Yesterday, the leafless trees etched achingly across the blue sky, and where the clarity comes from all of a sudden I do not know. Like the right lens finally passed across the eyes and the details sharpened into focus. Today drinking yerba mate and feeling okay. Working out, flexing muscles, living outside of the mind; indulging the physical senses, where the grit of life grinds against you, polishing the brittle edges of your psyche smooth. Time to cast aside the shell game and dive in the fray. So far, so good.
halting the aversion
The holidaze has come and gone, a blur of mostly family and some friends, a lot of eating, a touch of music with an old compatriot, some reading and sleeping, and a long, luxurious respite from work. I traveled by train and car, but have been off the bike for far too long now. Worked out at the gym, tried my hand at pedal steel guitar, cooked and ate with some of my favorite people. I received an unexpected gift intended to enhance my birding, which I haven’t done in about a month now, besides car birding, and some very meager backyard birding. Christmas Day did unexpectedly bring to the yard jays, cardinals, doves, sparrows, and even a junco or two. We’ve seen glimpses of a hawk (probable Cooper’s) in the trees across the street. Meanwhile, with the close of the old year and the dawn of the new comes the inevitable reflection. I don’t make resolutions, but it’s hard not to stare ahead at a blank slate of 365 days before you and not scratch around in your head for some ideas of what you want to see rise up from that expanse of time. Personally I know I need to stop treading water and start making headway on the changes I yearn to see in my future. No more averting the eyes. My passivity knows no bounds and the time to corral it is way past due. I need to spend the afternoon, as Annie Dillard says, because I can’t take it with me. There is a path that I am supposed to be on and I will claw my way through the brambles to get to it.
Posted by sean on January 3, 2010
https://sd-stewart.com/2010/01/03/halting-the-aversion/
something different
My back hurts:
Epic Baltimore snowstorm shatters existing record for December! We walked through white-out blizzard conditions on Saturday to purchase the second-to-last snow shovel at Rite-Aid. Then came home and played Scrabble and watched movies. We spent much of today digging out. I wish it would snow like this more often; it made me nostalgic for all those childhood snowstorms I lived through (and played in!). Of course, next time let’s make it happen during the week, shall we?
Posted by sean on December 21, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/12/21/something-different/
3:33
Wake up uncertain, through blurred eyes reach out, unmask the dread box full of time: 3:33 AM. I am untethering; I feel this, yes, I do. I float above myself all day, drifting, occasionally deleting Russian spam, wondering when this gossamer thread shall fray, then sever, to release me. I remember being young, staring at the ceiling, imagined walking on it, stepping over door frames to enter rooms; it seemed better up there. My thoughts upside down, always, then and now; my records all broken, need to melt them down, re-groove with new sounds and words.
Posted by sean on December 16, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/12/16/333/
far corners
In motion, we are immunized against lassitude. Working muscles open the vessels for more oxygen to enter. Don’t want to stop, don’t want to sit still. When you do, extremities lose their warmth; thoughts dull to a sluggish tempo. But outside, even as the wind wipes the smile from your face, the crows revel in it, swooping and soaring on currents we can’t even see. Later you glide on one of those currents in your mind, as the mood pendulum swings in your favor, without the benefit of active motion, but this time with the slow warmth of drink and easy talk. But when all that is over, quicker than you’d like, you still can’t stop the mental projectiles shooting off in every crazy direction, moving too fast to follow, all with holes burned through like the strip of caps you carried in your jeans pocket as a kid, one after another spark-cracking under the strike of a rock, as you watched and inhaled the acrid plume of smoke drifting up. Reach up quick to snatch them down with inked lines onto bleached white paper, but they are too elusive, having turned to vapor, damp and transparent like late night fog hanging over an empty field.
