Luminary

My girlfriend and I went this past weekend to WaterFire in Providence, RI. If you have not seen this romantic display of art, music, energy and community, you must. This weekend's theme was Choose Peace.

New this year (I believe) was the Starry Starry Night feature, which allows people to craft a dedication message, accompanying a candlelit luminary along the canal embankment and nearby steps, for a lost love. How fitting to do this, as my father died 11 years ago today: Aug. 11, 1998. In life, he wasn't the brightest beacon of light out there, but today I continue to feel his presence and am nonetheless inspired to try to live my life the best way I know how.

Peace

My bedroom is pleasantly chilly, and I'm getting the impression I'm stealing a glimpse of a secret world, where my room opens up its petals as the daylight filters through the slits of the window blinds.

I rarely see this. The sky is overcast. The air conditioner is humming along on LO. The white Honeywell oscillator at the foot of my bed is stiffly but somehow expectantly facing the A/C, waiting to be turned on. Dark, striped button-up shirts line up dutifully in my dark, small closet. The large IKEA wardrobe looms uselessly across from me, taking up space. It dwarfs the bureau, burdened by books I've yet to read, books I have read, journals I've neglected, coins, chocolate bars, allergy pills, my wallet, car keys, and other remnants, mementoes or souvenirs of activities over the last few months. There's my La-Z-Boy in the corner: a big, awkward, fluffy shelf for flung clothes and magazines when I am not using it to sit and meditate.

I am lying on my bed, its soft red blanket inviting and warm. The light here in the daytime turns these things into live creatures, each with a vibrant life of its own. The daylight reacts and gives resonance among these seemingly inanimate objects. The overcast sky is slowly giving way to the powerful sun, as swaying ribbons of light dance on my bed before me, shadows of the tree leaves outside my window waving in a damp, muggy breeze.

The light is smothered by clouds, and for a few moments I wonder if I'll ever see it again: I'm left with the dull red blanket, and the after-image of the shadow of the window blinds. There is a stillness, a sobering calm. The A/C continues to hum. Then the light appears again, brighter than before, wider than before, deeper and broader, covering half my bed and all of my journal and the leg of my Columbia shorts.

I look around and soak up the stillness. And I realize this has been here all along. It's here when I am away at work. It's here when I'm here at night, under the halogen light afixed to the ceiling, and amid the glow of the red lamp atop my bedside table. It's here when I sleep and when I make love, when I am frustrated or overwhelmed.

Wherever and whenever I need it: still, it is here.

Attainable goals for 2009

I don't do resolutions. Like many, I fail to remember even conjuring the audacity I had to challenge myself with lofty aims in such a trendy fashion. So this year, 2009, I am outlining goals more attainable and accessible, in an effort to actually achieve them!

1. Write every day. I'm already failing at this, if you consider that this originally meant write one blog post a day. Here it is, Jan. 10, and this is blog post #4. Not bad, considering I wrote an average of one post a month recently. See? Success already! So, whether it's writing here, writing in my offline journal, or writing a witty one-liner Facebook status message, the goal is to stretch my writing muskles.
   
   
2. Update my web portfolio. I originally wanted to do this in December. My web development portfolio is outdated and seriously lacking in design. It shares the minimalist aesthetic I have on Dankoski.com but really that was only temporary. So I'll update the portfolio content by end of January (meaning, adding the Staples CorpEx site and Craigie on Main) with screenshots and key code snippets.
   
   
3. Update the rest of Dankoski.com. I have had this domain for years, and it's time I do something with it. 2008 was a good year to start that with this blog, and with my web portfolio, but 2009 will be the year to beef it up with actual content. I hope to partner up again with the Craigie website designer on this. I'd like to keep the minimalist aesthetic, but I have some ideas to tie in my varied interests (web, writing, tango, photography, etc.). I'm hoping for a design mockup by end of February or March and an unveiling by late spring.
   
   
4. Travel more. I had a great time traveling to Texas over Thanksgiving. It was my first real "vacation" in eight years. I ended it with the want for more. It's good to get away, isn't it? I don't know yet where I'd like to go, or when I'd be able to. Before, it never occurred to me to get away, but this year, it's actually on my mind.
   
