Soul Coughing

I'm tired from being sick, a little tired of being sick, but kind of okay that my body has forced me into a bit of a stupor. Two days this week I have spent on our living room couch, largely confined to soul coughing, reading Anne Lamott, napping, reading The New Yorker, thinking, sniffling, blowing my nose, reading The Sun Magazine, listening to a bit of music (but not much because my ears are stuffed and muffle the nuance of most anything), reading Laurie Halse Anderson, napping a bit, and then reading Donald Hall. I've mostly stayed off my phone and been on the computer only to write and read a few good articles. These have been my days. Well, all that and the usual amount of existential panic. I get that whether or not I'm sick.

This panic (which a more reasoned observer would likely call anxiety) stems in part from the fact that I'll soon quit my job and need another job. I can't think of much I want to do for a job. This apathy could be the sick and tired talking or me just being so burned out by the job I have, but it is a feeling and way of thinking that I have had for longer than this illness, longer than this calendar year, longer than my daughters have been alive, longer than I have been married. It doesn't help to have so enjoyed these days of being sick on the couch, to have savored them more than most any other days this year. I've read an absolute ton, done some writing, and had some ideas become maybe a pixel or two clearer. I still live with my usual panicked anxiety, but if I could live like this, even with the terrible, wet cough, I think I'd be happy.

There are jobs to which I will apply, even some teaching jobs to which I might send applications out of desperation. My hope is that one leads to something more interesting and something more interesting after that. Maybe I'll trip into some connection with writing. It could happen.

This sickness started over a week ago and continues. I stopped taking medicine for it. Rest seems the only cure. I'll get better. That or I'll die. Those are the two choices. It will take some time to figure out which way things turn out this time. To quell my existential panic about these things I remember that I've always gotten better and that evetually we all die. It will all happen.

For now I'm going out for a slow walk. Winter, like this cold, is hanging on longer than it should. The sky is too blue for the cold, and yet there it is. I'll pull on a hat and my fleece. The dog will get excited and whinny. Yes, I'll tell her, let's go together. She won't care where we are headed, whether spring has truly arrived, the quality of my wet cough, or jobs. She feels not the least bit of existential anxiety. Not ever.

Home I'll return to the couch. She will stand next to it, lick my hand or feet, and wag her tail. I'll pet her neck and scratch her behind. She will go lie on her blanket, I'll read more. Or maybe I'll stare out the window, perhaps into the future. When it's all too much, when the soul coughing wracks my chest and will, I'll lie me down to sleep and pray for something my soul to keep.

Elusive Music

At a record store in Burlington I heard some music so incredible I had to ask one of the guys up front, "Who is this?!" I said it with some desperation because I couldn't believe what I was hearing it was so good.

"It's this guy," the kid said, holding up this album.

I was about to say, I'll take it, when he said, "it's this crazy rare thing. This record goes for hundreds of dollars. It's crazy good, isn't it?"

I said that it was and noted the artist and title — Fitz Gore & The Talismen's Soundnitia — in my phone so I could find the music later. It's the twenty-first century. Everything's available online.

Except, not so much.

Of Fitz Gore & The Talismen there is all too little available, damn it. There's this magnificence and he does a great version of Horace Silver's Song For My Father (from which Steely Dan lifted the hook for "Rikki Don't Lose That Number"). If that's not enough to make you want the album, we are hearing different things. I want that album bad! But it just isn't there.

This is disappointing but I also like that there is something so great in the world but not available to me. I can dream about it but not have it immediately. I need more of that in the world. More of less. Yeah, that sounds almost as good as Fitz Gore & The Talismen.

Still, if I find Soundnitia in a record bin for anything less than $150, I'll probably buy it on the spot. Less is good, but Fitz Gore is even better.

Sick Leave

This is the first I've sat at the computer to write in days. I caught a cold last week that, while we were in Vermont, turned into something quite awful. I couldn't drive us home Sunday and spent Monday on the couch passing in and out of sleep, sneezing, barking a wet cough, and wheezing. This morning I am foggy, but able to sit and type while listening to music. Doesn't sound like much, but it's a world of improvement.

Throughout the sickness I maintained the habit of writing three Morning Pages each day. The pages are in my basement office and I'm too tired to go inspect them. Good. There's almost nothing in them. I wrote how sick I was and how far from finishing each day's pages. I trudged through those pages.

