Choices

At the risk of seeming mushy all of a sudden...

I think about this a lot, but something brought it to mind again.

We are each of us a chain of choices. Each link is a choice we’ve made in our life. Were are not a meshwork of interlocking links, but one great strand of them. One choice leads us to the next, and we can never go back and break those links or remove them. Time keeps shoving us forward, and the most we can do is glance back. We can never effect any change on past choices. All we can do is try and make better choices next time.

I’ve been alive for something like 10,125 days. I’ll be getting married in 31 more. Before anyone wonders if my musings have anything to do with what appears to be the sentimental introspection preceding such a momentous event or some buried reluctance, I want to say again right up front that I can’t wait.

Has anyone ever asked you to give reasons for loving them, be it friend or lover? As if it were as simple as making a list. It's a selfish question, in my opinion, and evidence of more than a little self-consciousness on the part of the questioner.

What I love about Marisa are the choices she’s made in her life, that combination of decisions that led her to the person that she is—that is what I love. It's something to admire and be proud of. It's not a single feature or quality that can hold you this strongly. Enough to make a cynical man defy the depressing statistics of marriage in the modern world. And so I could love no other like this.

My apology if today's entry is uncomfortably lovey-dovey. It's not the usual distant, non-personal type. But this weblog is useless to me if I can't make it personal for myself, if the expression is needed.

Word of the Day

Fugacious and fallible our lives have always been; making something of it meritorious is the best that we can do.

What Do You Do?

As I get older, I find more and more people asking me this question in social situations. I wish people would ask the more appropriate, "What is it that you do to earn an income?" That I can answer, because when most people ask, "What do you do?", what they reall mean is, "What is it that you do that is also your primary vocation of choice?" I hate answering it. What I do, what I am, and what I do to get by are not the same.

What I usually say—and feel dumb about—is: "I work for a Web-based computer-type company in Manhattan." But does that answer the question? No. What I do is write and create and interact and plan and oh yeah, I work for a Web-based, computer-type company in Manhattan so I can pay the bills and buy food.

I don't begrudge that. I am content as long as I have sufficient time to do the things I really enjoy.

Does anyone share this annoyance? You self-employed freelancers out there—and I know a few—would, I assume, find the question less awkward and more truthfully answered? Or what do you say when this question is posed to you?

Word of the Day

Why do so many people stroll the supine path of conformity and, in effect, "sell their dreams for small desires"?

Nothing? Nothing, tra la la?

Have you ever had your mind so filled with things that absolutely none of them can escape?

Perhaps I'll have something more meaningful to offer another day soon.

Word of the Day

The internet is so full of excoriate commentation that I've come to expect it at every page; thus, I am delighted when I find its refreshing adversary, extolment.

The Waiting Room

On Ed's weblog a few days ago, he said he felt his life was approaching an invisible crossroads. Myself, I've been in this cramped, metaphoric waiting room for the longest time, mentally and physically—dwelling in various places, renting, borrowing, or otherwise using someone else's furniture and living space, and always being subjected to someone else's living standards and particulars—and more often than not, these are irrational and crazy due to the insanity of the owners of said spaces.

But soon my lifestyle will change dramatically. Marisa and I will be living in a tiny basement-turned-apartment (renovated by her parents, who are hardy, industrious people for their age, though not of the best health), and the rules will be our own, the stuff will be our own—though we owe much to other people in helping us get to that state. It's a small, cute little living space where even two people will bump into each other now and again.

And I can't wait.

Growing up, we take things for granted; I sure did. But you know what I don't take for granted now? The fact that now I have my own toaster and big TV and kitchenware. I've always had many possessions, sure, but we're talking books, CDs, VHS tapes, and endless stacks of paper. Now we're talking about real grown-up stuff. It's pretty cool.

I may not be able to tack up as many posters as I used to, but next to those nice framed pictures and amidst all that blank wall space will be that map of Middle-Earth tapestry and a pair of swords. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Word of the Day

My online sobriquet represents an ideal—still extant—that I can only hope to one day manifest in the written word.

Storytellers

"When people told their past with stories, explained their present with stories, foretold the future with stories—the best place by the fire was kept for the Storyteller." - Jim Henson's The Storyteller

I have had the privilege of reading many chapters from a yet-to-be published novel written by Ruth Lampi and Jess Van Oort, who most of you don't know but will have the opportunity to meet if you're coming to my wedding and, God-willing, you'll see on a bookstore shelf someday (errr...their names, not them). Where my my inspiration and literary roots stem from writers like George MacDonald, my actual writing is more often driven by the faster-paced style of Wizards of the Coast novels. Ruth's and Jess's writing feels like a combination of older, classier styles like Ursula Le Guin and Patricia McKillip.

