Patience

There is an idea in this country that everything has to happen "Now".

"He who hesitates is lost."
"We are a puny folk. Avarice, hesitation and following are our diseases."
"Audacity augments courage; hesitation fear."
"On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions, who, at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died."

Hesitation on the dawn of decision is never a good thing, but the lack of patience is quite another. The culture of humanity is speeding along on a runaway track of perpetual motion. Standing still is abhorred. If you aren't going forward, you are going backward. There is no time to just stop and appreciate anything.

There are ups and downs in life. The biggest thing is that there is nothing wrong with having a "flaccid moment in your personal history" as my favorite author outside of Joyce put it. It's a struggle especially if there were much more exciting parts of your life, to let things slow down around you.

Humans and Elitism

I think everyone needs to feel some sense of superiority over other human beings. In most ways, this manifests as a need to see the inferiority of others somehow. Putting others in an inferior position is something else entirely and shouldn't be tolerated. But I'm talking about observing people in inferior situations to remind us that we all are lowly human beings and no one is a perfect celestial being.

My outlet is reading sports forums. They annoy me to no end, but I get endless entertainment out of how stupid people can be. I have known people who are obsessed with celebrity gossip for just the same reason. Others compare themselves to everyone they see on the street. Others compare themselves to everyone they work with. Who knows what other options there are? I'd go so far as to say that everyone has some method of looking down their nose at someone just to pick themselves up a bit. The human ego seems to need it every once in a while.

I've toyed with posting in the forums themselves, but I tend to be too verbose and I always have the feeling I used to have when I tried to briefly join a debate club in my youth: argumentation with strict rules based on the media used is never about the content but about the method. Argument obfuscation rules the day rather than logic. So I've gone back to simply reading them. Even though I get astounded and frustrated at most of the content, I still get enjoyment out of the stupidity of the majority of people posting. I understand it is simply because I feel superior to stupid people writing meaningless forum posts. There might have been a time I felt guilty about that, but I simply accept it now as part of my humanity. It also helps me accept it when I see it in others as well.

Rusty Faucet: Part III

He reaches below his chair and feels for his pipe. He pulls the ancient-looking bowl from its hiding place and holds it in his lap. He turns it over in his hands, slowly inspecting its curves and crannies. He draws his fingers along the myriad of bumps and digs time has carved into the mahogany-colored wood As always, his gnarled knuckle finds its way to the only artificially made nooks for the finale of its tour. Niall’s eyes wince close as the wrinkled pad crosses over the inscribed lines. His bottom lip drops ever so slightly and quivers once before he opens his eyes and quickly reaches for his pouch of tobacco.

Niall methodically rocks back and forth as he packs the pipe full of dried tobacco leaf. He coughs twice before lighting the leaf with a long, wooden match. The tobacco draws a clear line of aromatic smoke and dances into the misty morning air.

Rusty Faucet: Part II

Niall crosses the room to the shower. He turns the spicket with a grunt. Brown water sputters out angrily for a few seconds before becoming a solid clear trickle. He stands under the ice cold water letting it run over his skin. Goosebumps pop sporadically from the pockets of his skin that still have the wherewithal. He doesn’t bother taking his glasses off. He hears the children from down the street laughing outside as they pass by on their way to the river. Niall turns off the water and pats himself dry with the rag next to the sink.

His eyes reluctantly roll over the turned down picture frame as he shuffles over to his closet. He pulls his white blazer out of the mothballs in the back. As he pulls his tie tight, he flicks his eyes to the mirror in the corner and looks away as quickly as a butterfly flaps its wings. He picks up the rotted coffee mug and pushes open the dilapidated screen door to his porch. The sun blazes with the early morning brilliance of a subdued fury.

Niall squints as he utters a low moan of irritation or grogginess. It doesn’t matter which it is anymore. He puts the mug down on the card table and sits in the rocking chair beside it. The rooster crows again. Niall draws in a long, slow breath and a nettled cough rattles out of his throat in lieu of an exhale.

Necessities of Dwelling

There is a certain understated luxury to living in an apartment or house with more than simply a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen.

Rusty Faucet: Part I

The early morning sun sheds through the fraying curtains like a mole burrowing through tilled soil. The room is again lit by the sepia hue that the faded red of the curtains produces every morning. The cot in the corner of the room creaks as the man turns over restlessly at the new sunrise. His eyes open slowly allowing the light into his faded corneas. A sigh escapes his chapped lips and quickly turns into a nettled cough.

Niall rolls over and slides under the mosquito net hanging over his cot. As he rolls up the net, his eyes pass over the picture frame turned down on the nightstand. He brushes one gnarled finger over it and pulls it away with a fresh coating of dust. He blows it off his finger and picks up the pair of glasses next to the frame. The glasses settle unevenly on the bridge of his nose and he blinks the world back into semi-clarity.

A rooster crows down the street as Niall scrapes the last of the coffee grounds from the rusted can. The cabinet is empty without the pitted can inside it. The steam rises out from the coffee pot. He looks down into the pot and sees a couple flakes of rust swimming in the tepid tan liquid. His reflection drifts back at him through the ripples. He slides the coffee mug across the counter away from him.

R.I.P. My Computer

Blog updates have become few and far between. There is good reason for the scarcity of the literary ideas being published in this medium. My computer decided to die. Two weeks out of its warranty, my hard drive decided to take a metaphorical leap off a tall building with its prescribed destination being the hard pavement below it. I have much of my data backed up, but I'm sure I've lost quite a bit. The brighter side of this is that I'm not exactly sure what I've lost and I don't even particularly care. I'm loathe to buy a new computer. I have access to my roommate's when he isn't using it so I'm not completely devoid of a digital presence. I find that this restricted access is not only sufficient but I find myself extremely amenable to my current lack of a computer.

Every once in a while, I do actually walk around and think that I could use a computer at the moment to quell some boredom. To my pleasant surprise, these are the moments of spare time in which I decide to do something much more productive than surf the internet. I wasn't even spending an inordinate amount of time on my computer when it worked, but now that it's gone, I'm spending even less and I don't miss it. Instead, I'll pick up a book and read even more often than I did before. I'll solve some puzzles, be they crossword or logic. I'll work on an actual puzzle. I'll go sit at the pool and swim laps in the sun. My current favorite though is punishing my body at the gym with my workout buddies/roommate Joe and surrogate personal trainer Joey. (In answer to your question: yes, the names get confusing.) The latter promises to find some way of motivating me through pissing me off with his trash talk, but he has yet to do it without me laughing instead. What can I say? I can't take anything a Ginger says seriously.

I've come to the conclusion that computers sap the life out of life. That being said though, I think I'm going to make a concerted effort to transfer the writings that make it into my numerous composition notebooks floating around my apartment into Joe's computer and subsequently onto this blog more often. If not for any of you reading this, then for myself when my notebooks die as unexpectedly as my hard drive. Don't laugh, it's happened before. Ask the one with a couple of chapters of Memoria in it that looks like a blue and white Rorschach test from having a Jameson bottle spilled on it.