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by doug | December 21st, 2009 @ 12:50 am
weight: 140.6
exercise: 0
blogs written: 0
photographs edited & posted: 0
books read: The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh (see below)
my wife’s deathtrap car: someone else’s problem now
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It is becoming fairly obvious that this web space will likely remain on autopilot for the remainder of 2009. The only way I can be at peace with that fact is if I look forward to developing new ways to stay consistently productive throughout 2010. That is the new goal. One of my ideas is to restructure the grammaticaster site in such a way that will feature each of my distinct creative interests – wherein this blog will be just one of four or more individual sections (the others being, tentatively: photography, poetry and the daily snapshots) – and will present each focus area in an appropriate and intellectually stimulating manner. Right now I am stuck on designing a flash menu for the front page. Perhaps having a few days off around Christmas will give me more time to devote to the project. My goal as of this moment is to go live with the new design on 1/1/2010. Stay tuned.
This week’s evenings were spent reading Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Miracle of Mindfulness – the translation of a letter written in exile to his fellow Vietnamese social workers and Buddhists in 1974. It is a short work, but one that begs to be absorbed slowly and deliberately. If only I could put into practice the ideals Hanh so elegantly lays out in this beautiful text, I am certain I would find my life happier and more peaceful… and perhaps impart some peace and happiness to those whose lives my life touches as well. An excerpt:
I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
Tonight I tried sitting in the lotus position and almost shattered both my knees.
Finally, in the spirit of the holidays, I present a Christmas classic: ‘O Holy Night’. I must here give due credit to my father-in-law, who first shared it with my wife who then shared it with me. I will never hear this song the same way again. I am, as it were, forever changed. Listen:
O Holy Night
by doug | December 13th, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
weight: 138.4
exercise: 0
blogs written: 0
photographs edited & posted: 0
books read: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (witty, graceful, sad… plot wasn’t what I expected)
my dad: awesome
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The NaNoWriMo’s effect on my creativity was completely opposite from what I had envisioned. It sucked me dry (not in that good way). It is as if I got so bored with writing during the month of November that now I am finding it difficult to jump start that creative engine again. I am currently engaged in an extended, yet mild, brainstorming session to try to make these activities fun or exciting or fulfilling. Otherwise, what is the point? I think I need some additional constraints: a project or series of projects that would incorporate or at least intentionally stimulate both the literary and visual aspects of my artistic self. I’ll keep you posted on what I come up with.
by doug | December 6th, 2009 @ 7:20 pm
weight: 142.8
exercise:
200 pushups
75 sit-ups
books read: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (stunning… beautiful… highly recommended!)
blogs written: 0
photographs edited & posted: 0
christmas presents purchased: 0
pig slaughters I can feel directly responsible for: 1
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Hambone, hambone. Have you heard? The Crimson Tide is heading to Pasadena, CA to play for its 13th national championship. Here are three early observations: 1) while it was satisfying to watch Tim Tebow get knocked down to earth, it wasn’t really necessary to keep showing him crying on the sidelines. He’s been humbled. Let’s move on. 2) there will be hype… do not buy in to it. The Longhorn team we saw against Nebraska last night will most certainly NOT be the Longhorn team we play at the Rose Bowl. This is a tough team with tremendous athletes on both sides of the ball – especially at quarterback and receiver. 3) that being said, I wouldn’t wait until the last minute to start tidying up Coach Saban’s spot on Bryant-Denny’s walk of champions. Roll Tide Roll!!!
 Speaking of hambones, this week I discovered that a small Honeybaked Ham will feed two people for a week – without getting boring! I bought it on my Monday lunch break. We rotated different vegetable side dishes for the first three nights: turnip greens, corn, field peas, etcetera. On Thursday we made ham sandwiches with french fries on the side. Friday I cut off the rest of the meat and made an always-awesome ham bone soup. That was more than enough meal for Friday night and Saturday’s lunch and dinner. Hooray for ham.
I also didn’t eat as many obviously bad-for-me things this week. As you can see, that plus the pathetic amount of exercising I have done was enough to stop the ballooning but not enough to reduce any of my extra winter bulk. It looks like I will need to go to the gym for that. Good thing we pay for that membership every month!
by doug | November 22nd, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
weight: 138.8
exercise:
300 pushups
30 sit-ups
140 side bends
2 ‘other’ cardio activities
books read: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (page 591; continuing)
blogs written: 0
photographs edited & posted: 1
cups of coffee: gave up counting when I started having lattes for lunch
christmas trees erected: 1
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The theme of this week’s report card is: admitting defeat.
