Chemicals

“He fixed and consumed his humble breakfast: tea with powdered milk; Hayduke’s Munchies, a private Granola mix; beef jerky; an orange. Sufficient. Squatting close to the fire, he sipped his tea. Chemicals: his mind cleared.”

~George Hayduke in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang

I’m currently amazed by exactly how much of my days are affected by the “chemicals” I choose to put into my body. Some days I feel completely flat, such as this morning. I can sit in my bed and list off things I can & should be doing with my day and not be stirred much by any of them. It doesn’t matter if they are mundane chores like balancing my checkbook or vacuuming my apartment (I bought a vacuum last week!) or things that should get me excited like reading more of Ignatieff’s Human Rights book or going for a run. Other times, such as now I find my self at a coffee shop wanting to run outside & tackle the entire world after researching some amazing law school options and listening to some of Ani’s new CD on the web. Looking at the difference of only a few hours its hard not to put down the main difference to the empty 16 oz. depth charge sitting next to me (coffee with a shot of espresso to the un-initiated :). For a more negative example I can easily think to the wasted afternoons where I had one to many beers at the bar while watching the World Cup. Normally such things aren’t a big deal because one goes home and goes to sleep (which is exactly what I did). It has a much bigger impact on the days productivity though when the World Cup games are on at one o’clock in the afternoon. One can also take the idea of “chemicals” in a much wider sense than the beer & coffee that drove Hayduke’s days. I wonder exactly how much of my energy & pacing issues comes from my erratic eating schedule & lack of consistency to my diet. I’m still that person who will completely forget meals, or will feel slightly hungry & absent-mindedly eat an entire pint of ice cream only to wonder an hour later why I’m not hungry to eat dinner with BK. It also brings up the internal battles of Order & Chaos in my mind. How much routine is healthy & sufficient to keep the balance of chemicals & sleep enough in line to function at a high level of consciousness throughout the day? How much routine is acceptable before it starts choking off creativity & life?

Space

Every week I get an email providing a rough idea of how many people have been visiting my site. It seems that people are still checking in. So I thought I’d return the favor and check in as well.

I face this conundrum. What is this space anymore? Before, while I was off adventuring (or not, depending on the month) in another country on the far side of the globe from most of you this whole gig had a point. A place to share thoughts with people I was not able to see and a place to both explore my thoughts and feelings and give all of you a tiny window into what a life is like that was very different from your own.

But what is this now? All the press I have encountered since my return has been relatively negative on the blogs that are at all “newsworthy.” These mostly are the ones of the political stripe that were lured from their Fortresses of Solitude to actually encounter one another and the world at a conference in Las Vegas recently (The Daily Kos variety). I certainly don’t want to add the sound of my own typing keys to that particular cacophony of voices. I get the feeling its mostly people trying to amplify their feelings of self worth by ranting and raving into the blog-o-sphere where they can hear their own thoughts echoed back at them to the point that the distinction between self & the masses blurs into an unrecognizable mass of text. Blah. Don’t mind my own biased opinions on the subject though.

So I’m not going to suddenly start espousing all my canned political thoughts & feelings, much to all of our relief I’m sure. & while a negative definition is a start, this one still leaves a lot of potential boring & irrelevant ground available to meander through.

I suppose that in some sense the life I’m currently blundering through is different from yours. But no more or less that the person in the other room or the one reading over your shoulder. But how often do we end up sitting down with any of them to explore some random corner of their existence or to find out their thoughts on purchasing vacuum cleaners in today’s world? I know I do not have those types of conversations with my friends as much as I would enjoy having them. Situations in which to have them take a little more time than our usual fast-paced Western cliché lifestyles allow. Maybe that’s what this space will morph into. I chance for me to explore those interesting & often mundane bits of life that spark my interest enough to write about & to share.

So why post them here? Why not? If I find them interesting others might as well and if wandering by this blog can brighten a day or make someone else think a little bit more about their own vacuum, then awesome. But it should be more than that…

After this particular mental quest I guess I end up with much the same vision of this corner as I had before. Originally I shared thoughts here because geography and technology prevented me from sharing and talking about experiences and life with all of you. I could use this as a spring board to actual conversations with people & as a chance to explore bits and pieces of my life I might not have looked as deeply without touching fingers to keyboard. Now it can be much the same, expect that is not geography or technology creating the barriers with most of you, but the realities we have created for ourselves to exist in that might not include enough time to just sit and exist with each other & to dive off the deep-ends of our consciousness. Which is certainly something I haven’t done anywhere near enough of with myself or any of the rest of you these past few months…

http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/reprieve/media.asp

≈Loring Park Dunn Brothers