Hidden Gems Of Life

I am off today after working some or all of the past 7 days, and P went to daycare, so I went for a long walk in Dimond Canyon.  It's a small slice of Montana in the middle of Oakland, a long, quiet canyon full of bushes and trees, although the oaks are uniquely California.  There are side trails down to Sausal Creek, which actually contains water at the moment, left over from Stormageddon.  It's surprisingly silent and empty of people, although the marks of people are everywhere:  the clever "I'm so hard" tag on a rock; the intricate and sometimes beautiful graffiti on the underside of a bridge, supporting the roadway with the names and tags of graffiti artists.  Have you ever noticed that graffiti artists have a fantastic understanding of color combinations? 

I want to spend my life noticing things.  I noticed the first blooming buds on skeletal trees, hopefully not too early. 

The new phone comes with a built-in pedometer, a built-in reason to sustain my iPhanaticism.  I've taken 9710 steps so far today.  I'm aiming for a minimum of 10,000 a day, to shed some extra pounds along with extra stress.  Walking in the canyon always makes me feel lighter, with a warm feeling in my stomach, kind of like the relaxing sensation after a nice, slow, comfortable release of waste, to put it delicately, releasing poisons both emotional and physical. 

Today I got about as far as I could go in Dimond Canyon, as far as I could tell; it appeared there was another trail on the opposite canyon wall, although access is unclear.  Next walking project: a circumnavigation of Lake Merritt (side note to job applicants: if you attended Merritt College, don't spell it Merit College on your resume; it earns you demerits in the consideration of those reviewing your information).

Miss P has not been in perfect health the last few days; whether teething or working through a virus, she has had various digestive complaints of late, but no fever and generally happy.  I'm taking her to a pre-scheduled 18 month check up today, the first time when I will be taking her on my own, without Marina there.  I realize that I tend to rely on Marina to be the grown-up, although I do my best to be mature.  Maybe grown-up is the wrong word; maybe I mean practical.  Anyway, I'm doing my best to grow up along with my daughter.  That effort provides gems of its own.  She's my sweet little child.

My weight has gone back up, reaching as far as 209, but down to 206 today after my walk.  That's success.  I have to keep the focus on healthy choices and making progress.  That's another gem, making the choice of going for a long walk on a day off, instead of sedentary hedonism. 

Baby Updates, Because You Deserve Them, One Way Or The Other

For the most part, I've been sticking to my resolve of writing every day, even if the amount varies.  I will take notes here and there, on my phone and random documents.  The idea is practice, even if it is to be discarded. 

Baby has been keeping me busy.  Well, she isn't a baby anymore; she's a full-fledged toddler, with all the boundary testing and "no!" that entails.  She is also keeping us more than busy, especially yesterday, when she was not feeling so well.  She started the day with vomit, and then ended the day with more vomit while we were at a 76 gas station on South Van Ness - not the ideal spot for Mommy and Daddy to be tested with their first real experience of baby tummy upset. 

(got to stop calling her baby. She's a toddler in full flight, 18 months and counting!) 

It was a traumatic moment, probably more traumatic for Mommy and Daddy than for our princess, although I'm sure she was upset by how upset we were.  Somehow, we avoided a complete emotional meltdown and got home and gave her a bath and made her feel all better.  And today, after a cranky start and two naps, she bounced back to her marvelous self.  New accomplishments: holding her toy cell phone and saying "Hal-lo;"  drinking water like a big girl - although only after Daddy, in desperation, took a sip from the cup first, and encouraged her to copy him (desperation, not necessity, being the mother of invention). 

Life rolls on, unabated, at every height. 

Magic and My Mädchen

Miss P turns 18 months tomorrow. Already!? Don't tell me that time's velocity is not relative. She makes us so happy. Watching her learn and grow convinces me that magic is real. Not illusions, actual Gandalf-level Magic, couched in evolutionary terms. Life and the news can be dark, but there is still room for love and magic.

Writing, Day 7

You learn things.  You learn that while you like and respect the people you work with, they can really piss you off and turn you into a razor-edged cynic, ready to be done with them at a moment's notice.  You learn that when there is something being talked about that you don't agree with, you can find a principle to anchor you, to say "I disagree with this, and it should not be done this way."  You learn that you can watch someone totally change tacks in the middle of a meeting, and wonder why that just happened, and you can wonder if you just made an actual positive change by throwing up a dam against a flood of mistakes. 

You can find victory in holding firm to a certain perspective that reduces the chances of mistakes and loss, rather than a creative strategy that creates gain and positive momentum, and maybe that is just as valuable. 

Numbers mean both more and less than the sum of their parts.  Business interests and the humanitarian perspective are in the balance, and you really have to fight hard for the humanitarian interests in the sake of being fair to everyone one.  Ironic, really.

You can be sick of everyone's bullshit and love them all the more for it. 

You can look at the regrets you are harboring over friendships lost, and realize: "What the fuck.  He threw it away himself."  You can be done with someone just like that. 

You can realize that you have a sneakily bad temper, and that it must be true what they say about Italians, even a quarter-Italian.  No wonder Italians snap and starting jumping on mushrooms and evil turtles.  We Mediterranean types don't tolerate princess-napping, even in 8-bit venues. 

