Practice and/or Client Discussion

Set for next week.  Such an odd feeling these days, the lack of work concerns intermixed with the liberation of condo cleaning/organization, healthy meals, and evening walks/meditation.  I seem stuck on 13 minutes on the Banook rock of choice for some reason, need to power through that tonight.  First, time to check the dock with the Spiro hammer.

Sale of this home, which was only simmering in the background in Moncton, now a necessity in my mind, the sooner the better.  Funny how that works.  The idea of moving on after this year incredibly obvious now as well, the question focused on how to credibly make it through the next 30 weeks to round out the year, and see about a part-time 2021 arrangement, to facilitate the global adventures that are coming.

Dock looks good, word from Silver Dollar that dock won’t be available next year due to construction.  What was I saying about signs earlier?  Make it happen.

It doesn’t have anything to do with...

... does it?  Oh my.  How difficult it is, managing expectations.  In thinking about last year, the mad juggling of each trip, the balance and chaos of sneaking through and around.  For what?  Now, with such luxuries of time, trying to find the best uses of it in a pandemic that places hard limits on travel, so maddening.

At least the broaching of the sale is fully on, as mom walks and worries (perceptively) about the true motive.  Strolling through prior journals on the 20th marking of this particular Swedish birthday, the unsurprising, ever-constant theme shines bright.  “How much longer until we can run,” the blog screams, “run swiftly away from these inane files and other meaningless fodder that enriches not?”

It takes just one month of quiet, one month of an abyss of billable hours, to stoke the fear.  You should not let it get to you, knowing what you know.  I thought it might be easier, to slip beneath the radar, when the time came.  Hard to forget you are a blip on the screen for the moment, inconsequential in the overall scheme.  Take this payout without shame, it’s deserved.  Spend another month of this year at home to ease through the reality and confirm the course to be taken.

The last Krapp’s tape.  That must mean something.  The last polar bear dip, too, in 2021?  And then la vita nuova, for real?  Maybe so.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  It feels like a coming together.  It does.

Time for a walk.

Signs that Might be Omens

One week of 18-6 fasting down.  Piece of cake, that.  No booze except the Inch b-day.  Arcadia, Truth and Other Lies, Oracle Night, and Part 1 of Jon Strange.  Everyday 10,000+ steps, a meditation spot on Banook found, and a watery date secured with the SC for this coming Friday night.  A well planned out and executed week one, back in fair NS.

Call today with M.  Talk of potential plans.  Concern about a once-every-six-months plan, as has been playing out in my mind, too.  After the sunset walk tonight, a solicitation in the mail.  Is this place big enough for a retired couple?  Can only call and see.  Mortgage rates being what they are, I can see the interest in buying.  Hilariously poor grammar in the letter, but that can’t be helped.  At least a further trigger to the thinking, and decent sign of demand...  all the more motivation to press on with the cleaning this week, potentially host the next.   Slight alteration to the Dale plan, perhaps?  If they are interested, get his appraisal at least?  Then sell furnished and rent through to December 31?  Hmmm...  big year, this one.  Big year.

Possibly a Pivot?

So says Nix, seems to be a theme of the pandemic response.  Transformed, reimagined, whatever word you choose the sentiment is the same.  Back at Banook and going to try a bit of meditation.  There are flies, a kid splashing, and the whoosh-hum of the highway traffic.  That’s fair enough, the mind will not be cloudless either...  the skin hangs on the body like used carpet, ready to be torn-up.  Use the next few weeks to do it.  Europe is ready to “risk it all” to open.  So am I.

As the little girl’s t-shirt advises, “I think you should go for it.”

The pandemic making you confront your life, the delays and the indecision, the waiting and the worrying, the plodding and shuffling.  Even as you do great things to stay occupied, the

I think what I’m learning is that it is not non-fiction I should be writing at all, but a mixture or concoction.  So as not to be a slave to fact.  I don’t know.

Quiet the Mind

It is a process.  The quitting of things, cold turkey.  Gradually becoming accustomed to the new.  Reading these large, long books is a help, as is the logging out of Twitter in order to catch the instinctive urge to check it, even days later.  Breaking off addictions takes will power.  Wine tonight with the shrimp would be nice, but to what end?  Best follow the plan, booze aboard the SC only for the time being.  I would be out there now, you can be assured, if we were in the water.  Let’s hope next week holds such a warm and steady breeze.

