curmudgeon

okay maybe that last post was a tad grumpy. i was getting annoyed at this "how to blog" website, that's all.

if you have to ask you shouldn't

let's say, for example, that one day you wake up thinking, "i would like to have a blog." after all, you've been hearing much about blogs. your cousin has a livejournal, your friends have blogspot and typepad accounts, you even have a co-worker who built hers out of scratch back in the days before blogging software. it seems like fun, and it seems like something Important To Do that may make your name in this thing they're calling the blogosphere.

so you sit down and register for a free account somewhere. and after entering all your profile information, you find yourself staring at the screen wondering what to write about. what can you say? should you talk about the movie you saw last night? how cute your kitty is lying in the sun? perhaps the world would like to hear of your involvement in your local knitting club.

at this point you should quietly shut down that browser and go read a book.

if you have to ask "whatever shall i write about?" then you have no business writing at all. if you have to ask it repeatedly, i implore you to stop writing. the web is full, so very full already. if you are constantly flummoxed, i suggest you expend your energies elsewhere. stop wasting time. blogging's not for everyone. it if doesn't come naturally, if it doesn't feel right, why bother doing it? life is too short. focus on what you really love instead.

i cannot help

the way i feel, sometimes, like standing at the edge of a bad accident unable, unable, unable to look.

examined life

"what do you do?"

if you have it figured out, you're one of the lucky ones. when we start off on independent living, we take a faltering step into the world. how many of us launch into exactly what we want to do? how many of us even know what that is? we grope, searching, spending our days in a grey cube and our nights exploring artistic pursuits. music. photography. painting. but those don't pay the bills, do they?

so to the question, "what do you do?" we are flummoxed, fumbling for an answer. "i...am a legal assistant." "a bank clerk." "construction." "i wait tables."

how can you answer that question without qualifiers? "i'm an admin assistant, but i play music." "right now i'm working in a cafe, but i'm a poet." or we make it into a joke. "a starving artist." or we evade the question altogether with some vague feint designed to distract.

after all, why should you be defined by what you do for money?

i understand. i've been there too. but that question serves a purpose. it should help you expand, not shove you in a box. people will respond to you based on how you answer, that is all. and if you can define yourself, think of this question as an opportunity, a shorthand to explain who you are.

so let the question guide you. at every cocktail party, every awkward pause, every stranger's introduction, let yourself grow into it.

what do you do? anything's possible.

driving with music on

we took off after breakfast which slid gently into lunch under a canopy in Santa Monica, crab and mango terrine with coffee that was no quite strong or hot enough, but freely refilled, which made up for a lot. so we took off then after our goodbyes along a freeway studded with silver gleaming in the noonish sun.

at first it was talking, because we are talkers, and we had been immersed all week in the medium of which we most like to talk. so there was much energy expended in reviewing, planning, plotting; in dreaming and arguing the finer points and sketching the future, spinning tales.

and then we passed over the rust-colored hills into the heat of the afternoon, and the land rolled past us in rhythm to the humming of the engine, and we stopped talking and listened. listened to the music on the stereo, to the road beneath, to the wind outside the window, all forming some grand design which we were still trying to figure out.

and the landscape made the music make more sense, and the music rocked the landscape gently to rise and fall with its beats and soar in melodies...

...just driving with music on.