As I drove up to my house, I saw a young maybe teenage girl, in a calf length jean skirt, with a purple stuffed coat going down to cover where I imagine there were back pockets. She was walking to the house next to mine. I parked the truck and got out. Told the dog, Jane, to get out of the back. Jane ran right into the neighbors yard, and, as I yelled for her to “get back over here”, the combination of the dog running to greet her – and me yelling at the dog – scared the mousy creature half to death.  She let out as much of a yelp as you’d expect a mouse to muster. But it was a short scare, as the dog turned back when called.  As the dog returned, I began to apologize, but her back was already to me.

I walked up to the porch and found, tucked into the door handle, “Live Animal Christmas Play… Marion Avenue Baptist Church”. I walked into the house and sat in my overstuffed, once upon a time red, now mostly pink, smelling a bit of dog that wasn’t supposed to be up there, chair. I watched the girl through the picture window and noticed her combed this morning, wind’s been blowing, brown hair. Long in the back. Bangs curling into her brow.

She crunched across the stiff November grass, occasionally stepping on a spot of snow, and placed another pamphlet carefully in the door. I felt a twinge of cynicism as I watched her tread her mission. I resisted it and thought how she must find this very fulfilling.

Of course you’re not satisfied.  If you were satisfied, you’d do nothing.  Satisfaction is the enemy of action – insofar as satisfaction would bother lifting a finger to do anything as active as being  an enemy.

The more dissatisfied a creature the harder it will work to become satisfied.

Hunger is a dissatisfaction that keeps me alive.

I’d like to be more satisfied than my current situation allows for.  That’s the trap though, isn’t it?  When will my current situation allow for it?  Today? Tomorrow?  A year from now?  Ten years from now?

Hard work can be incredibly satisfying.  It’s meaningless hard work that strangles my soul.  Dilbert.  Soul crushing.  The Office.  Soul crushing.  These are the stories from which we draw our protagonists.

I want to build something.  I want to build something so badly that I really really love that IKEA piece of crap I put together last Christmas.  I got it on sale after Thanksgiving.

I create nothing… No, I create something worse than nothing.  I create email.

So pretty much it’s us, bees, beavers, Mick Jagger,  termites, and basically all the other social bugs, that share the medal for least satisfied creatures.  And none of us is happy that there’s just one medal.

I am not making eye contact.  I have not made eye contact since you wrestled my attention from the important thing I was working on.  I am making halting torso movements toward my project.  My gaze bounces as I nod and mhhmmm as unconvincingly as I possibly can.

WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM?!?! Nobody talks this close.  This is very uncomfortable for me.  Stop playing the Labrador Retriever to my tabby cat.  Seriously, have you been eating poop?  The analogy was not meant to fit this well.

How do I make you go away?  Is nobody seeing this?  Somebody please come save me.  An emergency – I don’t care how contrived.  Please. Cowards!  I know you all see this!

Why do you have to be the same gender as me?  I really have to go to he bathroom, but you’ll follow me and ruin it.  You’ll talk to me while I’m crouched – open and vulnerable (by the way, I don’t think toilets have gotten taller along with people).

You’re leaving. Oh, thank you, sweet nine pound eight ounce, gurgling, pooping, beautiful Baby Jesus (and you too Will Ferrell).  Now, what the heck was I working on…?

the act of discovering new aspects of a medium and subject

We are a species between species. Our clever cortex shows us the problem; gives us an inkling; but never leaves us satisfied.

Everything that could, or will, or has, or could have happened, is happening – at this moment and forever. That’s infinity. Perfectly big and small, in every way, all at once.

I was shooting with a friend recently, and, at the end, we began to talk about how important the skill of attentiveness is to shooting. We discussed how learning to shoot had taught us to respect and attend to the moment you’re in. We discussed how, in an ever safening developed world, there are fewer and fewer situations in which people must pay attention to themselves, their surroundings, and their activities, in the moment, in order to avoid significant injury or death. I mean really how many people do you know who work in saw mills, or breaking young horses, or operating heavy machines?

Increasingly, we spend days planted well outside our bodies, in the future. We plan for this; we plan for that; sometimes we plan to sit together in rooms to plan for something else. We think about when we will get this; when we achieve that; when this or that will come to be.

We spend so much time doing this that we make ourselves physically and emotionally ill. There is an entire industry devoted to teaching people to be in the present. This is insane!!!

Right now, get your butt up and go do something that requires you to pay attention to what you’re doing. Carve, cook, chainsaw, sew, jump rope, yoga, sweep, draw, dance. For fuck sake, go to the mall and stare at that little blue, green, yellow, whatever dot. YOU ARE HERE!!!

Mom stood alone so that I could too.

Dad fought every day to show me the courage of imperfection.

I mean, Pope Francis, am I right?  Didn’t see that one coming.

And like that, we’re dancing.

without time to think how I

In the moment, we am caught up in the joy of

face after face after face after face

and the smell…

pungent, it quickens us

I can feel the smell in our bones

my bones feel light as a bird’s

at the end, we land. Together

Can someone tell me if I made this up?  Seriously, there are too many voices out there, and I don’t want to rip this off someone else.  It seems so obvious that I can’t believe nobody beat me to this gem.

SPEAKING LOUDER DRIVES PEOPLE AWAY!!!!

speaking softer draws them in.

volume is a stone wall.

stoicism a warm hearth.

I think there are three possibilities.  Either we will wipe ourselves out and life will give it another shot.  We will somehow find a way to establish a healthy homeostasis on our planet.  Or we will keep expanding until we destroy everything and have to launch ourselves off the planet – en masse – in all directions like the spore of some cosmic fungus.

I have to say, at the rate and direction we are going, I think the third possibility may be most likely.  Not gonna lie, the third possibility really appeals to the sci fi nerd in me.  Getting into my stasis chamber.  Being loaded onto a cosmic ark.  Oh man, I can feel my braces and pimples tingling just thinking about it.

I mean I don’t want to get all crazy metaphysical, mostly because I haven’t drank nearly enough tonight for all that, but how cool is it to think that our planet is just some sort of space life form, and we’re just little organelles working away to build the spore which will fly into space and seed other planets.

Space fungus, yep, that’s the life for me.