July 22nd, 2008 - Just that moment at the very end of the day, when Ianto rests his fuzzy head on my shoulder, sighs deeply and hugs my neck. Just that moment is worth getting up in the morning. I sing (badly) to him. I cradle him, kiss him and then lay him in his crib.

This is a very special thing.

Ianto has graduated from walking to careening, that middle place between his first fumbling steps and the full on sprinting his big brother does. Ianto careens into me, throws his arms up and yells, "UP!" I scoop him up, and he promptly points to the kitchen. In the kitchen, he gestures toward his high chair, slowly mastering the fine points of non-verbal communication.

Today, I was trying to watch some coverage of the Tour de France. Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen were prattling away about the lead group's distance from the peloton, when all of a sudden, Ianto points at the TV and lets out a low, plaintive whine. I say, "Do you want me to change the channel?" He grunts. I switch. I say, "Is that better?" He knods.

Christ.

His older brother is no less charming. Tonight on the way home from daycare, I looked up into the rear view mirror. I said, "You know what, Owen?" And he said, "What?" And I said, "I love you." And he said, "I love you too, Daddy." And then half a second later, "I farted. You didn't hear it. It was quiet."

On a side note: You would think, given the paucity of posts here lately, that I might reasonably consider a hiatus, or even a full suspension of blogging activities. Instead, I've begun a bicycle blog with my friend Marc. You can find it here,if you find yourself so inclined. I'm posting as "Da Robot," because, well, I am.

Read it and/or weep.

July 14th, 2008 - I'm not dead, and I didn't quit. I've just been busy with other shit.

Hey! I rhymed!

A partial list of what I've been up to: 1) finishing my tattoo 2)crashing my bike again 3) going to a wake 4) taking a week off in Vermont 5) chasing a very active, very destructive little man around the house trying to prevent injuries to both little man and house 6) lots of work on the house 7) lots of work at work 8) lots of time on-line plotting my next seven bike purchases 9) reading about (but not practicing any) Buddhism 10) taking my wife out on a date 11) deskunking the dog 12) drinking coffee as though I was an anteater and coffee was ants.

Here's the tattoo:

The crash came in the pitch dark, in the driving rain, as I was riding home from the tattoo shop. Coming around a corner I stuck my front wheel in a deep (but invisible) pot hole and flew over the bars, ripping the living shit out of my knee (and my rain pants). The pot hole was full of water, and even when I went back to see what angry monster had reached up from the pavement to arrest my progress, I couldn't see it until I stepped in it, up to the ankle.

Jonathan B. died. I didn't see it coming. More on that below.

Our week in Vermont was something more than a vacation. It was a proof of concept. See, kids are a pain in the ass. They keep you from doing things you want to do like, hike, kayak, sexual intercourse, etc. And the last time we went to the Green Mountain State with them they worked us like a pair of under-the-table immigrants. This trip, however, was fun. The boys had a blast swimming and playing in the yard and generally raising hell, and we had time, because we got to go swimming and kayaking and other things, and it just proved to us that we will be able to go on vacation with the little terrorists without losing our minds completely.

Ian has moved on from walking to sprinting and climbing and setting wild fires in California.

I've been painting my house and revamping the dog-dug lawn and rebuilding the back stairs (crooked and crappy but solid). I've been mowing and chopping wood. I got a new hot water heater and plants for the front porch, etc. etc. into eternity without cease.

We've arranged at this strange place at my office where we're all jammed with multiple projects, but we don't seem to be making any money. I don't know how it happens, but it does. I haven't been this busy in years, but we had layoffs a few weeks back. I'm making every kind of book you can imagine and worried about my job. I wish work were called fun and it paid twice as much.

I've gone completely around the bend with my bicycle obsession. Oddly, I have gotten rid of two bikes recently without replacing either one. But, I seem to spend inordinate amounts of time comparing handlebars and searching eBay for arcane Italian steel parts. What is wrong with me? I generally hold to the belief that the best thing about bikes is that they can be ridden. Of late, I've been doing as much shopping as riding. In fact, I just bid $350 on an old Italian road frame, that I have no idea how to turn into an actual functioning bike. Gosh, it's pretty though. I hope I don't win the auction.

Buddhism is neat. It reminds me of Alcoholics Anonymous. And Epictetus. The literature was all written by horrible hippies though, so I'm not sure how much longer I'll carry on reading it.

We went out on a date. A real date. We held hands and kissed on the Mass Ave Bridge. And we didn't run out of things to talk about. After 16 years together. Can you imagine?

Of course, after the date, just before we were headed upstairs to see what came next, I let the dog out for one last pee, and instead watched him get skunked. So instead of canoodling with my beautiful best girl, I dragged my ass out into the yard and scrubbed the dog down with baking soda and peroxide. That was fun. Fucking dog.

And all of it coffee-driven.

The 100 Addicts project is an effort to help people who are not addicts to understand people who are. Each of the 100 Addicts profiled is a good person who suffers from an often deadly disease. There is not one among them who I would not call my friend.

#11 - David S.

David is paranoid schizophrenic, not that you would ever know. He comes across as even-keeled, mature and thoughtful. But, he tells people about his mental illness and that's part of why everyone respects him. He is deeply and unswervingly honest in a way that most of struggle to fathom. He is warm and welcoming to the newly sober, respectful and humble with the old-timers.

David has also had leukemia, during which time he allowed himself to drink without limit and also to smoke crack. He was going to die, so he figured he had it coming. Then he didn't die, and he decided that even if he was, he didn't want to spend his final days on a rocket ride to oblivion.

Did I mention that David owns and operates his own business. He has employees. He makes good money. Even during his psychotic episodes he goes to work and functions in a way that people with far fewer health issues seldom manage.

David was two years sober last week.

#10 - Jonathan B. - They found him dead at the base of a brick wall, the throttle on his motorcycle all the way out. No skid marks. Draw what conclusions you will.

I met Jonathan in my Friday morning group. Like me, he was an atheist, and so he resisted the call of AA. Not for him, he thought. He did end up at some AA meetings, sitting next to me, and spilling his sins in between sips of coffee.

He'd gone down to Daytona Bike Week and stayed a month. Had an affair. Run out on his family. Was trying to get sober in order to get back in the house. Seemed to be doing some of the right things. And then suddenly he was off again. Detroit to meet the woman he'd run off with the first time. Left her when she proved to be a heroine addict. Back to Florida, for something. What? A brick wall.

