Another Place

I started another blog at: http://benjaminwblog.com/

Or, rather, I started a new place for the same blog. I've still got a lot of work to go on that, and it also is spread out over two domains - but I'm enjoying the project so far. It's also easier to remember a url like benjaminwblog.

I'm still recovering from my marvelous weekend. It's difficult spending time at the beach with friends, and then finding yourself back at work, programming android devices and wishing you could hear the waves, the storms flattening the salty grasses, the voices laughing in every room. I wish I'd had more time for writing this weekend past. When I find myself richer than Smaug, I'm going to purchase a nice castle on the cliffs of Scotland, and write whenever I can drag myself away from the scenery.

One thing that struck me as strange this weekend was a comment made by the host: "I'm thinking next time, because of the stage of life so many are in, I'm going to have to ask that we try and find sitters for dogs and babysitters for children." (paraphrased - may have been speaking particularly of dogs) Fifteen people at a beach house, four dogs and one child consumed an unsurprising amount of attention. What did we expect?

It's strange to think that I may be one of the oldest at the event, and I'm nowhere near that stage of life. Yet, even I've noticed responsibilities resting heavy on my shoulders as I move towards house ownership, some financial decision making, and the organization of my own time. I want to have adventures, be a child, run around in the fields and smell each of the different flowers - but does one balance the requisite responsibilities of adulthood and a youthful outlook and joy?

Some of it is found here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"  (Matthew 6) You can see it in the eyes of the president, the weight on the shoulders of the exhausted, and the greying hair of the stressed. Worry adds age, and in all this I'm doing my best to avoid worrying about how everything will turn out, and am simply enjoying the process of looking at houses, of writing, drawing, and building a website, and of loving those around me. Life is just the rim of an ocean, rising and receding at the draw of the moon.

Destiny

Walk any path in Destiny's garden, and you will be forced to choose, not once but many times.  The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths.  However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness.
Sometimes you dream about the paths of destiny, and speculate, to no purpose. Dream about the paths you took and the paths you didn't take... The paths diverge and branch and reconnect; some say not even Destiny himself truly knows where any way will take you, where each twist and turn will lead.
But even if Destiny could tell you, he will not. Destiny holds his secrets. The garden of Destiny. You would know it if you saw it. After all, you will wander it until you die. Or beyond. For the paths are long, and even in death there is no ending to them.
~ Season of Mists - Neil Gaiman

This is one of my favorite beginnings to any story, though the beginning of Season of Mists holds a special place in my heart. It is certainly one of my favorite Sandman novels, which makes it one of my favorite books overall. Choices are an interesting quandary, in retrospect. With an omniscient God, sometimes I have difficulty reconciling predestination and free will, though that's a philosophical topic too deep, perhaps, for this setting. But I can't not believe in a semblance of free will, for without free will, I'm not responsible for my misdeeds nor, even, for my righteous ones.
So, assuming I must claim responsibility for my actions, and the consequences of such actions carry me along a lane in Destiny's garden that cannot be unwound, I often deliberate overlong about meaningful decisions or happenstance in my life. This is not always detrimental. However, I'm also something of a personal perfectionist. It may matter little whether my friends  live perfectly, choose perfectly, behave ideally, but this is my life. With careful choices and faithful movements, should I not be able to live perfectly? Write perfectly? Be perfectly kind or loving? If the possibility exists, with enough rigor and rigid control, surely perfection is not out of reach for the rest of my life, right?
I don't actually think these things. But sometimes, in the aftermath of foolish choices, I wallow. I read a particularly insightful blog post the other day on this topic, and I'm going to shamelessly quote it here: (on the topic of a spiraling downward of shame)
...And you’re not allowed to shame spiral, either.
Why? We both have a life to live. Words of wisdom to offer. Gifts God has given us. And once you and I allow ourselves to be shut down and chained by guilt or mistakes, we are rendered ineffective.
And we both know who does that.
So let’s not let that happen to us, okay? I’ll make you a deal: If you don’t let it happen to you, I won’t let it happen to me.
Let nothing silence you. You have things to say.
And God still likes you.
(Thank you asparaguslane. I appreciate your words and the tactfully blunt way in which they are spoken. I wish I had your talent. For now, I'll just borrow your words)

No one is perfect. Sometimes I feel like I just see my foibles too clearly, like muddy palm prints on crystal-clear windows, or droplets of blood dripping into a glass of clean water (that was a bit gruesome.. make it blue dye). Now that water is undrinkable. Spread it around in 10 gallons so the blood is so diffuse you could not dream of tasting it, and still I'd know it was there, polluting. And it is in these times that I'm thankful for my friends. I often mistrust their kindness, misinterpret it as lying on my behalf, as flattery. Friends don't flatter, they compliment.
But, the reminder is there. I do have things to say, and God (and my friends) still likes me, loves me, even when I make mistakes, and then more mistakes, and even when I make the same mistakes again. While I've not shame spiraled recently, I remember times of having done so. Thankfully, my friends are wise, gentle, and knowing. What I want more than anything is to be there for them when their shame spirals begin, preventing that slippery slope and catching them when they fall. I want to do more than just pray, though sometimes the distance is too great. I want to be there for my friends on every branching path their walk through the garden of fate takes them. Then, when we reach the other side, I want to celebrate at our faith and faithfulness to each other.

