Rather than just duck out and not say anything I wanted to post that I'll be postponing my efforts to blog until the website is off the ground. It will be more interactive, allow for more content and show completed works for purchase once everything is in sync. Again, looking for the launch date to be around April 2013.
Until then, keep the spirit.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Overexposed
Here in the west we've nearly eliminated all semblance of ritual from our daily lives. From waking up without greeting or giving thanks to the sun , to going to bed without wondering at the moon. We're more apt to ritualize our morning coffee and roll over to sleep after the 10 o'clock news. I'm not entering into the debate of whether we as a society actually need rituals to thrive, just noting the near absence of them.
Over the weekend I was thinking about an issue that many people who create art have. Which is that many, including myself, are not comfortable with being referred to in public as an artist. "John Doe, I would like to introduce you to Rob. He is an artist." Cringe...It's an introduction guaranteed to make me squirm. Having been exposed to other artists' thoughts on this one I know I'm not alone. In fact, I would guess I am among the majority.
Of course, there are artists who are comfortable with the title. Maybe after having involved themselves in the arts for some time or they've just accepted the title as being inescapable. Or maybe they feel deserving of the handle. For me, the word conjures up visions of saint-like souls devoting the entirety of their lives to the practice and perfecting of their art through history. Be they painters, musicians, poets, novelists, playwrights, composers or whatever flavor their expression has evolved into; they are among an elite group that is set aside from the rest of the population throughout history. People who have proven themselves to be dedicated to their vision and pursued it as long and as far as they could. It's an exalted place in my mind. To get there the path is long, and the passage narrow.
So when is it that a girl becomes a woman? After what trial or test? How many are there before the boy has earned the distinction of being a man? It's analogous to when has someone who makes art earned the title their heroes assert themselves with? I suspect most, even in that exalted group, never feel/felt truly at home with it. When have you earned the right to rub elbows with the divine? To break intellectual bread with the masters and meet their gaze as one who belongs?
Over the weekend I was thinking about an issue that many people who create art have. Which is that many, including myself, are not comfortable with being referred to in public as an artist. "John Doe, I would like to introduce you to Rob. He is an artist." Cringe...It's an introduction guaranteed to make me squirm. Having been exposed to other artists' thoughts on this one I know I'm not alone. In fact, I would guess I am among the majority.
Of course, there are artists who are comfortable with the title. Maybe after having involved themselves in the arts for some time or they've just accepted the title as being inescapable. Or maybe they feel deserving of the handle. For me, the word conjures up visions of saint-like souls devoting the entirety of their lives to the practice and perfecting of their art through history. Be they painters, musicians, poets, novelists, playwrights, composers or whatever flavor their expression has evolved into; they are among an elite group that is set aside from the rest of the population throughout history. People who have proven themselves to be dedicated to their vision and pursued it as long and as far as they could. It's an exalted place in my mind. To get there the path is long, and the passage narrow.
So when is it that a girl becomes a woman? After what trial or test? How many are there before the boy has earned the distinction of being a man? It's analogous to when has someone who makes art earned the title their heroes assert themselves with? I suspect most, even in that exalted group, never feel/felt truly at home with it. When have you earned the right to rub elbows with the divine? To break intellectual bread with the masters and meet their gaze as one who belongs?
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Salted Daydreams
Last week I was introduced to Bronnie Ware's article Regrets of the Dying, linked by permission, and was struck by the the top three regrets stated by most people while suffering from a terminal illness. Numbers four and five I'll pass on as I think friends are good companions but have found them to be unreliable when needed most and that happiness is where you find it in life and suspect the people regretting not having enough of it in their lives are for reasons that relate back to first three stated regrets to begin with.
The first three regrets profoundly resonated with me. They are the very reasons why I quit my job last August and am now pursuing painting full-time. Along with the fact that mercury poisoning has left me incapable of that type of employment but that's for another post. As stated in an earlier post, I would be working diligently and along would come some aloof daydream and obliterate any current train of thought I was having. My mind would be forcefully taken hostage and off it would sail into the wild blue meanderings of a strangled soul.
