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This is my blog. I just went through a divorce; it was the worst thing that has yet to happen to me. This is me dealing with it and life. It's my blog; I write about what I want. I hope you enjoy. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** The above was me about three years ago. It is the most up to date digital photo I have.
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| Friday, I signed up for our office's version of Biggest Loser. Essentially, it's ten pounds in ten weeks for ten bucks. We all put in ten dollars, and if we make weight, we get our ten back and split the money of those who didn't lose their weight. So, this weekend I bought a couple books that should give me the upper hand. The first is The Bulemic's Guide to Losing Ten Pounds in Ten Days and Tapeworms and You: Weight Loss Tricks of the Fabulous and Dead. (PC Warning: I apologize for the above jokes. Both Bulemia and Tapeworms are horrible, horrible diseases; that I shouldn't make fun of. I apologize to everyone out there with no sense of humor and are overly sensitive to anything somewhat funny.) Seriously,though, I am happy that my work does such a thing. I will be working on losing weight this year for my health. I'm getting to that point in life where I need to start worrying about what can I do to make into the Adult Diaper years. I came into this world wearing diapers and eating pureed food, and my parents always tell me to leave things as I found them. So, I better damn well go out the same way. And hey, if a twenty year old woman wants to breast feed me again when I'm older, I won't complain. (How many people went Ewww?) So, Grifter will be focused on poetry and losing weight this first half of the year. I'm taking a couple months off dating to get some personal stuff straightened out, then come March/April, women will start populating my life again. I'll blog a little bit about dating, but not too much. I don't want to publicize another person's life even if I warn them about this little handy web journal of mine. It's looking like it's going to be a good year. Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| Last night, I did something that I haven't done in over six years. I shaved my goattee off. I have friends who have never seen me with a bald chin. The last time I shaved my face clean was for a job interview in August 2001. I didn't get the job. Since then, I went on two job interviews without shaving, and I received both of those jobs. I think that with the facial hair, I was more at ease during those interviews. I was comfortable with who I was. So why did I shave last night? I have no idea. I was triming my moustache, and I cut one side too short. So, I trimmed it down to stubble. I was going to leave the 'stache and beard as stubble. But I stood there in front of the mirror, and I just put on the shaving cream and bared my chin. I feel naked, and my chin and upper lip were very cold walking into the office this morning.It's strange, but I miss it. I don't regret shaving it, though. I have had girlfriends with long, long hair that got it cut off to about chin length. They described how dramatic it was. One girl cried. I thought they were a little over the top with their reaction, still do for the one that cried. But I understand them a little. I'm the same guy, but I look different in the mirror. I feel different; it feels sort of like a perspective change. I don't know if I like it. My face now looks soft and rounder than I remember. My goattee made my face look longer, and therefore thinner. Also, I have an overbite and a really weak chin. This becomes apparent without facial hair. Seeing that person in the mirror last night was a wake up call to my weight problems. I am heavier than I had pictured in my head. So, it's time to tackle that. For my health and my heart, I could stand to lose some pounds. I have that in my resolutions, and seeing my round face has reinforced that resolution. This feels like a very superficial post. I can't accurately explain what I feel with losing the facial hair. Six years of seeing myself with a goattee, and then it not being there this morning, was just a strange, strange experience. I hope you all are doing well. Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| Tuesday (1/15/08) was my first Poetry Writing class. I, unfortunately, had to miss this class due to unfortunate timing. I had e-mailed the professor to let him know that I unavoidably had to miss the first class. Yesterday (1/16), he replied with a syllabus, a handout and an assignment for a poem due Friday (1/19) at noon. There was no word count minimum or assigned structure. He said that I could use a poem that I had already written. However, I prefer to write new material any chance I can get. However, two days to write a poem? Damn, that’s hard. I wrote one, though, and it needs work, more than two days work. I will work on it again, tonight. I will see if I can get it near polished enough for class. I like to have my work as close to perfect as I can get it before I let someone else review it. That way, I am getting comments on stuff that I didn’t know needed to be changed. I hate it when a reviewer points out something that I know needs fixed. It seems like I am wasting someone’s time if they only give me suggestions that I already know need to be there. I have been reading some old favorite poems and some new ones for inspiration. William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas, Tennyson, Byron and e.e. Cummings have been looking me in the face lately. However, I am not finding inspiration in their words. I have been listening to Dave Matthews, Norah Jones, Coldplay and Staind seeking a spark of an idea in their lyrics. Nothing! No flash from the Muse, no lightning strike of beautiful