Another Morning

"Wake up," says the sky. Dull grays backlit by a soft yellowish glow from our resident plasma entity up above (or to the left if you look at scale models of the solar system). I'm putting the finishing touches on me before I out the door to the world of work, smiling slickly and palming people for wine sales.

It really doesn't seem that this much time has passed since I've been here. August will see a whole year gone, but the longer I exist (at least in this state, metaphysics are generally ignored on this blog - like writing) the more I realize that it all goes fast, like life is a landscape out of a train window, and there are no stops.

Writing had diversified into several projects. I'm still "writing" my books (mainly back story work), but now I'm also looking into content writing for money as well as a new project creating an online show, or a "serial" if we want to be Dickensian about it. If I had my druthers I'd work on all of these projects all day, at an office within walking distance of my apartment, and a secretary to help me know what day it is and other social niceties like that. Oh, to dream.

Now, to finish getting ready.

Wake up, right?

Today and Yesterday

A gorgeous morning bathed in sun gave way to Seattle's famous gray bluster, with rain punctuating the day like an e.e. cummings poem. I attended a meeting, trying some fantastic Spanish wines, and worked mainly from home organizing the week. Work is keeping me more and more busy, a situation I am very happy with. The week has had a fairly auspicious beginning. Let's hope the augurs are right.

Sunday saw me try a new Catholic church, Blessed Sacrament, a Dominican parish church in the University District. The spire of the church can be seen from my living room window, a fact that had escaped me until I got back from mass. The church itself is amazingly beautiful, like a Notre Dame in red brick, some kind of New World Imitation Gothic. Mass itself was incredibly traditional, with incense and Gregorian chants hanging in the air and lending the space an otherworldly feel. Four priests were present during mass, another surprise considering the bare-bones feel of other parish churches I had attended. I am definitely considering going back, and maybe making Blessed Sacrament my local parish church.

Have to run and pick up the Angel.



Ciao.


J

PS West Ham are awful. Roll on next season and a new manager.

Wine is Work

I may be one of the only people I know that considers wine tastings work. Now, I know, it is still a very pleasurable kind of work, an enjoyable experience especially so because I love wine passionately, but nevertheless, it is work. Yesterday I went to three (three!) wine tastings, the first a small in-house tasting for my fellow reps at our company, the other two to help my friend Michael who's wine shop I frequent and help out on the weekends. There was some very good wine - beautiful French wines and some great Spanish, a gorgeous Madeira, and more good Greek wine than I have ever had in my life. Vin Santo? Yes, please, and if there is anything more hedonistic than that, I don't want to know what it is.

Well, I can think of a few things, but I probably ought not mention them.

Wine tastings are an occupational hazard for me. I trudge blearily on, smiling and sniffing and sipping, and by the end of the day my liver hurts, well, in a metaphorical sense, and my temples are pulsing, and I feel like laying down in the leaves under magnificent trees to shield me from some overripe Mediterranean sun. I tell all of this to my girlfriend, who is the most dedicated, hardest worker in the world, and she raises her eyebrow suspiciously. Okay, okay, so graduate school and teaching a university course MAY be more difficult than drinking wine all day. But it isn't drinking!

Tasting, it's tasting. I do spit, not swallow.

Right. I've stumbled onto sexual humor, so this is as good a time as any to wrap this up. Life is pretty good, and I'm doing everything I can to work hard and make it better.

Glass by glass.

Ahem

If you know me (which, since no one reads this, you don't), then you know that I am prone to abandon things for long periods of time. Blogs, books, music projects and girlfriends fall to the wayside while I stumble on, momentarily oblivious, until I feel something dragging at me and I remember the things I've tied to myself. At that point I decide on permanence - some things go while others stay. My exes are gone, music is sadly part of my past, writing comes and goes, while blogging, well, let's just say it's like exercising. I know I need to do it, I want to do it, I just never seem to be able to convince myself that I need to do it NOW.

So where does that leave us? Probably with the most boring website on the planet, a blog which is updated on a yearly basis. Tell you what: I'll give you the Cliff's Notes, and then you can decide whether or not to read on if I write anything. Here goes.