One of these in particular came to me like a revelation. I felt my life was hopelessly empty, being definitively ground away in the fathomless pit of rotting pointlessness that is the toil of earning a paycheck. It was January 4th, 2008 at 10:30am. I wrote a note to myself that I now have glued into one of my sketchbooks as a reminder to myself of the pitfall that awaits me should I give in again. The note I wrote was both a question and an answer quoted verbatim here:
I can't say that every day of my life is filled with exotica, but every day has been filled with possibility once I concluded to resolutely, almost militantly, follow my daydreams into the wild blue meanderings. Every day I make a conscious effort to advance a little further down my path, however small the activity may be, however large the project may be, I take some step in getting closer to making life mean something.
What dreams have you been chasing? What dreams are you dying for?
The first three regrets profoundly resonated with me. They are the very reasons why I quit my job last August and am now pursuing painting full-time. Along with the fact that mercury poisoning has left me incapable of that type of employment but that's for another post. As stated in an earlier post, I would be working diligently and along would come some aloof daydream and obliterate any current train of thought I was having. My mind would be forcefully taken hostage and off it would sail into the wild blue meanderings of a strangled soul.
One of these in particular came to me like a revelation. I felt my life was hopelessly empty, being definitively ground away in the fathomless pit of rotting pointlessness that is the toil of earning a paycheck. It was January 4th, 2008 at 10:30am. I wrote a note to myself that I now have glued into one of my sketchbooks as a reminder to myself of the pitfall that awaits me should I give in again. The note I wrote was both a question and an answer quoted verbatim here:
I need to set a long term goal. Need to ask myself what am I going to do with my life, then work slowly every day towards getting there. If it's to become a self employed artist, then draw every day, or read an artist mag every day, or paint every day, or take a lesson, or see a tutorial online but every day try and work towards a long term goal. If I don't this life appears to be, and may very well be, completely meaningless.It was obviously an informal note to myself. "Get busy living or get busy dying", to quote King's Shawshank Redemption. But a note so sincere and so personally heartfelt by me that I have stayed true to it ever since, and intend to stay true to it until I'm dead. Since I was about 17 or 18 years old I've made it a goal of mine to gather experiences like wildflowers and populate my life with them in the conscious effort to avoid being one of Ferdinand Celine's "unfortunates" who die in misery, wallowing in regret. As he put it, "Most people don't die until the last moment; others start twenty years in advance, sometimes more."
I can't say that every day of my life is filled with exotica, but every day has been filled with possibility once I concluded to resolutely, almost militantly, follow my daydreams into the wild blue meanderings. Every day I make a conscious effort to advance a little further down my path, however small the activity may be, however large the project may be, I take some step in getting closer to making life mean something.
What dreams have you been chasing? What dreams are you dying for?
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Breathe
The laughing shoes. Crazy shoes. The only thing of interest over the course of the past week.
Laces weaving shadows of eyes. Mouths agape, sardonic, those sneering eyes. Collapsing in upon themselves and giving of themselves a grin. A universal guffaw, or a tip of the mad-hat.
A wild and capitulating sadness reborn in the celebration of the madness of the day. The bright day. The very,...very...bright day of the sun-bleached afternoon. Blinding in it's obviousness. Striking in it's plainness. Stark and barren. Cold in the shadow, radiated in the light reflected in the void of expanse and unforgiving in it's gaze.
Here we are. Aghast and again. Forever whispering. Forever complacent. Forever wishing at the tomorrow. Like tugging at the apron strings of our servant. Forever smiling into the void. Always blinding ourselves with the expanse of blood.
Scarred and shaken we tremble at the possibility of the day. Blinded by and educated in the brilliance of the midday sun we find ourselves quaking, abused, contorted, confused by the headache of the brilliance of the light. Denied and careless, we double our efforts and render ourselves hateless, sightless, guileless, squirming in the slime of birth. Rendered helpless yet omniscient. Writhing in exuberance, ecstatic in the possibility and endless forging of understanding.
Mouths open, as we were in the beginning. As it should be, and as we are in the presence of the expanse. Baffled. Refuted. Retarded it would seem in the face of the infinite. Retarded in the face of the void. Agape and aghast.
Keep the spirit.
Laces weaving shadows of eyes. Mouths agape, sardonic, those sneering eyes. Collapsing in upon themselves and giving of themselves a grin. A universal guffaw, or a tip of the mad-hat.
A wild and capitulating sadness reborn in the celebration of the madness of the day. The bright day. The very,...very...bright day of the sun-bleached afternoon. Blinding in it's obviousness. Striking in it's plainness. Stark and barren. Cold in the shadow, radiated in the light reflected in the void of expanse and unforgiving in it's gaze.
