Posts Tagged ‘writing’
Mildly Hesitant
I found myself mildly hesitant yesterday about writing of our having ordered chicks. I had it in my mind when building the coop last fall that we might be able to get our hands on some adult chickens for our starter flock. Instead, we are starting with chicks. That involves a bit more nurturing than I’d been contemplating.
I should be thankful. We could have gone all the way and opted to hatch them from eggs. With no previous experience in this realm of chicken raising, there is always a chance disaster could happen and we might make some fatal error that takes innocent lives.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to blog such a possible outcome and expose the personal failure. Then it occurred to me, that is what I do.
In discussing this topic with Katie at work, I became aware of a change that has transpired in the four-plus years Cyndie and I have been here. When we first arrived from our lifetimes in the suburbs, we were entirely naive about almost every situation we faced.
Long time readers might recall that we didn’t realize we already had a hitch installed on the old pickup truck we bought. I had no experience with a chainsaw. We didn’t know anything about growing hay. We’ve come a long way. I would even say I’ve had a few moments of feeling cocky about our accomplishments.
So, it dawned on me that cockiness was bringing me to a place where I felt less inclined to write about the things with which we still have no experience, like raising chickens.
I guess I’ve quickly worked through that hesitation I was feeling. This John W. Hays’ take on things and experiences currently involves our ongoing transition from a suburban lifestyle to a rural ranch, one experimental step at a time.
Hopefully, next year I will be reporting about how few flies and ticks we are bothered by after the addition of chickens to our menagerie. Maybe also, how the transplanted tree in the labyrinth is thriving.
If those things don’t happen, I’ll likely have chronicled about that, instead. Chronicling the whole range of adventures we are living, both the successes and failures, is what I do. Even if sometimes, with a little hesitation.
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Being Me
It’s been a long time since I just let words flow from my fingertips without any preconceived notion of where I was heading or what would come out next. One reason for that is, it doesn’t tend to produce a result that holds much in the way of value for anyone reading other than me; and even I don’t get much from going back and reading the words that have piled up.
However, I’m feeling like lately my writing has settled into a somewhat humdrum pattern of dreary detail about waking up, driving to work, coming home, seeing our pets, clearing some snow, cleaning up after the horses, and lamenting over the news.
Where is my soul in this chronicle of the day-to-day?
When you write and publish a narrative of a personal everyday, there develops a pattern. The longer it goes, the more likely it can become something of a facade.
I suppose regular users of other social media are already well aware of this phenomenon.
It is likely that I am only writing what I want the world to know about me. Of course, there is probably a portion of who I really am that readers glean from my choice of subjects and words over time, which defines me more precisely than I think I am actually doing. But that is happening somewhere beyond words. It’s out there in our intuitive perceptions.
I guess I inherently accept that level of revelation.
I remember actually pondering over how to traverse the long walk in front of the packed bleachers of my high school gymnasium during basketball games without appearing to be the hypocritical fool I was attempting to be.
I was overly-selfconsciously trying to stroll as if I was not the least bit self-conscious about being an awkward adolescent walking in front of hundreds of classmates, parents, neighbors, friends, enemies, and strangers who shouldn’t care, or even notice me in the first place, yet were likely doing that very thing themselves; actually noticing and judging me whether or not they recognize the pettiness of doing so.
Hypocrisy.
I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. Somewhere along that adolescent time period, I experienced a profound epiphany that inspired me to strive toward being the same person in every moment. Regardless of whom I might find myself with at any given moment, I want to be my most genuine self. It’s not easy to achieve, but it is a noble goal.
I believe I have failed probably as often as I have succeeded over the years, but with that as my goal, the failures have been minor. I still judge others more than I mean to. I still say things behind a person’s back that I wouldn’t say to their face.
But I catch myself doing it most of the time, and that is the key to interrupting the pattern and making a correction toward the goal of integrity I ultimately seek.
One tool in aligning words with noble intentions is the art of saying nothing when you have nothing good to say. Another is to think before you speak (or write).
What I’d like to achieve is a place of enlightenment where I can write without thinking or filtering and have the flowing words reveal my pure soul and the narrative of the day to day, hypocrisy-free.
Wouldn’t than be a nice me to be.
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I’m Thinking
I’m thinking of changing my writing style. Making it great again. Really great. You already know —and people tell me this— that I write about what I know. I know a lot. I’m smart. Very smart. I’m the best friend blogging has ever had. They love me. I tell all the stories about our dog Delilah; the best dog. Best breed. Very, very smart.