images, nothing but a divorced man sitting in front of a blank page with cats running around. I picked up some books to do some exercises at the end of the chapters. One of the exercises was a list type poem, like “People I’ve Kissed,” “Mistakes I’ve Made,” or “My Refrigerator.” I thought, well, this couldn’t hurt. So, I wrote a poem entitled “What I Miss About You,” which a friend thought was going to be about my wife. But instead it is about a girl I dated a year or two before my wife. That was an interesting discovery by itself, but the poem surprised me because I don’t miss this girl. I just miss certain things she did. For example, she had to have her arm over mine when we held hands. When we would study together, she would get frustrated and need to get a coffee with two equals. Then she would stir it absent mindedly while we were reading. I don’t know why I miss these things because I do not miss her as a girlfriend. Maybe I miss her as just a friend? Maybe! But I hadn’t thought of her in a while, so it was weird that I wrote a poem about her. The poem itself is not very good, but it is practice. The poem that I want to write will have to be put on hold. I need much more practice. I want to right a poem about looking at myself in the mirror. Maybe it’s a little narcissistic, but I don’t think it will turn out that way. I’m in need of more practice, though. I don’t want it to be overly negative nor overly positive. I’ve always been strangely drawn to Van Gogh’s self portraits. Anyways, I got more writing to do. Have a great day! Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield - from Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson Five lines that put chill down my spine. How inspiring is that? Say that last line drawing out the pauses at each comma, and the beauty of poetry is known. It is of aging, but this is also applicable to any life. That last line to me is life itself; life is a series of challenges. Some are hard, and some are excrutiating. However, it is those last four words that make life worth living. No matter the hardship faced, no matter how many times we are knocked down, success is embodied by those last four words. The past few days I have been mulling over the direction that my life is going. My career, my hopes, my dreams, my goals have all been a jumble of questions and conflicting interests. The company that I work for has offices in many cities around the U.S. I have been looking at job postings at many different sites. One came up in Houston, Texas, that would be an amazing opportunity. However, that means leaving my family. It means starting over, again, new. The only consistency would be the foundation of my job, but even my day to day activities would change. The challenges would be wholly different because I would be designing parts for an entirely different environment. It would be growth in my career, my skills and my knowledge. It would mean leaving my family. I would only be four and a half hours away from my sister (Now, I'm eleven.) But I would be fifteen and a half away from my parents. The way the job market is looking, it would be a long time before I could find a job with my company back here in St. Louis. When the work slowed, I would probably have to move farther from my family, out to the west coast. I have relished coming back from Detroit to become closer with my family. It would mean putting a hold on attaining my Master's in Fine Arts, but it would be a fresh start to meet new people and experience a part of America that has only brushed my life. Ultimately, at the moment, the idea is a bust because I don't think I can sell my house quickly enough to be able to move to another state. I, unfortunately, can't afford rent and a mortgage. (Maybe if I could find renters, though.) But the important thing is what I have said. For me, life is change; life is a challenge, and it is in the striving that I find happiness. It is facing a new adversity and not yielding. So, while I cannot take this job, this opportunity, I have learned something about myself. I have found out that while I love my family with all my heart and soul, I am not content to stay in this part of the country (world?) yet. I want to meet a California hippy, and I want to experience the craziness of Seattle's culture. I want to see if everything really is bigger in Texas. Life for me is "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| During class, a woman wrote a story with a scene that I found extraordinarily beautiful. Her father had passed away, and the night before the funeral (but after the wake), she found her mother at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee. Her mother just sat there staring into space with bloodshot eyes and tear stained cheeks. (Hopefully, my memory is accurate in this regard.) One of my classmates thought this was unrealistic. She thought the mother would be sobbing and heart broken. However, I found this scene to be utterly amazing. This gal had caught her mom taking a break from grief to enjoy a cup of coffee. This struck a chord with me. I don’t know if it’s from all the reading and TV watching that I do, but I don’t find the mom sobbing as necessarily emotional. At times, I find that the writer is trying to elicit sentiment (a real emotional response) from me but achieves only sentimentality (a forced, hence fake, emotional response). I have seen people cry, and I have cried, too. It is sad, but it can be powerful if used correctly. However, the image of a young girl seeing her mom at a moment when she is so emotionally drained that she can’t cry anymore is incredibly powerful. It humanizes the mother because a person cannot constantly cry or wail. We cannot forever weep and beat our breasts. At some point, we have to stop to recharge our emotional batteries. Some times, we hurt so much that a distraction as simple as a cup of coffee is heaven sent. It is moments like this that interest me. Scenes like this are what I try to make my poetry about. Much better writers than me have written love sonnets and poems of beauty and wonder. I read these poems and love them. But who writes poems about holding hands or walking next to one another in a shopping mall? These are such tiny things that we hardly notice them, but they are the good stuff in life. They are the stitching that holds the fabric of our lives together. Everyone loves and remembers the big moments, the first kiss, the proposal or the wedding. But the big moments are all held together by little things like opening a door for someone or cuddling by the fire. This is what holds my interest; this is where beauty lies for me. Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| Every wednesday at work, a group of employees get together and order Chinese takeout from a little place nearby. During my three week vacation, I forgot how much I missed Chinese food day. We all get together and chat over fried rice. It was fun experiencing it again, and it reminded me how much I like the people I work with. I hope you all had a good day today. Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| Before I left for work, I turned on the TV to a cable channel. The topic was, "What does Hillary crying on TV say about her campaign?" I was shocked; why? I don't really know; the American media picks up every bit of useless information and analyzes it to death. One person was saying this is early signs of her quitting the race, and another person said it was a tactic to make her more human in the publics eye. Seriously, can't the woman just cry? I despise Hillary Clinton, but for goodness sakes, just let her have a cry and move on. Campaigning is a tough, exhausting process. So, she let a little emotion, through. Does that really signify anything other than she felt like crying? No. But, we have too much information. We know more about celebrity lives than we do about our own lives. It is sickening. Some parents know more about Britney's behavior than they do their own kids. I would love to America turn off the TVs for a week. Read, clean your house or better yet, spend it with someone you love. Play a board game with the kids, take the wife out for a walk. Make your husband take you shopping. Do something just stay away from the Tabloid media that only cares about ad revenue. I mean if John McCain scratches his ass with his left hand, it doesn't mean that if elected, he'll give tax cuts to the wealthy. It means he had an itch and was to indescreet to let it go. If Lohan decides to become an alcoholic, I don't care what brand vodka she drinks. Just don't let the girl drive drunk and kill somebody. So, turn off your TV's for a week, people. Hell, with TIVO, you won't have to miss a thing! Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| Right now, I am in my music phase. Nope, I don't play an instrument. I am not coordinated in that way. But I have found a few songs that I find particularly poetic, and after listening to these songs, I feel like writing. I have stabbed pen to paper, but nothing has come out of the ole brain upstairs. I am too busy wondering what it is about music or poetry that so stirs our souls. Is it the beautiful use of language? Is the fact that someone has an experience similiar to our own that resonates? My poetry class starts in a couple of weeks. I am very, very nervous about it because I can't seem to write anything. When I was in the height of my attempts at verse, I would just spew forth raw emotion onto the page. I would attempt to capture the smallest detail of how I felt doing a mundane thing "Holding Hands"  (excuse the blatant self-pimpery). Then, I would go back and agonize over the words to make sure they were correct. (Holding Hands still needs work, btw.)However, now, I agonize over the words instead of trying to convey emotion with them. I stuck in a structural rut, trudging through the mechanical motions, instead of just opening my emotional veins on the page. So, I am very, very nervous about the class. I want to turn in original works, but these original works aren't coming. So, instead, I sit listening to someone else's lyrics or verse and cringe. I think it's because I have no more noteworthy emotions left to convey. Hahaha!!! 2007 drained me of emotion. I am more nervous going into this class than I was going into the fiction class, and I love poetry way more than short stories. We'll see though, right? Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| Well, today is the last day of vacation. Tomorrow, I return to work for the first time in 3 weeks. I am definitely looking forward to it. I have a ton of stuff that I need to get done. This vacation was the perfect stress reliever for me. I got my place cleaned a lot but not spotless. I steamcleaned the two main carpets in the house. I hitting that point where I need to get back to work. Well, have a great day, and an even better week. Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
| Today, I vaccuumed and steam cleaned the carpet in my bedroom. Man, that was disgusting empty the steam return. Those two cats of mine sure know how to make a mess. It had to be them because I am clean. Definitely, the cats. Yup, I didn't contribute at all. I also watched some movies that made me realize that I am a huge dork. I have actually had conversations where everything said was a quote from a movie. Oh well, I like being a dork. Other than that, it is a cold day here in MO. Tomorrow, I get to vaccuum and steam clean the downstairs carpet!!! Yay!!!! Grifter Courage doesn't roar. It's that quiet voice at the end of the day that whispers, "I will begin again, tomorrow." |
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