulled out of the oven. A gift. I received gifts of food often. I am snack-rich, I would proclaim proudly. People just handed food to me. Small bags of treats. A piece of fruit. It still happens.
    Consciousness surrounding food happened some years ago. A friend told me her mother was at an Over Eaters Anonymous meeting. I was surprised because said mom was quite slim. I associated over-eating with larger people. I initially may have dismissed the mom-at-meeting story as an example of a neurosis. It was quite a while later when I realized I ate way past the full point. I ate fast to shovel more in while the getting was good. I'd have seconds, thirds. I would pick at whatever was left on the table. At weddings I polished off every course and even hit into the cousin's steaks.
    When my thyroid bottomed out in my late thirties I started re-evaluating. I thought my weight gain was from my semi-strict diet of beer and bagels. Alas, it was not so. My hormones weren't working. My energy levels, always so high, dropped down low and with it a large part of my self-identity. I was always hyper, speedy, full of pep, happy-go-lucky. Now I was slow and tired. It happened, the doctors told me, for no known reason and it was here to stay, this new reality. I'm on the synthetic hormone now, every morning for six years or so. I'm stabilized and a little more prudent. I can't get away with eating five burgers at the bbq anymore. I can't burn off that kind of heat. My guts have rebelled. My ass is saying watch it buddy, this won't stand.
    I eat when I'm stressed. I'm often stressed. I cram the maw before I realize it. I'm stressed over nonsense, of course. The tension sets me to automatic and I revert to a habit that once worked but today spells danger. I'm a happy gourmand at times and at other times a ravenous junkie, wishing there was a spot in the 'hood that served small bits of meat from out a window. Meat on a stick for two bucks. I'd be there daily. Followed by a sandwich. Then a muffin. Finally candy. Willy-nilly, anything following anything. Indiscriminate.
    I'm learning slowly. I catch myself. I know it's emotional now. It wasn't always. But now, there is no denying it is. My overdue taxes turn to snacks, stress over work and the walk I'm taking to clear my head becomes a grazing session. I need a stick to chew on to avoid the gas station jerky or artisanal baked good.
    I'm moving slower now. I chew more. I put the spoon down every tenth meal. I say grace. I savour a little more than before. It isn't easy. It's very difficult. It's my final frontier, at least I hope so.
    I'd love to see the pyramids. I think southern barbecue may come first. I don't think of landmarks, I think of diners.