With the full understanding that I am likely just talking to myself I resume my blog. My disappearance was the result of two, unrelated, causes. The first is a syndrome that no doubt has a psych name but I don't know it. This is what happened:
The exploration of the "Locomotion" began to grow in breadth and significance beyond my ability to keep up with it for various reasons which I have forgotten. Somewhere between my conscious and my subconscious there was a deal made that I would not post anything new until I had completed that line of thought. In the meantime other demands called to me: dissertation prospectus, a writing conference, the compilation of a book of poetry, sorting out my income tax, bills, family events, etc. So I put it off and by doing so put time betwen my intent and its end.
As is often with me and I imagine others when time is so put, the return to the pursuit of the end becomes more fearful as it begins to work on the imagination: was it all folly, did Google dump me for inactivity, does anybody care, why am I even bothering to write when I can spend the rest of my days peacefully awaiting death. These sorts of thoughts.
Earlier I said that the two causes were unrelated but I'm likely wrong about that as I see now some connection between the state of mind occasioned by delay and what subsequently enveloped me. I had a mid-life crisis. This being my second I recognize the symptoms and ultimate result. The first occurred to me in my fortieth year. My wife was pregnant, I felt keenly that I had not accomplished that which I ought to have accomplished by that point of my life (though I knew not what that was), a deadly sameness had swallowed me. I had to change something. I was unable to afford a hot red convertible or any convertible for that matter and in truth I didn't care much for cars, my wife was adamantly opposed to my growing a beard or shaving my head, I couldn't decide on a tattoo, and I thought I would look silly with an earring or any other decorative piercing, so I quit smoking.
I had never gone a day in my life from the age of thirteen till then without a cigarette. Smoking is a pattern of life I was very fond of and I knew this fondness would never leave me, I liked everything about it except the end: cancer and/or emphysema. And while these realities were troublesome I felt the tradeoff was worth it. But the psychic need to make some big change and the thought that when this latest child, our fourth, was twenty I would be sixty and having by then smoked for forty-seven years, having a history of weak lungs (my mother never gave me permission to smoke because of that), and having Irish heritage on both sides (they all seem to die of cancer), convinced me to stop. Not quit, stop, with the intention of some time in the future resuming the romance with tobacco. I have a cousin, Joanne, who also stopped with the intent to once again resume, I wonder how many others have done so just to keep the door open?
But this is off the topic to wit: why I had been so long away from the blog and why I have now returned.
Mid-life crisis II: While the first crisis might have been aptly named, as twice forty is eighty, a reasonable life expectancy though beyond what any known male relative of mine has been able to achieve (seventy-eight is the record so far) the second crisis, coming at the age of sixty-three cannot rightly be called mid, unless I live to one-hundred-twenty-six, an unlikely prospect. I am working on a theory of serial deaths and rebirths but until I have it a bit more solid in my head I'm going to go with a variation of the common phrase.
This mid-life rebirth followed, as did the first one (I), a period of drifting. Now I am one committed to drifting and under normal circumstances would be content to drift but there are different states of drifting and I was in one that would be more correctly called being adrift. The distinction lies in the end of each state: the former has some intended end, the latter does not. Let me explain, but first I will post this because it has grown as long as I would like for a single entry. I will return much sooner than the five months previous pause.
The exploration of the "Locomotion" began to grow in breadth and significance beyond my ability to keep up with it for various reasons which I have forgotten. Somewhere between my conscious and my subconscious there was a deal made that I would not post anything new until I had completed that line of thought. In the meantime other demands called to me: dissertation prospectus, a writing conference, the compilation of a book of poetry, sorting out my income tax, bills, family events, etc. So I put it off and by doing so put time betwen my intent and its end.
As is often with me and I imagine others when time is so put, the return to the pursuit of the end becomes more fearful as it begins to work on the imagination: was it all folly, did Google dump me for inactivity, does anybody care, why am I even bothering to write when I can spend the rest of my days peacefully awaiting death. These sorts of thoughts.
Earlier I said that the two causes were unrelated but I'm likely wrong about that as I see now some connection between the state of mind occasioned by delay and what subsequently enveloped me. I had a mid-life crisis. This being my second I recognize the symptoms and ultimate result. The first occurred to me in my fortieth year. My wife was pregnant, I felt keenly that I had not accomplished that which I ought to have accomplished by that point of my life (though I knew not what that was), a deadly sameness had swallowed me. I had to change something. I was unable to afford a hot red convertible or any convertible for that matter and in truth I didn't care much for cars, my wife was adamantly opposed to my growing a beard or shaving my head, I couldn't decide on a tattoo, and I thought I would look silly with an earring or any other decorative piercing, so I quit smoking.
I had never gone a day in my life from the age of thirteen till then without a cigarette. Smoking is a pattern of life I was very fond of and I knew this fondness would never leave me, I liked everything about it except the end: cancer and/or emphysema. And while these realities were troublesome I felt the tradeoff was worth it. But the psychic need to make some big change and the thought that when this latest child, our fourth, was twenty I would be sixty and having by then smoked for forty-seven years, having a history of weak lungs (my mother never gave me permission to smoke because of that), and having Irish heritage on both sides (they all seem to die of cancer), convinced me to stop. Not quit, stop, with the intention of some time in the future resuming the romance with tobacco. I have a cousin, Joanne, who also stopped with the intent to once again resume, I wonder how many others have done so just to keep the door open?
But this is off the topic to wit: why I had been so long away from the blog and why I have now returned.
Mid-life crisis II: While the first crisis might have been aptly named, as twice forty is eighty, a reasonable life expectancy though beyond what any known male relative of mine has been able to achieve (seventy-eight is the record so far) the second crisis, coming at the age of sixty-three cannot rightly be called mid, unless I live to one-hundred-twenty-six, an unlikely prospect. I am working on a theory of serial deaths and rebirths but until I have it a bit more solid in my head I'm going to go with a variation of the common phrase.
This mid-life rebirth followed, as did the first one (I), a period of drifting. Now I am one committed to drifting and under normal circumstances would be content to drift but there are different states of drifting and I was in one that would be more correctly called being adrift. The distinction lies in the end of each state: the former has some intended end, the latter does not. Let me explain, but first I will post this because it has grown as long as I would like for a single entry. I will return much sooner than the five months previous pause.
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