Is there a point to that kind of thing? Yes and no. Start with no.

Nothing of consequence came out of the words on those pages. Nothing in them will come out and become some new piece of writing. Nothing. Not a word. Four days of pages like that means over three-thousand words of nothing. I should have slept instead.

But I don't really believe any of that

As of this morning, I've done 1,747 days in a row of Morning Pages. Even sick and completely fogged over, I wrote three pages. The exact number of days is unimportant, but that many days adds up to a feeling. The habit of beginning each day with writing has become so important I do it even when sick and far from home. This isn't willpower. It's that it has become a reflex, a comforting habit.

Another habit I have been trying to establish is posting to the blog each day. Well, I blew that this weekend. I couldn't get a good piece together when I was that sick. Three things come to mind about that:

One: I can return to posting now that I'm healthy. There's no penalty for having missed a couple days. No one is grading this. I can forgive and understand the lapse. To suffer guilt or give up are the acts of a fool.

Two: Technology gets in the way. Morning Pages continued because pen and paper are simple. Blogging requires all sorts of mediation. I didn't bring a computer on vacation because I wanted to be with my family. The first morning at the hotel, I used a computer in the lobby. By the second morning I was too sick to go down there. Paper and pen are always available. Computers and wifi, not so much.

Three: I should bank a few blog entries to draw on in times of trouble.

I'm getting healthier and understanding things about myself and about writing as I go. Being sick yesterday I read, slept, and daydreamed. I found a possible approach to a book idea I've toyed with for years. The idea has to do with Morning Pages, health, and the ways in which the two feed off one another.

It feels good to be back to blogging. It feels good to have stayed with Morning Pages. It feels good to have shed the worst effects of this cold and to know that things will get better with each passing day. Mostly it feels great to know that I'm still a writer in sickness and health, until death do us part.

Blogs, Generally

I'm five hours away from home, groggy from a terrible cold and medicine I've taken to get me through. I have a cup of decaf for my throat which was so sore that swallowing woke me at four and wouldn't let me get back to sleep. I'm far from home, up early, and laid low by this cold, but have done my three Morning Pages and know the day will get better.

Yesterday, in Cait Flanders' newsletter, was this passage about blogs:

I've been craving stories. Journeys to follow. Even just the "boring" (NOT BORING) updates we used to share on blogs. Like what are you thinking about right now? What have you been curious enough to actually learn more about? And where are the BEGINNERS!? Where are the people who are raising their hands and saying "I have no idea what I'm doing, but here's what I'm attempting and my progress so far"? I miss those days. Blogging was actually fun, back then.

I get that. Almost all the blogs and newsletters I read are very focused and the writer is an expert (if not the expert) on that idea. This is how one builds a platform (ugh) and a following (ugh), through specific focus such as on living frugally, being much more Zen, or retiring early to name a few I have been reading. These are good for now, but I wonder if, like subscribing to Runners World, that focus wears thin. I could only subscribe to that rag for eight months before the same damn run your fastest 5K! article would make me puke.

My interests are general and so I enjoy Austin Kleon's and Alan Jacobs' writings which focus on the lives of their writers. Thoreau was focused on his living near Walden, but really it's a memoir of living. I like memoir. I like blogs that feel like listening to a friend. My friend is a photographer, but that's only a slice of what we discuss. Then there are Genesis, turntables, our shared history, the Thousand Islands, parents and wives, geology, writing, books, friends, and whatever else we think of.

Go back to the magazine comparison. I like The New Yorker and The New York Times, and I love The Sun because they talk about most everything. There are themes and a feel to each, but they range all over. That's what I like and so, this far anyway, that's what I write.

I have my own recurring themes: Morning Pages, reading, teaching, schools, running, and so on, but there isn't just one thing the blog is about.

I'm unlikely to build much of a following or platform that way, but then again, who's to say? I think of the blog like Morning Pages and I'm on the last few lines of page one of three, about to flip over to a clean, blank page two. It's early in the morning. I have only the slightest idea what I will say on pages two and no idea how the thing will end. It's a journey, an exploration, a way of learning. I'm a beginner. I'm by no means the expert, though I'm feeling more confident in my expertise about a few things and maybe they will become the focal points.

I should go. The coffee and medicine have eased some of the pain in my throat. I've done Morning Pages (about how to do Morning Pages away from home) and written this post. It's time to see what else the day has to offer and what I might want to think about next. This is just the beginning.