Kevin and I went to the wake and saw his two beautiful daughters sitting on the funeral home couch. There were pictures of Jonathan everywhere. He was a good looking guy, a fun-loving soul, rye and funny. In the good times, he'd been a joy to be around. In the bad times, he could hurt the people he loved with impunity.

We'll miss him.

Drop me a line.

June 17th, 2008 - A meme: "List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if theyÕre not any good, but they must be songs youÕre really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what theyÕre listening to."

Song 1 : Baiting the Public - Fucked Up - Fucked Up is a band that have put a hard limit on their commercial success by choosing that name. That's too bad, because they rock. This is musically dynamic punk rock. Angry. Melodic. And rockin'.

Song 2 : New England is Sinking - Deathkiller - The first time I heard Deathkiller I thought, "Why is that guy screaming so much? I wish he'd stop screaming so much." Now, I can't get enough Deathkiller. There is a brutal brilliance to this record. It reminds me a lot of Helmet's "Meantime" album, in as much as they both struck me as one thing, but turned out to be another much better thing. I can't wait for the next Deathkiller disc, which is supposed to be out this summer.

Song 3 : Matrons of the Canals - Western Addiction - OK. So there's a theme developing here. Over the last six months I've been in a huge hardcore phase. Western Addiction is a side project band for some guys who have another more popular (but in my opinion less good) band. This is straight ahead hardcore, except it's new(ish), and you haven't heard it, and it's really, really good.

Song 4: Ex-Lion Tamer - Wire - Here's a complete classic. When I listen to old Wire, I always think, "This could come out now and sound completely fresh." This is my favorite track off Pink Flag. You should get Pink Flag, even if you don't like punk rock. It's just a good rock record.

Song 5: Skin and Bones - Joe Lally - Lally is the base player from Fugazi. I love Fugazi. My friend George took me to see Lally live a couple weeks ago. His solo stuff is this weird, avant-punk jazz. Kinda noisy. His voice is thin and reedy. But it works. It helps that he plays with great musicians and that his bass sound is totally unique and compelling. Skin and Bones is the sort of song you don't realize has completely wormed its way into your subconscious until you're at the grocery store singing it under your breath.

Song 6: Sound of Bombshell - The Aggrolites - This is an early summer song. Old school, dance hall reggae, except Aggrolites are a bunch of white guys from Los Angeles. Drums and keyboards. Drums and keyboards. Put this record on. Cook some food. Dance in the kitchen.

Song 7: Judas and the Morning After Pill - Good Riddance - Another classic punk band. Another great song that slips the constraints of hammering, stupid punk drone. Get it. Love it. Try not to think too hard.

I'm supposed to tag 7 other people, and there are definitely people I'd like to get answers from, but I'm not going to. What I suggest is, if you're reading this, and you're interested, pick up the challenge and then email me, so I can see what you're listening to.

Cool?

June 11th, 2008 - I have no time to write, and yet, I realize, I have no time not to write. For the important things there is no later. And I am fortunate to have so many good and important things in my life.

One of them pushed his way out the front door this morning as I was trying to leave. He slipped out on the other side of my bicycle, so I couldn't just sweep him back in the house. He used that window of opportunity to hurl the television remote across the porch.

It was comedy. One small escapee. One large and bumbling parent. Like a Chevy Chase pratfall and a Three Stooges bit in one neat, domestic scene.

His brother kept yelling "Come inside, Ianto! Come inside!"

It was YouTube funny, but no one was taping. Such is life.

June 2nd, 2008 - First, the forensics:

Now the story. What you see here is a collection of bicycle parts, a seat post, a seat bracket (the two pieces that clamp the rails on the underside of the seat), the thing that guides the bolt into the clamp, and the bolt (in two pieces).

When I left for work this morning I had this feeling that my seat was loose. I thought I felt my butt shift slightly to one side, but I ignored it. Then, as I passed through Davis Square, I felt another shift, and I knew. So I pulled over, adjusted the seat and then tightened the bolt. It felt good. Solid.

Until I was half way down Beacon Street in Somerville. Then it lurched again. So I stopped, readjusted and tightened it down extra hard. I remounted. It felt good. I thought I was all set.

Next I made a pair of fortuitous decisions. First, at the end of the Longfellow Bridge I decided to wheel up and over the foot bridge onto the Esplanade, that bit of grass that makes a very narrow park next to the River, rather than continuing onto Charles Street and across Back Bay, which is my normal route. Then, as I was rolling gently down the bike path, just above the Hatch Shell where the Boston Pops play every July 4th, I took both hands off my handlebars to readjust my helmet.

Just as I sat upright, my arms behind my head, I heard a loud pop, and then, before I knew what was going on, I was skidding on my ass on the asphalt, my bike shooting out from under me and continuing on down the path, as if it might just go on to work without me. The bolt had sheered off right beneath the saddle, which, along with all it's attendant hardware, was scattered around me on the path.

I hate to think what might have happened if I had been in traffic when the bolt let go. And I hate to think what might have happened to my humble manhood had the bolt left its mooring when I was stretched forward over the bike. The kind gentleman at the bike shop, who gave me a new seat post set up at luncthime, said that had happened to a friend of his, and that his friend had had to have his "taint" stitched back together.

So, yeah. I've fallen off my bike for the second time in less than two weeks, but I remain deeply grateful for the small mercies afforded me.

Oh, and I had the third sitting for my half-sleeve tattoo yesterday. Here is what it looks like now, with one sitting to go:

May 29th, 2008 - When I was a teenager, there was a period when, every day after school, I would ride my brother's old ten speed around the back patio in tight figure-eight patterns, sometimes for an hour or more. I would see how tight I could ride them. I would see how slowly I could ride them. I would pay close attention to the smooth arc of every turn.

To be sure, this was an odd hobby for a hormone-crazed, drug-addled teen, but there was a pleasing focus the bike brought me, the control of this gyroscopic machine beneath me drawing all my mental energy to a single purpose. It was meditative. Relaxing.

Of course, I had no real concept of that at the time. I felt vaguely silly doing it, but at that age you feel vaguely silly breathing.

I think of that time often now when I'm riding around town or when I'm down in the basement working on my bikes. Sometimes I daydream about spending days in the park weaving slowly around on a bicycle. In my head it's so peaceful.

On Wednesday mornings, when I go to an early AA meeting in Harvard Square, I ride to work afterward via the narrow paved path that hugs the contours of the Charles River. I ride slowly. Sometimes I slalom the dashed white lines that bisect the path at its busiest stretches. Sometimes I ride down to the water's edge where there are a series of public docks, and I steer myself out onto these floating bits of wood and spin my tight circles and then I continue on to work.