A strange Friday.  I am slipping slowly into the new mood, the idea of letting go of old habits and trappings. Rallying the motivation, slowly, to begin tackling the apartment next week.  For that is the task come Monday, with a deadline of Friday to be ready for cleaning. That and, at last, the ELIADC paper. There is also Trafalgar, if you feel up to entering another contest....  Next week should be a more invigorating one.

I will return to the tree trunk at Lake Banook, discovered yesternight. The temptation is there to bring a bottle, all the more reason to try and bring a meditative purpose along instead.  See how it goes, and report back.

I grow firmer in my resolve as the days melt away.  2020 holds a farewell.  8 is a lucky number, after all.

Reimagined

On the day of the AGM...  the last...?  So I have thought before, and wonder about again today.  Much in the way of well-meaning jargon, pivoting and resiliency and adaptation and so on.  The firm shall survive and so shall you, although what will manage to fill the time from now until then if the rate is working effectively, I know not.  Treat it as the bonus not provided, maybe?

It is hard not to stress about it, about investments lost to the air, about distance and border restrictions.  Walk.  Read.  Eat and drink with deliberation.  Prepare.  Sell.  Sail.  The docks are in.  Next Friday looms.  Hasten the day.

Live Who You Are

Four nights home, and the decision’s been made, I think.  Never a better time to prep the condo for sale. “Market is Correcting,” says Dale’s timely flyer.  In which direction, I wonder?  Either way, the man has a track record, a listing in the building, and June 8 calls out for decisions of momentous import.  Make an appointment for the day, with the goal of advertising by Canada Day?  Pourquoi pas?  Take advantage of the space in the storage locker.  No one but Inch need know unless and until sold.

8 years seems the right timeframe, a good run since the Vietnam watering hole.  No faulting the effort and commitment.  But walking around the neighbourhood, the attachment never really took.  The Peace Pavilion of 1995 on the water’s edge, just waiting for you to see the Zambian stone from Victoria Falls... Some good memories here, of the pool and balcony and 12 monkeys.  It was always here in shape and ready for another bout of rest on your return.  But I am running out of wall space, that old plant in the corner needs a proper burial, and the road beckons...

If the offers do not come in through the fall, then that provides another data point.  If closing occurs, short term rental opportunities will be there.  5 months into this year, how long until the lack of work becomes an issue, I wonder?  Before you are forced into other areas that appeal not?  Let’s not wait for an answer, but instead make preparations for the day.  Having been short-changed on the front end, no shame in running matters through as needed.

So what, then, is the plan?  NYC and gone?  Back to Zanzibar to start a new year and new life, 7 years later?  We need a symposium in here, to end things, to drop the news of changes to come.

Three exclamation marks.  Over the top, but I have always needed to be hit over the head.  The motto is too on song, who are ya?  A traveler at heart.  The Ha Long story a farewell to this place, and you didn’t even know it.  The gold rush, ha.  A shame Grandmom is not around to speak of it.  But she lives in you as well.  The silverware needs an heir.  Oh McMahon.  Such stories.

The joy of reading Arcadia, remember?  Now the attempt at Jon Strange, before the virtual AGM, fitting if it is to be the last.  Confusion has reigned in your head for some time.  Magically, there exists now a vision to run toward.  If it took a pandemic to deliver the final push, so be it.

Make it so.

Leave Behind

Night 60.  Imagine.

Doesn't seem that long ago, in some ways, although so much has fundamentally changed in the interim.  The walks and meals and birthdays and melted snow.  The iced coffees and drives out to Grand-Digue and hours billed through Elite from this couch.  The evening CTV broadcasts and Trumpian press conferences, as we lift from bed to jazzy to chair and back.  The little insights, imperceptible and potent and gathering and true.  Zoom in, or you won't quite catch them.  To write them properly would be a betrayal and or a tonic.  Elderflower or Pink.

The recyclables today in the rain, and then the blue sky, the MMc walk and beginning of discussion about the stories.  Evaluation!  Heh.  "My one recommendation, protect your knees!" rings aloud.  Always time.  Timing on song all around, that bagpiper for Inch's whiskey day, the Venza pickup en route home, the Chapin on the deck as mist emerged from Dad's eyes for Corey and A Better Place, the Prime Rib to perfection.

"I trust those are prophetic words, Chancellor."
"They are...  a bottle? I've brought a barrel of 2309, there is no finer vintage!"

