daily

(Grateful) Five For Friday

As we get to the end of week 2 of stay at home living, I wanted to reflect a little bit on what I’ve been grateful for this week. I’ve read a lot of people saying something along the lines of “things are going to be different after this is over”. I hope that’s true in the best sense of things, but I think there’s a danger that, just like after finishing up a diet, everything slides back to the way it was before in a rush of celebration.

In the meantime, I think one way to keep perspective is to concentrate on what we’re grateful for in this moment.

My New List

As you might’ve guessed from some of my previous posts, I have a curiosity with time management and productivity. That’s not to say that I’m an expert at either in theory or practice, but it’s something I think about a lot and do my best to apply in my life.

Part of getting myself into a better frame of mind as we embark on Week 2 of EVERYONE Is HOME, one thing became real clear to me real quick: I needed to up my productivity. Not because work demanded it, but because it’s important to me. Making sure I got something done in the right frame of mind is important to my mental health and balance.

Word Wednesday’s Everybody

Today’s poem has just stepped out of the Wayback Machine from 2011, so please be gentle with it as the acclimation process concludes. There was some minimal editing, but it amounted mostly to line breaks and a couple strategic spaces.

everybody’s everybody
 
nobody wants to die 
to get to heaven
 
living in the past 
& planning for tomorrow
 
one foot here and another over there
 
one good swing and you’re on your back
 
everybody’s everybody
doesn’t know nothing but a thing
 
a thing is no thing 
and every thing
 
to everybody, 
everyone 
is an everybody.

One Of My Greatest Hits

I came across a video by Kinga Glyk which then led me down a YouTube rabbit hole of bass-centric videos. Not a bad way to spend 9 miles if you ask me, but I found myself thinking “Man, I’m never gonna sound that good” somewhere after my second Marcus Miller video.

It’s one of my greatest hits. That’s what I call the thoughts or things I’ll say repeatedly, usually in some kind of self-deprecating way or as an excuse for something. Usually, I don’t give them much thought because they’ve become like the “ums” and “uhs” of my brain life – conversational filler that for the most part goes unnoticed because it happens so often.

But today, I actually started to think about it.

There’s more time than life.
Old Spanish saying, quoted by Dr. Ken Atchity

Time is a funny thing, and I mean that quite literally. As Alan Alda once famously said, tragedy plus time equals comedy. Even if it isn’t the punchline, I’ve heard jokes where the setup is almost as hilarious as the payoff. Which, to me, means that time is inherently funny – both in a comedic and ain’t-it-kooky sort of way.

“The problem, fundamentally, was one of control — I had too much of it, over too tiny a territory, and I wasn’t willing to surrender it. You can’t control your way out of control.”
Sam Anderson

The above quote is from an article by Sam Anderson in the New York Times Magazine back in May 2015 where he talks about something called blind contour drawing – where you draw something without looking down at the paper until you’re done. Full disclosure: I haven’t finished reading the article, but I found the quote via Austin Kleon and something about it connected a few dots for me this morning.

Word Wednesday Time

Here’s a little something for Word Wednesday that I wrote back in early February.

a time piece
 
the ticking
of my parent’s wall clock
is still with me:
 
as it used to echo
through a darkened house,
vibrating through wood floors
& joists, it echoes through
years & miles covered -
 
still present with its
steady Tick
(the sound of Death’s tapping foot)
& its maddening sibling Tock
(the mocking jester
with sociopath’s grin),
 
it’s all there waiting
whenever i close
my eyes.

A New Kind Of Normal

Well, this is an interesting time to be alive, isn’t it?

In some ways, it makes perfect sense. We human beings are a rather foolish species – it’s part of what makes us endearing. As we hurtle into the abyss, it makes perfect sense that we’re trying to convince people to wash their hands thoroughly and not use all the toilet paper. Things that we should’ve learned before first grade are now front and center of each Apocalypse Tonight newscast. It’s both the most predictable and ludicrous way for us to go out.

Could it have gone any other way? I doubt it.

Leaving Room For The Unexpected

It’s safe to say that I live a pretty safe life.

It also occurs to me how odd it is to have a thought like that while standing on the surface of a planet that is hurtling through the universe, constantly a few cosmic degrees from collision with objects, a degree or two away from tipping the balance away from being habitable, terminally subject to the faulty and fantastic abilities and flaws of a dominant species that is, at this moment, treating hand washing as some kind of revolutionary movement. Like, seriously folks, it’s been around awhile. Are we all that new to this?

City Life Word Wednesday

I’ve always been fascinated with cities. To me, they’re as magical in their manic noise and movement as the country is in its quiet and emptiness.

 weeknight in the city
 
 dirty town with wave after wave
 of windows, cascading over each other,
 walls of concrete & stone
 stained with evening sweat -
 
 hungry doorways wait for visitors,
 ready to devour & deliver them within,
 
 a steady throb of traffic
 flowing like blood: red & white 
 tail light blood cells
 in two neat rows - a pulse
 never ceasing, palpitations
 of sirens and shouts.
 
 drawing curtains, keeping ourselves
 to ourselves: millions of hermits
 sectioned off in our own compounds,
 waiting for daylight.

Todd Regoulinsky