Feeds:
Posts
Comments

The Introvert’s Calendar

07 Sep 2023 by KRAG

Bless me, Reader. It’s been three weeks since my last post.

Why? Because my calendar broke. Or more accurately, my introvert calendar broke.

What’s an introvert calendar? A calendar with nothing on it. Clean slate. Empty boxes with no fixed engagements. A fully functioning introvert calendar doesn’t mean I plan to do nothing. It means I have nothing planned. Big difference.

In this, my last year before retirement (T-minus 207 days and counting), there is much to do, and we’ve been doing it. Our calendar—especially during the past two months—has been chockablock with appointments, meetings, consultations, meet-n-greets, follow-ups, examinations, and procedures. We’ve seen doctors, dermatologists, radiologists, phlebotomists, dentists, and oral surgeons (yes, #32 strikes again). We’ve met face-to-face with financial advisors, Medicare consultants, contractors, plumbers, and suppliers. And, somehow, we also managed to squeeze in a birthday (hers), a 40th wedding anniversary (ours), and even a few social engagements.

For anyone it would be a serious course in Advanced Adulting, but for a serious introvert like me, it’s been all that whilst running a marathon, and to be perfectly frank, I simply haven’t had the spoons for anything creative. My brain has been filled with concerns, info, deadlines, questions, and fretfulness both reasonable and un-, so my gardening mode has been “maintenance,” my cooking has been pedestrian, my reading has been limited to emails and current events, and I’ve written little and woven even less.

However (thankfully) September’s schedule has a bit more white space than did July/August, and we’re both counting on October to remain featureless and calm as the doldrums, because come November, it’s a new round of activity, with another birthday (mine), the holiday season, some brief travel, and a bathroom renovation stuck in for good measure.

But here’s the thing I want to pass along: during this time of non-creative busy-ness, I chided myself for avoiding creative endeavors, or at least I did, until I actually looked back at the calendar (the broken calendar) and saw just how busy we’ve actually been. Creativity takes energy, and as an introvert, I need quiet to recharge my batteries, and I haven’t had any of that. All of my energy has gone into what was needed, leaving little (or none) for what was wanted.

So when you find that you haven’t gotten back to that quilting project or written that poem, when you find yourself exhausted at the end of the day with no energy for that new recipe or insufficient focus to get back to that book you’ve been reading, take a breath and admit two things: we all have only so much energy, and we have to prioritize demands on it.

Life is rarely constant; it much prefers cycles, rising and falling, waves and troughs. As long as we keep creativity on the To Do list, there will eventually be time for it.

Just keep it on the list.

k

Posted in Creativity, Culture | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

The Persistence of Music

17 Aug 2023 by KRAG

Walking my garden paths
fingers inspecting leaves
snips cutting spent blossoms
I hum a tune born
four centuries past
across continents
and seas

I wonder if the author
as he wove his tapestry
of notes and voices
imagined his music
would live beyond his life
persist through time
as empires rose
and fell

I wonder if he
as the ink dried on
quavers and triads
imagined his melodies
would grace the flower-scented air
of distant gardens
in a land
unknown

 

Posted in Creativity, Gardening, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Notes for the New Student

03 Aug 2023 by KRAG

do not put vowels
in the dishwasher
as they are made
of air and intention
and will likely melt

consonants are built
of sturdier stuff
and may go in
the upper rack

punctuation is best stored
in the garage with
nuts and bolts and
other fasteners

words once crafted may be
machine-washed and tumble-dried on low
but avoid fabric softener
unless the water is
especially hard

take time assembling
phrases and sentences
aligning them to the meridian
in a clean well-lighted place
free from excessive drafts

paragraphs benefit most
from a finish on the line
in springtime when the
breath of the waking world
begins to blow

non-fiction requires precision
and regular maintenance
so for peak performance
tune to 4° before
top dead center

patience is recommended
when assembling fiction
to ensure tight seams
and a proper fit

stir poetry
over low heat
until reduced
by half

 

k

 

Posted in Poetry, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

The Non-Event

27 Jul 2023 by KRAG

This weekend is a milestone for us, my wife and me. It’s our 40th wedding anniversary.

We’ve learned a few things over these four decades, but the most important lesson has been “How to Communicate.”

Case in point: Last night I delivered a critique based on bad information. I’d misunderstood something my wife had said, made a judgment based on that misunderstanding, and calmly supplied her with my ill-wrought criticism. Naturally, it didn’t go over too well. Thirty years ago this might have ended in a row. Twenty years ago, we’d probably have bickered and sniped. Ten years ago, there would have been an airing of our grievances, but we still would have ended up a bit bent out of shape.

Last night? After a brief period of quiet, my wife informed me of my mistake, correcting what I’d misinterpreted. In response, I agreed that I’d obviously gotten it wrong, retracted my statement, and thanked her for setting me straight. A non-event.

This improvement has not been a straight line progression, and some topics are obviously more fraught than others in this regard. The point, though, is that we’ve been working at it, via both introspection and dialogue, refining and adjusting our attitudes, our approaches, and our methods.

