a slightly unaligned weekend
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Journal
Well, I did not get everything I wanted to get done over the weekend done. Much of it, yes. Some of it, that stuff that is invisible to all but those in touch with the background, yes, much got done.
But not everything. It wasn’t so much a lost or misplaced weekend as an unaligned weekend. You know, like that one stack of CDs on the desk edge where the third, fifth and sixth ones down are not quite in line with all the rest. It would drive an OCD sufferer insane. To me it is just proof of God’s sense of humour.
As a man who is precipitously close to losing his heart as he writes this, irony and an awareness of the generic sense of humour of the Almighty is a constant companion. Don’t worry, I am holding on with bloodied fingertips to my latest vows. I know what a slightly unaligned minute, hour, day, weekend, year or life can mean.
It means life is an adventure. Chaos is my closest companion and the full emotional spectrum, love, fear and rage, and all the shades and shadows between, are my colourwheel, waiting for me to open my eyes, like a child who thinks if he keeps them tightly closed enough the monsters will go away. I grew out of that arrogance decades ago. I can’t live in the silence. It is a place for the lost.
Life isn’t for the cowardly. The truth is, alas, most people pick and choose their moments of personal heroism to maximize their hedonistic tendencies, accepting less than even a splinter’s worth of the universe because they have fallen so hard so many times. I recall just this past spring a kind warning that, having followed where I was lead, I was positioning myself for a great fall, without any kind of safety harness to cushion the pain and damage on the way down to the inevitable "thump".
And I fell. Like a stone out of the heavens. And there was pain and fire and carnage and not just the inevitable "thump" but the injury to others from the impact.
But I’m okay. I have fallen before. And, in all honesty, from greater heights, to greater pain and damage to myself and others. It’s gets tougher as you turn the corner and head into the homestretch, but you learn how to take the punch and roll with it, swallow the pain for the next time you need that jolt of adrenaline.
I live, not for the fall, but for the leap. To accept the fall, the danger in unaligned stacks, is to accept life and to roar at the thunder, cry in the rain and put your hand in the dragon’s mouth when that is what the moment calls for. If you want security, surety, practice lying to yourself in the mirror, as that is where you will find security: Illusions and delusions. Every stack has a few things out of alignment, we just tell ourselves that the misalignment is within our personal tolerances.
That concept having been blown impossibly out of proportion, I just want to say that I will not be doing anything less than trying to get caught up on my writing, editing, designing, publishing, recording and living. An old friend once told me that I have two gears and that the one not labeled "hyperdrive" is broken. I’m fine with that. I love that there are legends that you can hear a high-pitched metallic whine of massive gears emanating from my brain when I am asleep. The golem never rests.
Even in a room, a house, a world, a life full of unaligned weekends. My work is not done, and I am okay with that.
Love to all, all of you. Peace and joy. May you find your path…and may I not be on it, about to run you over.
strongest at the point of death
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Journal, Thoughts about Life
I am strongest at the point of death, bravest at the edge of despair, truest in the bosom of a lie and sharpest when blunted by faith betrayed.
I ran across this quote from me in a posting from a year or so ago on my blog. It was interesting to read.
My chess tutor in High School, George Sallows, used to warn my opponents that I was most dangerous when I was two pawns down. Something about the clarity of my mind under pressure and the fact that a lean board was simpler for and to my style of feral chess, where you attack your opponent until they are completely unhinged.
I have been cleaning up my blog (no, not deleting or rewriting, as that would be perverse and dishonest of me as a writer) but adding tags and fixing the occasional (okay, common) punctuation gaffe. Along the way I have been reading things I wrote 1, 2, even three years ago. Thoughts on love, war, peace, fear, hate, death, life. Early comments on people I barely knew at the time and who grew in my life, or of people who were, at one time, very important in my sphere and then faded.
It happens. And it is fascinating to me to be able to take the verbal snapshots and look at my life, sometimes from angles I had forgotten standing at, once upon a time. I never want to forget, anything. For when we forget, we give ourselves leave to lie to ourselves.
welcome to our world
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Candy Tothill, Journal
Insane weekend, featuring:
*Business presentations being prepped in the US and South Africa, including one for the US Army.
*A near arrest of a small, feisty woman by a small army of policemen.
*Various ghosts of the past manifesting themselves to their own folly.
*A box of assorted doughnuts.
*The dimensions of a book of poetry.
And I won’t explain any of the above. But Candy knows.
as I look around
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Candy Tothill, Journal
Candy accuses me of being a little "out there" when it comes to how much I demand from myself. She’s right.
People sometimes are confused when they criticize me and I don’t fall to pieces. But the truth is, it is because I have already beat myself up worse and demanded more. I am a brutal taskmaster, because I have seen what I can do when I get it right.
A healthy discipline? Probably not. But I don’t plan to return to the great grey that dominated my life over the last twenty years or so. I have purpose and path. I have the love of someone who doesn’t constantly ask "what have you done for me today" when I have already done more for them than anyone else ever has. My overachievement is an attempt to never underachieve.
Odd, on the surface, but I have seen too many people give up, give out, give in to the inevitable (to quote myself). I don’t want to look back one day and say "Wow, I took up space"…I want to be able to say "I wish I had a little more time to perform one last feat of the impossible, but on the whole, it has been a remarkable life". For the record, my plans include dying one day…but only after I have burned bright and hot and long and spent decades making up for lost time with my heart and head on right.
I am going to screw up along the way, just not the same mistakes I made there or there or there or then. I’ve paid my dues, knelt and taken my penance, and now it is time for the last charge…the Ascent of the Mountains of Life, not just out of curiosity or folly, but with a profound sense that, on the whole, I have gotten it right and have found love and have done what I could to fix that which I had bent or broken while surviving the worst that life could dish out (Okay, not the worst, but some pretty nasty body blows). I have come through this with my faith in God intact, my belief in love renewed and my intellect still hitting on most cylinders.
Candy, thank you for awakening me to the potential still yet unfulfilled. It is in you that I trust.
thought for the day
Posted by William F. DeVault | Filed under Thoughts about Life
You take the strongest, smartest and kindest person alive and lock them in an insane asylum for decades…they will not come out as they went in. Even if the asylum has no bars or doors…just life as it is.
Fight the darkness.
~so while hanging out in your corner...