Strawberry Shortcake After Two Courses of Dirt

"The great question was that eternal, seemingly unanswerable one: what have I to tell the world which is so desperately important? What have I to say that has not been said before, and thousands of times, by men infinitely more gifted? Was it sheer ego, this coercive need to be heard? In what way was I unique? For if I was not unique then it would be like adding a cipher to an incalculable astronomic figure." - Henry Miller in Nexus

"No other problem is as important to me as a difficulty I encounter throughout the long daylight hours: how can I invent a passion, fulfill a wish or construct a dream in the daytime in the way my mind does spontaneously as I sleep? ... If I write, it is not as they say, 'for others'. I have no wish to exorcise other people's ghosts. I string words together as a way of getting out of the well of isolation, because I need others to pull me out. I write out of impatience, and with impatience. I want to live without dead time. What other people say interests me only in as much as it concerns me directly. They must use me to save themselves just as I use them to save myself. We have a common project." - Raoul Vaneigem in The Revolution of Everyday Life

A sort of question and answer forms for me when I place these two quotes back to back. And then this, a note I jotted down at work on September 16, 2009, which I recently stumbled across: "Often I catalog the feelings that make up a good mood. But I'm in one right now, and at the moment, it seems superfluous to document it. I know that yesterday, I was beat, and not feeling particularly good - not bad, but not good either. The point is that some times I feel good and some times I don't, and why bother dwelling on either? It's all part and parcel. I guess I just like to remember good times...."

Well, there's a bit of a contradiction there. And I think the last statement is more correct than the one before it. But there's more to it than that.... I started this blog for several reasons (I like to write and blogging is good exercise and practice, I wanted to share things with my friends and others, etc.), and looking back on the early stuff, I see experiential descriptions of life's charms, a roving catalog of the moments in life that make up what I would call living. And as the posts develop, a critique also develops: the problems I perceive, the constraints that seem to hamper this desire to live... the illusions and masks that prevent us from making these criticisms in the first place. From a simply linear perspective, one detects a negative pattern emerging. Am I becoming more negative?

Am I becoming a sourpuss?

The answer is no, and I know that. But it can be difficult to explain why. The Vaneigem passage above proves important in this explanation: I write about the wonderful experiences in life - the people and places and events that make me happy - to remind myself what I am capable of in this existence. As accompaniment, I write about the constraints - those imposed from above (Power), those self-imposed, those willed outwardly as impositions on others - to prevent myself from allowing them to obstruct my will to live. And in addressing myself, I reach out to others for help.

The positive and the negative work simultaneously, regardless of a superficially chronological read. (Another Vaneigem quote (of which I have an endless and growing list): "Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.") But since a chronological read naturally befits the form of the blog, and since the critique seems to reign as of late on this blog, I offer a purely rapturous day recounted in a paragraph or two:

Last Sunday, I woke up after noon (as usual), had cereal for breakfast, and went right over to Bouldin Creek Cafe. Met Eric, recently back from a five month trip through South America, and this was the first time we'd really caught up. Sat outside, over coffee, and let the recollections fly. He had great, picaresque scenes to describe (the salt flats of Bolivia, the plateaus, oasis cafes in the jungle), as well as the psychological toll taken on one by five months of backpacking. Coffee refills, and the talk moved to books, of which we'd both read a few since last talking, everything from Dostoevsky to Malcolm Lowry. I had planned to go for a run and go to an experimental music show in my neighbor's backyard that evening, but momentum, dear reader, momentum... when Eric suggested horseshoes and home-brewed beer at his friends' house, the path had already been bushwhacked.

Over to Jeremy and Jenny's, we loaded up on great nacho pies, avocado, and bean salads, then sampled pale ales and IPAs that Eric and Jeremy had brewed. Tasty, all I could say. Jenny's relatives were visiting and everyone seemed to be in spirits of the most agreeable sort. To the backyard, to play horseshoes on a freshly-laid course (as fresh as yesterday, literally). Ringers and beer, metal on metal and hops... until the course was dark enough that the metal clang was only the hope of a successful toss; it was simply too dark to see. And later we went downtown with Jenny's cousin Kat, first to Ginger Man, for beer and darts, and then to the great Peche, a Prohibition-era bar, only serving cocktails from that time period. Happy hour all night on Sundays. For me, this included a French 79, a Sazerac, and a Rum Old Fashioned, but I must say, the happiest hours are those spent in good company, and this set, on this night, was of the utmost. A pure joy, in all subjects and subsets, manifested in conversation rolling off tongues without a hint of mediation. Later, we went to Jackalope's, but the sensation had already been cemented. And we made hopscotch footprints as soon as the cement was laid.

So it's simple... in theory. I felt great on this day - a day absent of those constraints which I will not speak of this in post - and I remember it in words. The challenge, however, comes not in theory, but in practice: I only remember it in words because I want to live it now, in action.