Some sense and beauty

[vaneramos]

It was good to get home. Since Monday my journal has filled itself with material from my time away. Meanwhile life keeps swelling with the present moment: thoughts, activities and beauty I wanted to share but didn't have time and felt it would be too distracting. The blackout was enough to make me ponder my life deeply, as if I wasn't doing it already.

I have walked extensively every day until today. Having generous memory space for my camera has started a creative nightmare. I've shot another several hundred photographs, some beautiful ones, and don't know what to do with them. It makes me realize what a visual creature I am and, having dedicated myself to writing, I don't know what to do with that thought, either.

Not that my writing has suffered. In fact my practice seems to be getting healthier than ever. During the month I spent with my daughters, I hardly missed a day of sitting down and writing for an hour in the morning. It was my time for me, and they respected it. Mostly I just wrote my habitual three morning pages, my daily entry for 100words.com, and then had a little bit of time left over, maybe 20 minutes. Out of that little bit came some interesting poetry and other endeavours which I might post when I have a chance to review them. Being a dad is always a hard adjustment, and I've never succeeded so well at continuing some writing habits while the girls are around.

But adjusting to their absence is even harder. The fall, after they go back to school, is my darkest time of year. Fortunately things have changed. Time has yet to tell, but if this week is any indication, I'm looking forward to September.

The actual routine has given me problems this week, but sometime every day I sat down for three hours, set everything else aside, and wrote. Not always productively, but at least I was there, at my desk, letting ideas roll over my mind and take shape. Some of it ended up in LJ form, like the account of Brenda and Judy's wedding and this morning's self-searching post. I also had personal issues I needed to explore, and allowed myself to use as much of my writing time as necessary. Wednesday I avoided my desk all day, but finally dragged myself down to the -bar and worked there for a couple hours. One way or another, it's happening.

Writing and walking outdoors are foundational habits for my life. The fact that the discipline has come to me now is a source of encouragement. It isn't magical. I understand cognitively why things are getting better, because I have worked to change the way I think and operate. But to feel myself rising slightly higher out of a life that was generally unhappy, to discover theories being borne out in practice, to reap some good emotional feedback from looking after myself in new ways, is slightly bewildering. Or rather shall I say, wonderful?

LJ is no small part of the picture, an unforeseen gift. I'm grateful for the people and events that led me here. The friendship, community and sense of an audience are all essential to the way I function.

There's a lot more I need to get my life, and specifically a career, on track. But even though I had to throw away the old operating manual and restart from scratch, I feel like I might have passed the 50 per cent mark as far as making some sense and beauty out of a miserable mess.

With this post I set out to describe a few things I actually saw and did on my walks this week. Instead it turned into a Narcissistic love-in. Oh well, I'm needing self-love right now. For my take on Narcissus I turn to Morten Lauridsen's song, Dirait-on based on Ranier Maria Rilke's poem. It is about a rose. Here is the original French and the English translation:

Abandon entouré d'abandon,
Tendresse touchant aux tendresses...
C'est ton intérieur qui sans cesse
Se caresse, dirait-on;
Se caresse en soi-même,
Par son proper reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème
Du narcisse exaucé

Abandon surrounding abandon,
tenderness touching tenderness...
Your oneness endlessly
caresses itself, so they say;
Self-caressing
Through its own clear reflection.
Thus you invent the theme
of Nacissus fulfilled