Friday, September 24, 2004
now now now now now
I guess it did take a whiz, and that ain’t me. Pea nailed it, and I have only myself and my sieve-like memory to blame. I could say that the coding changes I failed to make were down off the bottom of my screen and I didn’t even think to look there for them but that’s the same damn excuse I used last time so I think instead I’ll blame insurgents. They are handy, that way, for blaming things on them and such. Meantime, Thank you ms pea for the gift of wisdom. I’m going to have it bronzed. The photoblog awaits your viewing.
It all brings me back to today’s climactic essence. Not only is today the last day of a particular round of unpleasantness at work that I’m glad to see ending; not only is today the day before my darling wife’s 40th birthday; not only is today the day of Erev Yom Kippur - the last day before the last day to get my story straight with the cosmic landlord… but tonight we drive up to Philo for a few evenings of peace, quiet and communing with the unpaved world. We’ll have supper at Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino and we’ll do some hardcore extreme lounging. The dog comes with us. The fretting stays behind.
And that seems to me, in my confused early morning brain, to tie into my “days of awe” notion of “le vrai maintenant” - a phrase I’ve been hearing in my head for a few weeks, that as far as I know comes out of nowhere. “The true now.” I’ve been wondering what it means for it to be now, what “now” really means, when “now” happens and where I am in relation to it. “Maintenant” always makes me think of “maintenance,” as if the now was something that didn’t just happen, but demands some upkeep and involvement - to maintain the maintenant. Sometimes I am insensate to “now,” as when I look for code on my MT input screen but fail to scroll down to the critical field. Sometimes I am more in the “now” than I know, and then I sit up and realize it and the spell is shattered. More often, I have to shatter the spell to see the now, a now that I’m ignoring for some ignoble reason. The work situation reminds me that “now” is part of a continuum, but it’s the only part I ever occupy. Being up in Philo will help me focus on where I am in time and space, and will loosen the grip that past frustrations and fears for the future have on my thinking. The birthday will remind me that I’m living this day only this once, and had better take full advantage of it or it will take advantage of me. Yom Kippur out of shul and in the woods… well that’s complicated, but there’s a lot of “now” in that as well. Now now now now now, as Gabriel sayeth on Nursery Crymes, one of Genesis’ great early albums from back when Phil played drums. And I have a responsibility, now that it’s now, to respect the permanently fleeting nature of all things - life, opportunity, a good meal, a bad day at the office. Every moment is equally valid, and all deserve my full attention.
This is important to me because I tend to stay buried in work at my desk all day long, often not leaving my cube except to get (or relinquish) some water or coffee. I’ve started trying to get out for a walk in the afternoons, and to leave before it’s too terribly late. Leaving on time grows more important now that there is noticeably less light in the evenings. If I don’t hit the streets at a reasonable time, I hit them in the dark and feel that I’m missing out on a lot. Well if that’s how I feel I need to leave earlier. And with that in mind I wrote this:
The final flummox filters thinly
through the demiglace of dusk
I watch the blueness rise within me
as the grain fulfills the husk
The pending piles stack sublimely
punchholes watching me askance
suggesting efforts now untimely
lulling me back to my trance
of doublechecking double entries
burying myself in text
they stand my watch, complicit sentries
dull my hunger for what’s next
I force myself to arbitrary
action, tell my day it’s done;
my thoughts are all that I will carry
out into the setting sun.
Shana tovah, y’all - may we all be blessed with a year of peace, joy and growth. And if not for a whole year, let’s just start with today. We have a lot of now to get through.