So says Martok.  Prophecy is for time travelers (future short story title, amazingly does not seem taken).  I have waited for this series conclusion to be the finale.  Through the Black Mirror and the Voyager and the Before Trilogy and the Stranger and the Invisible Man and the Criminal and the State of the Union and the Deadwater Fell and the Dead to Me.  At the last, DS9.  Maybe Darmok in a moment if you feel up to it. 

We have learned of the connection to the gold rush, Jimmy's potential illicit parentage on the other side, Mom's solicitation and identification of the line-up at age 6, the drowning of granddad's best friend chasing a dog before the war early on.  Dad's trip to Washington at age 14 as the trip up the Monument.  Other imperceptibilities.  Other tales amidst the cooking rituals.  So many hours billed from this very couch.  Alison can have it, but remember the Tequila spilt on it, and the sound of mom's soft sighs and snores.  As Dad wishes for her.  Always.  Hard to be a care-giver and a lover down through the years.  The frustrations and the jealousy and the madness of time and the chimes of the clock, the manufacturer out of business, the weights hanging down helping. 

Relationships beyond repair even as, maybe, not?  This idle was supposed to start with a trip to the Drakensbergs, cut short before it began.  A summit of import.  And so, in a way, it proved.

"How are you holding up, old man?"
"All things considered, think I'd rather be on Risa."
"Well, that makes two of us."

Worf - insisting on Minsk.  The series ends in the great link, disappointing to Jake and to us.  So a hone call across the seas.  Smiles.  Then the last of all the Netflix episodes.  And gilad.  Gilgamesh. 

"He who was my companion through adventure and hardship, is gone forever."

Sadness.  Fight.  Magic.  Power.  More.  Innocent's friends wanting a glimpse.  Hehehe.  As you plan a honeymoon of Zanzibar, Seychelles, Maldives, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal.  Make it so.  On this night of Sonnet #57 by Frakes.  Thank you Sunny.  Ha.  What is true, after all, and how?  Unconditionally. 

Safe drive.  Could be Cape Split in 12 hours, come what may...

"Incredible Riveting"

The NOIA presentation not quite that, Mr. Skanes.  No matter.  As you pass through toward the last of the days home.  Drinking Gin and Glenlivet and eating Hawkins Cheesies and watching Star Trek.  As Mom and Dad rest for the Costco trip tomorrow.  Perhaps a Domus call in the evening, a walk with MMc, then a roast to end it all.  An intriguing trip to the ocean, what of that, before the next phase of the quarantine.

Fitting if we do March to May in Moncton, May to July in Halifax, then August in Amsterdam...  Holland may hold the answer, although my guess is that the Europa will arrive ahead of you.  No matter.  Can you track down Phil and Rob in their mess of a new world?  I think that would be worth doing as part of the madness.  Make it so, as JL would say.

"Seize the time, Maribor.  Live now.  Make now, always the most precious time.  Now will never come again."

Sonneteering

Key 33rd Birthday in the village.  

Yet a regular basement day here.  An email to B. Dzierz to state that yes, posted hours are true.  (No response, of course, like a mental health dagger in the wind, thanks in advance.) 

Changing of Regulations.  Calls with Eddy as he adjusts his headset, and P. Craig as he shephards kids.  T. Hennig and D. Mac as well.  Then a walk in the rain and a feeding of the ducks.  Undercooked Turkey put back in, bad start to season 2 of Dead to Me and then the Zoom with MVP Jensen, Doggy Daycare Shear, Mo' Mask Bear, and Playroom Pal.  What was memorable... social contracts, about to be violated, Bruce losing everything in the 2008 crash, etc.  Then the tasting of the 20 year old scotch, for a final video, and then PatStew, legend, and the old ShakesinLove poster at the end.  Why was it there if not for that? 

Pictures and videos back and forth to Primrose House all the while. Where you have been, may be the most incomprehensible aspect of it all.  The crossing of borders to Greece or Holland or the like perhaps the next step, if there is any fairness.  The return coinciding with Europa or a return to the 2009 Olive?  Ha, if the world yet contains such good humour, I would venture to see it.  International drivers' license procured or otherwise.  Will Spiro still be sheltered in place to greet?  Will Klaas wear a mask to the dock on the triumphant return?  Oh that would be something to see.

A longer wait more likely.  The cold turkey of the politics and negativity in favour of poetry, art, writing.  The idea of the novel, even, or such preparation.  The need for invention, flourish, liberty.  Based in memory, and yet....

