snowy morning. we trudge on

APHORISM: EVERYBODY'S WEIRD.

Not having read what I wrote yesterday, vaguely remembering it was another screed against technology, which is to say another screed against my not being able to do things that a retarded eight-year-old could do underwater. Is retarded no longer p.c. My apologies-- all insults were pointed inwards, not outwards. I was attempted to regurgitate what I had lost and may have mumbled something more about the format of the blog being the content and the audacity of thinking that what you have to say without really thinking about might be of interest to another human being with a discriminating brain. I believe I also may have promised that as this thing got itself together, like some primordial ooze, it would start to take form. The big bang. The big blog. I like the title of the blog or would change it to "I am." which is the real subject but putting the words together gives us an unfortunate similarity to a popular brand of pet food, a coincidence I would rather not go into.

I had a panic attack last night. I have these a few times a week when I think that another life, any other life, would be preferable to the one I have now (and yes, reader, I do realize you will have to be let in on some of the sordid details for this to have any meaning for you whatsoever). It is snowing is not sufficient. How about the fact that I am cooking oatmeal and attempting not to burn it as I write. Does that offer sufficient piercing insight into the soul of blogman? Panic attacks. The wanting to be someone else, be somewhere else. The talking oneself down-- lately I have been meditating with some success--more on what that means at another time-- and trying to bring oneself back to the present moment which is never really as bad as the moment you are panicking about getting away from since the imagination is such a better yarn spinner than reality. I notice that my reader count is back up to two. Welcome back aboard. It could be my daughter-- no she is too smart to waste her time reading what she had to listen to growing up.

Being an editor and sometime writer I should hold this medium in contempt but the sheer physicality of typing as fast as you can think or faster intrigues me and makes me believe that this is a medium that might be more akin to public therapy than any literary device. The trick, which I believe I said (I believe I will say I believe I said about everything I say and I probably will have since I have no intenion of re-reading-- it's against the rules as I create them) the trick is to create a character out of a disembodied typist, in my case relatively content free. Content requires the kind of thought that requires a book or a poem, revising, thinking, all the things I could be doing if I weren't doing this. It is a lazy craft that requires bursts of useless energy. I pride myself on having a low boredom threshold and that is the pretty much the only thing I will have going for me. My boredom threshhold tells me it is time to shut up for today pretty soon and also that I have done as much blog throat clearing as my two readers will tolerate. If it goes back to one tomorrow, then I will be certain. So as a cliffhanger I will promise content tomorrow, real incidents culled from a life filled with them-- the rich, the famous, the tired, the hungry yearning to breathe free, occasional four legged creatures, battles with technology that I invariably lose, probably some incidents from my legendary literary career, comments about my disintegrated relationship, hopefully polite-- all these will be yours my two friends. Stay with me. It gets lonely doing this alone.