Rambling Back to Where We Started

Luuucy! I'm home from the club. You got some 'splainin to do.
--Ricky Ricardo

A year went by and I didn't blog a line. I was trying to play it safe. But playing it safe is just a slow way of dying. In poker if you never play any hands you just blind out. Every time the deal goes around your stack just dwindles till it's gone. A life can dwindle away that way too, trying to be careful, trying to do the safe thing. There's no future in living fearful, timid or sad.

How did a year go by so chaotically? There were moments I couldn't breath. There were other moments I didn't want to. I went a whole year without writing anything because I couldn't bear to risk the repercussions. I also couldn't bear to see how ridiculous I sound, vacillating between hope and despair, helpless one day and full of myself the next.

For better or worse, I have to write this. Let the dangling participles fall where they may. I can't worry about repercussions anymore, about fallout or storm clouds. Just write it out. Say what has to be said that day, realizing it won't always be fair or rational or pretty. But it will be the truth of what I'm feeling and experiencing, and that's the best I can do.

A lot happened while I was away. Numerous titantic fights and brushes with ultimate despair. Humiliations galore, most self-inflicted. A whole summer went by and I played golf twice. Our kisses are tentative now, sad and mostly passionless. Things happened.

A few good things happened too. I got a new job that started three days after the old one ended. This December Marie got a job,25 hours a week for now, but $13.00 an hour, good pay for a temp assignment. It's a huge relief. I don't make enough to support our household alone. After all my years of mismanagement and poor decisions, I barely make enough to support myself. The Ducks won the conference championship, winning the right to go the Rose Bowl for the second time in fifty years. They might win. Should even. The smart, funny, beautiful daughter is raising her smart, funny, beautiful children. They're in Montana for Christmas. Thomas may be deployed to Afghanistan in the surge, a very bad place to be a munitions and explosives experts.

This blog isn't about politics, because I'm largely naive and ill-informed about political complexities. But I see a picture of the forbidding moonscape of that land and I can't think how we can believe that we can accomplish what the Mongols or Alexander the Great or 100,000 Russians with six tank divisions couldn't. One look at the jagged peaks and icy twisting roads and hidden caves and I can't think how anyone could believe reason or rationality or order could prevail there. The enemy is unseen and untrackable and committed to fight to the death. It's the largest home court advantage in the world. We're not fighting terrorism; we're maiming a generation and burning a billion dollars a day. But I have futilities of my own to worry about, and that's all I have to say about that.

Sporadically in November I started writing again, usually when things were at their worst, and I have to say I did some of my most whining and self-justifying work ever. But we're not here to pretty it up, to tell just the good parts or pretend everything is okay. Even so there are still moments that are inexpressibly beautiful. Marie had a baby granddaughter born last week, Madelyne Rose, so pretty and pink and sweet and soothing to look at you can believe happy endings are really possible. At least for some.

I'll try to make more sense tomorrow. It was important to get in motion. The November entries are dead awful morbid and frantic, often one-sided or full or rage or resentment, but that's how it happened. We don't edit out the bad parts. That would be cheating. Go Ducks.