I have hit the NaNoWriMo wall and cannot bust through. Yes, I know I am supposed to just rattle off words and not edit myself or worry about how good it is and so forth… but there is just no solving the problems I am having. I have no story. There really is no way to get my protagonist, Benny the Troll, from point A (a medieval setting where Benny makes his living as a traveling musician) to point B (Benny gets gunned down in a back alley of a modern city by a jive-talkin’ pimp named Cinnamon Brown). The plot is really just a running joke that got started between my wife and I — when I threw together two characters from altogether different story ideas. It works as a joke. Not so much as a novel. I cannot sustain the humor for that long. In fact, I cannot sustain the narrative for that long. And what is worse: it’s not that I’m blocked (even though I am), it’s that I am bored. Bored to death with the whole story. It is simply not interesting to me anymore. At the same time I am reading a truly fascinating piece of literature that, while time-consuming, is by far the most intellectually stimulating book I have read this year. So when faced with committing what little time I have in the evenings to either writing a gibberish ‘novel’ that will never see the light of day or reading a newly-discovered modern literary masterpiece, my heart longs to read the masterpiece while my mind urges me not to give up on the writing contest. This week, a friend finally gave me permission to stop worrying about Benny. Life’s too short, he said (I’m paraphrasing), to spend it doing things you don’t enjoy… especially if you’re doing it just to say you’ve done it. So, unless I hit some tremendous second wind during the coming week, I think I may be done with NaNo until next year.
by doug | November 16th, 2009 @ 12:42 am
weight: 138.8
exercise: 100 pushups (honest)
books read: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (page 353; continuing)
blogs written: 0
photographs edited & posted: 1
road trips: 1
NaNo word count: pitiful (see sidebar)
spaghetti making skills: outstanding!
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It is embarrassing how little I have written. All I want to do is read and write, and I find myself scrambling at the end of every evening to engage in either or (dare I imagine?) both. I do not know where the time goes. Sure, there is housework to be done: chores and cooking and preparing for tomorrow. But, even so, I know people who have many more commitments that I have and still have time to read more than a few p
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A funny thing happened on the way to the blog tonight. I was ready to whine about how I never have time for the pursuits I value. Then, suddenly, I was gloriously reminded that a) there are some distractions that are very, very welcome and b) stripping life down to a scorecard whereupon high marks are given for accomplishing strict, preconceived goals is not the ultimate answer to everything. As it turns out, simplification has its limits. And, while it might be valuable to remain aware of what is most important and eschew activities that are counterproductive, the final verdict as to whether a day or year or lifetime was as happy as it could have been for myself and the people I care about depends on so much more than tickmarks on a to-do list.
Tonight I am happy. I have written nary a word for NaNoWriMo this weekend. I am still slowly slogging through the pages of what is actually an extremely compelling and brilliantly written novel. The 100 pushups I did today (yes, all today) were most likely negated by the two pounds of leftover spaghetti and gigantic slice of key lime pie I ate tonight. Nonetheless, I am going to bed happy with my happy little family after a weekend full of warmth, relaxation and laughter.
Will I reach every goal? That is probably unrealistic. Will I be content at the end of the journey? That seems plausible. That seems like a goal worth striving for, even if it means letting go of the lesser goals along the way.
by doug | November 8th, 2009 @ 11:04 pm
weight: 138.8
exercise: bitch, please
books read: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (page 245; continuing)
blogs written: 0
photographs edited & posted: 2
crimson tide win/loss record: 9-0
NaNo word count: woefully inadequate (see sidebar)
raw oysters consumed: 3 dozen and change
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A note about simplicity:
I got pulled over by a Pike County, AL cop around 7:30 Saturday night. I was speeding – 62 in a 45. Guilty as charged, sir. That incident got me thinking, though, about my so-called commitment to simplicity. I had a long drive (2 remaining hours to and 4 hours back from Destin, FL this weekend – an impromptu beach getaway following an afternoon at the Auburn homecoming game) to ponder how unnecessarily complicated I make my life. Just going 5 miles-per-hour slower probably would have saved me the aggravation of being pulled over in the first place. Add to that the fact that I had recently renewed my car tag but had yet to actually attach it to the car and that my registration and insurance documents are crumpled in a couple of different car compartments, and you’ve got a whole slew of completely avoidable headaches.
And look – it isn’t that $155 or so is going to break the bank, or that the patrolman was rude to me or anything (he was actually quite pleasant) – it’s just an example of how so much of my anxiety is petty and self-inflicted. I have a lengthy mental list going right now of all the things that routinely or recently have been stressing me out, and the conclusion I must come to is that almost all of those items can be fixed by eliminating some object or activity or habit that is easily eliminable. And how dare I make my life or the lives of people I care about even slightly more complicated with personal decisions I take lightly or do not pause to think about at all?
The ‘simplify your life’ code cannot just be cleaning out your closets, keeping your desk organized and making daily to-do lists. It has to be about evaluating your behavior and its consequences – even those consequences that are, on the surface, inconsequential (i.e. a speeding ticket). Because oftentimes there isn’t some great big anxiety-producer that, once eradicated, empties your life of all stress. It’s the little stressors – a traffic fine here, a stopped-up toilet or a meaningless squabble there – that accumulate over time and weigh your mind down with worry, anger or shame.
Anyway. Just a peek inside my mind. I’ll be trying to slow it down, literally and metaphorically. I will also try to blog a little more this week. It’s hard when that NaNoWriMo goal is slipping further and further away. Goodnight, all.
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