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Jen and I celebrated out 15th anniversary the past Wednesday. Hard to believe. We didn’t do anything really exciting to mark the occasion, but we did take time to be mutually amazed and grateful that we have each other in our lives. Events of the last few months have sharply reminded us just how much we need each other. It has been really hard at times, but I have no doubt whatsoever that it has been worth everything we’ve put into it. Here’s to many more years! -= G =- Powered by Zoundry Raven I have added a page with a picture link to the Divided We Fail campaign. Please check this out. It addresses economic issues facing any American who will have to retire or get health care some day. Sounds like all of us if you ask me… -= G =- We had to euthanize one of our pet rats on August 14. I’d never had to do anything like that before. I wrote this poem that night at work.
There’s probaly a lot more I could say, but I don’t know how. -= Gryphon =- Powered by Zoundry I’ve made changes to the blog. Again. Of course, that’s the point, right? The big deal is that I’ve given in to the reality that my blog is my web site and my web site is my blog. I have therefore upgraded to the latest version of WordPress by creating an entirely new blog at the root level of my web site and importing all the old content into it. Anyone who pings www.billkubeck.com will now go right to the blog. This makes sense for two closely-related reasons. First, my web site has no reason to exist beyond hosting my blog. Second, I never really wanted just a blog, I wanted a dynamic web site. Well, WordPress isn’t just blog software, it’s a damn fine Content Management System. By putting a WordPress blog in place as my web site, I get all I wanted. How cool is that? I’m still rethinking everything, so there will be more changes. Promise.
-= Gryphon =- Powered by Zoundry Recent circumstances have forced me to work longer hours than ever and learn new skills at the same time. It’s all very profitable from a self-improvement point of view, but’s taking a toll on my health. I have to be very careful about diet and sleep, or I risk a serious crash. I’ve had a couple of scary near misses in the last month. I ran myself a little too far, and stumbled. The scary part was how hard it was to get back on track without losing momentum. It was also very scary how these episodes trashed my confidence and unleashed waves of anxiety and self-doubt. I’ve always had the bad habit of imagining the worst about every situation. I don’t know where it comes from, but it can be crippling. It is especially dangerous in difficult situations where you’re trying to break through a block, overcome a set back, or whatever. It’s the biggest single reason I haven’t done more in my life. I’m fighting back this time. I’m training myself not to brood on negative possibilities. In short, I’m training myself not to look down. Always look up. Be prepared for problems, but always focus on the positive goal. When you live on the edge, look up. Don’t look down. -= Gryphon =- I’m going through a lot of changes right now. I know it will all lead to a Much Improved Me, but it’s all quite terrifying as it happens. I’ve always been a loner, but I’m opening up to people. That’s scary. I’ve always been oriented toward abstractions and ideas, but I’m opening up to human interaction. That’s scary. I’m convinced that the path Fate has set me on is thr right one, but I am scared to death. I suppose the price we pay for great progress is abject terror. -= Gryphon =- Powered by Zoundry As I thought about topics that might be appropriate for this blog, I realized that good topics might come from little “thought bombs,” concise little themes that often lead to a lot of thinking. So perhaps I will expound upon some idea that requires lengthy development. Or perhaps I’ll just plant an intellectual land mine and see what happens…. -= Gryphon =-
This item caught my eye as I was browsing a local shop for books about the process of writing. The stark cover (showing many examples of famous authors’ florid handwriting) and the title (Poe’s own phrase to descibe the urge to write) made it stand out. I skimmed it briefly and decided I had to have it. I’m working with a library copy right now, but there’s an item in my Amazon.com wish list for the hardcover version. The author is a practicing neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and her writing arises from a desperate compulsion to write that began in the post-partum mood disorders caused by the death of her premature twin boys very shortly after birth. As a researcher in the field of brain disease, she had both the motivation and the tools to study her condition. This book is the outcome, and it covers nearly every aspect of the writing process, from obsessive writing to writer’s block to why we even want to write in the first place. The subtitle gives some sense of the scope: “The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain.” This is not an easy read. Dr. Flaherty avoids excessively technical language where possible, but she does not “dumb down” her content one bit. She also presents her subject as one that can only be properly understood by considering both the clinical and artistic aspects together. This hybridized presentation accomplishes that ambitious goal, and the result is dense and rich both in the clinical and literary senses. This will pose a serious challenge to many readers, since a lot of people just don’t have much experience trying to integrate subjective and objective material. It’s worth the effort, however. Besides being a gifted doctor with a thorough grasp of scientific method and the current research