My new computer should be arriving in a week.

You may or may not hear from me very much next month – what with the whole novel-writing business afoot. Or you’ll hear of nothing but finicky characters and a non-existent plot.

Life kind of happens, you know? I can’t fill you in on all the details (believe me, you’d be bored). But just posting the highlights doesn’t quite do things justice either.

Seeing as it is the current season, I suppose it’s appropriate that I can’t get fall out of my head. The sun shone for a moment as I was waiting for the bus this afternoon, and I revelled at the magnificent leaves. It’s been rainy (and I expect it to be for a great many months to come – thanks Seattle), and the light was a welcome change – albeit brief. I’ve been wondering at the beauty in fall – perhaps it is to compensate for the sadness of transience. It is, I imagine, the poet in me that searches for a glimmer of the beautiful and/or noteworthy in everything, even tragedy.

Thusly I will hold onto hope for my rather prosaic life of the moment. Work, come home and do stuff to pass the time until I work again? Umm, great… It should be work, have adventures and be awesome, work again to fund the adventures, etc etc.

I miss direction, most in all this desperation.

subject: The Two Towers (film), Samwise
quote: “The Blues”, Switchfoot

Today is my last day of work for the present. With any bit of luck and wind in the winged boots of the USPS, the several checks I am waiting for will arrive soon and I just might feel financially stable enough to buy a computer.

Setting aside the frustration over a hard-drive the size of a peanut and processing capacity to rival an abacus, part of the reason my need desire  for a new computer has ratched up to something nearing (but only nearing) an obsession is the impending arrival of NaNoWriMo. I suppose Word processing hardly takes the most processing effort from my machine – but it would be nice if, upon lighting-bolt of inspiration, the computer would yield to my instantaneous desire to transcribe said genius. Instead, I suppose, I will return to the tried-and-true pen and paper, because let’s face it…that will get the job done faster than waiting for the beast to wake up and come to some semblance of a functional state.

I really just wish November would hurry up and arrive so I could start writing. In the interest of maintaining interest in the work of craptastic brilliance I am going to create, I haven’t allowed myself the pleasure of planning, outlining or preparing in any way, shape or form since that inevitably prompts the desire to commence writing. At this point, however, I think I have decided on a starting place and three characters (well, two potential characters – certain friends upon discovery of my upcoming quest have requested to be included…we’ll see how that works out). There is currently no plot, but in the interest of keeping this month as painless as possible, I have decided on a genre and that being Humor (slash utter ridiculousness), hopefully a la Douglas Adams. We’ll see.

The uncertainty and proximate insanity of my impending adventure is a nice distraction from the well-phrased question of life, the universe, and everything. Because really, the answer makes about as much sense to me right now as 42 does. Who knows where I’m going – in just about any sense. In some ways I suppose it’s good for me to have to keep chillaxing and flowing with the proverbial river of life, but ambiguity is hardly my state of preference.

So, even if no epiphanies arise out of the 50,000 words I am going to shape into a novel, the break from stressing about life will be nice.

 

 
1)
Oh – so this is why Seattle is addicted to coffee. Between the warmth, coziness, and caffeine, it’s an all-in-one solution to the tired gloominess of a perpetually overcast sky. Why the love affair is limited to Starbucks, I have yet to discover, however (I am decidedly not a fan of their coffee). Indeed, apart from a Seattle’s Best (which is, if I’m not mistaken, owned by Starbucks?), I would be hard pressed to point out a cafe or independent coffee shop. Granted, I’m still new to town, but still! Starbucks on opposite corners of the Belleuve Transit Center? Two within the same shopping complex and not more than 50 yards away? Let’s shoot for more originality and less cardboard-cutout ambiance.

omar_MK

2)
Earlier this week I came across an amazing package for a couple days in Iceland. Lodging and round-trip airfare for under $700 – yeah it’s the week (US) Thanksgiving so it’ll be cold and maybe not very sunshine-y – but still! I almost went, but a reality check from my dad along the lines of, “So Iceland is more important than the new computer you want?” ………….Yeah maybe not. The beast is going on five years next month and my 30 GB hard drive was too small years ago. So while I have been setting money aside for the new beauty (whatever it’s going to be), I think it’s time to speed up that process so I can spontaneously take a trip to Greenland or Sri Lanka or the Andes – wherever the next cheap flight is to.

