A New Experience Every Morning.

Its cold when it rains--the heavy dampness of the rain drenched world permeates everything. I'm sitting here shivering just a bit, my legs, feet, and arms are chilly but my face is freezing. I would turn on the furnace but i love the silence and soon my coffee will be ready and i can wait for the thick steam to rise from the mug and wrap around my face and find some comfort in the smell of the coffee, the heat of the steam, and rich dark flavor that brings balance to my morning.

I have exposed on coffee before and i don't mean to beat a dead horse (or brewed bean) but coffee is so much a part of my morning that it has become a part of me. I find, more and more, that the simple things that bring us pleasure, that aren't killing us, that don't adversely effect our health, or don't drain our finances are worth making a part of life. There is so much sorrow and frustration and darkness and fear in the world already, i don't see a point in making life any harder on myself. I could live with out coffee, but it would suck.

It should be said that i am a creature of excess, i have an extremely hard time cutting myself off when it comes to food. So, there is an undeniable battle between the coffee i drink for the enjoyment and routine of my morning and going to far with the one more cup that makes me jittery and a little sick for the rest of the day. When I'm home it is easy to drink too much coffee, it just happens throughout the course of the morning and early afternoon. But the first coffee of the day is a new experience every morning.

Coffee, honestly, gives me a great deal of comfort and something to look forward to in the early morning. These early mornings hammering away at the keys on the computer or feeding a very grumpy baby or throwing my mind into the mixer if my 5 yr old is up too, would be close to impossible without something constant and routine and hot and caffeinated. And, perhaps, it is as much about routine as anything else. My morning coffee grounds me in my day and offers a small base of luxury and comfort upon which i can base the rest of my day. Hemingway wrote, once, that when he starts writing he starts with the truest sentence he knows at the time, if the rest of the days work falls apart then he can always go back to the beginning. In much the same way i start my day, if it all goes to shit, i can always look back to now and make another cup of coffee.

In Like a Lion...

It rained last night, very hard. I could hear the wind blow across the roof of our house and hit the stainless steel chimney cap and could imagine currents of wind separate around the chimney, some going around, some flying in and the the metal flap, not in my imagination vibrated and turned under pressure of the currents of wind that tried to fly into our house. This morning their is a residue of wind and the rain patters hard on the chimney cap, the furnace creaks in the changing heat, and my coffee is hot and fresh from the pot. It is six a.m. and the world seems asleep, dawns light held at bay by the rain and the clouds.

I was always under the impression that March went out like a lamb, but the forecast has Bellingham under the thumb of the wind and the rain for the rest of the week. The notion of going out like a lamb always offended me as a child. My birthday is at the end of the month (31st actually) and i wanted to be the lion, not the lamb. The lion/lamb symbolism is self-evident now, especially so close to Easter, and i would gladly let my life be synonymous with the lamb as i watch my actions and words take the shape of my great pride--pride is like a chain at times, remember Jacob Marley, and the more we live in a state of pride the heavier our chains become. The lamb seems to be the object of absolute humility (not to mention a great symbol of Christ...but the lion is as well, in another context for another time) and a way of life i wish i could say i strived to achieve but i am comfortable in my pride and leaving the comforts of life is not something in which i have a strong record.

Maybe i digress.

My birthday is on Wednesday and i am turning 30.

I feel adrift and grasping for a course heading.

I am beginning to loose momentum...

The wind and rain that the weather forecast promises feels apropos for turning 30 this year. I'm looking forward to being the age i have felt i should be for sometime now but sad by the notion i feel like I'm drifting into it. I have it in my mind that i should be going into my 30's purposefully and taking ownership over the next generation in my life. But i am not. While i have a goal in mind the preliminary steps are long, slow, and frustrating and i am left impatient and anxious for things to happen. (Cue strong gust of wind!)

Life will not always be like the ship tossed on the waves and controlled by the current, not entirely, eventually i will discover how to use the rudder steer into the places i want to go.

Decisions.

