The podcast is being revived/resurrected/reconstituted.
Reasoning here.
because writing doesn’t do it all for me
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what falters
Turbulent Saffron © 2004 (photo), 2005 (comp) Dawnne
and something completely different.
we are mesmerized by the lighted shadows, the shadowed lightnesses, and the sudden gleamings, no matter how disconnected (and all the more so if consequently irretrievable).
there is laughter in the light of the moon, and fear beneath the blazing sun.
a separation: there is naught but wandering.
reminiscences pale beneath the onslaught of the here-and-now; they fade. yellowed, grayed and musty, they depart from us slowly, though we bathe still within their subtle light. drawn to them (drawn of them), we grow, possessed still of an internal innocence that shall never grow old.
and so, begun again, that one unfortunate scream
metes the silence with all the anticipation that normality can bring to bear.
displace, this place
yeah, that last one was a bit more obtuse than intended. so, to clarify:
i don’t really hate it here per se. there are, at least, some really great people that i’ve met here over the past few years, and i enjoy having them in my life. theoretically, they enjoy having me in their lives as well. the only trouble with that is the fact (a very literal fact) that they are overwhelmingly from somewhere else, transplanted here just like i was. and it is they, along with my children, which constitute the only things that are keeping me here right now.
whenever i do get to leave, i know i shall have mostly good memories of this place, and certainly of these people.
mostly.
but things came together in such a way that i very much am in a holding pattern, now. how long i hold here has yet to be theorized, let alone determined. but i am waiting to leave now, and yes, the waiting for it bleeds.
but aye, some of it, i will miss. indeed. i am, after all, transformed somewhat by my experiences here.
Transformed By Evening Shadows © 2005 (photo), 2007 (comp) Dawnne
changes within the ever-changing unchangeable
stasis is not a thing i do well, and moments of unclarity like this do not range far from my definition of stasis. i feel that i’m at a crossroads, taking a moment’s pause before choosing which direction to turn, or not to turn, but in truth, there are no divergent paths before me, no turns to the left or right, no forks in the road ahead. i’m just pulled to the side for a bit; maybe to gather my strength, or maybe i should get out and walk. at least that would constitute some sort of decision to make….something to do.
okay, i’m no longer terribly thrilled with this metaphor. let me try another.
did i ever mention i’m not terribly adept at waiting? yeah, i probably did. when that for which you wait is unwelcome, the waiting for it bleeds.
once upon a time, this is what waiting felt like for me:
Tempered Impatience © 2004 (photo), 2005 (comp) Dawnne
it may convey something different to you, and to be honest, you’ll never hear me say anything like “this is the perfect image to describe ‘waiting’, in my opinion.” this was just what waiting felt like to me at a certain time: a waiting of a certain form, when all the things being waited upon were undefined, unknowable, hidden, mysterious, unresolved. but i do keep coming back to this image at moments like this, remembering the “then”, and comparing it to the “now.” sometimes, it’s even beneficial. and at other times, it might even feel that way.
there is a sense of acuity that comes with experience: a knowledge that the things to come will be better than the things that have been, at least in retrospect, for in later years we enjoy the privilege of coloring the things that were with the knowledge we have gained from them.
on days like this, the shadows fade, and on days like this, reminiscence is a muted scream.
inconsequentially yours
words do not begin…
it recycles, and that annoys. but, it’s never the same.
the problem with me is that i remember. i don’t have the type of brain that memorizes every word that is spoken or written, whether outbound or inbound, but i remember so much else, so many other details, usually visual or aural, that will haunt me all of my days.
just this past week, unbidden, came sounds from the night of my high school graduation dinner, an event that hasn’t entered my mind again in over twenty years. that’s what i mean by haunting. i remember, but i can’t always call things up at will. instead, the memories come almost randomly, and leave me cold.
and so, words do not begin…
sometimes, i catch myself about to do something that i’ve done before, and if it’s that type of thing that doesn’t really need to be done in the first place, well, that irks. recycling is good for the environment, but this kind of recycling makes me worry about my brain. i don’t like redundancy, even if those who were to receive what i’ve had done or said would never have had a way to know i was being redundant.
maybe even especially then, when i know it’s only me that i annoy.
and words do not even remotely begin…
i was chatting with a friend last night, and something came out of my mouth that surprised me: that within the short span of less-than-three (pardon the pun) months, i have learned to love without being selfish about it. that’s a bigger accomplishment than you might think. and more than that, i’ve learned to keep myself above the age-old tendency to lose myself in the emotion, in her. it is a different thing: one that took far longer than it should have, to accomplish.
and while the words fail to suffice to describe it all, neither do they prevent the enjoyment anymore.
i started writing this in late august, and got sidetracked with life, living, and the pursuit of not being borne down by the music i listen to (the things that remind me of where i’ve been, what i’ve done, and whom i’ve known, in other words), into the depths of remorse and might-have-beens. the vectors of certain tangents in my life are helical: not quite recursive, but they come back around, time and time again, and the where-i-was is in view for long, painful moments until i move up and away and around and back again.