It is possible that I have some mild attention-deficit. I have recently tried to do these simple, breathing meditations where you focus all your attention on the breath coming in and out. Usually I last through one breath before I'm thinking of a grilled cheese sandwich or a future dominated by sentient robots. I know it takes practice to develop meditational skills, but stillness is not a natural state for me. I am kinetic. I vibrate at a frequency only visible to birds and small rodents.

Motion helps me to focus, helps me to think. But like the stillness of seated meditation, the motion has to have a form, a classical shape, to get me into a state of calm. Bicycle as thinking tool, as valuable as this keyboard under my fingertips.

I don't know why I'm saying all this. I guess I was thinking about what bicycles have taught me and instead realized that bicycles are more of a how than a what.

Mary 27th, 2008 - In a city of squares (Harvard, Central, Kendall, Copley, Kenmore, Dudley, Ball, Powderhouse, Teal, Davis, etc. etc), the squat gray building that houses the methadone clinic is no where. There are no windows at the front, only a tinted glass door in a deep set portico.

It's on my way to work. The pavement is good there, so I'm always rolling by fast, but I make a point to notice who's coming and going. Most mornings, there's an older black man lounging out front drinking a coffee. I see mothers pushing strollers in and out. And that makes me sad.

It's a good kind of sadness though, the kind that fills you with gratitude for the fact that there is a clinic there and that you don't need to stop and go in.

On a completely different topic:

The Bush Administration sees meaningful action on global warming (including efforts to reduce our national oil consumption) as a sort of economic zero sum game, which is to say, if we make driving more expensive we will lose money, because people and businesses will find it harder and harder to compete in the global marketplace.

But, as car sales drop, bicycle sales rise. It's all over the papers. As people drive less, they walk more. Maybe they even ride a bicycle. They become healthier, get sick less. Their health costs shrink. Businesses are forced to find efficiencies they didn't previously have to consider.

Yes. It's true that growth in some sectors is stifled, but the dollars hemorhaging from some businesses (e.g. I can't imagine UPS is loving high gas prices) are simply migrating to others. It's probably a good time to be selling solar power.

The bottom line is: We still need to eat. We still need to get to work. We still need to buy things. We might just have to find other ways to do those things. In that sense, the dollars are fungible, and it becomes hard to see the economic fall out of this oil "crisis" as anything other than a redistribution of wealth.

Perhaps then, the administration simply dislikes the way the redistribution is going. Maybe I just misunderstand.

But I don't think so.

The 100 Addicts project is an effort to help people who are not addicts to understand people who are. Each of the 100 Addicts profiled is a good person who suffers from an often deadly disease. There is not one among them who I would not call my friend.

#9 - Ron R.

Ron worked for the two of the biggest creators of drug addicts in the world, the US Army and the US Postal Service. That was his joke, not mine.

Ron sorted mail for a living and spent his non-working hours in the old Boston Combat Zone, drinking with the worst the city had to offer. He dated strippers and whores. They trusted him because he was a nice guy.

Ron was drunk every day and every night. He never had DTs, never had a hangover, because he never let the alcohol leave his system.

He was homeless on and off for a number of years and ended up living the Veterans' Shelter downtown. Who knows why he got sober, but he just celebrated a year, clean and alcohol-free.

#10 - Spanky - They found him dead in his room at the Vet's shelter last week. I had only seen him a handful of times. I was there when he volunteered to be the group's coffee maker. I heard him speak about his experiences a little, how he'd gone off to Vietnam and come back a mess, how he'd been abusing his mind and body for nearly 40 years.

He was a squat guy with a long, curly black beard. He wore suspenders over a sweatshirt. He drank Mountain Dew in big, dramatic gulps. I think maybe he'd lost all his teeth. He seemed pretty far out but spoke normally.

We almost got to know him.

May 23rd, 2008 - I am soft and the world is hard. I was about to warn you not to interpret that sexually, but, given the world's tendency to have its way with me, the euphemism probably fits.

In this specific instance what I mean is that my physical self is soft and brittle, compared with asphalt, which tends to be somewhat less pliable. Thus, cut off by a pedestrian stepping out from behind a stationary bus and launched headways over my handlebars, it was with loss of skin and bruise of flesh that I came to rest at the feet of a contrite Puerto Rican man.

There is a lesson in this. Many lessons. But I will take the simplest, which is that I am small and the world is big and I receive my time here solely at the discretion of powers beyond myself.

So I will try to be more grateful for what I get. And I'll try to enjoy the soreness in my wrists and the palms of my hands, the stinging in my knees. It's the pain of being alive after all, and what's better than that?

May 19th, 2008 - I am beginning to dislike the 21st century. Here are four things I don't like about it.

Blue-Tooth - I know that this was the future that we were promised, with phones hanging off our ears. Ear phones go along with jet packs and rocket ships. BUT...blue tooth phones are perhaps the most obnoxious and stupid looking technology of the 21st century. You look stupid with that thing on your head. Especially when you're not talking to someone, but also when you are.

Plastic - So useful for frisbees and sex toys, plastic is terrible for most everything else. I don't even care that it's poisonous now. Sleep is poisonous. Everyone knows that. But plastic sucks. And it never goes away. Shit stinks, but at least it has the decency to break down and act as fertilizer. Plastic has no redeeming qualities that I can see. And it's also inescapable.

Airplanes - I know. I know. Airplanes make the world a small more accessible place, but maybe we'd all be better off if the world was a bit bigger and less accessible. Whatever happened to the tramp steamer for chrissakes? Or even the underutilized and long forgotten whore ferry? What was wrong with them.

Facebook - Facebook will steal your face, obscuring it in an aggregation of fairly homogenous interests and unremarkable humor. Facebookhas ceased to be an application interface that helps me stay connected with distant friends. I have now become a Facebook application myself, one that can be accessed with relative ease from anywhere a tramp steamer will take you. Soon Facebook will begin regulating my behavior, ferreting out my bugs, normalizing my volume. It will remove my face. You watch.

May 6th, 2008 - First, the real answer to the dilemma I posed in my last post: I need to pull my head out of my ass.

And now, pictures of my children, which is what everyone really wants anyway.

April 28th, 2008 - I've stopped seeing. My eyes are open, but I don't see. I keep waiting for sight to return, keep thinking that I just need to concentrate a bit harder, but so far, nothing.