My original intention for this blog was as a chronicle of a long process of career change. What was going to happen between the end of one job and the beginning of another. When i was first facing lay-off, i had no idea. Now, in the midst of job searching and career thinking, i have no idea. Day in and day out the absence of a job haunts me terribly. I have "turned a corner" in my thinking, comfortable in the knowledge that with our unique living arrangement (work trade for rent) the unemployment check each week does pay the bills and put food on the table and honestly i worked hard so that could be available. But it does no more than pay the bills. The flip side of the coin: i get time with wife and boys. But the job is still lacking, the feeling of providing and working at something is missing. I have searched, and continue to put nose to the pavement in search of work, but there is very little available right now and what is available is snapped up very quickly by the diligent and highly, highly qualified. It is obvious and ever apparent to me that i need a return to school.

We are in a frustrating cycle of work here, as a family. Feast or famine and at the times i should be feasting, famine beckons harshly. I want out of the cycle and into a career i can really get excited about, not just content to do my best. It has been a process of ticking careers off of a list--urban planner: out, construction management: out, chef: out, etc.--but i keep coming back to my love of language, writing, and reading. By language i mean the way talented authors can use language in simple ways to tell poignant and powerful stories (Hemingway is the quintessential author in this vein but Raymond Carver does it as well and Cormac McCarthy though in a very different and non-conventional way). So i keep coming back to teaching.

Career counselling has given me some tools to begin laying ground work to change careers. The best, to date, has been the Myers-Briggs personality identifier, i happen to be INFJ. Which, without going to deep, basically means I'm an Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling person who makes decisions based on the Judgment of the facts around before i make decisions (for more info, if you care, google INFJ and it will go into great depth about the personality type.) What has really helped with this assessment is the language to talk about and recognize the traits that were self-evident to me but i had no reference for them. Basically, the process I'm in, and the search for the ideal career, is a common struggle for people who have the personality i have. The right career for me is that of a writer (second most common for INFJ's) but i have to create a career path to get me there so i think teaching.

Not teaching because i don't know what else to do, rather teaching because i love good lit. and good writing and i feel that there needs to be English teachers in public schools with a passion for the subject they teach. This is subject, of course, to change. But for now, i am comfortable in my decision and the process of getting there can start today.

Time Alone

For those of you in cyberspace who had been reading my blog regularly, semi regularly, or ever so occasionally i am sorry to have fallen so dramatically off the pace of writing. In all honesty i have a very finicky and fickle muse and he likes it just so to write. My routine and morning discipline has fallen to absolute shit and the quiet dark hour of morning that used to belong to me has been or'ran by sleep and faltering motivation. I am deeply frustrated that i have stopped being so prolific on my blog, i had loved the productivity and the writing and the sense of focus it generated in the mornings and i am trying to get back into the rhythm of "up 'n at 'em" and onto this blog.

Honestly, being unemployed takes a great deal more energy that being employed. The constant focus on job searching and parenting and scheduling out my days to maintain productivity is so much more difficult than waking up, making breakfast, then going to work. Though my work was often physically demanding and at times a dour bore it was comforting and simple to maintain the routine--at collect the pay check!

Ultimately my day doesn't start properly if i don't get up before the boys. To wake up and begin parenting... I am an introvert and the time i carve out for myself in the mornings is critical to my day and the moments of alone time in the morning can not be replaced by other chunks of time during the day, i don't know why that is, but it is never the same. We can't relive time, we can't make up for lost moments, we can't defy who we are and what we need. What we can do is discover a balance between our needs and the needs of those around us.

Emergency workers--EMT's, firefighters, Paramedics, Police officers--learn that in any situation they have to be safe to care for others. That is a good lesson for people in all walks of life. To care for those around us, we have to first care for our selves.