i had to make a break with the one who haunted me all those years. it’s not a clean break, and if i think about it (or her) too much, it’s the one thing that can actually bring me to tears. it’s a regret, true and thorough. i had intended never to have such a thing, but there it is. i’ve cried more for her than i have for the mother of my children, but the tears, now, lack the power to sway me.
syntheschism
there’s a need for it like nothing i’ve ever known: a growing, changeful thing—a nuisance to itself and others—a thing that separates itself into anxiety, rhythm, bright darkness and understanding: things we tend to treasure, as if such things were remotely unique.
but it is a need. an intrinsic need: a part of the underlying conditions. a hopeful, insistent, semi-sentient, nearly-autonomous thing that seems to take control and drive us, and the only part about it that makes any sense is that those who experience it nearly invariably come to identify themselves by the virtue of its touch.
and then it changes, shifts, coalesces and divides again, trailing off in multiple directions, accomplishing different things, becoming far more than what was intended, sometimes until it’s far too large to rein back in. it becomes the light, the dark, the in-between, and eventually, it is everything and nothing: both more and less than what it was, and what we ever dared become.
it doesn’t matter what it is.
it is us.
the more things change
….the more they are changed.
life walks forward down a path of its own choosing, on its own mission, at its own pace, within its own time, and i’ve known for decades the baseless futility of attempting to steer it solely for my own purposes. sometimes you have roll with what you’re given, and you otherwise work within the gaps to make it your own thing.
and i am somewhere in the gaps, or at least i try to be.
the rains of late have been a fitting backdrop for these days. my life, changing once again, gets redefined, and the world weeps. no, i don’t really think that, but it’s sometimes comforting to think that way, at least until you think about all the people affected by the flooding. so i only think about it that way when the rain is actually coming down, and i’m out in it, getting soaked.
but it’s finally getting cool enough where that’s no longer a comfortable venture.
old habits like this, they die hard. but they are dying, and not just for her. they pass away for lack of my attention, and the lack of their ability to capture it away from her.
it hasn’t been so painful as i feared.
because it is
i got rather lost in the flux, lately. i’d offer some sort of humorous observation on the eccentricities of life and time, but yeah, that means very little. my on-again, off-again relationship with giving a shit about things outside of my control has fed into this as well. i’m trying to keep it more to off-again, but that requires a type of mental discipline for which i seem to have so little time.
i haven’t done a broadcast in a while, now. no one seems to miss it, and i’m not sure i do, either. i haven’t found anything insightful to say, nor have i found anything of seeming importance to promote. i haven’t been looking incredibly hard, either, though. i’ve been distracted.
i retreated into the online world years ago, completely by my own choice, and with specific intent, because up here, the inherent overlayment of impermanence and superficiality is transparently obvious, unlike the “real” world, where it all gets skewed and twisted somewhere out of sight before you ever get to see it coming, let alone recognize it for what it is. i can handle the bullshit up here because the bullshit is immediate, obvious, and usually very direct. real life is usually something different, or at least it has been.
but now, all of the sudden, life in my real world has become something both more and less than what it was for me, for so many years. the simple expedient of having someone interested in me–even demandingly so, sometimes–has changed everything. i’m actually having to think about how to better use my time, how to take care of myself for more than just the obvious reasons, how to learn to love again. it’s not something i ever really expected, even when i ended a marriage for lack of anything resembling mutual, interpersonal concern.
it’s different at this age, the falling in love thing, but yes, she’s keeping me away from you, my friends, and while i miss you, there’s just no contest there. i’m not so needful of attention that i couldn’t survive without her and her impact on my life, but by the same token, she’s here, she wants to share my time, and i want to give it to her. so, i wonder how many of you are like me, spending so much time on the internet, waiting/hoping/searching for something better to come along. yes, my prolific tweeting and occasional blogging have largely been escape mechanisms, i’ll admit it.
underneath all that, there has been some discussion of late about my morality. this is a laughable thing to me because of how little anyone online actually knows me, what i do in life, the communities i serve, and the people with whom i’m interconnected. somehow, it was deemed inappropriate of me to look for a relationship after i had ended a marriage that had been loveless for over a decade. somehow, for me, it was wrong to pursue those relationships via twitter while also using twitter to simply interact with people and learn more about the world around me and the people in it. somehow, i became anathema for actually taking the time, trouble, and expense to meet some of those potential relationship partners and deciding after some consideration that we weren’t compatible that way. in fact, i am apparently morally bankrupt for having done such things, despite the fact that i maintain good relations with those people, except for the one who bailed out of meeting me after i’d driven for 16 hours to meet her.
yeah, people’s definition of “morality” is pretty whack, and that’s true even amongst us freethinkers. i must have been the only person in the world drawn to other people via our interactions on twitter.
puh-lease.