I don't know what happened. Is it the lack of time? Is it the fatigue? Is it the disappearance of that camera that I knew how to operate?

There was a period, probably two-and-a-half years, when I could look out of these eyes and see beautiful things. I carried a camera everywhere and took a million pictures, and every 10,000th one looked good. The end product wasn't the point. The seeing was the point. The camera just gave me a reason to see.

Now I look at my friends' photos on-line and I page through the fotoblogs, and I miss that sight I used to have. They say the second child always has a more sparsely recorded childhood than the first, and we're certainly bearing that bit of wisdom out.

I can sift through dozens of shots of Owen, documenting every little progress in his first two years of life, and yet, of Ian there is fairly little.

Do I owe him better? Will he hold this against me later?

What can I do to get back to where I was? How can I hurry less through this compacted life? How can I slow down enough to see again?

Ideas?

April 23rd, 2008 - Oh, the ongoing comedy of fatherhood.

The baby shat himself. It was his 5th bowel movement of the day, not that I was counting, but it's hard not to, you know, when you're so intimately involved with each one.

So yeah. He crapped his pants. He filled his diaper, and then blasted feces down his leg, ass to ankle. This is what we, at our house, refer to as a "breach." I would say this was a top five breach, too. One of the worst ever.

It's hard to convey how difficult it is to remove feces from a squirming child. It is impossible to do, I think, without getting a whole bunch of yuck on your hands. I got yuck on my hands. It was all I could do, in fact, to keep the yuck off the wall and out of the kid's mouth.

Yeah. It was gross.

So finally I got him cleaned up and tossed his besmirched clothes on the floor by the stairs to be laundered and wrestled him into the bathroom for immediate bathing. This was meant to be the calm AFTER the (shit) storm.

I planted my naked son on the floor next to me while I ran the bath. He rewarded my by pissing all over the bath mat.

I put him in the tub, and then ran out of the room to grab his towel. He used that opportunity to get up and ratchet the water temperature down from pleasantly warm to ice freaking cold. I returned to him screaming at the top of his lungs, saw what he'd done and cursed (not at all) softly under my breath.

At this point it occurred to me that I would find the evening's events funny at some point in the indistinct future. That did little to quell my frustration in the moment.

So at this point, I had a decision to make, to wash him quickly in the frigid bath or drain the water and start over. Annoyed and still smelling of shit myself, I opted for the former. I mean, fuck him, he's the one that messed with the water in the first place.

Yeah. Father-of-the-Year candidate here.

I soaped and rinsed the little terrorist as fast as I could, and swaddled him, still screaming, in a towel to return to his room and a nice warm pair of PJs. As we exited the bathroom and started down the hall, I was greeted by the sight of the dog greedily nosing around in the shit-filled clothes I'd left by the stairs. I mean, what makes a better appetizer to a kibble dinner than a cup-and-a-half of baby crap?

Fortunately the dog is very sensitive to my moods and tone of voice, so he went scurrying before I could do the thing that I swore I'd never do, which is kick my dog.

From there on it was all pretty uneventful, except the part where I rinsed the clothes out in the sink, which pretty much ruined the sink, mine of course, and forced me to brush my teeth elsewhere. Next time I'll do that in the basement sink, the one I clean paint brushes in.

My parting apologies to those who abhor parental nattering concerning all things poop-related. You know who you are. I will not make a habit of this.

April 16th, 2008 - Things I'm liking lately:

Breasts - Maybe it's just the spring that has me particularly occupied and pleased by the breasts of the female inhabitants of this green Earth. Generally, I think of myself as an ass man. Other people think of me that way too, but in a different way. But, anyway. Breasts bring good words to mind: fulsome, bursting, melon-like, pillowy, etc. They're inspiring. They make me want to be a better man.

Robots - I can't let go of the idea, hatched when I was just a young 'un, that robots will eventually take over most of our day-to-day work. In fact, if you think about it, computers are really memory robots that augment our naturally poor storage capabilities. In this respect, you can understand the fear that one day robots will take over the planet. I'm not even sure that they'll need to be sentient to make this happen. As we gain greater dependence on robot technology, we become weaker as a species. It's exciting, isn't it?

Not procrastinating as much - I've embarked on a new productivity strategy that's paying some good, immediate dividends. It's a simple strategy really. I just don't look at the interweb while I'm at the office. Subsequently, I have roughly 4-6 hours of time in which I'm forced to perform the tasks for which I'm paid as well as to catch up on various writing projects. You can see for yourself, that this is my second post this week, a bumper crop relative to recent output. If, like me, you're an interweb junkie, I suggest you try it. Tomorrow maybe.

Just to provide some balance...things I'm disliking:

The way I smell - OK. So it was 10:30pm. We had just finished watching that Will Ferrell movie Stranger than Fiction just because it was on, such is the gravity of televised "entertainment." I needed to shower. I hadn't showered since the night before, and I spent the day with a snotty, pukey, food-crusted baby. I was too tired. I skipped it. So, smelly from the get go, I climbed aboard my two-wheeled steed this morning and pedaled my ass to work. And though I applied my Old Spice Solid deodorant extra-liberally, I still smell kinda bad. I was going to say "funky," but that's a horribly overused word, and my aroma is less Bootsy Collins and more Tarzand the Apeman. I wish I was a robot.

John McCain's gas tax proposal - Have you heard about this? McCain has proposed that we suspend the Federal Gas Tax (something like $0.18 per gallon) from Labor Day to Memorial Day to give the American tax payer some relief from high transportation costs. I could be wrong. I only took high school economics, but I'm pretty sure lowering the price of gas will drive up the demand. And when you drive up the demand, you lower the supply, which, in turn, drives up the price. So really, what we're talking about is giving more money to the oil companies instead of keeping that money to pay for the ridiculous war that McCain wants to keep on fighting ad absurdum. I can only assume that the oil companies will turn around and take their extra profits and plow them into political campaigns supporting people like McCain who want to fight even more wars. Christ! Seriously! When are the robots coming to put us out of our misery?

Litter - I nearly started a fist fight last week with a group of college kids after one of them came out of the convenience store on the corner, walked past the garbage can that sits there and carelessly flung a losing lottery ticket onto the ground. I won't recount what I said, but suffice it to say I was glad, in retrospect, they chose to drive away rather than beat me to dust. I HATE LITTER!!!! Who teaches kids that it's ok to throw garbage on the ground? Can we deport them? Woodsy the Owl says, "Clean up after yourself or get the F out!" Of course, robots could clean up after us. Robots can do anything.