Always a Light

Its a quiet morning, my coffee is hot, I'm making an attempt to reign in my routine and focus and live my day as though there is a reason to be up, motivated, and focused. We recently watched Jason Reitman's new film Up In The Air, starring George Clooney. I'm not a film critic and lack the vernacular and syntax to really talk about movies but i have a bit of a theatre back ground and feel that i know good acting, excellent directing, and very good scripting when i see it (as do most people, saying i have a theatre background just makes me feel like i have an expert opinion--which, incidentally, i don't). Jason Reitman is on his way, erm, up as a writer/director and following Thank You for Smoking and Juno this is another film that tackles a tough character in a delicate economic environment.

George Clooney plays Ryan, a man who gets paid a lot of money to travel around the country and fire other company's employees because "their bosses don't have the balls to do it themselves." He takes downsizing and spins it, telling people at the end of their ropes and facing desperation and depression that "anyone who has ever started an empire has sat where you are today and it is because they sat their that they were successful." And, he essentially lives his life in flight, traveling 270 days a year.

Enough movie critic.

I was struck by Up In The Air in a similar way that i was struck by Crazy Heart or A Serious Man, films so inherently different from one another in story and form and yet bound by the common notion of humanity at rock bottom. These movies being reticent of writers like Cormac McCarthy or Raymond Carver, unafraid to expose the darker heart of who we are. Individuals we may well be but our capacity for hurt and fear is collective.

Up In The Air shows the reactions of employees, some long serving, as they are "downsized" from jobs and the look of desperation and fear blankets them all. I have never sat where they sat--running out of work as a carpenter is not so formal as clearing out a desk in an office environment--but i have felt what they portrayed. Both the initial shock and then, at the end, as they talked about how they made it. Waking up next to their spouse and standing tall for their children... Somehow we make it. The grace of God, the needs of our family, the drive within that yearns for purpose and focus.

I don't know what it is that makes me tick, what I'm specifically passionate and energetic about. I can't seem to wrap my mind around a career or a life's focus. I have stood in the midst of jobs and known that i wasn't a "lifer" and the old timers around me were not the men i wanted to be. I have a faint notion of greatness, a sense of idealism that drives me away from what pays the bills and on towards something that full fills my passions.

One of my favorite quotes is from Isac Asimov, who said: "If i have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." I'm trying to climb those shoulders and each day is another boost to the top. I know i am not the first man here, feeling like he's slipping to the bottom, but sometimes it feels that way. The darkness is at best lonely and cold and at worst isolated and hopeless but armed with the simple things in life and family by my side I suppose there is always a light burning ahead.

Provider Image.

My daily schedule has completely gone to shit and i am cruising quickly towards motivational collapse. An entire shut down of drive, determination, and energy. The longer i am on the dole, the easier it is to feel depressed, drink too much coffee, and go mt. biking. Honestly, being unemployed in this labor market...sometimes its like standing in the woods, a deep thicket of underbrush and thorny vines surrounds you and there is no indication as to how you got into the situation and as you turn about to survey the wall of vines and branches there is very little to indicate a way out. Not stuck, so much as lost and the way back to civilization looks painful and very, very hard.

There is an image of a father/provider in my mind. Two actually. My father is the consummate provider and as a child and into young adult hood my family never, ever went hungry. The fruits of his toil are apparent to me now, as is the nature of the sacrifice he made to feed his family. Between my mother and he we were cared for and fed and clothed and protected. My father never spent more that one or two days at home due to lack of work--actually, i don't remember any.

I know that it isn't fair to myself and my situation to draw comparisons with my childhood experience. I know that what i want out of a career is to provide but also to find fulfillment. I don't know that my father was vocationally full filled, he did (does) what he is good at and is content in the knowledge of a job well done, but he is the quintessential provider in my mind and as i am home, not working, and struggling for self-worth and motivation i find myself falling dramatically short of the image i have of the providing husband-father. An image that is seeming farther and farther away with each passing day.

Pleasures: Big and Small

More and more i find myself retreating into quiet moments of solitude and peace. Perhaps these are the simpler pleasures in life, perhaps this how parents learn to survive the childhood years. As I've been at home more and more and more I've found myself invested heavily into solitude. The demands of a five year old and a 10 month old will take their toll, it is a slow draw from within that sucks love and energy and compassion and grace dry.