   
5. Live healthier. There are times when I eat some really nasty food. (See Exhibit A and Exhibit B.) But I know that green stuff and nonanimal products can sometimes (but not always) be tasty, and even healthy. I'm not turning vegetarian, but I'm open to eating healthier foods. The other day I learned I am technically overweight, with a body-mass index of 25.09, according to the the BMI calculator on Boston.com. That's based on my average weight of 185 pounds and my approximate height of 6 feet. Borderline with a normal BMI. But I know it's more difficult to maintain weight as one grows older. I'm also looking into yoga and will appreciate any suggestions and support. This healthy-living goal will be ongoing throughout the year.
   
   
6. Unplug. I'm on the computer all day. I need to unplug. Think I can do it? We'll see.
   
   
7. Go out more. I used to dance tango a lot. I'd go out a couple of or three times a week with my body dancing with some hot and not-so hot women. The scene is filled with people who are addicted to that sort of connection, and I've grown bored with it. I haven't danced tango yet in 2009, but I assume I will be back at it sooner or later. But it will no longer be my main social outlet, as it has been for the last five-plus years. This ongoing goal is to find other avenues. I'm a textbook introvert, so this will be a challenge.
   
   
8. Find a GGG woman. Today I'm not planning to seek out a woman who's right for me. Today I am happy with giving and keeping time for myself. But I know that aside from being content with myself, I would love to have a good, giving and game woman by my side. I deserve one. Someone who is sweet and cute and appreciates me for me. And, for the love of God, someone who is fun in bed ... or wherever else she wants to do it.
   
   
9. Keep blog posts short. My friend Jenny challenged me to do this. I know I tend to be wordy. But as Mark Twain supposedly noted, it takes more time to write short than it does to write long. I can write and write and write. Now I gotta edit them down? Argh.
   
   
10. Take more risks. I was going to leave this list at 9 items, but I couldn't help myself. I had to round it out. OK, taking risks, everything else and keeping blog posts short, starting now.
    

P.S. Oh, and if you haven't yet, please subscribe to this blog via e-mail at dankoski.com/blog or to its new Feedburner RSS feed.

Shedding my skin in 2008

Ah, 2008, such curveballs you threw my way! Let's see how well I did, how I've changed, and what I've accomplished as a result.

Waking up
I had a really great summer, a time of transition. Coming out of an on-again off-again yearlong relationship, I needed to clear my head. I chose to learn how to meditate. Without a doubt, this was the most important development of the year, if not ever. I learned not just to dismiss the negative thoughts that drove my life, but I learned to realize that they are just thoughts, just stories I was ruminating in my head; they are not who I AM. Ridding myself of this, I felt on top of the world, just by setting aside time for myself, doing simple things like walking around Fresh Pond in Cambridge in the summer -- or going to Brattle Theatre in December to watch all four of the Indiana Jones movies, Serenity and even episodes of Doctor Who on the big screen. July and August were by far the best months of 2008.

Paying down
In September, I worked on two freelance web development gigs in order to rid myself of credit card debt, which had been a dark cloud over my head for so long. Finally, my credit card balances have been paid off. Phew! There was a time when I had to pay rent with credit cards. Those days are no more. Not only did I pay off the debt, I'm pretty sure I also did not use my credit cards at all last year. It helped that I started in late 2007 to use an actual spreadsheet to budget my income and expenses, which helped me see in real and projected numbers that the debt was not insurmountable if I just stuck with it. I also gleaned random tidbits from advice from blogs such as Get Rich Slowly, where I learned to pay off the largest debt first, by being disciplined. In 2009, I hope to rid myself of my consolidated student loan and another loan. Getting more freelance gigs will make that easier to do.

Getting away
Prior to 2008, the last time I had a real vacation was in 2000, when a friend an I traveled to and around the United Kingdom for spring break in college. So after eight years of working as a reporter and then as a web developer, I needed time to get away from it all. I did this a couple of times this year, first over the Fourth of July weekend. I went to Rockland, Maine, where I walked the breakwater and got a sunburn, even on my feet, where the lines of my Birkenstocks still show faintly today. I did some writing in my journal, too. (To be honest, when I look back at 2008, my memory of it begins here.)