April 14th, 2008 - I'm a little bit afraid that Ian will never grow up, that we'll be stuck in baby days forever, never knowing whether we'll get to sleep through the night, slightly suspicious that he's sick again, having to carry him from place to place because he refuses to walk, having to do the laundry over and over and over again, having to wrench myself from the warm bed every morning to pluck him from his crib before he goes apoplectic. The crying. The unrelenting anxiety.

And I know he'll grow and change and that things will get easier. But when I have my head down, and I'm just trying to keep things moving I lose perspective pretty quickly. I act as though how things are is how things will be. And I'm awfully tired.

Simultaneously, what a complete, head-screwing joy it is to watch my little boys grow and change. Ian is walking now, if a little unsteadily. Owen is absolutely exploding into life. He never stops talking or singing. He is jumping, kicking, thrashing. He wants to play baseball and soccer. He wants to throw the football. He is eating life. I admire him.

March 31st, 2008 - There is a season for everything, according to the Byrds, and this does NOT seem to be the season for blogging. Turn. Turn. Turn.

It does seem to be the season for painting hallways and rocking babies to sleep and getting up in the night to change wet sheets, trying not to drop the kids as they squirm and wiggle and flail, eating life, wrecking the house, falling down, crying and getting up again. My beautiful boys. They are runny noses and head-splitting smiles and fission-level energy contained in wispy, soft bodies.

We're on a rocket sled to nowhere. Their mother and I land on the couch about 8:30, tossed there like a pair of bean bags to blink at the TV until one or both of us drift off. The dog will wake us with his scratching and licking.

Despite all that, I've been surprisingly happy and even-keeled. In fact, I've been so happy I feel like an idiot, that guy no one likes cause he's always so achingly cheerful. Like a Hare Krishna. Or a kids' show actor.

If you were to ask me why I feel so good, I'd have to say it's down to some combination of Celexa, Wellbutrin and Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the truth.

A little over a year ago I wrote at length about my depression and at that time I promised to say more about my progress. And of course, I didn't do that.

So, the update is I feel great, as happy as I've ever been in my whole life. Whether it's the meds or the meetings, I have no idea. The answer is likely, yes.

A year and a half ago, I began taking Celexa, which did what it promised to do. My negativity and depression evaporated. It didn't make me happy. I just stopped feeling sad.

But, since Celexa also caused me to TMI TMI TMI TMI TMI TMI, I spoke to my doctor and she suggested I lower the dose and incorporate some Wellbutrin, which doesn't make you TMI TMI TMI TMI or TMI TMI TMI. Now I can TMI TMI TMI TMI without having to TMI TMI TMI.

As for the AA meetings, I have to say I used to think AA was a bunch of bullshit and not for me. I was wrong and it is for me. I've learned a lot about how to handle my addictive, compulsive, self-centered personality in ways that are more conducive to happiness and tranquility. And I've made a bunch of friends, many of whom are felons.

So things are great. If you're struggling, I recommend you take some funny pills and make friends with criminals.

March 19th, 2008 - This is New England, it's mid-March and we're all dreaming of spring time, but sleet is falling, making little tick, tick sounds against the storm windows.

On the train, I'm surrounded by young blonde women. Where are all these blonde women coming from? It's like Scandinavia in here. All of them are dour and wearing clogs, the way liberal women often do. It de-sexes them, which is nice. That way I can pay attention to what I'm reading. A little white haired woman slumps against my shoulder, barely able to stay awake, a giant coffee cradled in her lap. I try not to wake her.

There is a funeral for a fire fighter at the Cathedral, just up from the office. I see a black guy wearing a kilt and carrying a bass drum. It's a bit like the first time I saw a pileated woodpecker, thrilling and odd.

Forget the spring, I'm dreaming of summertime, of stepping onto the porch into the sun's bright warmth. I am walking up the street, can smell the blossoms in the trees, and I have a t-shirt stretched across my back. In my daydreams I'm always more muscley than in real life, so the shirt looks good. Oh, and there is just the slightest hint of sweat between my shoulder blades. It's warm.

And that's it. Today the daydream worked, and though the city was completely dreary and socked in with fog and rain, I felt good. Massive doses of coffee and the shrill misery of others helped.

March 12th, 2008 - The house smells of primer and vomit. The kids have been sick, and I've been re-doing the front hall after they go to bed at night, painting in narrow windows of time between bedtime stories and exhaustion.

We seem to be in our quarterly collapse, that period during which the kids get sick, work spirals out of control and the house is best cleaned with a rake and a leaf-blower. These are enormously frustrating times. You start to think it's never going to end.

But that's because you tend toward cynicism and negativity. You're like that. If you're like me, that is.

Saw a cardinal in a tree the other morning. He was singing at the top of his lungs, and I wanted to hold him in my two hands while he did it, feel his tiny heart racing along, hear that song from inches away rather than 30 yards. Don't know why. Just did.

March 3rd, 2008 - I love birds. I love their feathery multiplicity and their skittish mistrust of humans. I love pigeons. I love raptors. I love winter birds and sea birds and water fowl.

But they're such assholes.

So last weekend, or maybe it was the weekend before, the birds returned to my neighborhood. Cardinals and juncos and mourning doves. All twittering and hopping about and darting from bush to tree and back again.

It was exciting. Spring, I thought, is here early.

Well, it wasn't, and it isn't. Those little winged liars. Here in New England we seem to get at least one and sometimes two Indian Summers a year. Now, we seem also to be getting Indian Winters. It gets warm. The sun shines, and then we get half-a-foot of snow.

WTF?

March 2nd, 2008 - Our Ianto has been alive for one year today, and we love him.

Happy birthday, little boy.

February 28th, 2008 - I was thinking just now that my bedside table is a perfect representation of what's going on in my life.

First of all it's overloaded. There's a lamp. There is a seldom-used baby monitor. There is a glass elephant filled with change. There is a leather valet meant to hold keys, wallet and watch. There is a cell phone charger. There are books, books and more books. Along the wall, there is a vertical arrangement, book-ended between the glass elephant and the base of the lamp. Then there is a further horizontal stack in front of it. Finally, there is a layer of dust that grows alarmingly thick between visits by the cleaning ladies.

Of course, the lamp remains dusty. How do you dust a lampshade? You don't really. It just grows more and more opaque. In the metaphor I'm working here, the burgeoning opacity of the lamp represents my inability to see very far into the future. Clever, huh?