I will always love my children. But the capacity for patience is not indefinite and needs time to recharge. This is, it must be, what my wife has been telling me for five and a half years. I finally understand her need for alone time, quiet time, and rest time. Not only that, but time with friends as well. The socialization of others, the opportunity to be invested in community, away from the insistent demands of children and husband. Moms, i know what your talking about! So i have discovered, there are the big pleasures in life and the small pleasures in life.

The big pleasures, for me, are on the lines of mt. biking and fishing. Out, away, involved and completely lost in something that brings excitement, danger, and pure joy to me. Since my re-introduction to mt. biking three or four years ago i have become slightly obsessed with the sport and with the recent acquisition of a new bike i am more excited than i have been in some time. Honestly, my new transition covert has taken me to the next level and i can not say how pleased i am with this bike or how much more fun I'm having every time i hit the mountain and all i want to do is ride. I've lost interest in running, soccer, fishing, anything other than riding. If i am going to expend energy away from home it is going to be on my bike. But the big excitement is not always available or practical, i do have two kids and a wife and in all reality my lifestyle is wrapped around them--their needs and their agenda--and within that i have to find much simpler pleasures to keep my sanity in check.

I am not a fallow person, i have an active mind and industrious energy and being home for long swaths of time is not a comfortable scenario for me. So i ride as often as possible but i have to find other ways of keeping my sanity. I've discovered the simple joy of quiet mornings with hot coffee and an open schedule. I have got to say that there is nothing like them. I have always needed time in the morning and have never understood how people can roll out of bed a half hour before work and walk out the door. I need time to collect myself, drink coffee, make breakfast and lunch, wake up, time to myself. It is important to me that i get up early and have that time but what I've been finding now that I've been at home is that i need that time mid morning too and if I'm still home, mid afternoon as well. I identify a lot more with the stay-at-home-mom and will never take for granted a missed nap again.

Vanishing Urgency

My focus and routine are beginning to suffer. I have been clinging to a final straw of normalcy as we slog through the job hunt. My alarm still goes of at 5 am, but I've noticed that I'm getting up a little later with each passing day. 5:15, 5:25, 5:30, then closer to 6. I need this time in the morning, before the boys are awake, before i make my wife's tea, before things happen. I've grown so accustomed to a bit of time before the world wakes up that when we all wake up together i feel twisted around like I've lost my bearings in a fairground packed with people like so many sardines in a small can. As my sense of routine begins to vanish so does the sense of urgency to find a job.

Little things keep me busy as does house stuff. But a full time, daily job is still what we need to live. Somehow we've made it through and are moving bravely forward but we can not ride this wave forever and i am afraid reality will catch up sooner or later and when it does i hope to high heaven i have a job. There will be the inevitable car problems or something of that nature... But it isn't even the financial aspect of working that is so important.

Work, for me, for men, is part of the way we are hardwired. Without work we drift and slowly values and traits that define our work ethic and motivation begin to fade into a grey haze as our lifestyle embraces unemployment. The urgency that was so apparent when i first began looking for work has subsided to a dull ringing that i barely notice and the excitement and fire of starting the process of change has cooled significantly. Process' never go as quick as we need them too. I do not understand the cadence of life--my boys have grown up so fast yet i feel trapped on a slow moving bus in rush hour traffic.

I believe there is a divine intention for the life of this family, but i don't believe there is only one right intention. The easy part is for me to take a job. If i don't enjoy it, so be it, it is easy for me to work (if work was available). The hard part is identifying what i want out to do with my skills and talents and take a risk by starting over. Going back to school. Digging deep and moving out of the rut of bouncing from one carpentry job to the next and finding something that facilitates a family oriented, working life style--i.e. benefits!

This has been a great opportunity to mt. bike and bond with my older son and be available to help with the kids for my wife but time is running out and motivation is severely waning. It is time for work, decision, and action and i wonder how I'll find the energy.

