Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 18

Of Relief and Accountability

Though a foregone conclusion, seeing it in words was more potent than I imagined. Cynicism taking a break in relief that accountability – no matter that it will be shat on in the Senate and 45 (I will not sully these pages with his name/brand/identity) will proclaim total exoneration and proceed to commit another, probably worse high crime and /or misdemeanor (I think Paul Begala is correct – a second impeachment is not unlikely) offense – has returned, if only for a moment. Relief in remembering what that felt like, what it felt like to have the immune system working (if only rarely, at that, but still), its gears roaring back to life like a car after a new battery in an arctic freeze.

Prognosticators espousing the potential negative effects that this accountablity, this etching on history, will have on Democratic prospects in November should ask themselves whether they felt that same relief last night – and what they're willing to do to feel that same relief on the night of 03 November.

If this was a taste, may it be the appetizer to the main course.

Current Rotation, 18dec2019

My complete reading list, from the present moment to the days of yore (2012), lives here.

Fresh Ink

… Universal Monsters/BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN-lab style, to tie together The Shadow and T1D Fountain Pen Snake sleeve.

The Sting Of Inflexibility

Fresh ink last night so my mind's on resultant fresh sleeve sting, in keeping with the pattern that surfaces not only when I expend myself here writing of French philosophers but also when I lose my second block of the work day (even if I never write any morsel of these in those post meridiem blocks of self-actualization), a pattern that will only, I'm certain, get worse as the holidays drag on. Hence the happiest time of the year is my least favorite time of the year; my defenses aren't yet up to snuff against the forces of lingering tradition. Working on it.

(But hey, at least the Malignancy will get impeached today – though full extraction surgery won't be on the schedule until November – assuming, of course, that we, the surgeons, are up to the task – as half of our immune system is compromised and wants to give the disease another year to spread.)

Goal for holiday survival: abstain as much as possible from rigidity and from the self-loathing inflicted upon tinseltime inability to adhere to a schedule and focus on becoming more flexible – though not less disciplined. Do more of what works, less of what doesn't. Simple ≠ easy.

Worth a read: WaPo on the DIY diabetes management movement. Want to investigate further, see what utility I can scavenge.

POETICS OF SPACE / Downstairs at Memory Lake

I'm loath to share fragments of a dream but it gave me insight into my current reading so deal.

Reading, a few pages deciphered in each 25-minute block I spend with it, Gaston Bachelard's THE POETICS OF SPACE and have a first, probably mistaken, impression.

Though writing of imagination, it feels as though he's describing a memory palace – "...this simple localization of our memories" – a poetic Sherlock Holmes. This stands out:

"When we dream of the house we were born in, in the utmost depths of revery, we participate in this original warmth, in this well-tempered matter of the material paradise... Our daydreams carry us back to it." – Gaston Bachelard, THE POETICS OF SPACE, p. 29.

As does:

"To inhabit oneirically the house we were born in means more than to inhabit it in memory; it means living in this house that is gone, the way we used to dream in it." – Bachelard, p. 38.

Dreamt last night not of my childhood home, that place is long – and mercifully – gone, mostly bad memories, but of my grandparents' house on the lake. Saw the rooms again, smelled them, felt them – "the odor of raisins drying on a wicker tray," as Bachelard says – and, even though said rooms were filled with angry koalas and an escaped tiger (I have no idea, might have had a low blood sugar in the middle of the night), I woke up smiling. My grandmother, long gone, was there too – as was her dog, Benji, a walk-on who lived to 22 –, freaked out about the koalas and the tiger but hey - he was thrilled to see me — and, while my
Grandmother refused to go downstairs (aforementioned koalas and tigers), I went and that's when the memories, the "raisins drying," really came out. I woke up remembering — remembering what it felt like to be home. Dammit, I miss that place – but, if I can erect it in my mind, if I can bring it back to life, deck by deck, smell by smell, maybe it becomes the place to which I can return, even if I'll never physically set foot in it again...

"... For nowhere with more quiet or with more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul..." – Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS, IV-3.

... flawed reading or angry koalas be damned.

There is Snow and Here Are Words

Good morning, there is snow. Excitement bubbling as I get to put Baby Leaf Blower (not Baby Yoda cute, but close) to the test of its car-unearthing-from-snow capability.

