Rilke’s Book of Hours

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that’s wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.

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Protected: On Being a Man, Being an Introvert and Being Lonely

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Too Late

It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.

Goodbye to Warm Weather

This is always tough for me, the last time sitting under the porch before I pull out to head west. In previous years it was Labor Day weekend, now it’s after my guys’ weekend in October. It’s still warm, but it won’t be when I return. No one will be back until Thanksgiving when it’s generally freezing on the beach and underneath the house. That weekend revolves around cooking, eating & shopping. It’s an outlier.

I would live here or in Wilmington at the drop of a hat if we could make it work financially. But I am limited in how I can provide.

I may never understand why my parents won’t move here permanently. It’s none of my business. For now, it’s the place I most want to be with Jo & Finley when I have downtime. It’s even better when my sister’s family is around.

So, goodbye warm weather. I’ll see you Memorial Day weekend.

C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed

“I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

“They say an unhappy man wants distractions—something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he’d rather lie there shivering than get up and find one. It’s easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally, dirty and disgusting.

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?”

In a Hole

From my favorite episode of West Wing:

Leo McGarry: [after Josh finishes an intensive therapy session set up by Leo with a trauma therapist, Josh walks past Leo in a nearby hallway of the White House] How’d it go? 
Josh Lyman: Did you wait around for me? 
Leo McGarry: How’d it go? 
Josh Lyman: He thinks I may have an eating disorder… 
Leo McGarry: [bemused] Josh… 
Josh Lyman: …and a fear of rectangles. That’s not weird, is it? 
[pause]
Josh Lyman: I didn’t cut my hand on a glass. I broke a window in my apartment. 
Leo McGarry: This guy’s walking down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep, he can’t get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, “Hey you, can you help me out?” The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts up “Father, I’m down in this hole, can you help me out?” The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. “Hey Joe, it’s me, can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, “Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.” The friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.” 
[pause]
Leo McGarry: Long as I got a job, you got a job, you understand?

I’m shouting up at friends today.

Who Knows?

I have no clue if anyone is still subscribed to this.  I hope not.

I am angry.  Full of anger.  I am beat down and feel like there is nowhere to vent what I feel, no one who understands.

I love my wife & little girl, yet I constantly ask myself, “How did I end up here?  How did I end up in a place where I’m stuck and so unaccomplished?  I’m not stupid!”

I’m so discontent.  Again, not with my family.  I love my girls.  I just feel like my life is passing me by and I’m missing out on so many things.  I feel like the past 15 years have been a constant process of my being shafted by people or completely dismissed.

End of.

If someone actually read this, I don’t want to know. 

Soundtrack 7-22-14

Call Me – St. Paul & The Broken Bones

Heaven – The Walkmen

Feel It All Around – Washed Out

Wish I Was Here – Coldplay & Cat Power

I Can Hardly Make You Mine – Cults

Run to Your Mama – Goat

Song For Zula – First Aid Kit (Phosphorescent cover)

So Now What – The Shins

Breathe In – Japanese Wallpaper (ft. Wafia)

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