Hardline

A brief thought.

It is easy to be a hardline political or religious thinker. Taking a position on a series of related issues and refusing to delineate from that position is easy. I am convinced that is why there is such a vocal right and left in this country. Allowing people to be extreme in their convictions is part of living in a democratic society that encourages and protects free speech and freedom to believe and worship as one chooses. The problem with extremist thinking is their refusal to allow empathy to enter their thought process.

A caveat, i am not the the pinnacle of empathy and grace. I tend to make reactionary statements and get defensive when i don't agree with anothers position. However, i see the merit in being able to identify with many different schools of thought and purpose. The challenge, as i see it, is for individuals to remain true to their convictions without alienating those around them.

My limited observation has been people with a hardline stance simply have a hardline stance and if i ask why they think the way they do their answers are often vague and general leading to my conclusion that people think the way they do because it fits an image they are trying to hide behind or they have taken issues at face value alone and are on the activist band wagon fad parade--left or right.

I have long since run out of patience with people who allow their politics and religious beliefs to take this form. Life is to short to constantly be on the defensive and to live a life that inspires hate and fear. This is as true for liberal minded people as conservative minded people, both sides push their platforms on fear campaigns. Both sides are equally prejudice and closed minded to the other. It is not a new observation that the "open minded" modern liberals are only open minded so far as people agree with what they already think. The same is true for conservatives but as least they have the sense to admit that they believe one way.

Ours is a country of compromise, the earliest debates in the capitol were resolved as political leaders on all sides of the political spectrum came together in compromise. This is a big world with a lot of individuals all thinking, at least a little bit, differently. We can spend a lot of time pointing out the faults and failures of those around us or we can encourage one another, even those we don't agree with, and come together.

It is not necessary to think and believe and feel the same as everyone else. This would be a dull, grey, and bleak world if that were the case. It is necessary to be different and have convicted beliefs and immovable stands on issues that affect our society. Our freedom to speak out and believe differently is one of the things that makes us unique in this world. But we should balance ourselves with empathy. In the words of Dr. Suess: "always speak with great care and great tact and remember that life's a big balancing act." Healthy, heated debate is fine, so long as we can come to a healthy conclusion.

Constant belittling, fear and hate mongering, and oppression of people as they make mistakes is a quick way to foster division in a society already split own the middle, nearly irreparably so.

This Entry Sucks

It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain routine. If you read here regularly you will have noticed that daily entries have tapered off to entries scattered across the week. Due to lack of urgency to maintain a daily schedule it has begun to fall off. I'm here writing this morning because i have work today, the instinct to get my day going kicks in when there is work involved, i know i need this time in the morning to gather my senses and take time to start my day.

Increasingly it is hard to write, brain activity has slowed to a frightening crawl as i become consumed with job-search obsession, wondering what is happening in my life. I can hardly think beyond the moment in front of me constantly watching the Internet for job postings and possibilities.

I did start career counselling last week and was initially encouraged by the counsellors vive and positive attitude but the reality remains that career change is going to be a long hard pull up hill, in the snow, against the wind. Both ways. I am overwhelmed by the process ahead, that is what has clouded my ability to think and drive forward. To write here, it is back to the feeling of trying to run through deep sand. I feel like i should be going faster as hard as I'm working. I desperately need out of the sand. This entry sucks.

A Normal Sunday

Today i had a brief interchange with someone close to me. The person said they were glad it was Friday and i laughed and said me to! The person said it was always Friday for me, being unemployed, and we laughed and that was that. But i started thinking. Not everyday is Friday for me.

My days feel more like Sundays.


It is my, albeit limited, experience that the Sunday of a hardworkin' man have an ominous sense of foreboding about them. It may be Sunday, a day of rest, but tomorrow is Monday. For my part the realization of Monday kicks into gear and i begin to organize the rest of my Sunday around what has to be done. A preparatory ritual for the new week where i rush about trying to get things done, shoe horn a little play time in the mix, then the day is over, the kids are in bed and its late and things didn't get done and tomorrow is Monday. The beginning of the week and the weekend is over.

