So where, exactly, is the rabbit hole? And am I in it or not in it?

These are the sorts of questions that can drive a person mad, particularly when they’re still at issue after many years.

Are they the sorts of questions for which answers grounded in relativism are apropos, or are such appearances merely artifacts of, and evidence of, a perspective from within said rabbit hole?

Life, life, life, you are a tiring sort of thing. Or at least, you have too frequently been thus for me. I sense that there are others to which you have given boundless energy. So come on, level with me—what did I do wrong? Is it because I didn’t fully appreciate your generosity as a kid? Let me say—for the record—that it’s not that I didn’t appreciate your generosity so much as that I was run over by its—I’ll say—splendor.

— § —

“Hier ist alles unverändert
es sieht aus wie überall
die ganze Gegend liegt nicht auf meinen Wegen
und so komme ich eher selten hier vorbei

There’s a place around the corner
where your dead friends live.
There’s a place around the corner
where your dead friends live…”

— § —

The first novel that I ever read in the middle of the night, cover to cover and under bedding with a flashlight (as goes the classic trope), was “Harriet the Spy.” Until then, I’d presumed that reading was something that one did only during waking hours, while sitting on the sofa.

The fact that I didn’t stop reading when I went to bed, and didn’t stop reading as I pulled the covers over myself to stay warm (necessitating the use of a flashlight), and in fact was still reading at three o’clock in the morning, came as a complete surprise to me.

— § —

On my office wall hangs a small dry-erase whiteboard on which I’ve given myself, in black marker, “grades” on my progress in various projects.

It shows a grade of “C” in recent progress toward the completion of my dissertation, which I have now not only completed, but in fact defended as far back as early 2014. It’s a dry-erase board. And the marker is as black as it was on the day on which the grades were written. Whenever that was.

QED.

— § —

“I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect…”

— § —

Whatever. That’s what they say, isn’t it?

Whatever.

It sounds like a Facebook update:

“Eating Chinese with the kids while watching Nature documentaries on Owls and Coywolves.”

There’s no picture to go along with it. The Chinese is home-made. I am an unkempt mess. It has been a long couple of days.

— § —

Right now, I wish I could take the back off of a mechanical chronometer or an automatic watch and just stare at the gears moving for hours.

Or maybe I wish I could load up a classic Genesis game like Flashback and play it for hours.

Okay, I don’t know what I wish. Maybe that’s where I am right now. I don’t know what I wish for.

— § —

I’m surrounded by an immense amount of creativity technology. Laptops, tablets, smartphones, smartpens, Alphasmarts, Newtons, Photoshop, Lightroom, digital cameras, pens and pencils, paints and canvases, modeling clay and I’m sure more stuff that I haven’t even mentioned.

And now what?

It’s like I’m waiting for the messiah so that I can write the hymn, sometimes.

— § —

Okay, I lied before. The kids aren’t eating. The kids never eat. That’s one of the things about kids.

I’d like to go to bed early tonight and read a book. I’m sure they have other ideas. Oh well, that’s how it goes.

— § —

Sometimes I make blog posts just to know that I’m still alive. This is one of those times. I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know what there is to say. I am doing precisely what the critics are talking about when the criticize blogs as being so much navel-gazing.

I am navel-gazing. I am. Because I have to do something. And I don’t want to do any of the things that I think I ought to be doing. So I’m doing this instead.

Just to feel the reassuring tactile feedback that the computer keyboard provides.

And I’m not lying there. It is reassuring. It is so reassuring that it’s almost sick at this point. Someday, when they invent direct mind-to-data transfers, I will be amongst the older generation of luddites that refuses to give up the keyboard. Because I need it. The feeling of the keyboard is more important to me at this point than my own heartbeat.

When someday I get arthritis so bad that I can’t type any longer, I will quickly go insane.

Right now there’s a part of me that wishes I was twenty-three years old, laying on my back in the sunshine, aimlessly drinking endless bottles of Heineken on the island.

There are some problems with this.

