In the stillness of exacting motion, a cessation of hiatus

Remiss, derelict, just generally absent from this space lately. I've missed you, dear reader. I think about you frequently. But it takes a certain set of chops to navigate these strange and complex changes. I feel as though i've lost my greatest audience. Readership has dropped a unit of late.

Now i fear the rains are bleeding my ink.

It certainly is late: late summer, late afternoon, late to return home. But a certain home drives my thoughts and actions fast. For since the last missive, we have pressed forward with our intentions. An offer, a negotiation, a counter, and now it is written. Our stamps are stumped and the parties arrived. Dear friend, a home has been found. We do silly dances and sleep lightly.

This is just a mention, a check-in after the respite. Tomorrow i leave for PDX for the week. My employer needs me to check a few things there, make sure everything is working as it should. Should be a blast, though also a distraction at the moment of action.

Sometimes you must move quickly just to stay in place. Sometimes there is naught to do but wait and rest a few bars on the bridge. Trust that things will resolve in time. I test, trust, and rattle the keys. And hope that i'm reading the right pages, for i've not run through this one ever before.

A Home on the Range

This is the moment. What better place to weather the Great Recession than where the Dust Bowl hit? More to the point, if I don't act now, I'll miss the moment. What moment? I'm going to buy a house.

I'm not sure what else to say.... I'm in the planning stages and only know it will be in the vicinity of KC, but I don't know what neighborhood or township yet. Put the word out, send me your comments, your emails, your advice, your spreadsheets. Anything you've got. I'm considering a 15-year mortgage, for instance, because it builds equity faster and costs a lot less in the end. It just depends on how much house you buy. New or old? Carpet or hardwood floors? Single or two-story? These are all big, tough questions.

I'm excited and dream about it. I plan and scheme it. I've been reading up and checking my credit report. I wonder how long it will take? All the rest is just details, but of course, it's all details.

The Death of a Writer

Hearing on the radio today an interview with an author who is writing about David Foster Wallace's last, unfinished book and suicide reminded me of Spalding Grey. This comes late to the latter's death, but now works well for me. Are you available now?

There's a common sentiment that suicide is the most selfish of acts. Whether or not that holds, i always think of Grey's death in terms of his family (a wife, two boys, and a step-daughter). For some reason, his alleged suicide (his body was pulled from the East River) strikes me as most sad in light of the family of which he was part.

This post isn't about suicide, though. Rather, i thought smashingly of Grey and his monologues, so lament the loss of the artist. One could say something about the fire that burns so bright, but Grey's life wasn't exactly brief, so i'm not sure that holds.

Specifically, Grey was a storyteller, and spun his monologues with such craft that you forget you're listening to a man, sitting at a table, talk. You see instead the scenes he'd built up, just as good literature transports you past the medium and on into the message. Witness that you can rent Swimming to Cambodia or Monster in a Box-- that these are selling movies with repeat audiences.

But other forces were at work, as well. The dynamism of his monologues usually lofted into mania. His book Impossible Vacation painfully describes an individual struggling to exist. And it tells too of his family in detail.

So we have to look among ourselves. For i doubt there are many here who have not seen dementia, nor witnessed addiction, nor ever felt so feverishly elated as to be accused of unchecked exaltation. And we know that these conditions do not grow in a vacuum, that they have a persistent history. We grow up with them, around them, learning to abide and adapt.

I often think of my life and actions in terms of a trajectory, but there was no clear target at the outset here. Only that i miss Spalding Grey and had possibly forgotten to mention it. But i think i see from where this thread was borne now. Grey is gone. Our knowledge and memories of his influence weave together our own experiences. They bear a warp against the surface of our thoughts. Be well, at the falling of the light.