20160615.0807

Every so often, I recall or put together some story about things my family and I have owned. One of them came back to me recently for reasons I only dimly see and am not entirely willing to discuss, but the story itself--insofar as I recall it--might be good, so...

My daughter, the resplendent Ms. 8, is like many children in that she had pacifiers in her early life. She is like many in that she had one or two that she favored. One of them was a green plastic thing, the side-pieces that prevent it going all the way into the child's mouth open, the button behind the nipple depicting a smiling cartoon face--not a specific character, just an abstract representation of a narrow-eyed or closed-eyed smile. However often her mother or I would put the thing in her mouth in the "correct" position--with the button positioned such that the eyes sat above the smiling mouth--she would invert it, although the resulting inverted smile was far from a representation of her mood. (Ms. 8 is generally happy. I am unsure where she gets so pleasant a disposition. I suppose it must be her mother.)

Because it was one of Ms. 8's favorites, when she, her mother, her father and stepmother, and I went to the City of Thunder on a day-trip one time, we took it along with us. Because she was young, she had it in her mouth as we went about the small, near-stagnant canal with which the City of Thunder seeks to emulate the Alamo City's famous and ever-growing Riverwalk. Because she was and still is a vigorous child, prone to expressing her excitement, she squealed in delight at getting to see new things with her Papa and Granny, her Mama and Daddy, and she flung her arms about in the throes of her joy.

You can, perhaps, see where this is going.

In one such spasm, her favored pacifier went flying from her mouth and hands into the slow-flowing water of the near-stagnant canal, doing so as we sat in a small craft on a guided tour through the lower reaches of the City of Thunder, trolling about the exposed appendix of the place. She flung, it flopped, it plopped, and it was lost in the wake behind us and the dozen others on the boat, who soon found themselves annoyed at the baby crying in their midst.

We disembarked soon after, of course, and continued to look around the area while afoot, stopping in at one shop or another. Ice cream was had, for the sun was bright and the day was hot. And as we continued to walk, looking at the thick green water, we saw something floating along in it, a nephrite against the malachite swirl, a leaf of grass against the algae scum. It was the pacifier, buoyed up and carried slowly by the faint current stirring the nearly still water in the heart of the City of Thunder--carried slowly away from where we were. I, being both jealous of property and desirous of a happy daughter, soon retrieved it, wetting only my hand in the event. (All the better, since I swim like a stone--and that stone is not pumice.)

Ms. 8 did not receive the pacifier back just then, of course. But she did receive it back, in time, only to later have to give it up--but that, of course, is another story...

20140101.0900

It has been three years now since I have made a blog post on Hangover Day.  While I had thought to wax rhapsodic about past New Year's experiences, I realized as I attempted to write several that I would be ill-served by doing so.  There are enough such narratives about already, narratives better documented than any I might muster and doubtlessly far more entertaining that any I have yet experienced, holiday or otherwise.  I need not add to them; I will write otherwise, instead.

My beloved wife and I traveled to the City of Thunder once again yesterday, passing over the wind-swept plains in haste to return to the offices of our perinatologist.  Our child was weighed and measured, and found sufficient; the physician noted that all looks well with the life growing inside my wife.  It is a comfort to know that things appear to proceed as they ought to for the baby.

In the above paragraph, I once again use one of the kennings of which I am fond and which I recall having discussed recently.  The device, a poetic renaming of a thing based upon its qualities and cultural associations it has (so a form of metonymy, really), is one typical of Germanic poetries; Beowulf uses it abundantly, as do the Icelandic sagas, and I, as a student of such things, find that it creeps into my usage as well.  It is not a roach that I seek to eliminate it but despair of ever doing so, but a gem unlooked-for that enriches whoever picks it up.