Throwaway Post

Philosophy? No. Poetry? Probably not tonight. Commentary on some literary experience or another? I'm tired. I have a stack of poetry books, essay compilations, and classics arrayed around my bed, and I don't even have the vitality for tasting them. Mentally, I desperately want to dive into Maya Angelou's poetry, or Watership Down's articulate descriptions of rabbit's scampering about the wilderness in search of home. I crave Keat's or Blake's romanticism and Gaiman's magnificent mythology, but my physical energy is ghastly low.
How am I still writing this?
I know not.
Today, I finished wedding shopping for one of my best friends' weddings. That exhausted me. Later, I played competitive video games (lame, huh?), and after several punishing losses, we managed to scrape together a win after a tremendously drawn out game (an hour and a half: the others were all around 30 minutes). Afterwards, I didn't get dinner until almost nine, and we ate celebratory steaks. I was in "tired coma" before the steak, which afterwards only exacerbated my coma-condition; postprandial somnolence crashed into my brain like a truck.
Still, the day was a success: bananagrams, burritos, outdoor mall shopping, breathing in the sun, driving with windows down, resting, chatting with good friends, competing with friends, reading, writing, dreaming, watching the hillsides roll by and driving along the Shins road into the valley. Summertime, the living's easy.
I hope everyone has had spectacular days. I'm praying for those of you that have not.
Enjoy the sun, enjoy the stars, dream yourself into mythical days.

Ramblings - Nothing to see here

Today, I worked deep into the night. It is possibly my ego that drove me into it, for my boss might have been understanding had I returned to work unfinished, with a plausible explanation as to why. However, having said it would be finished, I counted myself tethered to that statement. It is this industrial "ant" mentality that drives me along creative strains also, however. I cannot complain about the results.

It is a rambling night. I'm not certain I have anything worth saying, and I'm a wee bit exhausted (I finished all of the work things I had to do at 10 instead of 5). I suppose I can at least discuss a little bit of my marathon continuation. Still, quite successful in all avenues. There may be another stage of the race I previously neglected: the camel's bump, the peak of the bell-curve. I don't actually believe marathons quite work that way, with everything being downhill after the middle. I suspect they run more like stories, with a steady rising action leaning into a steep climactic climb, and then denouement! We've crossed the finish line after a bit of falling action and an excited leap towards the delimiting flag.

Still, there is something about the middle that is not unlike a story. Sometimes, when reading a particularly difficult or intense piece of literature, the beginning portion of the story is overwhelming. How will I ever make it to the end of if I struggle so heartily early on? But once you reach the middle, it is like walking a trail halfway up a mountain. If I've made it this far, is it not just the same distance back? Might as well keep going, because I've already shown I can make it this far, and giving up now seems ridiculous. It is past the stage of early abandonment. At least I have that, right?

I think it's definitely sleep time. I'm not certain I've said anything remotely intelligible, or of any form of utility. I hope and pray you are all sleeping well this night, however uncomfortably warm it is. May your dreams be sweet.

Operation

Often, I read. Internet articles, interesting blogs, classic and fanciful books, short and long stories, myths and fables - all these and more, I pore over each day. Then, clambering into my writing nest, cozying beneath pyramids of blankets, I create. Leisurely, meticulously, I craft each syllable and phrase, aligning and puzzling each piece into place. Am I an artist or a surgeon? Excellent query. I'll remove these vocal cords and ask the patient's opinion when finished with this writing operation.
Weaknesses in my intellectual scribbling abound. Each article, each blog and artfully manifest bound book I flip through shames my own conceptions. My worlds are barren, theirs flowing and bright; where seas clash and thunder roars, on my world the sea gurgles and storms are but clowning clouds; animals caper, crawl, and canter in their worlds, mine only cower. Is my imagination inadequate? Are my tales lacklustre?
I've no critics, you see. If I had but one: an outspoken, violent critic of great authority and grating wit, well, then I might be great. My competitive nature might spurn me into incomprehensible heights: empty skies would fill with salty stars and perfect, argentine moon, where below pixies and satyrs prance and chant around mirror ponds where listless maidens lay, basking in fae-light, baited until dawn of day.
But I've chosen an auto-didactic trail, a road from which few prevail. The poetry pool beneath and impassioned, fiery fruit above are my Tantalus aches - I cannot reach, I cannot drink, I suffer only to wait. Wait as each classical piece draws unwittingly nearer, as each persuasive prose or poem swishes in the air overhead, as my legs strengthen to leap. The waters around my neck, the breeze brushing the branches just out of reach - it is only time, then, and patience.
I can, of course, be overcritical of my own writing. Yet, still, the ardent nature of my writing is frequently lacking. I hate being overly informal. I despise writing (not necessarily reading) evaluations and descriptions that serve only to claw sermons from nothing. I always feel as if I'm drawing analysis on credit, and eventually someone might realize I've nothing worth saying.
Still, the onomatopoeia in daily experience is rarely utilized within my writing, for I scarcely delve into my experience. I vaguely bounce around it, scuttling like a crab sideways instead of forward through my beliefs and ideas. It is a paranoid, terrified principle, and one I fear stymies my growth the most.  If only I had the guts to define my ideas in honest terms, to risk everything, and then risk everything thrice more. Sometimes, dear Ender, you must do the unbelievable to prevent the inevitable to win the impossible. In the end, you can only pray your punishment isn't Xenocide.