The more significant trip came over Thanksgiving, when I flew to Texas to see my sister, who invited me at the end of August to visit her and her husband in Dallas. I hadn't seen her in a year or two, and I actually hadn't met Tony until then. So that was good. From there I flew south to Austin. I had no plans other than to check out the city and possibly go to the Fandango de Tango festival. I did dance Friday night, and Saturday I walked all over the city for hours, ending the day with a blues concert at Antone's, where I was introduced to the incredible Caroline Wonderland.

Freelancing more
I already mentioned that September was pretty busy with work. Apart from my day job as a contracted web developer at the in-house agency at Staples, I again was contracted by Aspen Publishers in Waltham to develop and produce e-mail newsletters for new and upcoming textbooks for law school students. That job ended just after Columbus Day, but by then I was already working with Pixelberg to develop the new website it designed for Craigie on Main, formerly called Craigie Street Bistrot before they moved to Main Street in Cambridge. I learned A LOT on that project and am very proud of my work on it. I hear there is some follow-up work to be done soon, too.

Expressing myself
2008 was the year I started writing again. I stopped saying "someday I'll write a blog" and actually started one. I hesitated for a long time because I wanted it to have a purpose, and I didn't really have one. So I started this blog on June 22, 2008, with two posts: one introducing myself and an example of a piece of writing I wrote earlier that month in a Grub Street weekday seminar on writing sex scenes, the day I met Jeanne Greeley, who writes the Stuff at Night relationship/sex columns that I've enjoyed reading for a long time. The story of the vegan restaurant was an example of describing food with all five senses. Then we wrote three versions of the same sex scene. I left the class impressed with everyone else's writing and realized that mine was much like reporting -- and hence, much more pornographic, in a way, than the sensual approach we were, uh, shooting for. I took two more Grub classes, one in mid-August on writing a personal essay, and one in mid-December on writing from real life.

So what sparked this renewed interest in writing? My mom was searching for stuff about me on the web in late April and found the last column I wrote for the Maine Campus college newspaper and said, yes, she was proud of me. I sent the link to my girlfriend at the time, who said, "Why aren't you writing?"

Smartening up
I always feel like I'm learning new things every day. There was a time when I distressed over this fact. "I should have figured it all out by now!" But in 2008 I embraced learning, including especially meditation. But earlier in the year I took classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, just for the hell of it. The center sent out a winter catalog in late 2007, and I saw classes for things I always wanted to learn. I took a one-day class on entrepreneurship, a beginner's six-week course on Polish, and another one on pottery. (I have some photos of my pottery that I hope to show off on my site soon.) This past Christmas, I gave some of my wares to my sisters.

Letting go
When I moved to Massachusetts in September 2007, my goal was to forge a mighty career in web development. However, my time here over the last year has become more a job in personal development. I had a lot of assumptions about how my life was going, and it didn't end up the way I expected it would. Each time I took a step, my feet landed in a different spot than I aimed for. It took me a long time to figure out that holding on to what I assumed were foregone conclusions hampered me from moving forward. I continue to struggle with it, but I'm getting better at understanding the concept of impermanence: Nothing lasts forever. I'm trying to get used to it.

Happy new year!

7 relatively obscure things about me

My friend Kate tagged me in November with the challenge to come up with seven random or obscure tidbits about myself.

I usually don't care for this sort of thing, but truth be told I have been reflecting on my life pretty heavily since the summer, and this gave me the opportunity to determine to see what about myself I obscure from other people. I tried to come up with seven aspects that NOT ONE person knew about me, but that was tough. So, finally, I've settled with these. (And part of the challenge is to ask seven people you know to do the same. Their/your names are below.)

1. No one in my family calls me Stan or Stanley, except for my mom's new husband. Everyone else calls me Stasiu, which is Polish for Stan. It's pronounced STAH-shoe (with each syllable sounded short, not drawn out).


2. My interest in writing began early, with a two-page story assignment in fifth grade. I picked the title "The Burglar and the Bear" out of a hat. I wrote and illustrated it. I then wrote three sequels in the eighth and ninth grades. I wrote a lot of fiction in high school and then in college, where I became a journalist, whose focus on reporting and accuracy helped shape my writing style. However, the first time a story of mine was published was when I was age 16, in Echoes magazine, for my profile of an elderly man and family friend in my town.


3. You know how sidewalks are comprised of square blocks? For the longest time, walking on a sidewalk required me to step in each block with my left foot first, which meant I could only do two steps a block. This started when I was really young. Sit back for a moment and imagine a little kid doing that.