Here we are. Aghast and again. Forever whispering. Forever complacent. Forever wishing at the tomorrow. Like tugging at the apron strings of our servant. Forever smiling into the void. Always blinding ourselves with the expanse of blood.
Scarred and shaken we tremble at the possibility of the day. Blinded by and educated in the brilliance of the midday sun we find ourselves quaking, abused, contorted, confused by the headache of the brilliance of the light. Denied and careless, we double our efforts and render ourselves hateless, sightless, guileless, squirming in the slime of birth. Rendered helpless yet omniscient. Writhing in exuberance, ecstatic in the possibility and endless forging of understanding.
Mouths open, as we were in the beginning. As it should be, and as we are in the presence of the expanse. Baffled. Refuted. Retarded it would seem in the face of the infinite. Retarded in the face of the void. Agape and aghast.
Keep the spirit.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Natural Selection -intially posted Feb. 2nd, 2012
I was talking to a buddy over the weekend about a messy relationship where two people weren't getting along and we got onto the topic of how some people feel a need to control the relationship and have a hard time getting along with their partner when their partner makes it known they aren't happy being led by, or punched in, the nose.
I grew up in a mostly catholic family. My parents met in the 50's and hung on to a lot of traditional ideas. My dad was the bread-winner and my mom was the home-maker. I only mention their relationship in passing since I was brought up in a traditional household with little exposure to "progressive" ideas, a wonderful euphemism in it's own right. They had different responsibilities and didn't allow themselves to get into situations that led to one of them attempting to control the other. Seemed to work for them for 20+ years until my mom passed away.
I've been living in the north country rural areas for the last 9 years now and have heard some horror stories about domestic abuse. This isn't a rural phenomena, in fact just doing a quick search, one site states rural and suburban areas experience 20% less of it than urban areas around the country. Maybe I'm just getting older and paying more attention to the extinguishing of personal liberties now more than before. Maybe it's due to the fact that rural communities have a tighter knit weaving through the fabric of their lives where partners are less apt to expose their partners, and themselves, to the shame invoked by the violence involved, the sheer relinquishing of liberties that goes along with such capitulation for the sake of saving face within the community. At any rate, some stories are horrendous. As someone who feels that personal freedoms are a fundamental right of all living things, I simply can't abide the limiting, or outright denial of, someone else's freedoms. It rubs me the wrong way in the worst way. But I digress.
To get back to the topic from over the weekend, the woman in this relationship is attempting to leave and be rid of this Machiavellian bullshit for good. Meaning she won't be sleeping with him, meaning no kids will come from that relationship, meaning his seed has been weeded out, left exposed and mummified on fertile soil in the bright sunshine. Ring the bell for liberty! I say. Natural selection through breeding wins again. The seed-trait of being a usurper, a bully, an effing tyrant has just been carved out of the gene pool. One bottom-feeder at a time. Hoo-rahh...!
Which led me to another branch on the thought-tree. Our kind, like every other living thing on the planet, is being slowly but definitively honed and sculpted, refined to reflect qualities that have staying power. Processes are in play that over the course of hundreds, thousands, and millions of years will define who and what we are. These will be the qualities that we as a species have declared through time, and our very existence, to be of value. We will declare these qualities to be representative of ourselves as individuals, and to be worthwhile to our civilization as a whole, and reflective of our massed conscious decision to be qualities that we find to be noble and worth passing on to the next generation.
Is that too much to take from a chick deciding to dump a loser?
I grew up in a mostly catholic family. My parents met in the 50's and hung on to a lot of traditional ideas. My dad was the bread-winner and my mom was the home-maker. I only mention their relationship in passing since I was brought up in a traditional household with little exposure to "progressive" ideas, a wonderful euphemism in it's own right. They had different responsibilities and didn't allow themselves to get into situations that led to one of them attempting to control the other. Seemed to work for them for 20+ years until my mom passed away.