Such devices do move away from the literal, I know.  They are bits of figurative language that require background knowledge and understanding to untangle, and so they are in some senses distractions from the thrust of what is being put across.  For that reason, they are disfavored in technical writing and reporting.  Yet they are a means through which features of culture are passed forward, and they are a means through which the use of language may be made beautiful.  They allow writers and readers to exceed themselves, engaging more fully in the dialogue that the best writing is and thereby entering into the greater communion of the world.

If, then, I write of the City of Thunder as it sits as the chosen seat of the chosen rulers of the wind-swept plains of sweet-smelling wheat, then I write in a place not only where I write but that acknowledges the NBA, theoretically-representative federated government, and Rogers and Hammerstein, and I am connected thereby to the communities that understand and engage with such things.  It is far more interesting than to simply state that my wife and I went to Oklahoma City, and this context of writing is one in which interest is rewarded.

Others look for the concision above other concerns, and there is nothing wrong with that.  I am capable of writing in such a way, which I know from having done a fair bit of it and having taught others to do so (unlike Shaw and unfortunately many others, I do not think that teaching allows me to not know what I am doing).  But this is not one of those circumstances.  This is more hortatory and epideictic, and if I am to praise a thing that demands skill in the writing and the reading, I ought to show that skill, myself.  Hence the several metonymies in the piece--and the many others that will follow after.

20190620.0430

I've posted six times to this webspace on this date previously, in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. The 2015 strikes me as relevant to some of my present concerns; in it, I muse on going to an outdoorsy store in the City of Thunder's Bricktown and my ill fit for most of what it presents. There are similar stores in and around the Alamo City, and I have been to them--and I have found that I still fit ill in them, years later and in the part of the world where I would seem to belong. And I still muse upon some of the same concerns that I voiced four years ago; indeed, it is not so long a time, four years, even if there are some ways in which the world seems wholly different than it then did.
In and around the City of Thunder, I found a sense of non-identity in many of the people I encountered. That is, they did not seem to know who they were as much as they did who they weren't. Given such circumstances, I understand why many would cling to such shreds of certainty as they did, why they make so much of themselves being such and such kind of person, usually someone who hunts a particular type of game or shoots a particular brand of gun. But I am not such a person, and I have never been one, so I do not share that particular kind of affiliation; not sharing it, I necessarily stood outside, but I did not expect to remain in Oklahoma even as long as I did, so I was not terribly concerned about it.
In the Texas Hill Country, though, there is a much more affirmative sense of self. Texans, generally, know that they are Texans--and that means the Wild West still, but also arts and sciences in plenty, William Travis and Willie Nelson, both. A lot of that identity, though, still links itself to outdoor life, to hunting and fishing and shooting, and I do not do such things much if at all. (I'll occasionally drop a line in, when I have time and inclination, but the former is a rare commodity, indeed.) My heart may sing at a field of wildflowers such that it brings tears to my eyes to think on such beauty, but there are parts of me that still don't fit here.
It's part of why I am so eager to grill when I can (and I can't always, given work and the unusually wet weather this year--not that I'm complaining about the rain, since I know it might not come back for a good long while). Grilling and barbecuing both are time-honored traditions here, taken from others but not unappreciated, and their enactment and performance is something that does allow me to fit in in at least some ways. Given that I have been and remain somewhat anxious about the ways in which I fit, not least because how I fit affects how others are able to fit, it is some source of ease for me that I do.

20131120.0622

I understand that the last couple of posts made to this blog have been a bit briefer than usual.  Today's should be back to regular length, or thereabouts, although it may be a bit random in its structure; this one is a news post (with commentary, of course, because it is my writing).

My lovely wife and I went to our perinatologist in the City of Thunder (kennings make things better!) to have a checkup done on our forthcoming child.  The child is developing nicely, for which I am thankful; all ten fingers and all ten toes are present, and the limbs to which they are attached are moving about fairly freely.  The child's face is developing well, as are the many vital organs in the human body.  Too, we have positive confirmation of which pronoun we will need to use, having gotten ultrasound images (something about the term strikes the eye oddly) of the relevant equipment.  The grandparents have been notified, and others will be advised when the time is right.