"For it is the tradition of sonneteering that all cruelties by the beloved must be forgiven by the lover."  Who can be truly honest when it comes to love, and fate, and family, and redemption?  Oh.  Write the novel, then, as the dreams and inspiration in the ensuing months come.  The themes of time, memory, moment, purpose, fate.  The only themes, of a linear existence.

"In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you, for constant heart."

Knock, knock.  Hippo Birthday indeed.  

The Essence (and explanation) of a Linear Existence

...From the DS9 Pilot...  Each day affects the next.  The day in the park.  It was a day that was very important, a day that shaped, every day that followed.

Then the baseball analogy.  All the preparation and strategy, before the uncertainty of each individual pitch.  You value your ignorance of what is to come?  ...It is the unknown that defines our existence.  Explorers... Explore our lives, day by day.

Quite the timing, to complete this episode on her birthday...  The whole timing of the pandemic, a manifestation of the type of conversation to be had in South Africa without actually having it.  All a part of the grand unfolding.  Down to the last detail of knowing where she is waking now.

I know not exactly what is to come, but I look forward to playing it out.  The PARC and then the Pandemic quite the one-two punch in terms of the exit strategy.  I wonder.

To Do...

One week remaining before the return.  What lessons learned, what progress made, during this ongoing pandemic?  Here on Night 55.  There have been a few solo bender nights, the liquor cabinet cleaned up this mother's day night, after various bottles sampled through the Zooms.  Reminder of the expenses saved to date, a sign of what can continue to be saved by moderation.  3 times a week at $20 or so a night is a few hundred a month. 

One idea is to return to the monitoring, the documenting, the pre-Camino routine, as preparations seem ready for another grand life-altering trip.  Barely anything spent these two months, how about the next two?

That requires focus on food and on drink. No other expenses really on the horizon, other than the boat, as you wait out the passing of the contagion.

Assuming no spending, how to occupy the time?  The ever-fresh manifesto.  To bring it full circle.  Exercise, daily, is key.  Back to the fasting, as well.  What timing on it, and the food itself, to be determined.  Agua.  12pm-6pm.

Transformation is the word.  Fitting, for a transformative time.  Mentioned in Sullivan's column about Adele, again in Dead to Me.  If you can't live in the now, you can prepare for the unveiling of it, the return.

If work continues to suffer, the time will need to be occupied in some manner.  Not on Twitter, not on Facebook.  Not on the Internet at all, to the extent possible.  Cleansing of the mind.  The Dolphin pledge, honoured in the breach, years later, until now.

You must begin immediately, however.  The routine and discipline must begin from the start.  Lists for the writing and lists for the travels with M. that will begin when they begin.     

Return of the King

I think Hemingway was wrong.

This idea of waking up in the morning and writing when your head is clear.  I sense my process must be more beat-style.  Free-flowing.  Not focused on precision.  Choosing the right word.  The exact and perfect sentence.  Discipline might get you there, but I am not that.  I am not of the mindset anymore to strive for such excellence.  Nor am I disappointed by any failure to "achieve" as all seems so impermanent.  Fungible.  Esoteric.  Incandescent.  Ephemeral.

Beautiful words, all. 

Today, some words about the "realization phase" and the Mr. Frodo water bottle.  The search for quotes and that old gem from Gandalf, about deciding what to do with the time that has been given to us.  Thinking all day about what you have been doing with that time.

11 years ago today, arriving in Santiago and noting Dante's pilgrim definition.

2 years ago today, and Merci Arsene, a game I barely remember, but for the sun and joy and privilege of the bookend.

What is memory, how much is reinforced by storytelling, multimedia recollection.  Et al.

Talking with Inch tonight, randomly (or is it), about such joys.  How not to take things for granted.  A pint in a pub.  Jostling through a crowd.  Not only taken for granted, but not even a pause for thought.

Now is the time for that pause for thought.  When the remaining years resume, a new mindset, for a time.  In this "temporality".  SK has a new novel, a cover with a colour scheme issue that seems slight off, a plot that seems too sadly... close.  And yet I cannot wait to read it. 

Coming on 6 years since Happy in Treasure Beach and, later, hated Van Persie in Salvador.

4 years since Hal Robson-Kanu in Lille.  The idea of showing highlights, one second a part, that would not be believable.

Mental health week.  The struggle, after a few shots of the Lamb's spiced, after the end of Deadwood Fall, after the aborted convo between Wells and Page, and then the discussion with Inch, to not open this bottle.  The inability to do so.  Reframe.  The undesire to do so.  UnbuckleMe on Shark Tank.  Show me other investments, and whether now is the time to buy.  The optimism/pessimism of the discussions over the COMFIT.  The ridiculousness over the "technical" rewording of the B'water recommendations. All from this room.

Zoom.

All so focused on kids.  Yet in this mind it is about the past and future.  Thoughts on the randomness of the pandemic, the effects if it had hit at other times over the past decades.  The impact on the trajectory.  All trajectories, but personal ones primary among the thoughts.

The NUIG call of Irish authors, the most creatively productive of this two month hiatus.  Not an onus to do anything now, an onus to think about what it is, always the subconscious, churning in the background.  Rethink.  Reinvigorate.  These people and their deep interests that you might skip over in an instant, rather than devote a lifetime of study to.  Remember the name: Hakluyt.  16th century travel.  If you see this later and have forgotten totally, remember.

Think of the essay as a way of answering a question, or making sense of things.  Writing as a way of ordering thoughts, or (easier) putting them down to see and process.  To stop the whirlwind for a moment.  Freeze, as Cecile said, about her trip plans.  "On a freeze."

There was the Derby and the crowds from prior years.  So strange.  The remembrance of last year at the nursing home and the controversy, that now seems so so so so so quaint. 

Fascinating, this time is, the shallowness, the featurelessness, the unknown.  The collective breath intake.  Keeping diaries and the like.  B. Esk doing the same, among the vamps and Scottish connections and such.  So very strange.  I enjoyed the random references of refreshment, of nourishment.  The call back to the Pepys diary ("peeps") and the purchase of a new razor - "it pleased me mightily".  Such an Irish turn of phrase.  One to think on, soon enough, when you turn it to your own head, on the return.

The return.  Which we hope for.  Transport right out of the current emotional life.  Like when T. Henry returned, for everyone else, yet for you the first time.  The list of bets and the last best of all.  Chance... goal.  Right in front of you.  8 years and a few months ago tonight.  How much of life is spent recalling, how much enjoyment is there in the actual moments where it is done.  How much do we (not) know.

Full Flower Moon tonight. 

Hemingway had a lot right, and to admire.  But Kerouac remains the more kindred friend.  And perhaps the lesson when you return to the keyboard after an absence in Halifax in a few weeks, is to let that spirit play a brighter guide.  Less rational focus on word choices, more on what feels or flows.  Less guarded.  You cannot convince with reason, it seems, from feedback so far. 

Do the same as to date, but make sure you let the subconscious in.

Health Tips

We wait.  That's what we do.  Like the Guinness commercial.  A lull in the action as work lessens and ideas percolate, filtering through the porous surface of the mind into the realm of possibility.  The realm of reality and action.  #getreal is the hashtag.  What of that sentiment, and the other tips?  The need for reminders to drink water, to move, to stretch, find a routine, create joy.  Should it not be obvious?  Is this a way to live, having to remember such mundanities. 

I am almost ready to write.  The different star trek episodes and random movies underlying story structures.  How to tell them?  What to tell?  The start in non-fiction, maybe its constraints will serve as a liberation when shed down the road.  Or is the fact that it happened the key?  Both true.

“Like most time paradoxes, it is implausible, but not necessarily illogical," says Tuvok in Relativity.  Everything seems implausible at the moment, everything changed.  The calls on Zoom no replacement for human interaction, no replacement for the joy of movement.  The Scotch club reminder about how every story can become their story, the pompous aspect of becoming an expert in a narrow field.  The Zoom windows into each home, into each individual experiment.  So much of this seems to echo that overall Black Mirror context.  Lives as experiments inside a simulation.  Randomness at work, the myriad directions.  Tick follows tock follows tick follows tock follows...

400 billed hours into 2020, where will the next 600-700 come from?  Hard to see down the horizon.  Next year could be the one for shifting course.  Or changing altogether.  In what direction I know not yet.  Need more time to sort it out.  But the excuse is there.  The values are not shared.  Wish I had not sold DPM, but no matter.  So hard to be right about the future.

All seems a bubble in this pause.  Reflecting on memories, rather than necessarily inventing new ones.  Reminders of what is lost, intimations on mortality.  Time passing.  Where to seek out reinvention.  I know not, yet.  Almost 50 nights, and the time soon comes to change up the routine.  Try and keep the optimism going for the summer.  For a last fond farewell to the Southern Cross on the occasion of her 10th anniversary.  The last of the launches.

Or as the Oils sing, the end of the beginning of the outbreak of love...