The New Me

Don't be fooled by the presidential wave. It is me, as envisioned by a) Anish Kapoor, b) a fly on acid, c) both a & b or d) none of the above.

Hedges

What important thing can I say after a year's absence?

The burning item that I've wanted to tell you: I wore mis-matched shoes to work one day.

I'm not saying that I wore a clown shoe and a stiletto. Nobody noticed for the same reason I didn't notice: these were two generic brown shoes. In any city worth its Nordstrom, I'm sure I would have been pointed at. Here in Medford, I passed muster. This post is not a thinly disguised jab at the Mythical State of Jefferson either. Let me say that there are no digs at anyone here today. This is more about the gray mistakes and adjustments I've been making over the past year.

It's been a good year of diving into myself.

Maybe there's a bit of a parable up in here. Or at least a fable about course correction. My tidy stale life needed some changing. So I've removed trying to play the guitar, writing my Old Tired Novel and painting. All fine activities. I'll return to painting someday but it doesn't make sense right now. I am writing.

I had to give up on what I had written because it wasn't working, the monster never roared to life. Once I realized that, it was time to move on. No harm in trying to animate the pile of flesh. But I didn't have the right pieces, the right electricity, at the right time. So I have a stockpile of words in cold storage and I'll start on a new pile. Knowing when to call a hard stop is a new skill. Knowing when to let something percolate vs. when to jettison has always been difficult for me. I no longer want my life to decay because something didn't work and I was timid about loss. Call what I've done a failure, a draft, a fragment or wisdom. But call it finished.

Thinking about heaviness helped me lay the few items above aside. It's simple: does X make me feel heavier or lighter? If heavier, am I rewarded for the effort or does it feel like cleaning and jerking a Volkswagen? If lighter, is it like a satisfying sigh or low blood sugar? I do like to haul me some weight, most of us yearn to: o sexy responsibility! But I have a slight frame, not designed for drayage. Not even a motorized metaphor probably. More like one of those old fashioned three speed bikes. With leaping gearing.

This past year has been about many things. There are so many gaudy bits: my life as an artist (as mentioned above) has been begging for an overhaul. I've struggled (constructively) on how to mend the giant hole in my life. How do I move from feeling separated to feeling whole? Lots of work to do but it's of a different quality now than in the past years. Years have gone by. My career change has provided a salutary spin on uncertainty. I'll write more about that because it's been illuminating some of the corners of my emotional life.

For now, I'm satisfied with making adjustments and pruning where needed. Literal pruning is something that I've done a lot of in my life, I'm shot through with my family's botanical DNA. I've always been much better at pruning plants than myself. Give me a stunted shrubbery, and I can set that thing free! I've had a built-in sense of where to cut, how extensively, to create a healthy, pleasing plant.

While I've had little doubt about how to strengthen the life of a plant through violent, creative destruction, I've been queasy about shaping my own life. I didn't know where to cut. I'd like to think that I'm learning how to recognize what isn't quite right in my life. That's what the past year's been about, moving away from what doesn't work, cutting it free. The surprise is that after the trauma, the organism can turn toward good, sturdy growth, unbound in the clean Spring sunshine.