I dread the end of Sundays, it always means the beginning of Monday is coming soon. But right now the beginning of Monday feels like the start of Sunday, so much pressure to do it all--family time, house-work, play-time--and it just goes on and on and on.

There is always a faint hope for work, just beyond the horizon, but nothing is written in stone. It is this hope that i rely on to drive me forward though each passing Sunday sees the hope diminish slightly. Each coming Monday fades into a day that in which i set standards and goals and watch as the routine of my life slips away--just like a normal Sunday.

Get Up Tomorrow and Keep Trying

I've recently joined facebook. Obviously, i can't stop writing about it. Tonight, though, i searched out people I went to high school with. I don't know why. But, ironically, there weren't that many people i knew.

"Who were you?" i found myself wondering over and over. Faces of couples and individuals who have no relevance to my life, none what so ever. Honestly, there were faces i never spoke a word to. My high school wasn't that big, but it wasn't small either, but more than size it was me. I was quiet, shy, and self-conscious and if i wasn't one of those i was generally awkward. Never popular, always present. My town was a foot ball town so i played soccer. In the spring it was baseball and i sucked at baseball. In the summer we just did our best to stay cool. In the winter, well, you wrestled or played basket ball so i did drama and choir. I read a lot of books. A lot of books and i took French. I was the hidden classmate outside the insular core of a small group of friends that deviated very, very little.

I still have friends from high school. Mostly guys i skied with. We bonded on the mountain, throwing ourselves down the hill for a common cause. A couple of us learned to mt. bike together, we fished and even did a bit of hunting. We are still connected, casually and friendly and we can talk after six months as though no more than a week has passed. For these friends--from that time in my life--i am deeply grateful. But i was struck by the close friends i once had whom i haven't spoken too in 10 years. These were the faces that have cut me closest to home.

I was tempted to message a couple of them via facebook but realized quickly that my messages would come off as they were, emotional response at seeing their faces after so long. Emotional response fueled with beer and tempered with time. A couple of those faces were so close to me. So intertwined in friendship and life and they have smiling faces on photographs that are the small covering of their lives and stories. Honestly i am afraid to pull the coverings away and i wish to God i had never seen facebook, that i had never signed up.

Invariably it would lead back to this place and what am i feeling? Hurt? Regretful? Nostalgic? A combination of all?

I'm beginning to feel like I'm turning 30 and i have no fucking idea what I'm going to do and 10 years ago i never thought life would have put me here. Let me be clear, i don't regret being here, i don't wish it was different, but i never would have guessed this would be me. I didn't expect to see a lot of those faces ever again.

Seeing all those faces stirs up the old isolated lonely feeling that was so common to me in high school. Feelings i had long sense either coped with or outgrew or fought down but the emotional response to the ghost lined hall ways of Pendleton High School are as real as they were when i graduated.

I'm afraid somethings never change and there will always be a part of me stricken with self doubt and insecurity. All i can do is get up tomorrow and keep trying.

The blanket of silence, the early morning light that illuminates the cracks in the blinds as though the could glow just faintly. Occasionally a car passes, headlights reflecting off the windows that have no blinds. My chair squeaks. The baby makes noises in the last little bit of his sleep. There is a cadence and rhythm to my mornings, the key board, the soft light of the computer screen the coffee maker as it spits the last bit of ethereal black coffee into the pot the ear half tuned the boys as they sleep, ready to get them what they need and hoping they stay asleep for just a minute more, maybe two.

There is a sense of emptiness upon me this morning, the morning rhythm remains the same, in form, but the general feeling is distracted. My focused has gone wanting and the individual turns of life, each manageable on its own, are combining to be one giant snafu. This is my third attempt at writing this morning, who wants to read this dribble? This mindless reflection on who i am, what i am doing, where i am going--or not?

