I touched it

These last 2 days if I touched it then it didn’t work.  I don’t think that I have ever been more frustrated in my life.  Here is how it went down (and I promise not to exaggerate)…I have multiple editing jobs due this week so I  I got a new (to me) computer for home editing.  It just needed a hard drive which I had 3 spare at home.  Well this new box needed a new type of hard drive so none of mine worked.  So onto craigslist I go and find one for $20.  I get it home and realize that the cables are all wrong. I go to the store to buy them.  Then the  connections for the DVD drive are wrong.  So I buy a new drive to suit.  Now I need to burn a copy of Windows to load onto the new hard drive but neither of my DVD drives are working for some reason.  I try to use my brothers computer but he didn’t have a ISO image burner so I switch the new drive to the old computer and burn.  I’m on my way.  But  halfway through the install (and at 4am) I realize the hard drive is corrupt.  Crap.  I fall asleep on the floor watching a progress bar that I know will never reach 100%.  Time is running out on me.

I wake up this morning 45 min late.  While rushing to get Mia’s lunch and breakfast ready I realize that Mia’s birthday/sleep over with 8 of her friends  is tomorrow and I have to clean the house, bake the goods, buy the presents and generally get stuff done.  Ugh.  I have to scrape the car windows.  Two blocks later I have to pull over to scrape them again.  Mia wants to bring bacon to school tomorrow instead of cake.  At 3 slices per student that means 96 slices to cook tonight.  I still need to edit and my computer is down.  Did I mention that we are picking up all 8 of her friends from school?  Did I mention that Rebecca’s explorers starter died yesterday so transportation is looking bad?

After I drop off Mia (late) I ran out of gas.  The best part of this day, I realized, was that I was only 3 blocks from a gas station.  I rush over to Rebecca’s and pull the starter (laying on cold cement in a tee shirt is really cold.  Don’t judge I was running late and forgot to dress accordingly).  I pull the part,  rush to the store and bring back a new one.  The electrical wires were wrong on the new starter.  Come to find Ford no longer makes the old connections so I’m left to rewire the electrical under the car, on my back, in my tee shirt.

 

Everything I touch just ends up not working out.  Everything I touched was a struggle at every step of the way.

 

At 230 I decided something.  I was going to touch this bad day.  I was going to touch this bad day and it was going to stop working.

 

I touched this bad day with the thought of hugging my girlfriend, Teresa.  She knows how to hug me.   I thought of how my friends want me to have a better day and I wasn’t going to let them down.  I touched this bad day by remembering that my baby girl turns 12 tomorrow and she is excited and so shall I be.  It’s 4:30 now and  I fixed the starter.  I fixed my computer.  I’m cleaning the house.  I’m editing in between.  Mia is happily cleaning along side me and I got to see Teresa.

 

Two negatives make a positive so I touched this bad day and it stopped working.  Take that you big jerk.  I’m happy and you can’t stop me.

I say Elenore goodnight

She does not like her name.  She never uses it and rarely responds to it.  A shortened version is all She’ll go by and mostly that is what He calls Her.   But on the phone, late into the night, when sleep is near He’ll say Elenore, goodnight.  It is with fascination then when She realizes Her mouth watering at the sound of His voice saying Her name.  The feelings that reveal themselves in the quite ways are beautiful.  A grand gesture can say to the world He Loves Her but nothing can quite compare to the way He tells others the story of Her.  And that is how I heard it the first time. Him telling the story of Her.  “I say Elemore goodnight”.  This is His story of Her for His friends to hear.  This is His way of sharing his feelings for Her in a quiet way.  I wish you could have seen Him telling it.  With a little dance in his stance and confidence in his words.

“I say Elenore goodnight”

You hear that from Him and you can hear what happy sounds like.

Wonder

I don’t know everything and I’m happy for it.

I saw this puzzle and it made me wonder.  It made me wonder how the creator of it had found the emptiness where once everything was whole.