• It’s the dead of winter right now, so it wouldn’t be comfortable.
• If I was twenty-three years old, it would mean no wife and no kids.
• It’s illegal, and any thoughts of lawbreaking are behind me.
• I wouldn’t actually like to be drunk right now, either.

Vexing complications to an otherwise sunny mental image.

— § —

Groceries give rise to one of the most important object lessons of separation. Every time I open storage areas, I see them.

Cans of cream of chicken soup. Multiple varieties of rice and pasta. Big jars of spice and frozen goods that haven’t been touched in months.

What is the purpose? The same goes for virtually every kind of “bulk” or “storage” good in the house, edible or no, and for the endless dishes and utensils.

People do a lot of stupid things. Playing house instead of being present is one of them. The American lifestyle. What a crock.

Buy one plate per person in the house. Buy the groceries you’ll use this week. Fuck the rest.

I mean, what is the point of orphaned consumer goods that nobody is ever going to use?

Separation teaches you that all of your shit is worse than meaningless. In fact, it is dead weight that you’re going to have to figure out a way to dispose of, while being reminded of just how wrong everything in life can go, and, in fact, has gone.

What fun.

It is time for me to work on leaving behind a particular tendency.

I tend to focus, moment-by-moment, on problems.

— § —

This isn’t quite the same as “catastrophizing” because I don’t usually descend into a downward spiral that makes things seem worse and worse. Well, not usually. There have been one or two occasions in life when this has been the case, but I’m not talking about exceptions here, I’m talking about the general case.

It’s also not the same as being a pessimist. Because on the whole, I’m not. Instead, big picture, I tend to be the ridiculous optimist. “Everything is going to be okay.” “It’ll all work out.” “I don’t quite know how this will get solved, but it will.” Anyone that knows me well knows this part of me. Some find it to be infuriating.

— § —

What I mean is that in the moment-by-moment of life, my attention is drawn toward anything that helps me to answer these questions:

• What are the most imminent risks?
• What needs to be done next?
• What fires need putting out?

And so, my general method of approaching a task, or a day, seems to consist entirely of finding and naming problems to solve and issues that need resolving. Even if in the end I tend to assume the optimistic view, and see problem-naming and issue-resolving as a way of getting to the good place that I believe will be the destination, the moment-by-moment thus has a way of being far too dark.

— § —

Put another way, I tend, moment-by-moment, to have trouble noticing, naming, and being pleased about the good things. Because the good things—well, they don’t “need” attention. They’re already “solved.”

Instead, I have traditionally reserved happy attention and commentary for destinations. Once everything is said and done, I stand up and say, “Gosh, that was awesome and the result is good!” But along the way, I tend to be critical and negative. “This needs doing.” “Why hasn’t that been done?” “Damn, that’s a problem.” “Shit, gotta attend to that.”

It’s an old habit and in some ways a productive one, but it is not a happy one, and it is not helpful in particular in relationships. Because there is no final goal or outcome in a relationship; there is only the moment. So if I’m not noticing or appreciating the good enough in the moment in a relationship, then I am not noticing or appreciating the good enough in the relationship, period.

— § —

I don’t mean to make this into My Special Problem.

Only to comment on it for myself, in my own case. Moment-by-moment, I’d like to take more time to say, “Gosh, you’re a good friend,” and “What you just said was amazing,” and things like that. This applies to conflicted moments as well. When someone says, “I’m pretty happy today, but I also have a couple of problems,” I need to resist the urge to jump straight for the problems.

I’m trying to learn to be more empathetic, yes—to go to “I’d like to listen about your problems” rather than “Let’s get to work solving your problems,” but it’s at least as important to take the step of valuing the first half of the sentence, which I tend to set aside as “solved, no attention needed.” That move of setting it aside is wrong.

Because if someone says “I’m pretty happy today, but I also have a couple of problems,” and I jump straight to the problems, no matter whether empathetically or in the problem-solving frame of mind, I’ve completely erased their happiness.

And just embracing and focusing on the happiness, too, often outweighs anything that can be done about the problems, be it listening or fixing.

— § —

In short, I need to move from “I think life is pretty good” to “I embrace the good details in life.”