Rain

Listening to the rain outside is somehow comforting. I can hear the hollow sound of the gutters collecting it and ushering the water away from the house. The spattering on what few leaves are left in our yard joins the ambient noise and with the cloud cover makes for a quiet day. Makes you want to stay inside, sitting in a soft chair and dozing in and out while sipping something warm.

I so prefer to be alone. There are few people I'd rather be with more than simply be by myself. It's for days like today that I yearn for it. The quiet times to think and ponder, mull and analyze. It's habitual and a reaction impossible to quell.

Structure has again returned to my life. It crept in slowly, my propensity for order which had been suppressed for so many months of my son's illness, dealing with whatever life threw at us any given moment, has resurfaced with unscathed. But now bound to it is a realization of the general futility and lack of substantial fulfillment which had previously been a motivator. This sounds like a bad thing at first blush, however, it has been liberating, allowing me to at once be engaged in productive activity, while also accurately measuring its meaning. In other words, I'm not idolizing the objective of being productive. It is what it is. It's a process that we've been programmed for over millennia. Produce or die.

Produce or die. It's a powerful drive in us, but a misguided one at times. In the age of plenty we strive for more and for better. I've struggled against this for much of my life. Realizing that no fulfillment lay in it, but compelled to it just the same. But now, the realization of it's futility sits upon me and I accept it. When I feel productive, I produce. When I don't, I don't. Both are fine, neither says anything about my self-worth.

So on a rainy fall day, sometimes its OK just to sit quietly and listen to the rain fall.

Intolerant of Intolerance

I was watching television last night, one of my favorites, John Stewart's Daily Show. I was tired and apparently easily annoyed because some of the news clips he had on, which were admittedly funny because they were so ludicrous, were fiercely grating on my nerves.

One of Stewart's techniques is to cull through old clips of some politician or talking head and then compare them with a recent one. There is a particular profusion of these lately with the change of administration and complete shift in the balance of political power nested within the disaster of social and economical issues the current administration is now wading through.

Perhaps the technique has been overused, which only implies that there is too much of the flip-flopping going on, not so much a commentary on Stewart's diversity. It's just becoming commonplace to find the political mouthpiece speaking only within the context and fervor of the immediately adjacent 72 hour period. It galls me to no end that even such previously admired figures as Rudolph Giuliani are willing to throw down the respectable reputation he garnered during late 2001, for the politically convenient stance that we should circumstantially abandon our higher morals.

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I'd love to be able to legitimately claim that Stewart's hackneyed performances in this arena are quotes taken from their original contexts, but honestly, if it weren't for this satire, there would be little left to challenge cable news to become worthy of its title.

Committing to Write

Over the last two years, I have been compelled to write for a reason I could have never imagined. My son became ill with a brain cancer and the ensuing days, weeks and months were filled with unusual and life-altering events. These required communication to various points around the country while trying to salvage what remaining energy my wife and I had for our family.

The by products of this habit were plentiful, if not unexpected. I spilled my emotions onto the keyboard and in lieu of talking about our plight with strangers, I wrote for anyone who would read it. It drew in a support group of people from all over. Those that knew us personally passed the information on to those that didn't and before long, we had a long list comprising a support community.

While the most outwardly tangible effect, it was hardly the most pronounced. I knew that regardless of the outcome we faced with my son's cancer that the record I was creating would serve as an archive for his sisters and our extended family, not to mention posterity. Then there were the psychological effects of writing.

Forcing my emotions into structure on a regular basis allowed my subconscious to quiet down and imbued me with peace for a time. When I felt emotionally bound up again, I would return to the computer and hammer out what was on my mind. It became therapy.

Our experiences lately have been horrifically and uniformly uninteresting. Days are similar in a way that will never change. We cannot reverse the outcome that we've lived through. We lost our son almost 9 months ago. Daily we awake and are struck over and over with that reality. Our daughters age, our nieces and nephews grow, the seasons change. But he will always be gone. It's sad. Devastating. Worthy of being mourned over and over. But it's also very circular. I come back to the same realities time and again. Having a mind that perseverates on issues until a solution is found leaves me mulling this reality like a tongue probing the empty socket of a pulled tooth.

So I have decided to write. I'm not sure about what all the time. But I know its been a helpful habit in the past and I'm searching for a bit of something to lighten the burden of our reality. It seems that in the absence of a solution, discovering ways to cope is our only alternative.