The glass elephant represents my finances. I have lots of change, but very little in the way of folding money. We gave the day care people more than $20k last year. You can buy a pretty decent car for $20k. We could use a pretty decent car.

The seldom-used baby monitor signifies the irrepressible growth of our youngest child, Ian, the way he wakes us in the night without the amplification of the monitor, and my persistent wish not to be disturbed.

The cell-phone charger is my connection to the world. It's a bad connection. Sometimes the signal gets dropped altogether, but mostly I just have trouble making out exactly what the world is trying to tell me.

The valet, as I said, is meant to hold a wallet, keys and watch. I don't wear a watch. It sometimes takes me several minutes, upon waking, to determine what day of the week it is and where I ought to be. My wallet and keys are there, faithfully, but they share the valet with about a dozen business cards, scraps of lists, a pen, receipts, reminder notes, paper clips, etc. Everything there is important to one degree or another. Actually, most of it should just get trashed, but I can't find the time to do it, though the trash can is only half a foot away.

Finally, the books. Normally, you can discern something fairly obvious about the train of my thought from the stack of books next to the bed. Tell me what this collection implies: the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, a Batman graphic novel, Exploring Stonewalls, Moby Dick , Alan Bennett's Untold Stories , Joseph Ellis' American Creation, Feeling Good , a collection of Hiroshigae prints, the Victoria's Secret catalogue, A Child's Christmas in Wales, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Lake Wobegone Days, John Keegan's The Face of Battle and Emerson 365 a collection of Emerson aphorisms.

Please, send me a note if you have some clue what I'm thinking about. I will certainly never complete that entire midden of material.

These are scattershot times for me. I would like to settle my brain and draw some conclusions, or at least document some observations, about my current life. We'll see if that's possible.

February 26th, 2008 - I need to play less Scrabble. I'm not blogging cause I'm busy playing Scrabble. I need to play less Scrabble.

To be clear, I'm talking about Scrabulous, the Scrabble knock-off that is the most popular application on Facebook. I know that Scrabulous is supposed to go the way of all things, that Hasbro and Mattell are going to sue the Scrabulous folks right out of their pants, assuming they're wearing pants, but it hasn't happened yet.

And as much as I enjoy, if by enjoy you mean "waste massive amounts of time doing," playing this game, I really wish it would go ahead and go away.

Now I gotta go. It's my turn.

February 21st, 2008 - D's father died. So did S's. P's unexpected baby had an unexpected complication. J's mother bounced in and out of the hospital with runaway Alzheimer's. We took T to the hospital for an alcoholic detox.

Last week was thick with tragedy and heavy conversations about heavier topics. It was short of sleep and grindingly slow. I am only grateful that none of the woe and tribulation got on me directly.

I was saying to S that this is actual adulthood. What we were doing in our 20s was only a rehearsal, a post-adolescence more than anything. Now that we're in our 30s, the math starts to work harder. It's time for those who want to have babies to go ahead and have them. It's time for those of us whose parents will leave early to go ahead and check out.

B said that in the last year he'd been in the room during both a birth and a death, and that now he's different.

I'm different too. Having kids has clued me into some basic shit about the human condition. Being older has opened my tiny mind to ideas I previously dubbed bullshit. Death has become a more regular feature in the program, and it scares me less than it used to. I think I'm beginning to be able to make out the vague shape of what's important in life.

I'm probably fooling myself.

February 8th, 2008 - Heath Ledger killed himself. Say what you will, "it was accidental," but the fact remains that the man killed himself.

"Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine," a representative for the New York City medical examiner said.

It's odd to me that this is somehow deemed an accidental overdose, but that heroin addicts who misjudge their fix never get that benefit of the doubt. Famous people have accidents with their illicit drugs (prescribed or not). The poor and anonymous just OD because they're weak. We're better off without them.

Ledger's father, grasping to cope with his son's death, said, "While no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath's accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage."

I am sorry, Mr. Ledger. Truly I am. But your son was an addict. You don't mix up the cocktail they found in his blood unless you're abusing drugs. Abusing them. Like people who have both bullets and guns sometimes abuse firearms.

The questions shoot across my addicted brain: Who prescribed all this stuff for him? Was it one doctor? If so, ought he not go to jail? If it was multiple doctors, did Ledger lie about all the prescriptions he was taking? That's something addicts do. What combination of anxiety and injury could possibly justify all those prescriptions? And what state of mind would you have to be in to think it was a good idea to take all of them at once?

I take no glee in pointing out that Heath Ledger was a drug abuser. None. But there is a moment here where the celebrity-obsessed can learn something about addicts and abuse, and it's being swept away by the need to believe this was an "accident." Underlying the sanitization of what happened, is the misconception that good, admirable and talented people can't be drug addicts. Instead they are overworked, overly anxious, too sensitive. They fall prey to their own work ethic, to their artistic sensibilities.

The truth is there is no difference between Heath Ledger lying dead in an expensive hotel room and a junkie dead behind a dumpster with a needle in his arm.

My aim is not to deposit a great actor behind a dumpster, but rather to draw the junkie out into the light of day and point out that he or she is a good, if broken, person too. No one chooses to kill themselves with drugs. The drugs choose it.

Something led Heath Ledger astray. You can be suicidal without writing a note about it. You can put yourself in harms way unconsciously, and I think that's what Ledger's family and friends want us to think here. This wasn't a suicide. It was an accident.

But no. It wasn't. When the bus hits you, that's an accident. When you take a handful of prescription drugs and die, that's suicide by drug abuse.

When Kim Ledger says, "Heath's accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage," he's wrong. It's not as though his son died after combining skim milk with 2%. No. His son's death serves as a caution that addiction and it's consequences don't care how much money you've got or how famous you are, or even how good a person you are.

I'm sorry. I really, really am. This is one tragedy among many.

February 7th, 2008 - It's the Lunar New Year. Now commencing: the Year of the Rat. And while that's pretty great, you know, celebrating a disease carrying rodent, I propose a slight change to: The Year of Ratt.

I remember Ratt was on tour with Billy Squier in nineteen eighty something, and I really wanted to go, but my parents wouldn't let me. I guess they didn't want my young mind to get blown by all that testosterone-infused awesomeness. Little did they know that it was too late. My consciousness had already been forged in the foundry of glam metal.