I've been living in the north country rural areas for the last 9 years now and have heard some horror stories about domestic abuse. This isn't a rural phenomena, in fact just doing a quick search, one site states rural and suburban areas experience 20% less of it than urban areas around the country. Maybe I'm just getting older and paying more attention to the extinguishing of personal liberties now more than before. Maybe it's due to the fact that rural communities have a tighter knit weaving through the fabric of their lives where partners are less apt to expose their partners, and themselves, to the shame invoked by the violence involved, the sheer relinquishing of liberties that goes along with such capitulation for the sake of saving face within the community. At any rate, some stories are horrendous. As someone who feels that personal freedoms are a fundamental right of all living things, I simply can't abide the limiting, or outright denial of, someone else's freedoms. It rubs me the wrong way in the worst way. But I digress.
To get back to the topic from over the weekend, the woman in this relationship is attempting to leave and be rid of this Machiavellian bullshit for good. Meaning she won't be sleeping with him, meaning no kids will come from that relationship, meaning his seed has been weeded out, left exposed and mummified on fertile soil in the bright sunshine. Ring the bell for liberty! I say. Natural selection through breeding wins again. The seed-trait of being a usurper, a bully, an effing tyrant has just been carved out of the gene pool. One bottom-feeder at a time. Hoo-rahh...!
Which led me to another branch on the thought-tree. Our kind, like every other living thing on the planet, is being slowly but definitively honed and sculpted, refined to reflect qualities that have staying power. Processes are in play that over the course of hundreds, thousands, and millions of years will define who and what we are. These will be the qualities that we as a species have declared through time, and our very existence, to be of value. We will declare these qualities to be representative of ourselves as individuals, and to be worthwhile to our civilization as a whole, and reflective of our massed conscious decision to be qualities that we find to be noble and worth passing on to the next generation.
Is that too much to take from a chick deciding to dump a loser?
Newborn Baby Blog -intial posting Jan. 31st, 2012
Initially, I was thinking about writing about the great feeling I'll get in the summer mornings when I go outside to enjoy my first cup of coffee and the sun is coming through the trees and the grass is dappled with sunlight. It's such a companionable feeling listening to the birds sing, drinking some coffee, smelling the morning air and thinking about the things yet to happen for the day.
But after realizing this is to be the baby post in a very extended family with an infinite number of siblings, I thought it would be more interesting to document where I'm at right now and where I plan to be in the years to come. Offering insight into who I am, and why in the hell I'm writing this blog in the first place.
Since I was about 12 years old I've been writing poetry. It came naturally to me and without forcing it. I've never been serious about publishing anything. To me, it's always been a very personally rewarding exercise and of no monetary or other value attached to it--as if. A touch of a godlike feeling of having created something of worth out of thin air. When I was a kid I'd write about the moon, or trees, or my friends or whatever I was thinking about when I felt like writing. The feeling of wanting to write always came first. Curiously, it wasn't the subject or the focus of the poem that would get me writing, just the feeling of wanting to write something, anything, and off I'd go.
The feeling of wanting to write stuck with me through my teen years and into the twenty-somethings. In my early 30's I started to recognize a pattern to my stuff that although I was writing quality poems, the tone was consistently dark. Even when I was attempting to express the things in life that deserve celebrating(like the summer mornings outside I just above)there was an element of doom and despair creeping into all of them.
When I realized that, and that I didn't want to write about everything with a gloomy cloud hanging over it, I consciously made an effort to change my voice. I wrote about the things in life that were worth wrapping around your mind like a warm blanket keeping the cold at bay. I wrote about love, about finally getting groceries after eating nothing but potatoes. I would write about visits to the park and the odd meetings with wild animals I would run into in the woods. Things that gave me reasons to keep getting out of bed every day.
But what happened was the unintended result of trying to direct my creativity. The poetry sucked and I found out the muse was a temperamental and sensitive little bitch. It all fell apart for me. In attempting to force myself in the direction I wanted to move in, everything came out awkward and clunky. It sounded like I didn't really know what I was talking about. I had so many things worth expressing that had nothing to do with the mudpuddles of life and everything to do with the flowers in the morning sunshine. But(alas!) the poetry sucked.
After laboring with clumsy entries for a year or two I gave it up. I still had a strong impulse, a constant and increasingly consuming desire to express myself but in a new way, a way that was unfamiliar to my writing. A way that I had few tools at my disposal to use. I needed to find a resolution, and that's where the drawing and painting came in.
For the better part of my 30's I worked hard and provided a moderately comfortable living for my family. Working my way up the ladder as a marketing analyst for a national company. All the while being driven mad by the impulse to create. Being distracted in the middle of the day or being possessed by something I couldn't relate to anyone.