There seems to be a baby boom going on at my workplace.  The last few weeks have seen several of my colleagues bring children into the world; I have not heard that any of them are doing poorly, for which I and others are grateful.  Unlike other such booms I have seen, there is not a commonality of names.  Many of the babies born to members of one of my former departments in the past few years have been named after the same line of English monarchs, which makes sense given that I have worked in English departments and the cultural cachet of the Bard, but it does set up a potentially confusing situation.  Overlapping names can be problematic.

One of my colleagues, Dr. Helen Young, at the time of this writing a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney (information here), has released a call for papers that seems to have originated in the Tales after Tolkien Society of which she is the head and of which I am part.  The project seems interesting, and I will most certainly be offering an abstract in support of it.  For one, I need the publication.  For another, I am committed to the kind of scholarship that the call suggests (as well as to other projects, including Humanities Directory and my own proposed SCMLA special session, both of which could use submissions).

The semester at my current institution is rapidly approaching its end.  Accordingly, there is panic in the classes as students realize that they have not done so well as they might have hoped, and there are few assignments and little time in which to correct matters.  For many, it is at this point too late, and a semester of slacking off is about to have the just and appropriate consequences.  Few contacts from parents are expected, although such things have been known to happen from time to time.  Comments about the phenomenon, which I am certain is not as recent as it typically assumed but has been less widespread in the past, are welcome.

Tomorrow may well have a more "normal" post, something more like a regular essay than today's few bits of unrelated comment.  But I make no promises.

20130918.1056

One of the things that has changed for me in the move to Stillwater is the perception of weather.

In The City, there are sun and wind, rain and snow, but they are filtered through the urbanness of the place.  The sun shines brightly but seldom, and even then, it is experienced more reflected from the towers of concrete, steel, and glass than in direct beams; its virtue is largely expended, although the annoyances of glare and heat remain in full force.  The wind blows, almost always up Eighth Avenue, frequently carrying with it the fetor of rotting food moldering in trash cans not yet emptied, or else the sickening stink of purgings from both ends of the mammalian digestive tract.  The rain that falls carries with it the particulate matter released by the daily deeds of the denizens and visitors to New York City, their millions of exhalations and excretions and exhausts sent heavenward and knocked back down to earth by falling water; being caught in a shower feels much like being caught under a car that does not retain its fluids well.  And the snow, although it sits whitely for a time, is soon discolored by all manner of things, piled up by others always in the way of yet others, and it does not drain well when it melts.

Rarely, though, did I hear thunder echoing through the concrete canyons, even in the most violent storms.  The rain could fall such that I could not see ten feet in front of me, but the only sounds were of the rain itself and the noises of those who were forced to be out in it.  The retort of superheated air to the insult of lightning flashing through it seldom came to me while I was in The City, and, having grown up in the Texas Hill Country where such sounds are expected, I missed hearing the profound bass rumblings that said "storm" to me.

In several of the last few days in Stillwater, rain has fallen (and it has been welcome).  As it has found its way from cloud to ground, it has been heralded by the erratic strobing of lightning leaping across the heavens and to earth, and instead of trumpets to sing of its arrival, the rolling of kettle-drums has sounded among the meteorological cannonade to let me know that I have come to a land where the storms announce themselves in pride and majesty.

Their song has been a comfort to me.

20140123.0703

I have addressed the use of kennings before, at least as the device exists in the world (and as it occurs to me to look over once again in preparation for discussing with my students works which include them as a matter of course).  They are in many cases metonym or synecdoche, references to things by association or by component part, and I note that I use some variant upon them to describe the places I have been and those in which I live and have lived.  The City of Thunder, Bedfordside Garden, Sherwood Cottage, and their like occur to me as being such references, even if their meanings are perhaps obscured by the specificity of their fields of reference.  (But only perhaps.  I have few secrets.)

They are forms of encryption, such devices, methods of reducing certainty and clarity and therefore methods used to hide--although in such a way as asks to be found, as with the embedding of Cynewulf's name in runes in his verse (you can guess what I have been teaching, yes?).  If I call the place where I grew up Nimitz's schooltown, it will not take much to figure out what and where I mean.  Similarly if I say I studied at Gaines's school, or the Chaucerian Allen's.  And with that ease comes the suggestion that the task is to be done, the puzzle solved; it is not much of a cover that so readily falls to the floor.

And in such a case, why would it be used to hide?  (As might be guessed, this line of thought proceeds from what happened in my classroom.  Say what it is that I have been teaching.)  If the mask accents but does not obfuscate, to what end is it as a device for hiding?  For when I put the question to my students, they suggested almost to the last and least of them that the slanted embedding of identity amid anonymity surrounded by riddles and elegies and the talk of the best of trees was meant to hide the writer in the work.  I know that my place on the ground floor of the ivory tower limits my view sharply; there are walls about the grounds over which I cannot see, and my students still stand at the gates, having not yet fully entered, so that they can yet see the streets surrounding.  There may well be a thing in the text of which I am unaware but that their circumstances make obvious to them; if there is, it is knowledge I wish to possess.

I wish to possess all knowledge, actually.

Perhaps, however, there is a cultural current among my students that suggests to them that the only reason to hide a thing, however badly it may be hidden, is to actually conceal it from the casual viewer.  And if there is such a thing as that, I sorrow, for it is a means by which to isolate people from the wondrous intricacies in the depths of things.  The solid stone beneath us is by no means simple; its structure is complex and glorious if we but look closely enough at it.

20150316.0818

I realize that I am a little later than usual in writing this little piece. It is my break. I am ostensibly on vacation. I may be permitted to laze about a bit before diving back into things, I think.

That said, there are things to say. Ms. 8, the Mrs., and I took a little trip to the City of Thunder yesterday, enjoying the kindly spring weather as we crossed the re-greening plains between it and Sherwood Cottage. (Yes, I know it sounds like a fantasy novel write-up. You are invited to guess why.) There, we ran a few errands that we had allowed to pile up, including getting a couple of nicer shirts for me; since I have job interviews coming up, it makes sense that I have clothes worth going to them in. We also picked up a number of books for Ms. 8, including copies of some that I had had as a child. A good time was had by all.

In the evening, the Mrs. and I read a few of the books to Ms. 8, who seemed variously interested in and unaware of the efforts. I noted a few...oddities in them, things that I did not realize as a child and that would likely have occasioned no comment when the books were written and released but now strike me as strange. In The Poky Little Puppy, for example, the puppies' mother makes them chocolate custard for a dessert, which the eponymous puppy eats. Yet chocolate is poisonous to dogs. One has to wonder what kind of family dynamic is in place that has a mother make such things for her children. One has to wonder also what kind of metabolism the poky puppy possesses to eat a whole chocolate custard with no penalty.

Yes, I know "It's just a kids' book. It's just a story." We make meaning through stories. We tell stories to tell ourselves who we are and who we want to be. In some sense, we do not exist as thinking beings without them. Having such oddities in the stories we embed into our children's minds early on, then, has effects upon them--and, to those who will say "I had such stories, and I turned out fine"...did you? Did you really? Are you fine? Are you happy with it? Did your cohorts who also had such stories turn out fine? Is the state of the world as it is really a result of people having turned out fine?

I have had opportunity to consider such things.

The break is not a wholly removed thing; work continues, of course, and not only in such writing as I do here. More, the kind of thinking that underlies the work I do, the habits of mind and results of long practice that are about to allow me to make much of freelancing opportunities and that will help me get a few more job applications sent out (and maybe get a paper written), never stop. They are always with me, making the world more complex and, if at times more absurd, all the more engaging.

20160416.0816

Continued attention to the paratextual details of my posts to this webspace seems to be helping. I am making adjustments to the ways in which I present materials here, some of which have hopefully been noticeable. The way in which I handle the initial capital seems the most obvious; I have taken to enlarging it, backgrounding it in red, and rendering it in white instead of in the darker, more normal type. It is not as the medievals would do it entirely, to be sure (although if there is an example of such color-swapping, I would love to hear of it), but it has a similar effect. I hope that it is a salubrious one, something that makes what I write here easier and more enjoyable to read. And I hope that my continued adjustments to the paratextual features of what I write in this webspace will serve similarly. (Indeed, having such a workshop as this is useful; trying things out here for use later seems a good idea--and I do have future plans.)

Amid the continuous adjustments, I will be continuing to assess the papers my students have submitted. Not as many did as should have done so, but that is to be expected; it is rarely the case that I see 100% submission of minor assignments, and the papers that came in yesterday are preliminary review versions of major papers. It does make for less work for me to have to do, so I cannot make too much complaint. It has the advantage of freeing up some time to attend to other assignment materials; I have to compile information for the final exams my students voted on taking. Most of that task is done, but the documentation needs a bit more adjustment, and there are a few final points that need to be addressed in it. That I will have a little extra time to work on it, thanks to a lowered assessment burden, is good. (That I have to respond to some institutional pressures at the moment is less so, but I am still going to work with those students who have acted in good faith.) So there is that.

There is also this: My mother-in-law is up from Texas. She is attending a function in the City of Thunder, which is but an hour away from Sherwood Cottage, and so she is staying with her daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law while at the event. It is a good thing, truly. The Mrs. appreciates getting to see her mother, and Ms. 8 delighted at "Oma!" being at the house. (My mother-in-law is of Texas German descent; small touches help connect her to her heritage, as well as connecting my daughter to hers, and I approve of them in general.) I have stayed with my mother-in-law while attending functions in the past, as well, and I do not begrudge returning favors done me; it helps that my mother-in-law is a reasonably unobtrusive houseguest, and her attendance at her event means that I am not being discourteous when I sit at my computer and write in this webspace or struggle to do the work that seems always to continue.

20131023.0628

Some assorted news is available.  One item is that my wonderful wife and I took a trip to the City of Thunder yesterday, there to have some tests done regarding the upcoming addition to our family.  Results look good.  The baby has ten toes and ten fingers--and in fine familial fashion, two were lifted up in salute of the ultrasound's probing.  (I leave it to you to determine which two.)  Blood was drawn to look for a few other things, but there are as yet no physical signs of causes for concern, which is a joyful relief for us.

Other news is less important, although also joyous--at least in the minds of my compatriots in the work of teaching.  Before the trip, I was able to get two classes' papers graded--and one set of them even made its way back to the students (the other waited until after the trip was done).  I actually managed to get caught up to myself for once, a phenomenon I know will be short-lived, since another assignment is coming in today.  Still, the rare sensation of being where I need to be in my work was welcome; I shall have to do it again sometime.

Another item is that Humanities Directory still needs submissions.  It is joined in this by my proposed special session for the 2014 South Central Modern Language Association conference, to tale place in Austin, Texas.  Seriously, give me more work to do.  I look forward to reading what you send in; perspectives from any discipline that can conceivably be regarded as being in the humanities are welcome, and a trip to the beautiful Texas Hill Country is worth taking (especially at the time of the conference, when the heat will be more or less over but cold has not set in--for it hardly ever does).

Major news points done, some commentary: I find that my thoughts are increasingly overtaken by the evidently healthy baby my wife carries.  The names we have selected run through my mind and over my tongue, through the end of my pen and my fingers on the keyboard (if not in this venue).  With each iteration, they grow more pleasant for me; I am increasingly enamored of them and of the child they represent.  Even now, I smile to myself despite the sure knowledge that nobody sees it.  I cannot help but do so; I am going to be a father.

But I know that I am not ready for the responsibility of raising a child.  In many ways, I still feel as thought I am a child, navigating a world made for those bigger than me and confused by the subtle signs and signals that flow around me.  There is much I do not understand and that I feel I never will, and the idea that I am tasked with helping a new life learn to live in the world when I cannot (else why should I seek refuge in the ivory tower, despite the sometimes-uncomfortable chairs?) frightens me; I fear to fail the child who is mine.

I know that I will be amply supported.  I know that my wife, my child, and I are greatly loved, and that many people stand ready to render much assistance.  But even with all the help in the world, things can get screwed up--and my child, all of our children (I can actually say that now), are too precious to suffer such error.

20140617.0953

Since I have been making short posts anyway, I thought I would try to make a post via email. Evidently that is a thing that can be done that I have been missing out on doing...

Just a few minutes ago, I got back to Sherwood Cottage from the City of Thunder (muted though the Thunder was not too long ago...), where I put my wife and daughter on a train. They are heading to the Texas Hill Country to visit family and help with my wife's elderly grandmother. (The phrase "elderly grandmother" was redundant for a while. I suppose that it once was not, and now is less so than it was, say, thirty years back.) My father-in-law and his wife headed back to the Natural State on Sunday, and my folks headed up to Iowa this morning, so I am at the house alone and will be for some few days. It is not necessarily to my liking, of course; I rather like having my wife and daughter around. But I cannot say that I do not appreciate having the time to work on The Work and other things, which I cannot do when I have company over and can do only slowly while taking care of Ms. 8 as she deserves.

It will take me a bit to get back to where I ought to be in terms of the thinking that underlies my writing, even such informal writing as this. What stringing words together in some semblance of order requires is different by far from that which being hospitable and maybe even friendly requires. Writing is a largely solitary activity, even for those projects (such as the Tales after Tolkien Society blog) that work with multiple writers; each of us works alone, only coming to the others with a draft of the text in hand. Being with people, though, requires direct interaction and sustained. It offers an immediacy that cannot be had through the interchange of text, and it is valuable therefore, as well as in offering actual physical closeness and thus a range of sensation that the written word can only evoke. It is greatly to be esteemed therefore, and I do value it.

But I am also an introvert. I draw strength from quiet and expend it in being among people. My family is certainly worth the expenditure, and I do not begrudge it. Indeed, as the athlete exults in the performance despite being exhausted at its end, I take pleasure from being with those whom I love. But just as the athlete must train between performances and gain strength to be able to enact them, I need time away and apart. I have it now for a little while, and, again as the athlete, I do not want to grow stiff and cold from too much time training and not enough in the performance; I look forward to having my people with me again. Even so, I will not waste the time alone that I have.

20190615.0430

I have posted in this webspace on five previous 15ths of June: in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. It seems clear to me that I have gotten more diligent about posting as I have moved along. It's a good thing, far better than the opposite. I am uncertain how long I will be able to keep it going, though. There is much that needs my attention, and I am concerned that, at some point, the other work I do will prevent me from attending to this. I do work to foster a buffer, and retrospection is helpful with that (the materials I treat are already present, so I do not have to wait for things like I do when I am commenting on current events), but building a buffer takes time, and I may not always have as much of that available as I would like to have. And I may not be in a good frame of mind to write when I have the time--if I ever am; I know some might look at what I write and argue that I am not.
The two prose pieces among the five I've posted on this date in past years (the other three are verse) attract some attention. The first one, from 2014, reflects a bit on my first Father's Day as a father and upon my then-new fatherhood. (I still sit on the Arc of Attention, though I can already feel myself slipping towards the Trough of Delusion; Dad still floats on the Sea of Sagacity, even if he has to bail out his boat occasionally.) I am still learning how to be a decent father; while I flatter myself in many ways, I do not pretend that I do a good job at it. Honestly, the best I do is get out of the way and let Ms. 8 be her own excellent self, stepping in on occasion to pick something up she can't heft herself--and there seem to be fewer such things each day. That's as it should be; I won't always be here, and she'll need to be able to face the world without me, probably for longer than I'll be here to help her.
The other prose piece recalls a pleasant story. Ms. 8 has at this point long since given up pacifiers, though I think I might still have the one I retrieved from the stagnant ditch in the City of Thunder. (There is something nice about the kenning-like reference to cities; the metonymic names seem make the places less prosaic and more, somehow. But I am a nerd and given to rolling around in fantasy literature, so I would be expected to think such things.) She does still clutch her long-held and well-worn softie, though, and I know that I should be working to wean her away from it as I did her pacifiers and her bottles before. At the same time, I also know that her holding it does no harm. It is a shaped and stuffed piece of cloth given her by her mother's mother; it is a thing had since before she was born, a physical link to her earliest life. I have few such things available to me, and I prize them (though I have not always done so as I likely ought to have done). Why I would take hers from her is unclear to me.
Such questions as whether or not I ought to persuade her away from her softie are frequently in my mind. As I approach another Father's Day, I wonder how common a thing it is to question so.