Relationships aren’t constant. They change with conditions and react to events. They strengthen. They become strained. Sometimes, they break. Sometimes, they should break. But with attention and communication, they almost always can be improved upon. The “more perfect Union” is a goal worth striving for.

k

Posted in Culture | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

It’s Broke

13 Jul 2023 by KRAG

it’s broke, so broke
I wake and feel
each day’s harsh edge
broke like torn tin
sharp and hungry
unforgiving

why so angry?
so harsh, so cruel
as if people
weren’t people
as if kindness
had no value

we want we want
it’s all we know
we take we take
it’s all we do
our circles shrink
collapse, darken
into a void

I don’t believe
in souls or gods
though I did once
a long time past
but then people
showed me their truth
and it seemed best
to believe them

Posted in Culture, Poetry | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

Taste Tests

06 Jul 2023 by KRAG

  • “Top 10 Reads for the Summer”
  • “The Best Games of 2023, Ranked”
  • “Twelve Items Every Pantry Must Have”
  • “5 Movies You Need to See”
  • “Seattle’s Best Restaurants”

There is no scarcity of voices eager to tell us what to do, what to like, what is good. “Listicles” abound, plastered with headlines shot through with words like “Best” and “Ranked.” But, “Best” according to whom? Who decides how these things are “Ranked?” Not me, for sure. Probably not you, either. But here’s the thing:

  • I’m enjoying a book my friend didn’t like.
  • The music I’m listening to is probably not on your playlists.
  • I loathe brie cheese.
  • A well-maintained and -manicured lawn is my idea of a crime against nature.

In other words, my tastes are different than yours, and yours are different than mine. And that’s okay.

My tastes in music, books, and cuisine aren’t better than anyone else’s. Yes, I was trained as a musician, have written novels, and have taught myself to be a better cook, but my personal likes and dislikes in these areas aren’t better. Obviously, they have been influenced by what I’ve learned, but they’re not better. “Better” presumes there is some Platonic ideal against which all others are found lacking, and while this might work for some objects, when it comes to things like sandwiches, it’s useless. There is no “best” sandwich. There’s just your favorite kind of sandwich. And there’s mine.

“Bestseller” doesn’t mean “best,” and it damned sure doesn’t mean you’ll like it. Neither do awards, kudos, upvotes, likes, retweets, or some stranger’s rankings.

Where there are quantifiable characteristics that can be evaluated, let’s compare and discuss them; we might learn something, see something we never saw before, and possibly modify our opinion. But when we’re dealing with the unquantifiable, when we’re talking about basic visceral likes and dislikes, we just need to chalk it up to personal preference.

I’ll enjoy what I enjoy, and you do the same. I won’t think less of you because you love brie cheese (though I may wonder how you manage it).

In short, I don’t want to yuck your yum.

k

Posted in Books, Culture, Gaming, Movies, Music, Television | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Pole Reversal

29 Jun 2023 by KRAG

I’ll be honest. Death has been on my mind. For a while.

This is not unusual for someone in their early-mid-sixties (i.e., me). In the past decade, my folks died, my brother died, and friends have died. Others we know in our cohort are battling cancer (successfully, we’re glad to hear), surviving strokes, and dealing with the trials of getting older. It’s not like I thought I was immortal, before—I always knew I’d die, someday—but it just wasn’t ever . . . real, y’know? It was an eventuality, but never registered on my radar.

Well, for the past few years, it has been a distinct blip on my screen, and it is now impossible to ignore.

And again, to be honest, I’ve lost sleep over it. A lot of sleep. How long do I have? What quality of life awaits me? What am I doing to improve what’s ahead? What am I doing that is eroding my future? What can I change? What benefits will they bring, and what costs, and would they be worth it?

It always hit me at about 4AM, too, and thus, the lost sleep. Which probably didn’t help things. Vicious circle.

I’m nine months from retirement—the final act in my grand opus—and I am definitely looking forward to it. Except, that is, for all the fretting about mortality.

But (oh, come on; you knew there was a “but” coming) then I remembered something I wrote, a passage from The Year the Cloud Fell. In the opening scene, the heroine is fighting the onset of a vision. She is afraid of it, and she is struggling against it. Her grandmother is at her side, and counsels her to give in, to accept what is inevitable.

“If you fight it, you will only get sick.  Then you will have the vision, and you will be sick, too.”

I realized that I was only compounding my problems. Yes, I am mortal. Yes, I am going to die. Yes, I am powerless in the face of that inevitable outcome. And all I’m doing with this fretting and “what if”-ing is making it worse. I’m stealing time, from myself.

The magnetic polarity of Earth flips every couple hundred thousand years or so. But it isn’t like flipping a switch. It’s not like, next Tuesday, we’ll wake up and all our Norths will now be Souths. It takes time. It’s gradual. It staggers around, meandering closer and farther from true polar coordinates until, after a few thousand years, our magnetic north is somewhere in the Antarctic.

This shift within me, it’s kind of like that. Seeing each day not as another step on the path to decrepitude and demise, but as a finite commodity to be cherished and enjoyed, it takes time. And effort. I have to choose to see it in this light. And yeah, I fail, and it’s usually around 4AM when I do fail, but I’m failing less and less.

My days don’t have to be stellar, red-letter days to be precious. Just the sight of a wild rabbit in the back garden, the smell of petrichor, learning something new, a hearty laugh are each more than enough to make a memorable.

Gratitude for the gifts nature has given me—breath, life, senses, emotions—make each day worth the trouble.

Onward.

k

Posted in Culture | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »