I am reading a book called “How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving” by David Richo, and this passage struck me today:

Childhood forces influence present choices, for the past is on a continuum with the present. Early business that is still unfinished does not have to be a sign of immaturity; rather, it can signal continuity. Recurrence of childhood themes in adult relationships gives our life depth in that we are not superficially passing over life events but inhabiting them fully as they evolve. Our past becomes a problem only when it leads to a compulsion to repeat our losses or smuggles unconscious determinants into our decisions. Our work, then, is not to abolish our connection to the past but to take it into account without being at its mercy. The question is how much the past interferes with our chances at healthy relating and living in accord with our deepest needs, values, and wishes.

Where to begin … yeesh. First of all, I can’t write entries like this with Jonathan Coulton playing, no matter how much I like his music. Now that it’s off: in past relationships, I was often told that my past was a problem, something to “get over” — or, rather, something I couldn’t get over, and thus was a deal-breaker — so much so that I attempted to disconnect myself from it, to forget it in order to overcome it. As a result, my memory of my childhood is spotty at best. When I discover an artifact from it, I am often moved to tears not because I reminisce but because I cannot reminisce. Whole years of my younger life are gone now; in an effort to be “normal” I have created twice as much work for myself.

While cleaning my desk today, I found this photograph of my family. I think I am three years old in this photo, but I truly have no recollection of it or of being three, of having two parents in the same place. We all have separate homes now. And today I realized that I am still trying to make sense of that.

[Want to help me bust through my writer's block this month? Read about this exercise!]

garnish
me with
more than
green

side to side
start with
white plate
blue eyes

flutter
lashes
long and
cautious

where do
I find you
fresh and
warm

crisp or
wilted
fingers grasp
for past

shredded
hearts
dressed with
time

[Less than 100 words, but that's where it wanted to end. Want to help me bust through my writer's block this month? Read about this exercise!]

I woke up with one clear thought: pain. My face hurt; my lips were being pulled back from my teeth in a jack o’ lantern sneer. Opening one eye, I reached up to my lips and felt tiny hands.

“Hey, asshole,” someone very far away said. “Where’s the fridge in this place?”

My feet smacked bare tile of the bathroom floor before I realized that I was out of bed. The clock radio flipped on; agitated yet polished voices collided into one another. I didn’t want to look in the mirror.

The head and torso of a small angry man protruded from my beard. He seemed to be flipping my reflection off with fingers too small to see.

The radio announcer said a word that sounded like “pandemic”.

“Beer? Hello? Do you even talk? Did I get a mute one? Well, that’s just great.” The creature put his hands on his hips and huffed.

I had thrown away my razor years ago.

[Want to help me bust through my writer's block this month? Read about this exercise!]

The wood stove in our living room was surrounded by pieces of slate. Old radiators kept the corners of the other rooms warm, but the wood stove, the old general, boomed forth waves of heat well into winter nights. Cats curled up to it as close as they dared. My parents each tended the fire in such an unassuming way while working on their other projects, another grownup ability that I found quietly glamorous. During nights spent around the stove, I would write and draw on the slate pieces with chalk while the three of us listened to albums of classical music. To this day, whenever I hear Satie’s Gymnopédies, I feel safe.

[Want to help me bust through my writer's block this month? Read about this exercise!]

You and I will bust through my writer’s block this July. We will do this together! All you need to do is give me a prompt, and I will use it to write at least 100 words each day of July.

Send your prompts via comments here or via Twitter.

If you are similarly blocked and want to play along, you are cordially invited to do so.

Let’s have some fun!

I wake up before my alarm goes off. The tick of a cat’s tail is at my chin. The heavy curtains gap near the top, a knowing wink of light: not yet, but soon. Without my glasses, the bedpost is a smudge and not a sphere. Cat’s tail ticks. To call the weekend “brief” would do a disservice to all we packed in: our house show, our gardening, our quiet talks and unquiet laughter.

Monday mornings are difficult for me in the most cliched way: I struggle to stay motivated in my job, because one half of it requires me to be the heavy, the other half requires me to be the martyr, and both halves require me to take all of it with unflagging good humor. Some days I feel guilty for how much it frustrates me, for how little I care to interact with the rest of the world as a result. Some days I wonder if I belong in this profession; this is followed immediately by musing on whatever else I would be possibly qualified to do if not this.

The bridge from Sunday to Monday is usually paved with panicked dreams involving exaggerated absent-mindedness, lack of planning on a gross scale, appointments missed, obligations shattered, dependents horrified. I wake up before my alarm goes off; the dreams crumble like mildewed paper. Here are a few solid moments of my own before I push forward and out in an unremarkable birth.

Sometimes when I wake up we are holding hands.

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
3. The Bridge by Iain Banks
4. Justine by Lawrence Durrell
5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
6. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
7. Demian by Hermann Hesse
8. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
9. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
10. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
11. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
12. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
13. White Apples by Jonathan Carroll
14. Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey
15. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I should have had a perfectly lovely evening. Before that, I should have had a perfectly lovely day. All of my problems were no more than minor irritations in actuality, logistical tangles to untie quickly and cleanly.

Why, then, do I only fumble them?

The dish I promised to make for tonight’s pot-luck supper has a time-intensive component: shredding 2 pounds of brussels sprouts by hand because we don’t yet own a food processor. I decided to buy all of the ingredients Thursday night so I could easily make the recipe Friday night, then send it to work with FunkyPlaid on Saturday morning so I didn’t have to carry it on the bus.

By the time Friday night cooking time rolled around, I wasn’t in the mood to cook. Cooking even straightforward recipes like this one is still a challenge for me, and my week had already been an 8 out of 10 on the “challenging” scale. (Note to self: do not plan on cooking to relax until cooking is relaxing.)

Long story medium: the brussels sprouts were wormy and unable to be salvaged, thus turning my Saturday into a car-less quest for brussels sprouts, which — as I realize I should have already known — aren’t in season anyway, so I have no business making the dish. (This last is difficult for me to internalize because I love the dish and it’s something I can do consistently well. Still, second note to self: cook seasonally.)

My Saturdays are strange creatures. I look forward to them throughout the week as if they are gold-plated unicorns of sheer delight. They are all mine, because FunkyPlaid is at work, so I have complete autonomy over them. That is in theory only, because when they roll around, I mull over completing any number of a hundred different things I think I should be doing with my time off, and I end up getting nothing done and feeling guilty for it.

A few times I have hit that lovely “I can do what I want and I want to do nothing” stride, but on most Saturdays my to-do list and I get into a stare-eyes contest and, despite it not actually having eyes, the list always wins.

Anyway, this Saturday I spent entirely on the brussels sprouts, up until the moment I hopped in the shower to get ready for the two-hour public transit adventure that is getting to the middle of Marin County. By the time I arrived, the brussels sprouts had taken on legendary status for me; I was merely a support system for the brussels sprouts, the imperfect vessel by which their greatness would be conveyed.

Okay, not really, but you get the idea. I had obsessed so much over how I considered this stupid side-dish to be inconveniencing me that I missed the entire point of cooking, or at least what I consider to be its point: to savor and share good food with good people.

Because I am me, I did not have a “silly me” moment. I had a full-on self-loathing “stupid, stupid me” moment. More like a collection of moments, organized into hours. It is hours later and I am still upset with myself. And then I say, “Why am I still upset with myself? That’s so stupid.”

… and we begin again.

This is the point at which a normal person says, “Hey! Snap out of it!” and I hear, “Hey! Stop being stupid!” I have no idea how to stop being stupid so I just sit there, wings flapping uselessly. Flap flap flap they go, and people wander off because watching sad little wingflaps is pointless and kind of pathetic and there is nothing more for them to do anyway.

So, third and final note to self: learn how to snap out of it. There are probably whole self-help books devoted entirely to learning how to snap out of it. I would be surprised if Oprah herself did not have a treatise on the snapping out. If only I knew of a place filled with books that I could browse for free!

Yes, I see my wings are still flapping. At least everyone ate all the brussels sprouts.

At least I took some video. And let me tell you: there is nothing quite so humbling as watching oneself on video.

Not exactly caveats, but it bears noting: Yes, my face really moves like that when I talk.  No, I wasn’t under the influence.  Yes, I wear that hat out in public.  No, I had no prior experience with handheld videocams.

Yes, I would do it all again next year.

It is best, on the random days, to let pieces be pieces, at peace.

._.-.

Torgi the cat is curled up next to me. Bedtime is his favorite time because he curls up in between us and purrs. Overcome with somnolent joy, his purrs pitch higher until he is trilling in his drowse.

._.-.

Recipes recently attempted and succeeded, at least in the barest sense of the word: Southwestern frittata, steak with ginger-butter sauce, pork tacos with mango salsa, baked eggs in ham cups. Concepts tested and learned: broiling, sauteing, searing, braising. Injuries: one minor burn to the left palm, one minor cut to the right index finger. New tools: black plastic measuring cups and spoons, stainless steel pots and pans, waxing confidence.

._.-.

My first-ever multi-day overnight-stay gaming convention, KublaCon, was both a blur and an amber-trapped memory. Although I love games, I have never self-identified as a gamer, perhaps because I avoid self-identifying as most things on principle. Still, I was among my people all weekend, and it felt good to be so.

._.-.

Pastimes neglected: writing, knitting, photography, World of Warcraft, website tinkering. Pastimes nudged vaguely: reading, crossword-puzzle-solving, cooking, geocaching.

._.-.

Right now I am in a boundary-setting mode, creating structures for productivity, reassessing priorities, and discarding inefficient patterns. This mode is dull, and I look forward to the messy thumb-painting of the next one, whichever it may be. I hope it involves wild, mad creation. I am overdue.