20150620.1010

Today, I am doing something I have not done in some time: running the smoker. The Mrs. and I have two pork loins cooking in sweet hickory smoke over many hours today, and they promise to be quite tasty, indeed. My mouth already waters at the thought, in fact, and I wonder why it is that I have let so long pass between when I last did the work of smoking tasty, tasty meat and today. It is a thing I have long enjoyed doing, as I think I have attested in this webspace, one of the few out-of-door activities and "traditional" American masculinities I actively and explicitly enjoy (in the sense of "take direct pleasure from" rather than "benefit from," since I am aware that I experience significant privilege because I am a man).

This was pointed up yesterday as the Mrs., Ms. 8, my in-laws, and I went to Bricktown in the City of Thunder and puttered about. That puttering took us to an expansive outdoors store, one filled with hunting and fishing accoutrements, rifles and shotguns and poles and lures and jigs. I was bewildered by the display, confused by it in large part (except for the smoking and camp-cooking, with which I am familiar), and aware that it is not aimed at me (again, except for the grills). I am flatly not an outdoorsman, not a rugged individualist comfortable away from society and civilization, out in the woods with a knife and axe and rifle to make my way.

I do not want to fashion myself in such a way, as many so desire who shop at the outdoors store. (I have the sneaking suspicion that those who are such people without having to be fashioned are already out and away, or they make no commotion about the thing.) I know that I would rather be inside at home with a book in one hand and a drink appropriate to the time of day (coffee in the morning, iced tea in the afternoon, beer in the early evening, whisky or whiskey later on) in the other. I know that, while I do like my privacy, I like access to the things that population density permits, as well, and that I can make my privacy with a shut door. And while I have respect for the outdoors and appreciate what it can provide, I would rather stay inside--or, if the weather is right, on my front porch. (I believe in porch culture.)

But that does not mean I do not question how I fit in amid a masculinity that values at least the display of outdoorsiness. It is perhaps from something related to that anxiety that I value as highly as I do the work of the smoker I have going on even now, work that allows me to stay close to home--the smoker is in my driveway--while still doing a "man" thing, recognized as such by even the more bluff and rugged folks to whom I am akin and around whom I find myself surrounded, the town and the countryside against the gown I sought long and now seldom wear.

20140823.0823

I knew that this would happen...

Today is a good friend's birthday--which one, I think I need not announce--and my wife, Ms. 8, and I went to one of the suburbs of the City of Thunder to celebrate it with her. We did so at an Indian restaurant not far off the Mother Road, where we ate well (perhaps too well on my part) and enjoyed good company. It was a good way to celebrate.

Today, I think I will take the day more or less off. There are things I need to do about the house, of course, and my wife has a short shift today. But my own work can wait until tomorrow, when I return to it in earnest. For now, though...a quiet cup of coffee and a bit to read will be welcome.