you don’t care a bit
the dust has only just begun to form
crop circles in the carpet
Back in a different life I used to work at GNC. While on a shift, when things were especially slow (or even when they weren’t and I could sneak a spare second), I jotted down journal entry ideas or poetry fragments on bits of register tape. I need to do that again—not with register tape, mind you, but on any of the assorted stacks of blank post-its I have here in my cube.
I’m frustrated with and disappointed that as much as I told myself otherwise, it appears that a huge source of motivation for me to write, back when I did write frequently, was the attention of an audience. It takes the roof off a bit, metaphorically speaking, forcing me to admit to myself that maybe my online persona didn’t completely match my real-life one. As soon as I say that, though, the retort is that I didn’t write or discuss anything that was ever contrary to the way I really felt or thought. So it wasn’t a qualitative difference so much as a quantitative one. The quality is still there, albeit somewhat atrophied from lack of exercise, but I don’t believe it’s anything that can’t be resuscitated (triple negative?).
So, status check:
- 37, still 6’4″, still have red hair (with a bit of gray now), still have the same rectangular glasses Leslie helped me pick out in Durham in early 2004.
- Diane and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary this November.
- Luke is 12; Penelope is 8.
- Still out here in Chattanooga.
Those are the all-unimportant (for the purposes of this journal) facts. Hopefully the daily anecdotes will serve as springboards for the recording of the internal dialogue. Which is how it ever was.
blood and tears
they were here first