5 am soul milk

The urgency is similar to needing to feed a baby, only with the nagging awareness that there is no baby to feed (yet) and that perhaps you should try to go back to sleep after all. But popping out of bed at 5 am has it's up sides, like feeling profoundly alone in the universe. By 6:30 the up side becomes the awareness of how much you want the loved ones on Facebook to stop by for a visit, or the ones in the house, upstairs, to wake up already!

The desire to blur lines between somethings finds a happy home at 5 am. And then love calls.

So now, what to actually write about. . .

Planning to have a baby? Planning to climb ladders and paint old houses for a living? Planning to visit less than friendly parents of your partner?

All distinct somethings, that no matter how fluid the decisions are that bring them about, undeniably not only point to something, but define it and harden it into a more solid form. And the risks of denying that solidity are too great--lack of appreciation, lack of caution, lack of righteous fear.

5:30 am

Waking up when it is still dark and no one wants to be awake, it is a treat to do so with an immediate sense of calm. Thinking of the sleeping 3 year old next door (hi Jackpunk) with a relief after last nights anxiety about the same shines a light on what feels like a more accurate response. Contemplating my list of things to do also brings calm, and I wonder why someone who claims to long for nothingness would go to such lengths for negentropy. But there is a swirling of things that happens in the activity that reminds me of--and throws me into the flow of-- the hurling universe, and there is a centeredness that comes from sitting and reflecting in and on the increasingly beautiful surroundings that makes sense.

It is not that the universe requires me to work so hard to find the flow, I know I could just dive in at any other juncture and find peace, but it suits me for now. And it dawns on me, as the sky creeps toward blue, that uniquesness implies somethingness. That perhaps, after many years, I want something.

Not even two feet of snow

There is still too much. The cars creak over the packed snow on their way to work, and I called off before the place I work for four more days canceled operations, making me look even more rebellious than I need to be to quit a job in the middle of a serious recession. But there was too much there too. SO much there. So many. Beyond the street jammed with crawling traffic there was a glimpse of what was so delightful two days ago--untouched snow. The sun blazing down on it along what we can only presume would still be the railroad tracks under there.

We dove in, the dogs and I and tried to recreate the freshness and bounding enthusiasm we felt when the snow first fell, and we were among the first out on the what we could only presume were streets under there. But we were tired, and not bounding. Trudging, but taking in a bit of the smooth surface through the eyes, the sun on the face. Trying not to go there--to the mind, where too much is happening.

my only goal

I am a drop out. I have only ever had one true goal, which was conceived of and squashed on the same day in the Spring, or Fall, or an unseasonably warm winter, or a cool summer day, when I was eight or nine years old, or maybe twelve. All goals since then have been short term diversions built on a foundation of disappointment.

I suppose you want to know what that goal was and why it was so important. I suppose you wonder if anything I do matters to me now, or if I am happy. There are pockets of paradox. For example in my incessant busy-ness or my obsessive adoration of results. But these don't count much to me. The world disappointed me that day and I have never really forgiven it. I can only go on, knowing I can not make my dream a reality. Then or ever, until I am dead. And then I won't be able to appreciate it.

It was simple and clear and not much to ask. I don't know where I got the idea but I came home from school with a mission. It must have been Spring, because I remember being hot and taking my shoes and socks off, hurriedly as I headed toward destination: top of hill in yard. I had the sense that this would get me just enough closer to the thing I wanted to not see, that it was important to go to the highest point easily accessible. Peeling off my sweaty socks and throwing down my infeasibly heavy backpack which contained homework that would later make me cry, I scaled the hillside and flopped down on my back. And just like that I failed. I knew within a half of a second that my hypothesis had been bogus. That I had no evidence and now not even a dream. There was sky--blue, and clouds. Wires and birds and treetops. I had been hoping for a glimpse into that vast love of mine, the unnamable void. But all I had gotten was more of the same.