I've always been fascinated and jealous by those writing duos, like Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. How do two people write together? I can't be sure, but I do know one thing. It's much easier to keep away writer's bloc and maintain inspiration when you have someone else to bounce ideas off of. Just talking about a shared story keeps the interest there, so I understand that and I hope to have more projects myself with other people. Already got a few lined up, in fact.

Last night, when I was reading chapter 11 from the aforementioned yet-to-be novel on my subway ride home, I was really struck just how much I adore the art of storytelling. I realized how much the world had faded away, how absorbed in the story I had become, and how disappointed I was when I realized I only had one more page left to read that night. Whenever you find that happening, you know the writing has succeeded. Good job, guys. Keep it coming. And prepare for me to make a nuisance of myself until you get this stuff published!

Word of the Day

I wonder: Was Gandalf secretly stricken by triskaidekaphobia? If so, it would explain his persistence in plodding that poor Hobbit out of his door oh so long ago.

The List of Many

I missed out.

When I was in 8th grade, the smart class got to read The Hobbit. I was bitterly jealous, having read that one on my own. The smart kids were being forced to read it—I loved the notion of reading and writing about The Hobbit as homework!—with no real interest of their own. Instead, my class read boring, depressing stuff like John Steinbeck's The Red Pony. (In retrospect, I actually liked those Steinbeck stories.)

Then in high school, I was elevated into the honors English classes, so at last, I was one of the smart kids. (Not in all subjects.) While my class had to read Catch-22, Heart of Darkness, and Pride & Prejudice, the dumb kids got to read Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and The Oddysey. The injustice of it! To this day, I've still never read those first two. Can you believe it? I have some major catching up to do.

There's so many books out there. Very intimidating. More fantasy novels than I'll ever be able to check out. And science fiction, I want to read more of those, too. Many have been recommended to me that I haven't yet seen fit to pick up. Nor I don't want to stay limited to these genres, either. I've absorbed more nonfiction books than I ever realized, too.

I've always heard that writers, though they are highly encouraged to read a lot, find less and less time to do so the more they write themselves. If life keeps me from taking in as much as I want in all these coming years, well...God willing, I look forward to sitting in a comfortable chair by a fire someday when I'm old and grey with thinned, wizardly hair all loose around me, snoozing and dreaming with a book half-opened in my hand.

"We read to know we're not alone."
- Shadowlands

Word of the Day

The books I read, while not typically disparate, have been steadily expanding from one another; no writer should stay too confined, after all. Though I'm not sure I agree with him, R.A. Salvatore told me once that he thought the last few pages of James Joyce's The Dead was the finest piece of writing ever.

Paper Faces on Parade

All this week, I've had to deal with the Republican National Convention going on in Manhattan. It took place at Madison Square Garden, and I work on Broadway and 38th St., a very short walk from there. Police barriers, motorcades of cops, and most of all, an insane number of tourists and protestors. Mostly all these things just made it slower to get to work, and to be honest, I'm really just glad there wasn't any serious incident. The security was justified.

But it's funny. I grew up with very Republican-minded parents, and I admit some grain of that conservatism remains within me—but not much. And yet now, everyone I know my age is exceedingly Democratic. Or more correctly, anti-Bush. For this reason, depending on who I'm talking to, I find myself in the company of people who speak as though their opinions are solid fact, are right, and it cannot be any other way.

Truth is, I'm not much for politics. It's not my arena, not my speciality, and I cannot voice a strong opinion either way. I'd live with whatever the majority demands and be content. In a worst case scenario, this country is still easier to live in than most others. Given the context of the world and history, I simply cannot complain. The funny thing is, I think monarchy is best, if things were as they were meant to be.

"For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be 'debunked'; but watch the faces, mark well the accents, of the debunkers. These are the men whose tap-root in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polphony, the dance, can reach—men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison."

- C.S. Lewis, in Present Concerns

And that's about as political as you'll ever see me get.

Word of the Day

The Republican Convention has been the cynosure here in NYC these last few days; I'm glad it's over and people can go on treating people as they were before, ignorant of one another's views.