then, i had to go make things worse and take loud, public exception to what i perceived to be the desire for the touchy-feely version of humanism to operate as a trump-card to all other forms of interaction freethinkers may have with the deluded. i handled the situation immaturely, apologized for it several times in several different media, and still, i’m the bad guy not just because i temporarily lost my head in an argument, but because i disagreed with someone who has more twitter followers than i do. funny thing is, that person and i were able to see through it and past it, and carry on being friends. it’s just some of her followers who seem compelled to continue “protecting” her on her unasked behalf, or who make entertaining, loud noises as they unfollow me.
which brings me to the last thing i wanted to say today. for all the shit i’ve been going through in the past year, it continues to amaze me to near speechlessness, the amount of willfully ignorant fools we have in our “ranks” as atheists and freethinkers: people who have really only effectively traded one adamant belief system for another. i received more rude, threatening and demonstrably unthinking tirades from fellow “freethinkers” due to the altercation i mentioned in the paragraph above than i have ever received from theists responding to something provocative i’ve posted in the past. these people (and you probably know who you are) serve to remind me that it is the simple human condition which is the overriding factor to everything we do, and within that human condition, intelligence has by no means been necessary, let alone an exclusive requisite, to the survival of this species or any of its individuals.
but yes, my friends, some wear the label of “freethinker” inappropriately: embarrassingly, ruefully, depressingly inappropriately.
ugh.
of course, aside from the accidental duplicity, there’s really nothing wrong with that. it’s part of what being human is about. perhaps “freethinker” can be a label that some people wear as an aspiration: something to work towards. a silver lining on the clouds of a bullshit reality which they may, indeed, someday take hold of to reshape themselves.
was that touchy-feely enough for you? probably not. o well.
at any rate, as with every autumn, my real-world life takes me away from here. and this woman with whom i’m falling in love is an additional, highly welcome distraction in whom i already find comfort and release (and that’s….refreshingly scary). i miss my frequent interactions with you, my friends, but there is no contest in the consideration of whether or not this is right for me. we’re two fiercely independent people who somehow manage to complete each other in all the right ways despite our insistence on our respective independence. there’s no way for me to describe how attractive that is to me, and so far, it’s working out beyond any expectation i might have been inclined to have.
if my past is any valid comparison, i expect what you’ll see is a bit more focused input from me in the future weeks and months. i’ll be using this internet thing a little more responsibly, which is to say, not as much, because i’m actually not trying to evade my reality any more.
and that, my friends, is a very, very good thing.
peace.
again
would that i not be independent: that i couldn’t stand without your support, for a small, selfish part of me would very much like to just lay down.
would that i not be self-reliant: but as much as i like having your arms around me, i have to hold myself together in order to be yours.
would that i not be self-motivated: i could easily live my life for you and you alone, but only i can be responsible for my successes and failures, and i certainly wouldn’t pin the latter on you.
i feel incomplete without you, but i can’t feel helpless when you’re gone, for the hole you leave inside me is covered by all the things i appear to be and do.
and that vacancy is quite large, echoing with the sounds of my self-reliance, resounding then fading, as if they were searching for you, calling your name then chasing after you until they disappear over the horizon.
left alone, i return to myself somewhat, but it is, in truth, something less than what i am, when you are with me.
i might hide it well.
perhaps.
but i miss you already, and you’ve only just departed.
traded
i live in a moment of barter which makes no sense, for nothing has been tangibly exchanged. yet it seeped through me, runs over me, and the only word that comes to mind as description is barter: i have traded something away and gained something very much more. describing it, defining it: these things are beyond me today.
there are no storms, as if August came and swept them all away so that my center would lie elsewhere. i do not grieve for them, and yet, for a while, they reconnected me with my past in their warm, wet, intimate way. and that, of all things, was the healing i needed. i am not groundless in this. i do not waver constantly without my center. i know where it is, and what it awaits, and that, today, is centering enough.
it is a different time now, a different place, a different measure. all the might-have-beens were washed away this summer—all the could-have-beens, the in-betweens, and the waiting for them that bled and bled and bled my life away. even alone, i live more fully now than over the past decade.
and that word. that rarely-seen, unfamiliar word that has come to me infrequently over time, came up again in my last writing. and it has interpolated itself into something more than it ever was before. recalescence: that ever-ephemeral glow of molten iron as it cools. somehow, over the years, i’ve managed to keep my own core malleable, workable, changeable, adaptable, and to keep that recalescence alive. i thought i’d lost it, yet it burns within me still, though it seems like something close to forever since i last saw it shine.
i thought i’d traded it away for stability—for that constant, inconsequential insistence that all is well. if i’ve failed at anything in life, i’m pleased to have failed at that, then.
and she—she only begins to know, to understand. she hasn’t been a part of all of this, and she didn’t know she could be burned by my recalescence. i try to shelter her from it, yet having failed at least once (at least partially), she remains, voluntarily, and pulls it—pulls me—closer to her heart. i cannot fathom why, or even pretend to. i simply cherish it, and cherish her, and walk alongside her, hoping neither of us burn.
for i’ve traded the insularity for brightness, and that brightness came with the death of the all which never was.