Posted by sean on December 13, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/12/13/far-corners/
routine part ii
Certainly routine has its place in life. For example, recently an infant stayed at my house for an extended visit, affording me the chance to observe how routines helped both the parents and the infant (unknowingly, perhaps) to manage their life together. Point to ponder: even from an early age, we humans experience life as an ordered structure of events. But when too much of your life feels governed by routine, this can’t be a good thing. Take office work, for example. I work in an office setting; however, many of the people in the field in which I work are drawn to it because of the opportunity for travel. They itch to travel, and when they don’t get to, they are restless. They seek escape from the office drone lifestyle, so infused is it with the boredom of routine. I personally don’t want to travel for work, and I suffer the consequences of asserting that preference. I face the blandness of routine each and every work day, but I don’t think that I wish for the complete disappearance of routine from my life. It has helped me in the past and I still see some value in it. In some cases, I even think it keeps me from completely falling apart. But what does everyone else think? I feel like I’m talking in circles. Will anyone de-lurk and weigh in on this issue? I know there are at least a few of you reading this thing.
Posted by sean on December 8, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/12/08/routine-part-ii/
routine
Drinking cold coffee and thinking about routine. Do you love or loathe it? I’m conflicted, myself. Stepping outside of routine allows new perspective to flood in, the cracks and gaps full of seeping insights. But without the comfort of familiarity wrapped around us, we are vulnerable. There is exposure to the unknown. There is loss of control. The older I get the more I think about this. Do I want to walk along the boundaries, toeing the lines, free to move across them at any time? Do I want to take those risks that seem less appealing with each passing year? Does being grounded have to shut off the tap to the creative flow, or even merely reduce it to a trickle that barely hydrates a parched mind? Is there a way to squeeze a pulsing ribbon of liquid life down to those potbound roots? Perhaps I have not struggled fiercely enough. Maybe there is a balance that I just have not yet discovered.
Posted by sean on December 8, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/12/08/routine/
if dante had worked here, there would be another circle of hell in the inferno
Today is meeting day at work. Tuesday is always meeting day. In my lexicon, meeting day is known as the Inferno. We have an all-staff meeting, and then after only a 30-minute reprieve (Purgatorio), my section has its weekly meeting. These section meetings are excruciating and often stretch their weedy tendrils into the lunch hour, so that near the end everyone has been stricken blind by the gnawing hunger in their bellies, and they begin to hallucinate that there are even more items to discuss on the agenda. Nine times out of ten there is absolutely nothing on the agenda that relates directly to my work and so the torture is particularly poignant for me. The boss man spews his oily drivel and we all flop around in it. We drink down his bitter poison and smile through our gag reflexes, even as our insides melt away. Then I go back to my desk and stare hollow-eyed at the computer until the end of the day.
On many of these days, the only moments I truly feel alive are those I spend biking to work. Attention to my surroundings is crucial, as traffic is unpredictable and hazards abound. At work, at my desk, my senses dull to a blunted finish. I sit for hours, an empty husk, with glazed eyes and blank mind. At the end of the day, I struggle to shake it off for the ride home.
Every day they dump new blazing coals upon us, and the greedy flames consume another chunk of our dignity. As the fat sizzles, so do our ideals.
P.S. Someone just told me that the staff meeting has been moved to Thursday. Perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel after all!
Posted by sean on December 8, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/12/08/if-dante-had-worked-here-there-would-be-another-circle-of-hell-in-the-inferno/
snowy day
As I stare out the window, fluffy puffs of snow drift purposefully down from the sky. They signal a lazy day, or at least they provide rationalization for such. As the first of the season, they also hammer the final nail in the coffin lid of autumn, and prod me into a grudging admittance that winter is definitely here now. Yesterday morning, I searched in vain again for the Red-headed Woodpeckers at Irvine. It was cold, gray, and quite birdy, with loads of other woodpeckers, sparrows (including several Fox Sparrows), many jays, and the other usual suspects. I also surprised an interesting looking squirrel. It was smaller than an Eastern Gray Squirrel, with a reddish tail and mostly blonde body. Blonde phases of gray squirrels are not uncommon, but I’m not too sure about a red/blonde mix.
Feeling a bit restless now so I think I better venture out of the house. Maybe more later?
Posted by sean on December 5, 2009
https://sd-stewart.com/2009/12/05/snowy-day/
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