It seems my blog is degenerating into the indulgent reflections on the unfair nature of life. The constant focus on trying to lift out of the whole, the unemployment, the need for work and identity. Try as i might, i can not lighten the words that appear on the screen, almost as though i have no control over what i write.

I can feel the frustration well up so I've got to stop, today. Tomorrow is another beast altogether.

Seems No One's Lonely Anymore

Yesterday i had a Greg Brown song running through my head, i think it is the opening track from his album "Covenant", i don't remember the song title. It goes:

"Half the people i see these days are talkin' on cell phones, driven' off the road and into cars./ People used to spend quite a bit of time alone, seems no ones lonely anymore./ 'Cept you and me babe, 'cept you and me..."

This isn't the first time this song has been stuck in my head, Greg Brown has a haunting, deep, voice with effecting lyrics and complex melodies laced throughout his music. I enjoy the slow lonely feel of his music, it being less dark than Tom Waits but no less haunting and intriguing. I suppose the effect of those lyrics hit me hard as it relates to facebook. "It seems no one's lonely anymore" is, I believe, an ironic take on the way we stay connected to friends and family.

Connectivity on facebook--and email, over the phone, instant messaging, even blogging, or anything electronic--is not the same as seeing people face to face, being in relationship with the physical person. So much of how we communicate and relate to the people around us is based on a reliance on email and text messaging. For my part it is easier to organize my thoughts around written word and the vague, informal lexicon of texting. But i know, at its heart, is often my lazy or fearful nature of vocal contact, then face to face. This sense of control than can be obtained by electronic communication--electronic community--has this danger of being so connected, in an impersonal way that it becomes the antithesis of community in that we are suddenly isolated to a computer for human community and contact.

Not to say social networking forums are inherently bad things. They have a very real and useful place in our lives. So far I've loved being able to see pictures and updates from the lives of old friends and to stay connected to the daily lives of the people i only see occasionally due to busy and conflicting schedules. But the danger remains that it becomes the social circle. The little status comments become the intimacy of friendship and presently we are no more than a friend of a computer and face we no longer really know.

A Grave Yard Called Facebook

There is a lot rattling around in my head right now. I feel like a can of spray paint with the marble clanking against the sides as I'm shaken up and slowly the pressure is release. Except I'm not a solid color because life isn't that simple. Three events, this past weekend, have served to through me a little bit. I finished the book Ride With Me Mariah Montana, by Ivan Doig, i signed up for facebook, and my wife and i watched the movie Crazy Heart. Initially i had a hard time putting the three together, they seem relatively unrelated but the book compelled me to dive into facebook. We saw the movie because it was supposed to be very good, and it is very good, but it ties in as well.

Briefly, Ride With Me Mariah Montana, is an old ranchers life introspective as he travels around Montana with is daughter and her ex-husband who are chronicling the life of average Montanans in the build up to Montana's centennial to statehood (good book). Crazy Heart is a film about Bad Blake, a burnt out country singer whose life is heading toward ruin from alcoholism. He meets a young music writer after a concert in Santa Fe and she and he connect and he finds himself on a slow lonely road to redemption. Facebook is a graveyard from the past.

There is no surreal connection between the three, but it has seemed that one has informed the other over the course of the last few days. I could say that, to some degree, the book inspired me to delve into facebook but recently i have been wondering and thinking about a lot of friends that have evaporated from my life and are alive to me only in memory. But their faces are beginning to fade as i grow up, discover my life, go my way i realize they are too. There are people that i was very close to who are living rich, full, and successful lives. Stories wrapped up in tragedy and joy and by and large, it is my fault, i have missed it. Facebook has been a bit haunting, like walking through a graveyard of faces and friends i thought i would never see again.

I don't have the expectation of rekindling these long past friendships with a great degree of intimacy. I don't really think the platform for meaningful friendships rests on facebook. I can see that the people i am close to i will remain close to, acquaintances will remain so, and the ghosts from my past will see my children and i will see theirs. As much as anything i want to know that they are okay, to see their lives--even briefly through the snapshots of facebook, and allow them to see mine.