4. For a full decade, my family lived in a cellar. We moved from Rhode Island to northern Maine because my father wanted to own a slaughter house. That deal went sour, and my father ended up starting to build a house on one of the two pieces of farmland he had owned. The basement was built in the autumn of 1988, and we lived in there during the winter. We started building the rest of the house in the spring but we didn't have enough money to finish it. We stayed in the cellar while the upstairs remained an unfinished skeleton. The cellar was unfinished, and there was no sense of privacy. There was a bathroom, a kitchen area, and the rest of the home as one big room. Our bedrooms were separated by bureaus, dressers and racks of clothes. Thus was the environment of my formative years.


5. I have never been grounded by my parents. I think perhaps it never occurred to them to try that form of punishment. That, or the way in which we lived was punishment enough.


6. I joined Kappa Delta Phi, a small but national fraternity, in my second semester of college. Even weirder, I was known among them as "Demon" or "Sir Demon" because up until one night during the pledging process, I was a quiet, shy guy. Then one night I spoke my mind. I think I sent the pledgemaster a quick verbal (but funny) jab, which took everyone by surprise. They joked that obviously someone had taken possession of my mind and body. My mom never liked that nickname. But nicknames stick around for a long time. I've had two others: DANK and STANGO.


7. My hearing is within normal range, but I sometimes have a hard time processing what I am hearing. I have not been diagnosed with central auditory processing disorder, or CAPD, but I need no more convincing. My ears work fine and my brain works fine, but the auditory connection between them is at times faulty. In a conversation with you, the first few words of your sentence simply sound like noise, and I either have to ask you to repeat yourself, or I have to figure it out based on the context of what I did understand. If we are anywhere with a lot of background noise, then the background noise is the same volume as you and will thus cancel your voice out. If you're a mumbler, God help me. So if you ask me a question and I'm staring at you or look like I don't know what to say, it most likely means I'm still processing what you're saying, or still processing what I want to say in response. This is why I do not enjoy the bar scene, cafeterias or socializing in group settings of three or more. (I enjoy the crowded dance floor at tango milongas specifically because I don't need to talk, and when I do try to, it feels awkward even to me.)
   

Now I am interested to know seven random or obscure things about the following people. Answer in your blog, and if you don't have a blog, reply to this post here at dankoski.com/blog.

1. Krystyna Emmons
2. Kasia Landry
3. Teresa Ngunyi
4. Jenny Bergman
   
5. Josh Nason
6. Amy Beaudet
7. Ryan Robbins
   

Blog topic ideas

No, I'm still alive. I haven't updated my blog in a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it. In fact, I have many items buzzing around in this hollow head of mine. So as a teaser, I suppose, this post is the list of ideas I'm brewing to write about.

• 7 obscure things about me. I was tagged by my friend Kate (more than a month ago). I'm still thinking about it. That's a tough one. (link added 12/20/2008)
  
• TANGO with STANGO. A blog post about my story with Argentine tango. I already have a request for this, and to that person, I can probably guarantee some surprises.
• Trip to Texas. I visited my sister and her husband in Dallas over Thanksgiving, and then went to Austin to complete the weekend.
• Calexico. They're my new favorite band. I saw them in concert in November.
• "At the movies" -- Ask anyone close to me, and they'll make fun of the fact that I hardly watch any movies. Lately, I've been trying to change that.
• Craigie On Main. I developed this restaurant's new website, and learned a lot along the way.
  
• "Dealing with Loss" -- a title I thought of back in September that would track my (feeling of) transformation and all the stuff I was losing in the process.
• Impermanence and attachment. You may know I started meditating in the summer, and learned some principles of Buddhism along the way. These two concepts have still eluded my grasp to understand them. (As have the grasp of many other people, apparently, someone suggested to me recently.)
• Healthy eating. Almost every woman I either just liked or dated have been very health-conscious, even to the point of being vegan or becoming vegetarian. Being aware of this pattern is interesting and has affected my diet... slowly but steadily. (Please overlook my recipe for Crunchy Eggs Dinner for now.)
  
• Truth. Truth, versions of truth, how people act and react around their own perceptions of truth.
• Trust and patience. I may need to rollover this one into 2009. haha.
  