When later I turned to punk rock, and then, through the influence of marijuana cigarettes, to the Grateful Dead and their anaesthetizing, jam band ilk, the strains of Squier's "The Stroke," echoed in my beleaguered ears, eventually saving me from a lifetime of hempen lameness.

The first rock show I saw ended up being the Replacements, which, at first blush, sounds very cool, but in truth, was awful. The band, and especially Paul Westerberg, were blowzy drunk. Songs were sung without microphonal amplification, Westerberg laid out on the stage half asleep. They began to play some covers, and then realized they didn't really know them, and so stopped. In my naive enthusiasm, I swore it was awesome, but in reality it was horribly disappointing.

This Lunar New Year business is a bit beyond me. I know the Chinese eat moon cakes, with sweetened red bean filling, and set off fireworks, but that's all I know. Perhaps I'll walk to Chinatown for lunch.

The effect of the moon can be exaggerated and dramatized. I confess that this morning, while walking past the South End Firehouse on Harrison Ave, there was a truck parked out front and still running, and I was tempted to jump in and drive away. Can you imagine? Driving around in a stolen fire truck? It's so crazy, I almost did it.

But didn't.

February 6th, 2008 - The smell of vomit and feces. The incessant screaming. I live in fear. One of my captors does nothing but scream incomprehensibly in my face. The other barks orders, but I have no idea what he really wants. They wake me at all hours, subject me to new indignities.

What gains me a reward one day, earns me a beating the next. I am constantly off balance.

I am forced to prepare all their meals. Sometimes they just throw the food back in my face. Equally I launder their clothes, only to have them knowingly soil themselves.

I am told I will be here for twenty years, though some sentences run longer.

Parenthood. So rewarding.

I keed. I keed.

Here are my beautiful boys:

February 5th, 2008 - The 100 Addicts project is an effort to help people who are not addicts to understand people who are. Each of the 100 Addicts profiled is a good person who suffers from an often deadly disease. There is not one among them who I would not call my friend.

#8 - Susan R. - In 1971 Susan RÕs family moved from the US to Sydney, Australia. At first, she adapted well, and for many years just Òwent with the flow,Ó never causing any ripples. At 16 she started to experiment with drugs, nothing too heavy at first just some pot, hash and alcohol. But then she discovered heroin. It gave her the courage to lie, steal and deceive those who cared for her. If it meant betraying a loved one to get a fix, the fix won every time. She did two stints in rehab and spent time in jail, but none of those experiences helped her kick the habit.

Then, a three month Òdesperate tripÓ to a remote Papuan New Guinea island called Bougainville, to live with her father, proved a remarkable success. There were neither drugs nor drug dealers on Bougainville. Initially it was a painful struggle but she overcame the physical illness and went cold turkey to rid her body of the addiction.

During those three months she gained some weight, began looking and feeling better, a real sense of personal triumph. She began looking to the future. She wasnÕt na•ve. She knew it would be an ongoing struggle, but she was just so happy to be drug free for the first time in 4 years. Returning to Sydney and her family home she lived drug free for more than five months.

On 6th September, 1986 she had a nice dinner with her mother, brother and sister-in-law and then headed out to visit a friend. By now Susan had been drug free just over 8 months and was starting to enjoy life. No one really knows what happened that night, but the next morning her body was found in a well known drug dealerÕs apartment. It was FatherÕs day in Australia, 7th September, 1986 when her father received a phone call asking him to attend the police station. Once there he was taken to the morgue to identify his daughterÕs body. A few days later an autopsy revealed she had died from a massive heroin overdose. The coroner left an open finding into her death Ð death by a Òhotshot - administered by an unknown personÓ. Susan wasnÕt a bad person. She was someoneÕs daughter, sister, aunt, cousin and best friend.

And she is missed.

January 26th, 2008 - This is the hoodie Brittney got me for Christmas. It is awesome.

Robot comes from the Czech word 'rabota,' which means, literally, 'serf labor,' but further back comes from the Slavic root meaning 'work.'

My brother and I joke, especially at work, that robots don't feel stress, anger, pain, cold, etc. And that we are robots.

And people give me funny looks when I wear my hoodie, so I have those now.

January 21st, 2008 - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a new tattoo, an ambigram of emlyn. Stand on your head and it reads the same.

January 15th, 2008 - No words.

January 11th, 2008 - First, some minor business. Many people want to see more pictures of my children. To them I say, "PAY ME!" I mean, come on! Who gives away good content for free? No one, that's who. Maybe I can get my kids sponsored by some national tire retailer or top brand of disposable refrigerator.

Second, Owen said to me tonight, "Daddy, let's play my favorite game, the slap in the face game." And I said, "What?" And he said, "First I slap you in the face. Then you slap me in the face. It's fun." And I said, "Are you serious?" And he said, "Yeah. It's my favorite."

Finally, I've seen this done elsewhere and liked it, so now I'm going to inflict on you my personal top-five musical heresies:

1) The Rolling Stones are not the second best band of all time (assuming that we accept the Beatles as number one, which many of my friends don't, but...). Both the Clash and the Who were far better than the Stones. Who's Next and Super Black Market Clash could both come out this year and sound fresh. The Stones always sound like a '60s band. In fact, the best music in the Stones' discography came in the early '80s, Tattoo You and Emotional Rescue, which is funny because I understand that the band wasn't even properly together when they made those two albums.

2) Nirvana was not a great band. I'm sorry. Bleach was an ok album. Nevermind was a great album, and In Utero was a pretty bad album. One great album does not make a great band, and even now Nevermind sounds somewhat dated. I would rate Kurt Cobain an idiot savant at best. Sadly, his rocket ride into legend seems to have cost him his life.

3) Brian Wilson's Smile was really, really disappointing. I've never been a member of the cult of the Beach Boys, but I appreciate what they did with overlapping harmonies and brilliantly engineered recordings. But, come on! Songs about surfing? And Wilson's "comeback" album was a mediocre rehash of what he used to be. It wasn't bad, but it was a long, long way from brilliant.

4) Eminem is not a genius. He's a clever kid, but not a smart one. For all the records he's sold, he's taught the youth of America nothing that a kajillion previous pop stars hadn't already taught, that being famous and wealthy is not a ticket to happiness, that hating your parents remains profitable and that it's really unbearably cold and unpleasant in Detroit.

5) Video did not kill the radio star. Bad programming and too much advertising did. And eventually, bad programming and too much advertising will kill the video star too. And not a moment too soon.