3)
While no sociologist or psychologist, I wonder if the majority of personality shaping is done before the average person reaches adulthood. While I am firmly in the personal responsibility/don’t-blame-it-on-your-parents-who-drank camp, it seems inevitable that some personality traits/idiosyncracies would be passively acquired in childhood. Certain other tendencies would be more willfully sought out in adolescence.

Since, let’s face it – habits die hard, perhaps then the rest of our lives are spent getting to know ourselves. Rediscovering those little quirks we picked up along the way – maybe even forgetting where. The corrollary to self-discovery is deciding what to do with this new information. By virtue of recent experiences and likely just the phase of life I’m in right now…there are a lot of things I’m figuring out about myself. Some things I’m okay with, others I’m working on changing – which is not always a fun process. But in the end (and even now), I guess I’d rather the ability to recognize weaknesses and have the desire to, by the grace of God, adjust them.

On a related note…speaking not only of the people I know, but also myself…

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.

(CS Lewis, The Four Loves)
 

On Sunday, I lost that ring, the one on my thumb. Pretty sure it slipped off when I was throwing some boxes into a trash compactor, and even if I had noticed at the time instead of ten minutes later in Pita Pit, it still would have been irreversibly gone.

It wasn’t even aesthetically my favorite ring. I think it cost around $11, and I was waiting for the day it would be bent out of recognizable shape. The thin metal had already conformed to a shape not resembling my finger or a circle, but something closer to a square or rectangle.

But every time I looked down and saw that ring on my finger, I remembered Kenya.
Certainly not to say that I don’t think of that trip apart from a small piece of manipulated metal, but a constant, physical reminder, couldn’t help but prod the memory.
I am getting better at accepting loss. At not clinging unrealistically tight to what is transient.

Why does life persist in pouring this overbearing profundity into my lap? Perhpas it was always there and I have managed to be busy enough to ignore it.
I think I am going to skip A, B, and C and go with #3:

If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.
-Lord Byron

subject: “Africa”, Toto

I have decided to buy a house.
Or rather, I have decided that buying a house would solve a dilemma or two while being a nice investment.

I love new places and travelling. However. I do not like moving and the unpleasant process of toting all my possessions here and there (granted, all of my possessions have yet to move…a significant bit of my random memories and collectibles remain at my parents’ house).

So! I have concluded that the best option is for me to purchase one of my ideal homes (yes, there are several – whether I ever inhabit any of them is yet to be determined). That way, I can just move allllll of my stuff to My House, and it’s always at My House for when I need/want it. Then, I will just pack my suitcase and go off to have some adventures. Maybe even long-term adventures. But really, the stuff I need to go about my daily life is minimal or easily purchased at the destination. I just can’t manage to throw away things that I might use down the road, or  my future children might find amusing, or someone writing my literary biography might find useful (can any writer truthfully claim to wholly lack the narcissistc tendency of contemplating potential greatness such that would lead to others caring about the scraps they doodled on in high school?).

Obviously I am not going to buy a house.

But unfortunately, I don’t think this dilemma of (cherishing the life I have lived and wanting to in some small way preserve it) and (wanting to be unattached so that I might leap between countries and adventures without the hindrance of strings) is going to disappear anytime soon. Or ever really. There are always going to be strings attaching me to places and things and people, maybe it’s just a matter of not letting them pull me apart. I don’t always have to let go or sever the strings, but sometimes, for a time, one or two might need a little more slack than I am accustomed to giving.