You can think to yourself, "What if the narrator is a ghost?  Not a real ghost, but a metaphorical ghost?"  And then you can slap yourself for being a pompous ass.  And then you can slap yourself again for using the word pompous.  And then you can laugh at yourself for talking about yourself in very meta ways.  It's fun!

And then you can laugh at yourself for that too. 

Fuck it.  Life is brilliant, if stressful.  People will let you down.   People will haul you up.  You just need to be the John Lennon of your own life.  I'm sure that means something wise.  If you don't know what it means, then you need to listen to more John Lennon. 

It also probably means that I've had enough bourbon for one night. 

Writing and The Upset Baby

    There is nothing as excruciating as the cries of a distressed child, when the child is yours. 

    Your night may be going on like any other night, the comfortable routines playing out as they always do: books, dinner, a bottle, unwinding with more books and bed when she seems sleepy.  You manage to play a board game with your wife, cook dinner, and be ready to watch TV and then do some writing to fulfill an arbitrary decision that you need to write so much each day as validation of yourself.

    And that's when you hear the crying. 

    This isn't just the normal evening interruptions, when she calls out for a moment or two at 8:37 and 9:54, when she whimpers or talks to her stuffed owl for a few minutes.  This is crying.  This is pain.

    You may have had a hard day in a hard week in a hard month, with an iron bar of tension lying sideways inside your shoulder blades, as you try to figure out how your well-intentioned efforts don't seem to be pleasing anyone, really, even though you are giving as much as you possibly can on all possible vectors, but all of that gets sliced away when your baby is upset.  When she seems to be in pain, maybe from gas or something she ate, and the angelic sleeper you know, the little marcher who takes you by the hand and charges 100 yards across the park -- or is it 100 years -- in a single straight line, seems to be on a different plane all together, that's when you know you would forego anything and anyone if it would protect this creature.  Life is carved away, whittled to the primal fathering instinct, and words no longer matter.

    And yet you still think to yourself, in some recess of your brain, the same recess that says all the selfish crap you don't say out loud to anyone, well, how am I going to get my writing done now? 

    Doesn't it seem like there are more important things to worry about at that time?  What sort of person are you?  Maybe you aren't the good person you thought you are. 

    Then again, you are getting up at 10:45 at night to offer a baby a bottle and sing her soft songs, so you can't be all that bad. 

    When she finally falls asleep in your arms, and you hesitate to move, when you just keep rocking her for another two or three minutes, fearing at any moment that she might stir again and resume crying, that feels like the moment that defines the night.  Is this the night where she falls asleep and feels better in the morning, or is it the night before you quit your job as so much meaningless sludge and run off to the Oregon coast with your baby so the sea air will do her good, away from the terrifying reports of city life, where victims of home invasions say they understand that the thieves were trapped in socio-economic circumstances, a de facto segregation, when in fact these thieves were just selfish pricks.  That's when you feel all this welling up inside of you, and then it doesn't matter anymore, because you put her back in her crib, and she cuddles up to her owl, and the rest is silence, but in the good way, not the Hamlet way. 

Good night.  My writing clock for the day is at 19 minutes and holding steady. 

January 1st - Writing Resolution

Resolutions - do they do any good?  I'm not sure, but they are worth trying, because they obviously point to something that we want to fix, or at least something we think we are supposed to want to fix.  I want to be creative, so I resolve to write every day.  Is that because I really do want to write, or is it because I've selected writing as a key part of the identity I want?  Do I just want people to think of me as a writer, because I like writers and reading, because my mother and grandmother were writers, and because I think people would think I am interesting and smart if I'm a writer?

I don't know yet, but maybe I'll find out if I actively try to keep my resolution.

WARNING: MEANDERING THOUGHTS AHEAD. 

I haven't posted to LiveJournal in some time, or posted blogs on my other sites.  I've been too busy with work and my baby and my marriage, all the financial challenges of moving to Oakland from Santa Cruz for a promotion that didn't bring enough of a raise to offset the added expenses. It's ridiculous, but I feel committed to sticking it out for a while, for a variety of factors.  I've worked here for many years, but I don't know if I can afford to keep working here, the way things stand now.   

I hope writing regularly will help me focus on other opportunities, maybe encourage me to explore that technical writing path I've always considered; I also hope to re-center a part of myself in a process that makes me feel satisfied (that being said, I kind of hate everything I've written up until now, at least parts of everything).  I want to tell stories, but I'm not sure I know how.  I want to practice writing, and I want to sharpen my writing, and I want to experiment and see what stories I can tell.  I want to chisel words on a page that will seem to have meaning behind them.  Far too much of my writing seems pretentious and overly clever.  I want to strip it down, but at the same time I can't resist florid writing. 

Please forgive me if you read these over the next year.  This will be treated like a journal, as a place to start my writing each day, like warm-up exercises.  Some may be interesting.  Some may be rambling. 

Does any of that make sense?

Writing thoughts for a story:

Princess goes through a mirror into a land that is turned inside out.  What triggered the change reflected by the experience in the mirror?  What broke down the status quo?  What does any of that even me? 

We write about death, but characters in a story can never truly die because you can always turn back to an earlier page, or rewind the movie.  Is that why we write?