day three

Day three in Colorado, first time writing here, mostly because we've kept pretty active. Botanical gardens. LoDo. Cherry Creek. Airport. Ft. Collins. City Park. PF Chang's. Buying a canoe. Pus, it feels rude to sit and write while visiting.

Of course, it's just after 7:15 now and I've been up for over an hour and everyone else is asleep, so I sit here in an Adirondack chair staring at the hint of mountains in the distance, visited by family pets and trying to ignore the noisy squawking of the blue jays. I'd hoped being here would wake my slumbering muse, but she still dozes, oblivious to my need for her. I think back to my last visit here, must before the great train adventure and remember the words that poured from my pen, thoughts and insights that now seem written by someone long gone. What was it about that time? Was I more aware? More open? More awake?

Or perhaps it was because I had 10-12 hours a day on a train with nothing to do but write....

Lately I've felt like I've been stumbling through my days half-asleep and while the insomnia contributes some to that, there's something deeper going on. I'm broken inside, only I can't find the cause, only the symptoms. Sleeplessness, self-loathing, joylessness. An easy annoyance with life. A sense of being left behind, stuck watching others lives change and grow.

I am reminded again of the quote Karin shared during her talk in June - "Comparison is the thief of joy." How true and how difficult to live out.

I look at the horizon and know the beauty of the mountains in the distance, but the morning mist blurs and fades, giving only an impression of what lies there, obscuring their gradeur. But as the sun climbs the clouds behind me, the peaks become clearer, sharper, inspiring, beckoning. We see now through a glass darkly, but clarity will come. Slowly. In its own time. We cannot push it. We can only wait. Æ

a beginning

DIA, waiting for my flight to Denver to board. Vacation, 2008. I'm not nearly as excited as I thought I'd be, but then I've been up over 2 1/2 hours and it's not yet 8:00 AM, so tht might have something to do with it. Yet it's clear something's not right within me. Insomnia. Bursts of anger. Feelings of worthlessness. Abnegation of hope. Not the way you want to start a vacation. Of course, perhaps it's OK, proving the need I have for a vacation, a change of venue, of pace, of routine. I know there's something off-kilter, judging from the symptoms, but I cannot pinpoint what it is. Perhaps stepping back for a bit will help.

My brain is not here. Will write later. Going to start The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Mom said it was bittersweet. Definitely not what I need right now. But it's what I have. Æ

i lost my phone

we live in fascinating times. here i am, my phone left in the backseat of a friend's car, able to jump online and check to see if anyone has called my phone from my computer. there was a time not that long ago where an extended trip like the one i'm preparing to take meant expecting to be away from your phone for a while. now i'm driving up to mason tomorrow morning to make sure that doesn't happen. how swiftly time changes. the strange thing is, i had hoped to make a couple of phone calls tonight. and though no one ever calls, i'm afraid i'm going to miss a call tonight. don't know what you've got 'til it's gone, right?

i sat down this afternoon at moe's to try and write down some thoughts following the visitation for susan's husband, but nothing came. i have no words for a situation like this, for two little girls left wondering what happened to their father and if it means their cat and dog might leave them as well. i have no words for the swirl of emotions on susan's face as we methodically made our way through the line to where she stood, just in front of the casket. my feelings on visitations are well-documented and i won't go into them again. i only wish i had words that would help, or the power to take the pain away. but i do not. and quote woody all you want, but showing up for things like this rarely feels like success. it feels like the absolute least i can do.

the clouds have been following me all day, stealing my thoughts and distracting me from the thoughts still lingering about. right now they're shadowed against a dimming sky. this afternoon they were brilliant white in an impossibly blue sky. no ducks or figures or mythical creatures, just a reminder that life is filled with unimaginable beauty we miss every day because we're too busy staring into the abyss.

we're moving on.

blood work tomorrow morning. trip to mason to pick up my phone after that. home to probably mow my lawn, unless rain intervenes, which looks unlikely, dagnabit. do some laundry. start laying out what i need to pack. then back to the exact same building from the blood test for a meeting with my sleep doctor about my future with the damned bipap machine. then more prep for the trip. hard to believe it's coming so soon. it's times like this i wish i were a list maker, but i'm not, as it was at the beginning, so it is now and so it shall ever be, world without end. need to begin throwing stuff i want to take into a centralized location as i think of it so i don't leave stuff behind. which i will.

the museum has an exhibit going on now of photographs by gregory crewdson. you can do a google search to see some of his work. if you're in the cincy area or are going to be in the cincy area before oct. 5, check it out. huge prints of staged scenes that feel like captured moments from a david lynch film or a real-life version of a hopper painting. make sure you stop by the gift shop to look at the book beneath the roses before you leave. haven't been this taken with a photographer since peter lik.

enough for tonight. want to try and finish west wing season four before i leave tuesday. seems doable, especially since i don't sleep anymore. night. Æ

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