• Hair, and perceptions. Hmm, I wrote this idea down one day. This could be either one or both of two concepts.
  
• Life is a traffic jam. I thought of this while in one, and wrote it down in a notebook I keep in my car.
• Life is a dream. I first read this in "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle and realized how true that can be. Strangely, it also made me think of the campfire scene in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. That then led me to realize that its widely regarded bad storyline had some interesting points.
• Changing "never enough" to "never IS enough". Similarly, "not good enough".
• Jealousy and fear of rejection. Ah, this old chestnut!
• Clarity and perspective. Related to truthiness (see above).
• My accomplishments of 2008. Because there are a lot of them?
  

Any other requests?

I hope to address some of these in the next couple of weeks. At least one of them!

Busy month

I wish I could say I was on an actual vacation for most of this month. I haven't actually written a real post here for most of July, as I've been unusually busy. Not really with busy work here and there, but I feel I'm occupying my time, for the most part, more wisely. There is a better sense of purpose. So here, I will try to do a brief (haha) synopsis of my month, picking up where I last left off.

My weekend getaway.
On July 4, I saw my friend and his wife, and caught up on life over the past year. I have grown so much in the time since we had last met, at their wedding, and it was good to hang out. Then it was off to an undisclosed location, which, by a number of readers of my blog had figured out from my photos, was in Rockland, Maine. I had hoped for a beach to lay out and just vegetate, but I ended up getting a ripe red farmer's tan (burn) just walking from my motel to the Rockland Breakwater, and beach time lasted only nearly two hours, tops. I got a free four-day three-night stay at the motel for resisting buying one of their timeshares after taking a tour of one of their condos. I decided to drive back to Massachusetts via Route 1, but after four hours and STILL in Maine, I hopped onto I-95, which ended up having worse holiday traffic. Six hours later, I landed in my neck of the woods and went straight to the last hour of the Cambridge tango practica, before heading home. All in all, it was a good trip, but I realized I could really do with a two-week vacation, which I haven't done since my trip to the U.K. over eight years ago during spring break of 2000.

Staples | Corporate Express acquisition (I mean, integration) website
Just before going to Maine I started work on the integration website of Staples and Corporate Express. And when I came back, I was working full-throttle on getting it done. One week I actually got an hour of overtime. It took me and a number of people on my team (I'm currently a contract web developer at Staples headquarters, for those who don't know) the better part of three or so weeks to get done what normally would have been months of work, according to one higher-up who applauded our efforts once we were done. I did most of the HTML, CSS, javascript and a dash of ASP (someone else did the Flash and design). I had some help on the javascript part from one former contractor who has gone full time. The Staples Corporate Express site is now live, but you need to have login access.

Then it is on to a new, big project, which I am knee deep in now. And once that's done, my duties will completely change. Sounds like good job security for now.

Life is a one-man play on a stage
One evening earlier this month, a friend of mine from New Hampshire and I went to the New Rep Theatre in Watertown to see "According to Tip", a one-man play performed by Broadway and TV star Ken Howard. I don't know anything about Broadway, or Tip O'Neill, but my friend is a political junkie. And because the New Reperatory Theatre is in my neighborhood, and because I am interested in the arts (even though I haven't done much with it), I thought what the hell. Ken Howard was great. Because he sang a handful of Irish drinking songs, does it count as a musical?

Howard has been around for a long time, and apparently he is sometimes in the U.S. version of "The Office," and he was in the (fantastic) movie "Michael Clayton," which starred George Clooney. I'm the type of person who can't do movie quotes to save my life, and therefore I cannot remember who Howard was in the movie. I'd have to watch it again.

Life is a one-man play on a stage, Part 2
The same night as "According to Tip" there was an Argentine tango milonga in Brookline. The play was done at 10:30pm-ish, and the milonga still had at least two hours left, so I decided to go. That was the most interesting two hours at a milonga I've had in a long time, if not ever. And that's putting it lightly. I saw my ex arrive there with a guy friend of hers, and I (apparently?) jumped to conclusions and had to step outside for a while to clear my head (see more about meditation, below). I stepped back inside and ended up having incredible dances with some of my favorite dancers, and with those I haven't danced with before (they were added to my list of favorites).