I remember looking away from my monitor at one point and staring out the window at the sun hanging over the snow. It was about midday and brutally cold outside(this was January in Wisconsin). I stared directly at the sun for probably 4 or 5 minutes. Overwhelmed by the thought of the sheer expanse of space I was looking across; how homely and beautifully insignificant I felt knowing my relative size and delighting in the fact that I was taking a ride on a ball of dirt and water being slung through the void of space for what reason and to what end was a complete unknown. Then it was back to the monitor and the business of making a living.
Like most things in life there wasn't a EUREKA!-like moment to decide to move into drawing and ultimately painting. I had been dabbling with drawing all my life but never thought much of it. Gradually it became obvious to me that I needed to switch from writing to painting for my new form of expression. Some languages are blocklike and tough--think Russian or Japanese. Some are lyrical and poetic--think French or Gaelic, or something. I needed to learn a new language that would allow me to fashion these thoughts and feelings into something useful. I needed to find the tools that would allow me to forge these thoughts into existence.
Like every other artist out there I'm the best there is and everyone else is wasting their time. Although there is a legion of artists both alive and dead that I truly admire and offer them their due respect with my humility in hand. Art is not a craft or a skill as many people think of it. Because someone can draw or play the piano doesn't make them an artist. I've known farmers and truck drivers that were more poetic than a lot of the poets I've met. There is something inside an artist that seeks definition, transformation, and a desire to bring something new into this world that makes an artist what they are. It's as individual to each artist as a personality is to an individual. In my egotistical moments I think of myself as something more akin to Christ than my fellow man. In my moments of weakness I think of myself as unworthy to stain the paper with my drivel. Reality is likely somewhere in between.
I've been drawing studiously and with purpose for a little over two years now and only within the last two months have I been preparing myself to move on to experimenting with painting. I'm in the process of learning this new language and I think that the process itself, in part, is what will make this hapless dive into the blogging world halfway interesting. That, and my own ramblings that I intend to be posting weekly. This is the ground floor of the building of something new. Something profound, ugly, beautiful, or something that's just boring and pointless, I'm not sure which yet. My hope is that while I'm in the process of learing there might be something of interest going on that everyone can relate to. In learning something new we find out how little we knew to begin with. I always find that sort of thing humbling and instructional. Either way, it's better than TV.
At some point, all posts and artwork will be moved to my future website but the website needs to be built first. Looking at 1-2 years away for that.
Keep the spirit
P.S.
Silence is the communion of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places. H.D. Thoreau
In spite of this heroic effort on my part to expose myself and attempt to be outgoing I am in fact a remarkable shut-in, a hermit, a recluse by nature and I don't mix well with people. As Thoreau so eloquently describes above, I'm more comfortable being alone listening to his brand of silence. If someone posts here, I'll try to mount a witty reply and ride it onto the page in full battle gear and shining glory, but we'll see if the Golum in me carries away 'my precious' and finds a dark hole to hide in first. Either way, I want everyone to feel free to comment here. I only ask that the comment be relevant and of interest. Something that adds to the discussion. Positive or negative, just so it's interesting.
But after realizing this is to be the baby post in a very extended family with an infinite number of siblings, I thought it would be more interesting to document where I'm at right now and where I plan to be in the years to come. Offering insight into who I am, and why in the hell I'm writing this blog in the first place.
Since I was about 12 years old I've been writing poetry. It came naturally to me and without forcing it. I've never been serious about publishing anything. To me, it's always been a very personally rewarding exercise and of no monetary or other value attached to it--as if. A touch of a godlike feeling of having created something of worth out of thin air. When I was a kid I'd write about the moon, or trees, or my friends or whatever I was thinking about when I felt like writing. The feeling of wanting to write always came first. Curiously, it wasn't the subject or the focus of the poem that would get me writing, just the feeling of wanting to write something, anything, and off I'd go.
The feeling of wanting to write stuck with me through my teen years and into the twenty-somethings. In my early 30's I started to recognize a pattern to my stuff that although I was writing quality poems, the tone was consistently dark. Even when I was attempting to express the things in life that deserve celebrating(like the summer mornings outside I just above)there was an element of doom and despair creeping into all of them.
