JOURNAL: AGE, WEAR, AND BLITHER

Sometimes I'm reminded that I need to write more. I've never seen myself as a writer, never felt the call to be an author. Rather, I have to write. I would not be a happy, well-adjusted, fairly confident individual without writing. I wouldn't be a lot of things so it's easier to say what I would be: miserable.

I've been biking for my work commute as we've been blessed of late with this fresh, spring weather. This is a ten mile round trip with plenty of up and downhills. Add to that my vague training for a 10K (running) race at the end of May...My body has been telling me it's aging this past year. I feel damaged much more quickly if I don't stretch it and rest it like it wants. It's a whole new phase of life with sciatic nerves and ligaments and strangely specific muscle aches. Where raising my arm while dancing to Sam Cooke on soul night can pull a muscle and take a couple of months to heal. Bodies are weird and precarious and really special.

Another part of aging probably speaks to why I blog so little as of late. What you may not realize is that most of my posts for the past year were scheduled long ago, these photographs that appear periodically were set up to appear on the anniversaries of their creation as precious mementos for myself. I blog so little because I no longer heavily feel the weight of existential dilemmas that I did eight years ago. I'm sure I'll face another wave of those as I near middle age. For now, I have no children so I can relax in my knowledge that I know nothing.

Guys, I can comprehend now that I'll near middle age. Before you know it I'll be 30 and then it's just a fleetly, flittly, flying leap to 40. I can see 40 approaching. I've always seen years stretching out before me like a strange day (but year) planner, white boxes enclosed in structured black lines. Which is funny because no one actually experiences time this way, but I've always had this image and it continues on, now with 38, 39, and 40 in view.

Well, anyway, this is total blither meant to just get me to write for a few minutes. And I'll post because this is the internet which is comprised largely by blither and who doesn't want to fit in? Let's all be lemmings.

we cannot remember the future, time just keeps moving forward

let me be boring

So lately I've been on this researching Frederick Wiseman kick. He's a filmmaker that's a legend in documentary but not necessarily to the wide world. Part of the reason for this is that he makes films about institutions–a mental asylum for the criminally insane (in 1967 so you can imagine), law enforcement, high school, juvenile courts, welfare, ballet companies, boxing gyms to name a few– and they're observational films: Let's sit and roll with the camera and take our time. You might not know this about me anymore because for the last couple of years I've been making docs for pay or for causes, but that's my first love. I want to be a "boring" filmmaker and I've forgotten that. The cause of commercial documentary is a foreign and stressful campaign to me: I doubt and trip over myself because it's my counter-intuitive. Anyway, thanks Freddie. Thanks for you doing what you've done. I forget myself.

Oh. Also, you should look up pictures of Frederick Wiseman. He looks like a thoroughly charming and idiosyncratic character.

And, I guess, happy 2011. I can't believe this eleven business. Time is no linear beast, it's an unwieldy, fluid, and here-and-there substance. The next thing we know I'll be 45 and...well...I don't know the rest of that sentence.  

theory of relativity part II

Read Jessica Francis Kane's Where do you find the time?
Here's a preview:

"It's occasionally been found in speeding taxis and Paris hotel rooms. Alpine meadows and mourning doves are rich in it, though can be hard to find. Forget about fountains and rainbows, they're myths. Rarely it falls from geese flying north."

Now go read it here at McSweeney's. I promise, you'll find time.


I also recommend Adele's Rolling in the Deep music vid. Found it on my lovely friend ke's blog.

theory of relativity part I

December isn't what I thought it was. That's my conclusion these past few months starting in September. The weather kind of changes, I'm swept up in various different activities, I've grown –> everything has changed.

But it hasn't.

Am I not prepared?

Am I holding onto something?

Is time moving faster? (yes.)

In elementary school you have themed calendars. October becomes associated with black cats and the color orange. November is fallen leaves and little pilgrim couples in their black and white period costumes. This is clear: October is not November.

Perhaps it is this lack of distinction between months. They slip out as the next kind of wanders in without announcing itself. The calendar tells me there's something going on. November 30th. December 1st. What's different? Why has the word changed? We just went from Tuesday to Wednesday.

How do months differ?

And why does this matter?

I'm in an ambiguous soup of time. Yesterday I was laying in my hammock writing a paper about Beyonce's If I were a boy and tomorrow I will be in a cafe in Paraguay eating mbeyu. Does anyone else know this feeling? Albert Einstein studied it. Kind of.