Probably useless thought: Sticking with one post a day here. EarBliss stays, even if no one listens to it; I enjoy putting them together. Also, I have returned to Micro.Blog. Time to commit.

Useful thought: Diving headfirst into the deep end of a shallow pool with the revision process to the new next book (a vomit draft took ten days of writing and eight years of thought). Each work, I've found, brings with it its own process. A new book = a new job, with each phase.

Revision: the slow slog, the one I love - most of the time. Pulling apart strands, tying them into new things. At least this time I have both the vomit draft / outline-ish thing that isn't – not only as a northstar to go back to when I invevitably lose my way, the cheatsheet of chords and melody for the improvisations required to make a memorable live performance, but proof to myself that the story, the bare bones of it, work – and the self imposed deadline (or at least a date of temporal renegotiation in three month increments based upon progress up to that point but I'll continue to call it a deadline), 04 December 2020, to – in theory – prevent a years-long spiral of perfectionism and self-delusion.

Car unearthing: success. The day is won.

Listening: BECOME DESERT, by John Luther Adams.

EarBliss 08-14dec2019

Giving this a try… I listen to a ton of music during the week - and this is a useful way to not only share some of my favorites of the week but to deliver content here on Sundays. But, since I use Apple Music as my streaming option of choice, there’s no way to publicly share universal playlists (you can choose your preferred service when you click the play button). Soundsgood seems to be a viable option; an experiment/work in progress. Enjoy.

PS: There is a draft.

Ten days of word vomit and eight years of thought; the deep dive awaits.

Of Rhythm and Purpose

If I write here too often of routine and of schedule it's because routine and schedule not only keeps me alive (T1D management being an essential, practical, and non-insane iteration of the Quantified Self movement (though it does provide its own levels of insanity)) but gives my day a rhythm –

“The wisdom of the journeyman is to work one day at a time and he always said that any job even if it took years was made up out of a day’s work. Nothing more. Nothing less. That was hard for me to learn. I always wanted to be finished. In the concept of a day’s work is rhythm and pace and wholeness.” - Cormac McCarthy, THE STONEMASON.

– and a purpose. It is my cheatsheet through the improvisations required to survive the day with my head still attached to my shoulders, "Puny God" brain-Hulk thrashing, one side to another, kept to a workable minimum.

But the afternoons have always been a dead zone fraught with guilt and the worst ennui has to offer, a place where I left my day open for the needs of others, at their mercy, if for no other reason than to stave off the pangs of guilt that came either from having to do what someone else needed me to do or from not doing the work that gave me purpose; the afternoons were, before, the realm of, as my therapist cleverly concocted, my being a "sheepdog without sheep."

(I also, over the years, concocted the bullshit for myself that I was useless in the afternoons for anything but yard work or menial househusband labors, a useful lie to stave off that pervasive guilt of being who I am.)

And now that I actually do have the time to work in the afternoons, I vacillate between working then or in the evenings, you know, to keep those afternoons open, in the name of consistency. This too, is bullshit.

Vacillate no more, writer boy: for you will – you must – work in the afternoons. You will own your day – the challenge being not so much of getting the words on the page or of overcoming said bullshit concocted but of the cessation of looking over your shoulder, waiting for some emergency, like reversing a ceiling fan, to pop up of which you're the only one they can turn to and who must sacrifice their day and their time to reverse said ceiling fan.

(A theory: the end goal of therapy is to become an astute therapist that operates on your own frequency.)

As for the evenings, I've found that I really like reading and playing video games (LONELY MOUNTAIN: DOWNHILL and MY FRIEND PEDRO are glorious) and spending time with my wife. Watched her slip into her flowstate as she put ornaments on the Christmas tree last night while the dog-children sat around me and I trod my way through James's THE WINGS OF THE DOVE and I knew that there was nowhere else I'd rather be.

The challenge, then, is of the cessation of guilt for being myself, of taking charge of my day and making the day serve me and of refusing to rush, to kowtow, to live my life according to the whims of others – my stupid fucking immune-system-debauched pancreas included.

And so the day is, and so it shall be, probably. Newsletter 0080 drops tomorrow. Onward.

Worth a read: Pew Research Center's most striking findings of 2019.

Listening: SNUFMUMRIKO, by Snufmumriko.

It is mine…

… and when this book is done, I will partake of each and every glorious morsel.