There are the types of good dancers who are so pre-occupied with doing a particular move RIGHT, as in pointing the foot at the correct angle to floor and juxtaposed to the leg blah blah blah, and there are the types of good dancers who move with feeling -- it may not be 100% correct but it FEELS goooood. I lean toward the latter, and I love dancing with those types of dancers too. For a while, I lost sight of that, and I'm comfortable with where I am. (I do know that if you combine both of those types of good dancers, the precise with the feeling, then your eyes roll back into your head with bliss. Been there, done that. That happens when the stars are aligned just perfectly.)

Hosting practica
In other tango news, I had been asked to be host to the Sunday practica in Cambridge. I was host on July 13, and will be host this Sunday. Basically, all this means is that I'm responsible for bringing water for everyone, ensuring that the vibe of practica remains friendly, be welcoming and dancing with new faces on the scene. I have no control over how freaking hot and muggy it gets in there, even when all three air conditioners and industrial fans are on at full blast. Thankfully, I don't need to mop up the drops of sweat on the floor. But I am responsible for having enough money to cover the rent.

Creative writing update
I haven't done much writing this month, other than writing prolific late-night (into early morning) entries in my journal after a long day (see "Life is a one-man play," parts 1 and 2, above, for example). Other than that, I have submitted a very small slice-of-life story as an entry to Grub Street's new literary magazine, the Rag Mag, which will debut Sept. 1. The story is labeled as fiction, although it's definitely based on a true story. In fact, I wrote it during a Grub Street writing class in early June, and it became one of my early blog entries, The revenge of the mysterious green plate monster. I hope it will be published in the Mag in one way or another. So far, I know that two people in my life have read it and that they loved it. I hope the rest of you do, too.

Crowning achievement
I finally got my second crown put in. This time porcelain instead of gold. I waited awhile to get it done, and therefore there were slight complications. I was under nitrous oxide (laughing gas) for about three long hours, and coming out of that consious yet coma-like state was rough. I had to sit down and drink some water to let my convulsing body iron out the shakes. Really weird.

Think twice about asking me to fix your computer
I messed up my computer bad. It actually happened the end of last month, and I let my computer whiz-kid friend up in Maine make a diagnosis. Yup, I lost all my files. Had I actually looked for my Windows XP setup CD, instead of using the PC Recovery Disc, I would have been A-OK. But the PC Recovery Disc reverted my computer as if I had just bought it this morning, taking me through the tour of Windows. Bizarrely, all my programs were fine, even Firefox 3, which I had downloaded a week before my computer wouldn't load. All the files that were stored in the My Documents folder? GONE. All the free videos I got from Amazon Unbox that were stored in a separate shared folder, videos I downloaded but don't have time to watch, and probably never will, were SAVED. Family and friends' photos? Gone. Budget spreadsheet I painstakingly built over the last year? Gone. Website source files for my previous clients? Gone. It's high time I invest in an external hard drive to back all my shit up. Now I'm re-building my budget with Google Docs (read: online).

Meditation and mindfulness
In many ways this should be first on this list. This has been one of the most important things I have done in a long while. It has been occupying most of my free time, when it's not spent dancing Argentine tango, surfing the Web, or taking walks. So because this section deserves more attention, and rightly so has turned from a brief synopsis on the list to a lengthy description of where I am at, "meditation and mindfulness" has become its own blog post.

One more week
There's still one more week to go for July. What more could possibly be in store for me?

On my way to getting away

The previous blog posts are proof that my phone has a shitty built-in camera. Where there were Canadian geese swimming and flapping their wings in the Charles River, all you saw was a murky midnight-bluish-gray. Those were taken just a few steps south of Watertown Square, on the bridge near the Galen and Watertown streets intersection.

I had surrendered my car to Sullivan Tire to fix a blown blower motor around 8:30am, sat on a park bench and wrote for a couple of hours, went to Napoli Pizza for a small one (the guy repeated my order, "Hamburg, and broccoli?" but in a tone that said, "Seriously?"), and then decided to take a walk. I could only eat half the pizza, so I carted around the take-out pizza box, my journal, my eyeglass case and water bottle around in my hands. As I crossed the bridge, I snapped those photos. (Actually the first photo is OF the bridge, taken from the vantage point near where I wrote on the park bench, on the deck where old men cast fishing lines and families feed the geese, even when the signs say to keep them wild.)