January 10th, 2008 - My two, beautiful, murderous, voluble, heart-crushing boys in their school picture:

January 6th, 2008 - The 100 Addicts project is an effort to help people who are not addicts to understand people who are. Each of the 100 Addicts profiled is a good person who suffers from an often deadly disease. There is not one among them who I would not call my friend.

#6 - Richie C. - In AA they tell you that alcoholism will leave you incarcerated, institutionalized or dead. Richie has been all three at one time or another. Paramedics have brought him back from the dead twice. He has been in prison. "Nothing," he says, "prepares you for prison." He is sober two years now, "at the courtesy of the Commonwealth," which is what guys say when they've arrived at AA by court order.

Richie always drank a lot, but his drug of choice was crack. They called it freebase when he was first smoking it though.

When he was released from prison, he had nothing but the clothes on his back. Today he has more than that.

#7 - Jay - Jay walked a half-mile through Somerville buck naked for $160. On the way, he sprawled across the hood of a state trooper, who declined to get out of the car to see exactly what Jay was up to. As he walked up the street to his house to a waiting crowd and an incredulous landlord standing on the front porch, he looked up, "holding my prick in my hand," and said, "I got it under control." He went up to his apartment, attached a live electrical wire to the front door knob, doused the welcome mat with water and retreated into a closet with half an ounce of cocaine, a gallon of cheap wine, thirty beers and a quart of Jack Daniels. He sat there for three days. When his friend Brian called, he answered the phone. Brian said, "What are you doing?" Jay said, "Partying. I'll call you later."

Jay says he's glad to be an addict. AA has given him friends and structure, and he claims insanity still rules his days. He says he has a lot of fun.

January 3rd, 2008 - Owen, my son, turned three today. WTF? He is an amazing, loud, obstinate, little man.

He once said to me, "Daddy, I have something to tell you." And I said, "What's that?" And he said, "Dreams come from the dark." And I said, "Whoa, Buddy! That's pretty profound." And he said, "Yes, Daddy. Yes, it is."

They made cupcakes for him at day care today. He fucking loves cupcakes.

Brittney taught him to say, "Put 'er there, el Guapo!" And so he said it to me a dozen times last night, while he brushed his teeth.

Also, it was 8 degrees when I left home this morning. On my bike. I am either very tough or very stupid. Or. Possibly. It is tough to be as stupid as me.

But I have a beautiful three-year-old son. So suck it.

January 2nd, 2008 - The 100 Addicts project is an effort to help people who are not addicts to understand people who are. Each of the 100 Addicts profiled is a good person who suffers from an often deadly disease. There is not one among them who I would not call my friend.

#3 - Jim B. - Jim drank vodka, straight, all day, everyday. At home, Jim sat in the shed in the backyard and drank alone, sometimes all night. He did coke, too. Once or twice, he drove get-away cars to get money for coke.

He celebrated his first year sober yesterday, along with all the other New Year's wrecks. His last drunk included telling his nephew, the priest, to fuck himself. And his aunt, too. And his brother. And his in-laws. Then his wife threw him out, and his brother cut him out of the family business and he lived in his truck for two days before giving up and calling AA Central Service.

Jim never graduated high school, but he's one of the smarter guys you'll meet. He's made millions, knocking down and rebuilding. Lives in a giant house in a wealthy suburb.

#4 - George K. - George ate pills by the handful. Literally. Vicodins. Percocets. Xanax. Oxycontin. He spent whole days chasing pills around the city. That's when heroin wasn't available. Eventually he OD'd and spent nine days in a coma. He suffered some low level brain damage. His personality changed. He lost a finger to an infection and was out of work for four years, fighting for workman's compensation and disability benefits.

Now he's in job training, and he takes care of his three kids. I see him every Friday like clockwork. He doesn't talk much, but I like to hear it.

#5 - Bill D. - Good time, Billy with the mile wide smile. He plays the keys, and always has, and never really gave up on being a rock star. Even came close once or twice. Bill married well, but introduced his wife to heroin, and she fell apart. They divorced. Then he married again. Another nice girl.

Billy is such a good guy that friends and family kept giving him opportunities to right his listing ship, but in the end he had taken on too much water. He did a stint in rehab. He's out now.

January 1st, 2008 - I've not been here much lately. Just five posts in the month of December. The truth is I was too depressed to write. Not the tragic sort of lying in bed kind of depression, just the sort where the minimum and the maximum become the same thing. I sat in front of the television trying to empty myself out. And mostly it worked.

I don't want to say too much more about this depressive episode because I find that most of what I say is inaccurate. It's only in distant retrospect that I'm able to draw any conclusions about what was happening and why. In fact, mostly there is no why. I have a life second to few. That's the thing about depression, at least in my case. Very seldom are there discernible environmental causes or solutions. Mainly what happens, I believe, is chemical.

But today is a new day and a new year. I turned 36 yesterday (yes, thanks, happy birthday to me). I had planned to get tattooed, but my tattoo guy called in sick. I was pretty disappointed about it, but perhaps some days don't really need commemoration.

I'm looking forward to getting back into my blogging groove. It's funny how when you're depressed, all of your ideas seem hopelessly horrible, not even worth the time to tap out and hurl into cyberspace. At any rate, I'm brimming with new thoughts, not to mention needing to get back on the 100 Addicts Project. There are just all those addicts out there with the best stories you can imagine hearing. Or reading. Very inspiring stuff. One way or another.

The holiday hullabaloo is behind us at last. I hate to cheer its passing, but somehow the stress and busy-ness of it always manages to snuff out whatever relaxation I was supposed to derive from having four of my ten annual days off in the space of two snowy weeks. I am, in all sad seriousness, looking forward to returning to work tomorrow, if only to drink coffee quietly at my desk and perhaps hatch another blog between braying encounters with disgruntled editors.

My new year is full of resolutions, none of them related to quitting any substances or losing any weight. There are books I want to read (for the first time in a few months). I've just put new strings on my old telecaster, the one that's been stuck in the back of the storage closet in the basement for the last couple of years. I have some ideas for magazine pieces I'm going to pitch. There are home improvements to undertake. Land to scape. Lots and lots of shit. And while I will never achieve them all, I do feel as though I can do better than the minimum given my current mood and general trajectory.

I've just seen the new Joe Strummer documentary this afternoon, the one called The Future is Unwritten, and found it pretty inspiring. The truth is, I don't really think the future is unwritten, but I do believe, down in the very bottom of my self, that we have to behave as if it is.

And that is my most important resolution for the year.