I know that math will explain this but I’d prefer it not to.  Just the idea of something that can make me wonder … I don’t know about you but when I am faced with wonder I feel strong. I feel young. I feel hope for this world because this thing made me feel magic. If even for a fleeting instant before my brain started analyzing the math of it I FELT the wonder of it.  My heart almost broke for the loving of that feeling. This is how I learn. This is how I love. I see something that fills me with wonder and I feel it. I feel it and I want to learn it. I learn it and I know it. I know it  and why it is and how it now is a part of me.

I saw this puzzle and it made me wonder. It made me wonder how the creator  of it found the wholeness where once something was missing.

I cried at work today

This is the second time I’ve cried at my current job.  The first time was at the Robert Manwill funeral.  That time it was the culmination of all the emotions from the previous weeks. The search, the community pulling together, the crushed hopes of all who were there, the poor boy who would never get to experience so many good things in life.

Today, my reporter and I were sent to cover a single vehicle accident on I84.  Prior to arriving all we knew was that only one car was involved and that one, maybe, two people were ejected from the car as it rolled.  So, when I got to the scene I went to work getting video.  The crumpled and broken car.  The life flight helicopter on the freeway.  The tears of a woman crying on the shoulder of her husband.  We found an officer that we could interview so after I mic’d him up and began recording I tuned out the conversation between my reporter and the officer and began to scan the scene for anything else I could get video of.  The quilt pinned under the car tire.  The suitcase in the back seat.  The home-made cupcakes scattered on the ground.  The playing cards blowing away in the cold wind.  As my eyes focused on the blood stained weeds my attention focused back to the interview.  The officer was saying that 2 children were ejected from the car.  A 9 year old girl and her 10 year old brother.  The boy had been thrown across the freeway.  The officer continued to explain that the boy struggled to crawl back across the freeway to get to the car where he found his sister, unresponsive and dying.  He held her as she died.

It was too much for me.  I looked back to the quilt under the car and thought: that was her quilt, those were her cupcakes.  I cried through the rest of the interview and the rest of the video.  I cried on the way home and when I went home for lunch.  I cried for that poor girl who’s name I don’t know and who’s face I’ve never seen.  For all the good things that she’ll never get to experience in this world.   And for the brother that had the strength and courage to crawl back to his sister, i send him my love and hope that it finds him.  I hope that it lessens his sorrow by whatever amount that its worth.  I also send him my admiration because when my time comes I would consider myself blessed if someone just like him was sitting right next to me in the car.

The End and the Re-Start

Below this post is what I have written. As you can see I have not posted (or written) anything since February ’07.

 

Above this post is the Re-start of my writing.  It may be more of the same or something different but probably a hodgepodge of random stories or thoughts.

 

Lets see where this goes.

Four Flowers

Thursday, February 22, 2007

I see four flowers and hear violins.  I am witness to their heartache but I am also witness to the birth of inspiration and the impression this duet has made on life.  Blossoming melodies and hauntingly beautiful boquets.  What story will they tell you?  What truth will you learn from fragrant music?  Many truths travel in duets: pain and sparrows, love and fate.  Alone they hold meaning, together they hold purpose.  I wonder what my duet would be in your eyes?  In me I long to know if you see purpose or just meaning.  Meaning or purpose?  I laugh at the snow and move against the motion of the sea.  Do you see meaning or purpose in me?  Brush your hair from beside your eyes and wet your lips.  Whisper.  Not everyone can relate.  Seeds planted for the meaning of the weaping willow may just hold the purpose of the rebirth of pain and sparrows.  Whisper, for your impression may change the will of the seed.  Whisper, for the will of the seed may instead choose to blossom into four flowers that will someday weap blossoming melodies and hauntingly beautiful boquets.  Alone, your whisper and the seed hold meaning.  Together, they have the power to change my purpose.  Is it possible that in your whisper I have finally seen the brilliance that I’d thought lost in my lifetime?  Creation for the sake of beauty.  Emotion for the sake of a smile.  Motion for the sake of meeting you.

The Day

Thursday, January 25, 2007

The darkness weighed me down.  The darkness that that I was used to and the darkness that I once welcomed now has chosen to turn its back on me.  Such is the nature of these things.  In the darkness i found that there were no shadows.  In the darkness my vision was blurred but it did not decieve like the shadows of the light.