in her field, the author is also a talented writer who speaks in a compelling and articulate voice. There is a lot here to reward the persistent reader, and I was obliged to hide my highlighters while I read lest the parade of revelations seduce me into forgetting that this was a library book. Dr. Flaherty presents no conclusions in “The Midnight Disease.” That was not her goal. What she wanted to do was share her experience and what she learned from it in the hopes it would help others in similar situations. I read this book hoping to learn more about my own struggles to become a writer, and I learned a lot. Indeed, I learned more than I bargained for, and gained insight into the overall picture of my mental states (both good and bad) and how various parts of my life drive, and are driven by, those mental states. As soon as I can afford my own copy, it’s going on my shelves as a regular work tool. -= Gryphon =- I did something Saturday that I hadn’t done in a long time — I went for a hike. I used to walk miles, but various factors have conspired against that for some time now. I had a chance to get back to this favorite activity when an errand in a nearby town put me near a trail that Folkcat and I had partly explored a short while back. She suggested that she could drop me and do other things while I took my time to follow that trail as far as I wanted to go. I did just that. I started out near downtown at a point near the start of the trail, and began following it along the Souhegan River. The trail wound along the river, generally at the rear edge of some property or other. I passed car dealers, lumber yards, and some things I just couldn’t figure out from the back side. The trail branched after about a quarter mile. I took the left branch, because it led closer to the river and farther from evidence of civilization. The branch didn’t go far, but ended at a splendid sight. A bend in the river had been made into a classic swimming hole. A gnarled tree teetered over the water, and one big branch bore a well-worn rope. The shore was sandy gravel, and was dominated by a chunk of dead tree lying in a line pointing down toward the water. Bark and branches had long disappeared, leaving an irregular trunk polished smooth by countless hands, feet and behinds. I marked the spot because I know Folkcat is always on the prowl for scenic pictures, and this was a postcard or poster if ever I saw one. The other branch took the trail on its way. I passed more suburbia on my right and more river on my left. The trail finally reached the local public athletic fields, as I suspected it would. I crossed the bridge to the fields since the trail ahead was marked with stern signs warning all comers to get permission from property owners before daring to walk there. I continued on, with the river now on my right and the fields on my left. The trail entered the woods again at the end of the fields, and I plunged into terrain that looked rather like the scenery in a “lost world” movie. The trail rose and the bank plunged steeply down to a dry branch of the river. Both sides were heavily overgrown, and nothing could be seen, nor little heard, of the surrounding town. I stopped at one point to puzzle over a row of rocks across the bed that looked just a little too dense and regular to be natural. The jungle romance ended at the rear of a parking lot. The path continued, now more implicit than explicit, but I could still walk steadily west without getting too far from the river. Thus I continued, always aware that the highway was not far away, but usually far enough for the woods to muffle the traffic noise. The terrain varied widely. I often found myself walking along the edge of a parking lot at the rear of a commercial property. Sometimes the boundary between properties was trivial; sometimes it was not. The farther west I traveled, the more challenging the task of crossing those lines. The rear of commercial properties that have no neighbors in back are often dumps. This is especially true of sites owned by construction companies and such. At one point I had to scramble down and back up a steep, overgrown bank to get around a pile of unidentifiable equipment at the corner of the property. Other barriers were more prosaic. I had to walk a good distance toward the front of one property to find a gap in the brush large enough to pass on to the next. The last I encountered was the most ordinary: a large field gate, challenging only because it was so overgrown at the ends. The hike ended shortly later because I had committed the hiker’s cardinal sin – I had left my water bottle at home. I was smart enough to recognize very early that the trip was over and called my wife to pick me up. I don’t know how far I walked. I forgot to reset the track log in the GPS unit, so it still held a lot of previous track data. It was a long walk on a hot day, but I doubt I walked 87 miles. I surely walked two or three miles. Considering that I had not done any serious walking in some years, that was a fine start. I was pleased with the experience. I have always loved hiking, and I have done too little of it lately. I enjoyed myself thoroughly despite the fact that hiking in a built up, nearly-urban area often means dodging the dumpster at the rear of an apartment complex. These events were more than offset by the pleasure of walking along a river bank, knowing that trout and salmon swim that river, and that fishermen test their skill and patience there. The highway seemed very far away in those moments. I haven’t finished that journey; indeed, I have only begun it. I want to walk more along that river and see where it takes me. -= Gryphon =- |
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