When I realized that, and that I didn't want to write about everything with a gloomy cloud hanging over it, I consciously made an effort to change my voice. I wrote about the things in life that were worth wrapping around your mind like a warm blanket keeping the cold at bay. I wrote about love, about finally getting groceries after eating nothing but potatoes. I would write about visits to the park and the odd meetings with wild animals I would run into in the woods. Things that gave me reasons to keep getting out of bed every day.
But what happened was the unintended result of trying to direct my creativity. The poetry sucked and I found out the muse was a temperamental and sensitive little bitch. It all fell apart for me. In attempting to force myself in the direction I wanted to move in, everything came out awkward and clunky. It sounded like I didn't really know what I was talking about. I had so many things worth expressing that had nothing to do with the mudpuddles of life and everything to do with the flowers in the morning sunshine. But(alas!) the poetry sucked.
After laboring with clumsy entries for a year or two I gave it up. I still had a strong impulse, a constant and increasingly consuming desire to express myself but in a new way, a way that was unfamiliar to my writing. A way that I had few tools at my disposal to use. I needed to find a resolution, and that's where the drawing and painting came in.
For the better part of my 30's I worked hard and provided a moderately comfortable living for my family. Working my way up the ladder as a marketing analyst for a national company. All the while being driven mad by the impulse to create. Being distracted in the middle of the day or being possessed by something I couldn't relate to anyone.
I remember looking away from my monitor at one point and staring out the window at the sun hanging over the snow. It was about midday and brutally cold outside(this was January in Wisconsin). I stared directly at the sun for probably 4 or 5 minutes. Overwhelmed by the thought of the sheer expanse of space I was looking across; how homely and beautifully insignificant I felt knowing my relative size and delighting in the fact that I was taking a ride on a ball of dirt and water being slung through the void of space for what reason and to what end was a complete unknown. Then it was back to the monitor and the business of making a living.
Like most things in life there wasn't a EUREKA!-like moment to decide to move into drawing and ultimately painting. I had been dabbling with drawing all my life but never thought much of it. Gradually it became obvious to me that I needed to switch from writing to painting for my new form of expression. Some languages are blocklike and tough--think Russian or Japanese. Some are lyrical and poetic--think French or Gaelic, or something. I needed to learn a new language that would allow me to fashion these thoughts and feelings into something useful. I needed to find the tools that would allow me to forge these thoughts into existence.
Like every other artist out there I'm the best there is and everyone else is wasting their time. Although there is a legion of artists both alive and dead that I truly admire and offer them their due respect with my humility in hand. Art is not a craft or a skill as many people think of it. Because someone can draw or play the piano doesn't make them an artist. I've known farmers and truck drivers that were more poetic than a lot of the poets I've met. There is something inside an artist that seeks definition, transformation, and a desire to bring something new into this world that makes an artist what they are. It's as individual to each artist as a personality is to an individual. In my egotistical moments I think of myself as something more akin to Christ than my fellow man. In my moments of weakness I think of myself as unworthy to stain the paper with my drivel. Reality is likely somewhere in between.
I've been drawing studiously and with purpose for a little over two years now and only within the last two months have I been preparing myself to move on to experimenting with painting. I'm in the process of learning this new language and I think that the process itself, in part, is what will make this hapless dive into the blogging world halfway interesting. That, and my own ramblings that I intend to be posting weekly. This is the ground floor of the building of something new. Something profound, ugly, beautiful, or something that's just boring and pointless, I'm not sure which yet. My hope is that while I'm in the process of learing there might be something of interest going on that everyone can relate to. In learning something new we find out how little we knew to begin with. I always find that sort of thing humbling and instructional. Either way, it's better than TV.
At some point, all posts and artwork will be moved to my future website but the website needs to be built first. Looking at 1-2 years away for that.
Keep the spirit
P.S.
Silence is the communion of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places. H.D. Thoreau
In spite of this heroic effort on my part to expose myself and attempt to be outgoing I am in fact a remarkable shut-in, a hermit, a recluse by nature and I don't mix well with people. As Thoreau so eloquently describes above, I'm more comfortable being alone listening to his brand of silence. If someone posts here, I'll try to mount a witty reply and ride it onto the page in full battle gear and shining glory, but we'll see if the Golum in me carries away 'my precious' and finds a dark hole to hide in first. Either way, I want everyone to feel free to comment here. I only ask that the comment be relevant and of interest. Something that adds to the discussion. Positive or negative, just so it's interesting.
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