Now the darkness is telling me to go.  It is telling my that my time there is over.  The sun is beginning to shine and the moon is fading away into the past taking with it my ability to blend behind the scenic curtain of the night.  There is an event horizon closing in on me.  Do I step forward and face the day or do I try and remain?

I step forward.  I step forward because the time is now.  I step forward because I choose to.  I may first be blinded by the forgotten day and I may stumble when a steady path is expected.  The shadows of this world of light will find me as I find my own way but i will choose thier shape and I will choose thier effect.  I will find my tree in the park and rest there when I need to.  I will choose to stand tall and I will choose to smile at you just because you deserve to have a smile given.

Do not hate the darkness.  It gave me a home and it kept me.  And now it has guided me toward my future not by lighting my path but by receding unto itself and letting me choose the direction that I will take.  If by chance our paths should cross and the sun is shinning bright I hope you will join me in the shade of my tree where we can tell stories of past endings and future beginnings and smile past the shade into the crisp air of a dew covered summer morning.  In the path of my choosing and in the shade of my tree, I can see something to exist for: The company of you and the soft scent of dreams on the breeze.

The Sound of You

Friday, December 08, 2006

The sound of you woke my soul.  The sound of you. The sound of you knows when to be soft when I am blue.  The sound of you knows how to smile my heart and see my mind and whisper my happiness and wink my shy and glance my ease and brush my forget and caress my remembering and when your eyes slowly close and open again pulling your smile lines into my worlds glimmer you already know that I am peaceful because as my lips move to form a thank you your lips have already formed a welcome and suddenly I smile your heart and I see your mind and I whisper your happiness and I wink your shy and I glance your ease and I brush your forget and I caress your remembering and when my eyes slowly close and open again pulling my smile lines into your worlds glimmer I already know that you are peaceful because as your lips move to form a thank you my lips have already formed a welcome.

Title Bout

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Choosing the Wrong Fight VS. Adapting to the Cold

When summer left me in the fall I didn’t even notice. It switched by slight of hand. Cheap parlor tricks if you ask me. A left to my right, a zig to zag. A transition is, by rights, not an unseasonable request. A dumped lover may not know why but at least it knows when. This morning the hope of tomorrows sun shined far brighter and with more purpose. Then, at mid day, summer dumped me for fall. Tonight the stars will fight me for control of the season. Will I be able to see in the mist of memory and forgotten chance?

I’m not ready.

Now the sky has whithered into darkness and smothers the face of the sun. I realize that the fight has not left the night. It is simple to see if you notice the branches fall while the leaves remain and the fluid dreams of trees go silent. I armor my body with my blanket of Novembers past and of Decent Places: Trampled brown grass & a teenage laugh, apple cider & a pebble at your bedroom window, the first snowfall & its non sound of a world gone quietly silent.

Its not working.

Warm voices (veiled) somehow begin to make sense. The night changes my thoughts. The rich vein of stars are braille for my eyes to touch.
“There is a time for struggle” it says “but it is not now. Let the red sky rise and winters warmer blanket will replace Novembers carousel ride.”
The flavor of my melancholy is forgotten. I long for the rain to bring it back to me.
Night & Stars say: “Do not listen to the rain, dear boy, it has already fallen and has nothing good to say.”

Dawn Approaches.

Another transition is lost. Winter and her fucking blanket argued me straight out of fall. Now I know to close my mouth and watch. If I’m to know my seasons I must know my transitions. Don’t you agree?

The Death of a Friend…

Monday, November 13, 2006

It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you all that my dear friend, Mike’s iPod, died today.  All of the details are still not known but it is known that it died in the pocket of a loved one doing what it loved to do: spreading the joy of music to all those willing to share a strangers dirty white ear bud.  He is survived by a cell phone with a few ringtones and will be dearly missed.  There will be a brief memorial service at the train depot on November 21 at 730 pm.  This date was chosen to honor the short lifespan of the the 1st generation iPod and also to commemorate the release of II Devo’s newest album: Siempre.  Drinks will be BYOB preferably in a conceiled flask.  Donations will not be accepted.