I moved to Seattle. I now live with a view of the Cascade Mountains, and the air is sewn with mist instead of vapor. I traded big cedar-like Northwest pines for scraggly Southern black pines, and cool mornings for sultry nights. Winter was dark, lonely, and short, full of rough personal anxiety while I worked in an industrial warehouse and pain from a work-related back injury. After rehab, both physically and mentally from friends, I found some connections, got into the wine business, and am not building a life when before I simply existed, legs crossed in zazen but thinking too loudly. I still squander time and drink, still while away on computers and put things off, but under it all there is this HOPE, and I write some, and I sell wine, and little by little I become more motivated.

Perhaps I'm growing up.

Will I write again?

I won't tell you. You didn't think I'd make this easy, did you?




J

.

I've started a little project/experiment. We'll see how it goes.


J

Our Illusory Pasts

I have always felt the yawning gap of history behind me, and it has always seemed unnatural, like an artificial empty space in my memory. Places that I visit seem to be familiar upon my first visit, whether due to my overactive imagination, my love of the old and the beautiful, or to some spiritual connection, I don't know (perhaps all three?). Two of the strongest areas are one place that I have visited, France, and one place I have not, Hungary.

It seems odd to me that I should feel affinity to seemingly random places, and some times these irrational connections do fade after exposure or a change of heart or just simply time. I loved Italy in a boyish fashion until I traveled there; not to say I disliked it, because Italy is wonderful. The people, the landscape, the history, all of Italy was truly gorgeous and spectacular, and yet I did not feel the deep, unexplainable connection with Italy that I thought I would. Instead, France stepped out like a second sister that I had always heard so much about and didn't want to love but, like so many others, couldn't help myself.
I fell passionately in love with Japan for a while, moved to Hawaii to study it more, to learn the language and study its history, but found myself instead warming to the history of my own blood, to Europe, reconciling myself with what I slowly recognized as Western guilt. I had been seeking out all things anti-Western because I blamed the state of the modern world (which has always, and continues to, feel wrong and twisted) on the past evils of "The West," whatever that is. I looked to "foreign" religions and peoples for answers, and found many, some of them truly beautiful. But in Hawaii, while studying Zen Buddhism and learning how to make tea the ceremonial Japanese way in an authentic Japanese tea house, I suddenly came to terms with the West, with Christianity, and with my own self (to an extent). Perhaps my experiences in France were a part of that, a planting of a seed, if you will.

I love France, love it down to my bones, feel the warmth of the French sun and the gripping touch of French soil, and it really doesn't make sense. I am not French; some of my ancestors may be of Norman decent and moved to England after the Conquest of 1066, but I am fairly sure that six hundred years in England makes one English. My other ancestors seem to come from Scotland and Ireland, with intermingling between the two thanks to the policies of the English throne. So why France, why this irresistible connection with a country I have no obvious link to? There is no easy answer, no reasoned line of thought. The cynics among my friends (and there are many) surely think that it is my love of beauty and another of my flights of fancy, a silly and juvenile infatuation, like my conversion to Catholicism. Others think it is a past life, that I have lived in France before and am remembering it in some spiritual way. In some of my musings I wonder if it is the influence of the saints, if the work and prayers of St. Joan of Arc, who was so instrumental in my conversion, have endeared me forever to her homeland. There probably will be no easy answer in this lifetime, and I accept that.

Lately Hungary has been pushing its way into my mind. It is still warming, waxing and waning like a moon around the Earth that is my France, but it is there, an ancient land of proud and beautiful people that have no direct connection to me. I will write more on this later, but suffice to say it is my sudden pang for Hungary that made me write today, and if nothing else, I thank if for that, for anything that can rouse this dragon of words out of my dormant cave.

For now, that is all. Adieu.

Lent

For any of you non-Catholics out there, we are currently in the Lenten season, the time when we reflect on our past transgressions with Our Lord and Master and voluntarily give up something important to us as a sign of sacrifice as he sacrificed. I have given up computer games. I am only allowed to play with Abby, so my free time has skyrocketed. I did this partly to please the Lord, and partly to sever my ties with my most troubling addiction.

And it worked. I am a writer again.

I wrote several pages yesterday, wrote a poem today and and developing my stories at a much more rapid pace. I have met a few new people who are involved in interesting projects, such as a food-blogger (much cooler than I would have thought, food blogging). I ran out of English tea and am drinking Irish tea, which reminds me, HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY!

Now, off to work. I must continue to write, but I've been saying this for ten years now. Wow. Did I mention I just turned thirty?

Adieu.


J