I'll cut it out soon, I promise.

I wrote this:

The nice thing about harsh realities is that existential angst just can't, in the face of them, maintain its grip. Oh, for sure, some existential tricks are helpful, but angst just isn't worth the bother.

But I was mistaken. You might not think angst is maintaining its grip, simply because the general busyness of crisis distracts you, but if angst is fated to be your traveling companion in life, you can be certain it will reassert itself in time.

I was thinking I should give it a name, seeing as how existential angst doesn’t skip daintily off the tongue. So, what I’m going to do right now is see if I can Google-up a random name generator since meaningfulness is not one of my stronger attributes...(so hang on there a second...)

Ok, I’m back. And I’m going to have to confess--the generator was random, but I had to fire it off several times before the right name popped up. So here is the new moniker of my angst-friend: Nitza. Oh, it just makes sense and you know it.

Nitza has been very evident lately, and I’ve had to think why. Because thinking why is something I can do now so effectively that the whole story becomes quite transparent.

Odd there, that I even used the word “story,” because, right now, what Nitza is on about is the dissolution of my default narrative. The default narrative(s) went like this: There is a guiding force in life from which I can discern a path, a purpose, and a means to creatively contribute to the collective is-ness. It’s a pretty story, and who wouldn’t want live in it?

In fact, it was a portion of the following quote (which is often mistakenly attributed to Goethe, when in fact, only the final couplet is a rough translation from Faust) which provided some of the psychological rocket fuel I needed to get myself through the first book I wrote:

...the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

In fact, this is a passage from W.H. Murray’s 1951 The Scottish Himalaya Expedition. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but magical thinking--regardless of whether one’s muse is Goethe or Murray--was probably better abandoned along with baby teeth.

I do favor narrative, so it’s understandable that I’d want one. But I expect that there are many people who are able to make life meaningful without imagining the guiding nudge of a thinking cosmos, so that’s what I’m working on now. Restructuring the way I see things, perhaps using a material which Nitza isn’t so prone to shake. Until I get at least a good foundation built though, she’s rattling away at the bit of time-space continuum I’m occupying. She likes to remind me of how old I am, and point out acts of notable creativity by others who are not me, and ask (in her tremulous alto) “what did you write those books for??” To which I can only, so far, respond “Nothing Nitza. I wrote them for nothing. And we will make that ok.”

Actually, I’m hoping that now that I have outed Nitza, I won’t feel compelled to write about her so much. On to something more interesting. Like how April showers bring...May showers, which bring, apparently, ants.

Rabbit wisdom

The number of concert association renewals waiting for me to process them is roughly...a lot. And I will. They just need to sit there and age a bit, so that their characters fully develop. Meanwhile I will spend a little time wondering why blank days on the calendar add a special twist of flavor to my baseline anxiety level.

On that note...well, not really that note, but at least in that key and mode...I’m wondering whether it would be appropriate to change my default identity from “writer” to “slacker.” Or whether there’s a more descriptive term than slacker, because that’s not quite what I mean to connote. I don’t particularly evade work and responsibility, and I’m not--as far as I can tell--marked by apathy. I need a word that means “existing without an externally validatable identity.” (She who makes up words when none of the dictionary-approved ones suit her?)

Yes. If you have time to worry about this stuff, perhaps you have too much time. One of the tricky aspects of the aforementioned blank-calendar days. You might say “You need more to do.” I might reply “I have, as I mentioned, a stack of concert association renewals. I just don’t want to do them. They’re tiresome.” You might say “You’re tiresome.” I might reply “Yes. Thank for a defining word.”

I am struggling to continue the book. (though I will. I do feel I owe the characters that much.) But the struggly part is perfectly understandable (to me anyway,) in that I have three completed books and nothing to do with them. It’s kind of like making three delicious cakes, decorating them with Cool Whip™, and saying “Couldn’t we just look at them for a while?” So here I am thinking “Let me hurry and finish the 4th! Heaven knows 4 moldy concoctions stinking up the fridge on their way to the garbage must be better than 3.” So, that’s the thing. Purpose is a bit elusive here.

Which leaves me the determinedly healthy, if sort of labile, support-partner to a wonderful but fading person who can no longer provide the sturdy presence which kept me sane.

So Fred-fred and I went on a sanitizing walk this morning and stared down a good many bunnies. Who continued to nibble their clover, as if to say “don’t you have some concert association stuff to work on?”

I would just rust if I had iron

So great. I’m now, officially, the worst arm-wrestler in the family. It is almost a draw with Becca but I perceive that I would wear out sooner. Sad. Still, I will keep rowing that imaginary boat and lifting that imaginary Earth over my head, Atlas-style, at the community center. I just need bones. Bones are what I need. I suppose it’s not surprising that when you mix an ectomorph and a mesomorph you gets kids who are more mesomorphic than the ectomorph. But now, without further ado, I can quite honestly defer heavy-lifting jobs to whomsoever else happens to be handy, on the grounds that he/she is proven in clinical studies to be musclier.

Yay for the online health insurance apps. Seemed to go without a hitch. Jeff gets part D, and the rest of us have a cheapo (relatively speaking,) low-premium, monster deductible United Healthcare safety mat. I’m still voting Democrat, and I’m still hoping for something better.

In the good citizen department, I tried to donate blood today, at the Community Center. Hemoglobin, as measured by the little red gizmo, has to be 12.5. My first fingerstick turned up 11.5. “You want to try again?” asked the lady. “Sometimes it goes up” (for no apparent reason, I might add.) It did. To 12.0. So two stuck fingers later I was still a reject. I’ll try again in August.

In other news, I realize what’s bugging me. The world isn’t magic, and I wanted it to be. I was really kind of hoping for Yoda, or Clarence the wingless angel, or the celestial voice of Mufasa...or something. I might even accept a talking tub of margarine. I just hold a worn blanky of a myth that there should be further instructions, and there aren’t. Well, at least there’s coffee.

Here's a haiku, most excellently generated by this silly little haiku engine:

Haiku2 for messandclutter
who lives here who thought it would be a matter of throwing a few things
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

Here are more:

that which had plopped
was breakfast not for us and
sadly for her not

the breakfast shoppe where
the eggs homefries and toast were
fine but the coffee

abstraction that is
simply playing tricks with our
imaginations