We have horses —Arabian horses— that I write about when I blog. Incredible horses. Our horses love me. When I go down to clean their manure —they create a lot of manure; 50 pounds per day from each horse, every day. You could power a small factory on the heat their composting manure creates every day. Daily— I can walk right between each of the horses, right between, and they know why I’m there. They will come right up to me, Hunter does this, they walk over to piles I am raking, while I’m still raking the piles, and deposit a fresh contribution for me to collect.
Their manure is so smart, it composts itself. I don’t do anything. Just make a pile. It cooks on its own. Hundreds of degrees. 160° right in the middle of the pile.
Okay, enough of that dung. Except maybe the narcissistic part where I bragged superlatively. That part was pretty great. Well, sort of great, anyway. I want to give some credit to the article I spotted on Vox while researching linguistic stylings, which inspired my little adventure in changing my writing style for a few paragraphs.
Back to my woe-be-gone tales of our paradise called Wintervale… where all the horses are strong, the dog is good-looking, and the cat is probably above average. We are wallowing in the purgatory of “between-snow.” That’s a phrase I use to categorize the amount of snow which is messy and should be cleared, but isn’t enough to deserve shoveling or plowing. It’s a common winter hassle, especially during periods between real snowstorms that dump so much snow at one time you have no choice but to plow if you want to get in and out of the driveway.
The best way to solve the conundrum is to simply plow as soon as it falls, even if it is barely enough to warrant the use of the machine. My problem in this case is a limited opportunity (or to be more precise, limited energy), after getting home from the day-job. An inch or two isn’t worth the push to get off my butt and plow after work, whereas three or more inches would inspire me to rise to the occasion.
Since I’m home today, I will do some plowing. It will give me an opportunity to test out that tire repair I did before leaving for Florida, and allow me to clean up the paths I want to have open for the tree trimmers, whom I hope will be here in a week or two.
That’s what I’m thinking, anyway.
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Precious Sleep
I have been coming up short of sleep lately and I can feel everything suffering as a result. For one, it makes commuting for 2-hours a day a hazard of droopy eyed distracted driving. I’m too exhausted to think clearly, I’m getting grumpy, and my sugar cravings are defeating my best intentions of thwarting them.
It becomes a vicious circle of fatigue breeding fatigue. On Tuesday night I had hoped to get to bed promptly in the evening to allow time for a full 8-hours of slumber. Circumstances foiled that plan and I stayed up about 2-hours later than I planned. In and of itself, that would have been manageable, but then my keen mind and body betrayed me an hour before my alarm would have gone off Wednesday morning, leaving me wide awake, when that was the last thing I could afford to experience.
Precious sleep got lopped off on both ends of the cycle.
It hasn’t helped at all that our internet connection has been totally unstable of late, causing me to languish in the limbo of half-loaded pages and images in my quest to toss up another entry in the daily blog effort.
I have a plan to get back at the dang fickle connection. I’m writing a short post and getting it done fast, so I have more time to sleep. Wish me luck…
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Random Writing
- What if I simply wrote about it
and when you read it you were moved
by its inherent tendency to apply
rendering all your suppositions proved
not like the tacky film of ad campaigns that try
no farther
much farther away than that
down where involuntary doesn’t even begin to exist
and up into the stratospheres of our existential bliss
where the vibrations of our ever present song
invigorate our reasons to believe
which we do
and have been all along
neither color nor flavor
but both all that and more
where nothing else disturbs
the focal distance from before
the shoelace became frayed
and elastic recoil happens not
sickly film forming over soup in pan
as simmer faintly fades from hot
beneath the late afternoon’s waning light
revealing brilliant yellow gold
where moments ago there was only white
there’s both new and also something old
already been here, already done all that
it’s the same as what already was
as if that’s some bright new found fact
a digression from a fear
accessory after the act
it fascinates and it bores
though mostly alluding every grasp
like a meaning getting briskly stamped
upon our spongy blue-green minds
and we wile away while we can
or is it them or me or you?
flailing away in attempt to understand
both a meaning and intent
focused solely on the only thing that
hasn’t even happened yet
slippery sliding down a slanted slope
of largely hypothetic tries
to heap ungodly piles of healing balm
on swollen red and tired eyes
and waiting ’til the late of any night
as if waiting makes it all alright
seeking not that phantom wisp of what
it is that starts
and stops
this unattainable freight in flight
which circles round upon
the very path
it paved away from here in desperate fright
a feeling not so bad in fact
except for when it lingers far too long
draining out the last of tact
struggling grip on flowered teacup
steady enough to avoid
stuttering clatter as you sup
a smile and a worry that have grown together
as if wed years ago
when nothing that has happened
had even begun to happen yet
wonder what
if any
silly significance lies
in the way that some people skew their words
to pronounce the “th” sound
as if it were a “d”
and say with cultivated aplomb
dat dem’s da ones dat up and died.
As of yet untitled… originally composed February 2003.
Relative Something 