I always intend to do more, write more, be more.

I always fail. Or, fade. Or just forget.

I should have a pen and paper next to me every time I decide to travel seriously into the Interweb. I always end up finding excellent websites and excellent leads for information and research. But then I make the most tenuous notes. Scattered scraps of notes that just go a-fluttering away. Or I decide that I will remember what led me to where. But then I remember something else or something else catches my eye and the original path that led me to that most wonderful vista is lost or left behind or simply forgotten.

Oh, Interweb. Who knows how much longer I will be able to roam through your ecosystems before they clear-cut you and make you safe for Steve Jobs and his horror show.

Work is a slow climb out of a deep ditch; methodical, irksome, tiresome, and always checking your footing. You slip a lot. You do a lot of standing at the bottom with your arms crossed in front of you looking at the rim while silently planning your ascent. You get slightly frustrated with yourself because it really isn't that great of a climb, and yet it completely stifles you. Eventually, you will get out of there with one furious burst of energy. It will almost be an explosion.

Today is another day at the bottom of that ditch. It comes on the heels of a rather pleasant weekend. At least, I believe it was pleasant. Any time spent away from home is good - for the most part. And any time spent in the out-of-doors is time well spent. I don't believe the the climate or the weather mar the experience, really. It can be cold and raining and it is still usually a good experience when you are outside. I tend to believe that the air's fragrance takes on new and wondrous aspects: wet leaves, damp moss, soaked twigs and branches, moist earth, the humus, the god-knows-what, and the this-and-that all adds their odor. Do I want to use the word 'odor'? No. I want the word 'scent.' That has a more benign essence. Or do I want 'essence'? Difficult. English is a wonderful language, sometimes...though, it can hold you up and deter you from finding easy meaning. Either way, a rainy day is as wonderful a day as any.

There was a lot I wanted to write today. Now it leaks out of my mind like water in an old cooper's barrel.

Perhaps I wanted to mention Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester with its nearly ancient cobbled paths and crypts and the hillocks and the weird knolls? How it is this maze-like park with strange trees and greenery all over the place? A beautiful park studded with tombstones aged well over 150 years? It is strange...because of their age, it is OK to walk over them and pay them little mind. It is high Victoriana. The crypts and mausoleums and decorated stones. The gated family plots and the stairways curling around knolls. The paths are more like deep-rutted holloways.

It is hard for me to believe that this was the first time I had ever been to this place.
More later.

I've failed to record anything in here for almost one month. It seems like I am one day shy of a month from my last post. And all of this lapsed time even after I told myself that I would be using this as one of my methods for getting back into the habit and practice of writing. Something written everyday just to get my mind running and moving in those directions. But didn't do that at all. And I really don't have a good reason.

Maybe there is a reason and it has to do with the catapulting of messages into the ether. I've been packing words like gunpowder into big drums and ramming them into the bottom of a 17 inch Howitzer...and then blasting them out into the distance. They fall like terrifying shrapnel on yonder entrenchments. No. Nothing destructive. It is all very productive. The words are being mined from the cavernous reaches of my mind like ore-slag and refined in blast-furnaces until a perfect iron-clad is removed from the fires to cool. Pig iron sent across from the frontier reaches and into the densely populated regions for some proper smithing. Or something like that. Something good is happening and I am writing - but like anything...like always...as always...I wonder if it is going anywhere other than toward the perpetual exchange of e-mails. Like post-modern pen pals or something. But I am gearing myself into the same rut I always gear myself into in these situations. I write, write, write myself into an open field after several days of rain and then try to hurry up and accelerate out of there.

[Can I mention that I hate sitting here at work and having to listen to the ninnies in the office? I despise them and their despicable lives. I hate their bitching, their shallow criticisms, and their all-around busy-body presence.]

So my writing gets sent off into the silicon ether in an attempt to further the slow movement toward...

I am completely overwhelmed by writing. Literature and history and philosophy and science and on and on and on. I cannot keep up with anything. Too much writing to read. I read the New York Review, The London Review, Harper's, essays, books, online journals, blogs, and this and that ad infinitum ad nauseum. And I am still left in the lurch.

It's been awhile, which is infuriating because
I promised myself that I would make an effort
To write every single day,
Even if it was something mundane
(Like this)
Or something profound and eloquent.
I know better than to expect productivity
Every single day
But I would still hope that every OTHER day
Would suffice and be equally decent.
But you get what you put in.

------

I dislike businesspeople.
I dislike their eager faces and their
'Ready to please' attitudes
Because they want a share of your pie.
Their utter lack of curiosity and
Their inability to enjoy anything
For its own sake and outside of profit.
I cannot stand to see them in their
Polo shirts and slacks, with their click-clack
Dress-shoes observing everything in mock
Interest while the modulator in their
Brain converts everything into margins,
Percentages, overhead, and dollars.
I hate that they are respected so much
For what amounts to their triumphant greed.
Their humor curdles milk.
Their smiles would cover a tomb in frost.
Their interests are the pockets on a stomach
Riddled with Diverticulitis, collecting bits of
Seed and shell and giving the body an opportunity
To wallow in internal infection.

The light has fully changed. Autumn's gilt edge has lent itself to the quality of Sunlight and the last vestiges of Summer clarity has receded for the year. It is easy on the eyes and softens the appearances of even the most troublesome sceneries. Autumn makes even the long-abandoned, dilapidated, and ramshackle farmhouses around here look picturesque.

The air has changed. Even when the temperature climbs, there is a dullness to the heat...an Autumnal dullness and softening that renders heat ineffective. But while it dulls the heat, it crispens the cool. I think Autumn tempers the climate so as to prepare life for the rush of invigorating air that comes with Winter. But that is just my opinion.

I still have two tomato plants living and actually still throwing up a few blossoms.
San Marzano Tomatoes are the best tomatoes I have ever grown. They are considered a 'Paste' Tomato and are slightly smaller than a full-blown Roma, but they are great for slicing and just simply snacking, too. I've had great success with dicing them and rendering a little juice from them. Beautiful.

It is seed collecting time and I always love this time of year. All the different types and the pods and the seed heads and the drying and desiccated bits lying on trays or in jars waiting for final Winter storage. I like brushing through the wispy weeds and snagging the best looking examples or rooting about in the soil looking for fallen seeds. All the different forms are amazing...and year after year I am still amazed.

What else? I am sitting here at work and trying to avoid doing anything. I am thinking about myriad subjects. They are not racing around my mind, but they are gathering, peacefully and in a scattered manner, in my mind like picnic-goers in a park. A broad park like something Olmstead would have designed. (I actually had to give a moment's thought to remembering his name...I need to excercise this brain a little more).

More later.