My New Year's Resolution!

This is a hammer. 

I've been trying to write a blog post beginning with this sentence for over a week now. Conditions of the world, good and bad--arguing, obligations, and friends--have bound together to prevent m from doing any writing, any revising or anything good what so ever. This is no surprise. Life is a tilt-a-whirl and I'll be spun wherever the good spinning is. 

Returning home to Detroit, Michigan came just in time. A part of me, a vital one at that, had wandered off waiting to baited back with the right moment. The proper mix of festivities. I boarded the plane as a 22-year-old man. A 22-year-old-man eating a candy apple but a man nonetheless. 

Since stepping off the plane and eating one of mother's omelets, I've entered on a souped-up alcohol laden tour of the life I've lived so far. Unlike so many disappointments (I'm looking at you Snuggies) this stretch has swept me off my feet. Each day is cathartic, via a milestone or looking glass. My mind is fit, trained for analysis, but observing a moment objectively, it becomes quite easy to decipher what period the stance stems from. Yesterday, I was 19 in the morning as I wrote silly commercials. 8 as I discovered the sensory sensation of high definition goggles. 16 as a wonderful girl put butterflies in my stomach (literally and figuratively!). 

I have several mantras I repeat to keep me grounded. 

1) Peace above me, peace below me, peace within me. 

2) Snakes! Snakes! Snakes! Snakes! Snakes! Snakes! 

3) Life is about the journey. 

The last is my favorite. Overwhelmingly the idea of product outweighs the joy of the process. Running about in the desert, limbs a' flailin' and pumpin' perspiration from every pore, makes humanity feel damn good. It isn't about exercise. It isn't even about where you're going. The task at hand is more than enough. Do the same thing with the aim of getting in shape, gaining a few inches on your vertical leap so may dunk, etc. There will be no good visions, just insidious visions of success. 

This same problem turned writing a novel from a jolly jaunt into an intrinsic battle of the gaudiest proportions even though writing is very very very very very easy. Words are but a moment's effort, a traipsing of tendrils across the keyboard. DISCLAIMER: If you agree with certain anthropologists and regard language as purely instinctual skip this paragraph. The book is out on a paper, far from a finished product with no discernible end in sight. It could have been easily finished by now, perhaps even two or three times over but in the early going I committed to only writing when consumed by the process. If my imagination went into full tilt, prompting visions of hardcover books embossed with my name, I did not write that night. That'd be the same as masturbation. As a writer I attract attention to the writing. This is an effective tool for conjuring a voice but utterly useless when ego gets involved. 

The lesson of going home, returning as some pseudo-conquering hero: everything adds up. 

I'm taking a ballet class to fuck everything up.