chant

I don't really know where to start this or what I want to say so I'm just going to type and see what happens. I could start with a rant: Windows products get more difficult to use with every iteration. I just spent five minutes figuring out how to open Notepad in Office360. As someone who works in the tech industry, I think it's all just gotten to be too much noise. So much crap we really don't need, burying the useful stuff. Not just MS. All of tech, big and small. I don't like it because I can't figure out how to fully unplug anymore. And so I want to yell at them instead of making personal changes in how I interact with technology. Because I'm an American, and that's what we do. We huff and puff and threaten to blow the house down even though we are completely out of breath. We don't do silence so well.

But that's a boring topic. Like listening to your ignorant, xenophobic uncle rant about immigration, oblivious to the fact that all of us were immigrants at some point. I still hate that the space bar only half works on this computer though, even though it's brand new. And I hate that my normal writing laptop is not functioning. I'm writing this in the living room instead of the hovel that I call my office. Maybe the words will be different.

There's been a lot of death around me lately. I'm not going into details. I do not need sympathy or condolences, though I appreciate the gesture and love you all. No, it's a cyclical thing, this messy thing we call life, and the last couple of years have seen a lot of death. Perhaps the next couple of years will see fewer in my circle of family and friends. Processing death is an ever-changing experience for me, as it's part of what I would loosely term my "spiritual practice." I was raised a Catholic, rebelled violently against it in my teen years, became an agnostic fascinated by but not connected to different spiritual paths (Eastern and Western), evolved into an atheist--or more accurately, a Saganist. Say atheism and people assume you have no spiritual practice. This is simply not true.

It is fair to say I have a lot of anger to much of organized religion as an institution. The disgust I feel for the Catholic church is the same I feel for WalMart. But that anger has mutated into something more like despair as the years have piled on. How do we evolve as a society past the backwards thinking that allows so much power to both? Everyone has a right to believe what they wish. But neither religion nor corporations should be controlling the conversation about what is best for society. Health, education, public policy--these things are too important for megagiants to control the conversation. Yet it is happening. And I do too little to combat it. I sit in my own little world, writing my stupid stories, too distrustful and tired to actually get off my ass and make the world better.

I've no interest in politics aside from the very big fact that they directly affect a lot of my daily existence. But I'm not a political writer, I'm not a debater, and this is not territory I feel comfortable talking or writing about. There are nights for pushing one's boundaries. I don't think this is one.

What a weird turn this pile of words has taken.

Look, I just don't know, ok? Life is fragile and amazing and beautiful. Why are we so intent on making it worse for so many? Can happiness for one only come at the expense of another? Does anyone read Whitman or Thoreau anymore; are they completely irrelevant? We are imperfect animals. Must all imperfections lead to destruction?  I'll stop now.

I will list the things I love. This will be my chant for beauty:

The first sip of scalding hot coffee in the morning.
The woods surrounding the house Jeff grew up in.
My youngest daughter's giggle.
The first four Def Leppard albums.
Smoking a clove on an autumn afternoon.
My oldest daughter explaining the Hunger Games story arc.
Beer at the Elysian with friends.
Running my hand over my wife's curves.
Everything King, Carver, Plath and Murakami have written, even the stuff that's not good.
The spicy burrito I get at Acapulco Fresh for lunch 3-4 times a week.
Lighting a candle.
Drawing a bath.
The cosmos.
My wife, my daughters, my friends.

Today was not a good day. The simple act of thinking on each of these things I love (and there are more things I love, of course--I could write a list like this every day for a year) has me feeling better than I have for some time. Writing words is how I remind myself that I am the cosmos witnessing itself.