|
Don’t sweat the petty stuff. Just pet the sweaty stuff.
|
|
I'm forty-two years old and living in Minneapolis, Minnesota near downtown. I've lived here most of the last five years with some months of that time spent back in Texas on my father's farm just west of the DFW metroplex. I was in a relationship for six years that ended in early February 2005, and that fact dominated a good deal of my consciousness over the months after the breakup - at least until I started working a job again. I'm sure there are people who have met me over the last year who may think I'm a bit unhinged. I suppose that assessment would be pretty accurate if the portion of my life up for review were only that time of their acquaintance with me. I've always been a bit out front with what goes on in my life, so I suppose the darts will always fly and will usually be earned. I'll take my lumps in that sense and perhaps I'll gain a little humility from it. As they say, I'm not much, but I'm all I think about.
I'm not sure what I want from myself, going forward. I have some pretty clear ideas, however, about what I do not want.
I read again these days, and my interests vary a good deal in that regard. I walk around town, and I take hundreds of photographs, and I read. I've got a lot of accumulated debts to pay off as a result of those six wonderful years of wedded bliss, but I landed a decent, if modest, job that I enjoy well enough. Books, music, movies, the company of friends and a heavy correspondence with loved ones and acquaintances around the world seem to make up my idea of trappings of a happy life. I suppose I'd contrast that with the feeling of achievement some people desire for accomplishing some great life goal or acquiring financial success sufficient to make them happy. Those are all well and good, and I even envy some of those folks. I'm just not cut out for that kind of mindset, at least not at this stage of the game.
What I don't want, I suppose, is the kind of self-destructive distractions I've often pursued. I'd like my health back, thank you, and 2006 is as good a time to concentrate as any, and the sooner the better. I also don't want to slip back into that frame of mind and condition of the spirit that had me believing I was somehow diminished because of a change in the nature of my associations. We live in a world of fluid circumstance. My attachment to any particular arrangement upon which to predicate my happiness will only leave me forever disappointed of achieving that state or fearful of losing it. I've squandered a lot of valuable time that way. I reckon that's just human nature for some of us.
so anyway, here's some of the recycled stuff about my interests:
Favorite music: drunk horse, cog diss, mass grave, neurosis, toadliquor, corrupted, noothgrush, V9R9D, Iron Lung, Savoy Brown, Johnny Winter, George Jones, Bob Wills and just about anything else. Procol Harum's "Whiskey Train" is the best rock song ever recorded, by the way. Johnny Winter's cover of "I'll drown in my tears" is the best blues number ever done. Rorschach is the best hardcore band ever. End of discussion.
Favorite reading: Flannery O’Connor, H. Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy, Thomas Hardy, Isadore Ducasse, Poppy Brite, Thornton Wilder, Graham Greene and Melville. Just finished "Soledad" by RG Vliet and enjoyed that a good deal. If I had to pick a favorite book at random I'd say, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather, but there are scores of others that would fill that slot just as well. It nonetheless is an example of a book that I really loved reading.
Favorite artists: I always love goin to the museums and galleries. I love the Walker, the Weisman and the MIA in Minneapolis. I caught the Barnes collection when it came to the Kimball in Fort Worth way back when. I cried when I saw the David, but I’m a crybaby anyway. I always love learnin about someone I didn't know about before. Modern artists like Alice Neel, Lucian Freud, Ray Johnson, Andy Goldsworthy, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Basquiat or Marcel DuChamp are all meaningful to me now, though I knew nothin about most of em until the last six years or so. Leavin home and movin north and gettin involved with an art student did that for me, I reckon. No regrets there.
Favorite films: Vivra Sa Vie, The Lion In Winter, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe, Zarkorr the Invader! Cool Hand Luke, Hud and Last Picture Show are the best flicks ever. I just watched Naked by Michael Leigh for the third time, so I suppose I like it as well.
I'm a mercenary. I'm a compiler, a scribbler and a literary jack-off idiot. I'm also an incurable city-boy who nonetheless loves to dig in the dirt and let the dog up in the bed. I'm never bored, and I could spend a day just pickin my nose and kickin a head a lettuce around the floor. I kinda like my own company, I guess.
My body has never been a temple to much of anything but my own excesses. I’m indolent and slothful, but it’s my nickel.
|
|
|
|
