Sunday, November 02, 2008
Valedictory
I suspect you’re sick of reading this, because I know I’m sick of writing it - but damn I am out of spare time like nobody’s business. Add to everything else going on that I’m going to have to start harassing my senator and congresswoman to get my kid’s visa unstuck from the anal annals of the immigration bureau. I’ve got a few other random irons in a couple extracurricular conflagrations, one of which in particular is demanding heretofore unrequisitioned extra creative energy, writing time, and human potential. It is possible that this one bit of grit in the cogs of the sorry machine that is my life may actually pay dividends sometime soonish in a way that counts, but I have more work to do before I get to sniff that potential. Meantime, what I’ve got is a notebook that’s rapidly filling up with writing that has nothing to do with this blog, and an old notebook with just one decent post left in it for your alleged enjoyment. I need to transcribe it and put it away in the cabinet where such things go in my world. After that, I’m down to the scourge of the ostensibly creative - photographic regurgitation.
We’ll have to endure that bridge-crossing when we, um, drive off of it. Meantime, I have this for you, as the final words out of a notebook I carried for most of a year, filling it up with essays that began with one dated March 4 about the new dark windows in my apartment that I barely even notice anymore. That book got some good writing done in it, and then just as I faced its last few dozen blank pages with the sputtering pen of my imagination, a beverage spilled on it and the cover sort of melted and I just gave up on the damn thing. But I wanted to close it out with a few final words, out of respect for all the other words I’d stuffed in it and those it had elicited from me. These ideas germinated each other as I looked at the final page of that notebook one morning on my ride to work, and within a few days I had this - and now you do too:
Valedictory
Walk as if you’re going somewhere
Look around and look ahead
Speak as if you’re saying something
Don’t forget to go to bed
One good friend can last a lifetime
Never hunt what you don’t eat
Act as if somebody’s watching
Know your pudding from your meat
Put aside a little something
Think about the follow-through
Know your windows from your mirrors
Lead as if we’ll follow you.
Tattered, spattered, broken, torn
the blue mead notebook is no more
Hundred fifty college ruled
Nine-point-five by six-inch school
Non-judgmental, constant friend
Filled you up from end to end
Yes I’ve used you, it’s been fun;
Now there is another one
Take your place down in the drawer
The blue mead notebook is no more.
That should be all for now. I hope later comes soon. I’d like to see what I do with it.
