Thursday, July 31, 2008
The surf has been consistently good, the wind lightly offshore. I'm losing weight and gaining muscle mass. At the rate I'm going I'll be in the best shape I've been in 4 years by November. I'm dark brown from head to toe, except for the parts that are typically covered by baggies.
Not one, but two local bars are starting up open mic nights and with any luck a band or three will congeal out of that over time. I'm playing at Coquitos tonight with Aaron.
The youth hostel I help run now and then, La Casa Feliz, has been packed with interesting visitors from all over the world for months now. (Last year, the year they started, they weren't). I have met more people in the past year than in my entire life prior, and gained insight into many viewpoints. I've been sharing my office with writers from 5ones.com, Shaun chills out here a lot - and Cameron just did a wonderful writeup of his trip to Nicaragua. Kelly Ann Thomas of Picasso Dreams writes of Nicaraguan politics and white woman's guilt...
A couple days back I met a bunch of folk visiting a friend in the peace corps, one of them writes a darn good blog about everything from the rights of primates to robots... Tom Trumpinski now has his first book, The Hellbound Train, available for sale from lulu, Brian Clapper has resumed writing about everything from python to Django- and Cubic Dog's been posting about environmental issues and has up a nice rant about responsibility. Doc continues writing profoundly on everything from Lyndon LaRouche (on his birthday, no less) to the memery, to opening the cellular infrastructure...
and me... I sit here with 30,000 words stacked up and don't care... I've been through dry periods before, but this one is different...
I'm happier and calmer than I've been for a really long time, and although I have frustrations - like deciding to never own anything that can be easily stolen again - I'm happy... and... although I'm surrounded now by writers... I don't have any driving urge to write!???
I have several big articles on important subjects (stuff that angers me) stalled out, I don't have the drive to finish any of that. I poke a paragraph here, a sentence there, and quit. I've spent a little time organizing things so people can go through my old threads on space, asteroids, the 2008 election, and my assaults on the framing issues the mainstream media has, but that's it.
I find English slipping away more and more often as I attempt to operate in Spanish. I keep thinking that I could exit the internet with nary a backward glance, and use up the time for something else.
Wordlessly, I have an urge to paint - and instead of words, music fills my head. Music has always filled up my head, I have no idea how it gets stored, but I always used to ignore it, now it is louder than it has ever been....
I keep thinking - is that bad? It's not like I make a living from writing. Why should I subject myself to the pain of exposing truth or bias in the media, when there's a living, breathing world all around, with fun things to do, friends to hang with, and good things to eat and music to be made? - And everybody else, actively writing, doing such a great job?
Perhaps, today, I'll finish something. In my grabbag, fed by the prolefeed, are subjects like stagflation, the pending decline of Australia's economy, the saga of Terry Childs, and some stuff on corporate governance that all tie together... somehow.
Perhaps I can just serve as an amplifier for a while.
Labels: civilization, happiness, nicaragua, writing
¶ 8:18 AM
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Yeah,
Good idea that.
painting is at least as good an expression as writing, and in very many ways, much better.
it's only once in a very great while that I 'get it'.
5 or so years back, was at an
'art show' up in State College Pa, I was particularly taken by an oil on canvas landscape, of a snowless winter scene, on an overcast day, in some fallow bottom land. I was really taken by it. It hit really hard. I spent the better part of an hour regarding it. The artist came by to chat. I looked at her, just a few years my senior, and finally, just asked;
"Was it your father?"
She took a moment, and said, "yes".
The painting said what was needing to be said, to anyone who would hear it. For the rest, it's just a painting.
I get it.
Good idea that.
painting is at least as good an expression as writing, and in very many ways, much better.
it's only once in a very great while that I 'get it'.
5 or so years back, was at an
'art show' up in State College Pa, I was particularly taken by an oil on canvas landscape, of a snowless winter scene, on an overcast day, in some fallow bottom land. I was really taken by it. It hit really hard. I spent the better part of an hour regarding it. The artist came by to chat. I looked at her, just a few years my senior, and finally, just asked;
"Was it your father?"
She took a moment, and said, "yes".
The painting said what was needing to be said, to anyone who would hear it. For the rest, it's just a painting.
I get it.
Great post! Isn't it strange that the happier we become the more difficult it is to write!
I'm stoked beyond belief for open mic night this evening and will be there as your and Aaron's biggest fan
I'm stoked beyond belief for open mic night this evening and will be there as your and Aaron's biggest fan
i have to say that i am so glad you are happy enough to let your pissed off stuff gather dust.
you say, I keep thinking - is that bad? It's not like I make a living from writing. Why should I subject myself to the pain of exposing truth or bias in the media, when there's a living, breathing world all around, with fun things to do, friends to hang with, and good things to eat and music to be made? - And everybody else, actively writing, doing such a great job?
it's not bad at all...you be an amplifier and i'll be an audience and good things will come.
*hug*
you say, I keep thinking - is that bad? It's not like I make a living from writing. Why should I subject myself to the pain of exposing truth or bias in the media, when there's a living, breathing world all around, with fun things to do, friends to hang with, and good things to eat and music to be made? - And everybody else, actively writing, doing such a great job?
it's not bad at all...you be an amplifier and i'll be an audience and good things will come.
*hug*
Recently I found a deeper truth behind an old saying that I didn't know. Ever hear the phrase - "Nero fiddled while Rome burned". I had always assumed that this saying was talking about abrogating responsibility entirely...
Then I looked up Nero's story on wikipedia. Yes, he was off in Antium playing music while Rome suffered its great fire...
Afterwards, he rushed back to Rome to organize a relief effort, which he paid for from his own funds, opened his palaces to provide shelter for the homeless, and arranged for food supplies to be delivered in order to prevent starvation among the survivors. In the wake of the fire, he made a new urban development plan. Houses after the fire were spaced out, built in brick, and faced by porticos on wide roads. Nero also built a new palace complex known as the Domus Aurea...
Maybe I'm re-arranging deck chairs on the Tahtanic... or maybe Rome needs to burn.
Then I looked up Nero's story on wikipedia. Yes, he was off in Antium playing music while Rome suffered its great fire...
Afterwards, he rushed back to Rome to organize a relief effort, which he paid for from his own funds, opened his palaces to provide shelter for the homeless, and arranged for food supplies to be delivered in order to prevent starvation among the survivors. In the wake of the fire, he made a new urban development plan. Houses after the fire were spaced out, built in brick, and faced by porticos on wide roads. Nero also built a new palace complex known as the Domus Aurea...
Maybe I'm re-arranging deck chairs on the Tahtanic... or maybe Rome needs to burn.
We need others. Writing is one way of connecting. So is painting. So is singing. So is blogging.
And so is having lots of people around, at your place, at the hostel, at the bar with the open mic.
You have an orgy of connections to organic, squirmy, squishy humans right now. You are sated.
The yearn to write will return when you are again alone, when your juices start to build up, and when you've have had enough aloneness, the need to connect to other flesh will grow.
And you will then write. Because you need to connect.
It is primal, genetic, gut.
Go with the flow, man. Don't try to figure it out. Just flow.
It's a moon thing.
Be the juice, man.
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And so is having lots of people around, at your place, at the hostel, at the bar with the open mic.
You have an orgy of connections to organic, squirmy, squishy humans right now. You are sated.
The yearn to write will return when you are again alone, when your juices start to build up, and when you've have had enough aloneness, the need to connect to other flesh will grow.
And you will then write. Because you need to connect.
It is primal, genetic, gut.
Go with the flow, man. Don't try to figure it out. Just flow.
It's a moon thing.
Be the juice, man.
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