My goal was to check out a new set of walking/bike paths in that area. If you hang a right after the bridge, the trail is right there. Turns out that corner is the start (or end) of a particular section of the Charles River Reservation, where there lives many small wildlife in addition to the geese. These include a type of sparrow, dragonflies, and a variety of fish, among others. Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, in my view. However, it was really nice and somewhat calming to watch a family of geese float by and admire their legs paddling themselves around.

The particular portion of the reservation extended from Watertown Square through Newton, up into Waltham and back down to Newton. I'm not entirely sure how far I went. The trail meandered fairly close to old buildings and was at several points practically in the back yards of many homes. It's a fairly windy day today, which was great in the shade while writing in the park, but it also allowed many twigs and branches to fall on the trail, so it wasn't as clean as, say, the trails along Fresh Pond in Cambridge. Soon I came across an outdoor barbecue consisting mostly of young Asians who had set up white tables on the grounds. Then the trail stopped at an actual road, but blue and yellow heron tracks painted on the sidewalk showed me the way across the street to where the trail continued. Shortly thereafter, Sullivan Tire called to say my car would be ready in an hour, so after continuing for a little bit more, I back-tracked my way to the starting line, and I had my car by 2pm. (As a side note, walking in Birkenstocks today has been a much more pleasant experience than I had on the first day.)

This has pretty much been my first day of "getting away from it all" on this long holiday weekend. I have so much on my mind lately, and just when I've started to sort things out, more gets added to the plate. I know that I could travel all over the world, but I won't "find myself", as it were, until I look inside. Nevertheless, I am traveling to Maine, with a tentative plan to find a beach to just relax and reflect, maybe do some meditating and more writing. Along the way, I'm going to see a friend who has offered to try to fix my home computer. That's really an excuse, as if I needed one, to chill out with an old friend for the first time in almost a year. Then it's onward to the crash of the waves and the hot sandy beach.

The revenge of the mysterious green plate monster

The following is an exercise in writing fiction that I did at a Grub Street workshop this month. That day was the first time I had written fiction in years, and to be honest, this is more like an embellished "based on a true story." Actually, a lot of what I wrote that day was not really fiction. I felt rusty and out of practice. I did not read this out loud to the class, but I let my friend read it soon after and she loved it. Hopefully, it's not only because it's about her. Please comment if you wish.

She was excited to eat at this vegetarian restaurant, and as I was tasting the edamame for the first time, and the rubbery blocks of tofu squishing between my teeth, I asked myself, what had I gotten myself into?

I wanted to impress her by being adventurous, but being a meat-and-potatoes and sometimes-junk-food kind of guy, this felt more like I was jumping off a cliff and reaching for anything resembling food. I suppose I did grab a branch or something, because the next foreign object I had cautiously put in my mouth had all the flavor and texture of a twig.

I toyed with the generous pile of green leaves on my plate. It wasn’t lettuce or kale, but it was stringy, sticking to each other and the cubes of tofu and chick peas. I picked at the green monster, imagining myself as the little kid in the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, in which his food comes to life and begins to orate the Hamlet soliloquy. I start wrapping the sticky, stringy green mess around my fork like I do with spaghetti. I held it up to my nose and steal a whiff. I was hoping for some redemption, some essence of hope that perhaps it only LOOKED horrible and that the smell would offer a hint of delectable bliss that I had yet to encounter. Instead, it was a neutral-to-pale scent that conjured up images of steamed broccoli and my laundry basket. I sighed, and looked at the rest of my plate. Eyes of quinoa were staring at me, pleading with me to run away and take them with me.

I had no option but to taste it. I stuffed it into my mouth and squirmed. I closed my eyes until it was successfully down the hatch.

I looked at her. She was all smiles and looked content. She looked at me, rolled her eyes and pointed her fork at her plate of the same concoction.

“This,” she said, “is the best I’ve ever had. I’m really glad we chose this place.”

Hmm, I said, and poked my finger into the tofu. It bounced back.

Opening the glass jar

I wish I could capture my thoughts.

A writer usually finds a way to do this effectively. There is always a pad of paper and a pen nearby. A notebook is always in the back pocket or in the glove compartment. Microsoft Word is always on standby. A budding writer has the tools, but they are only as good as his ability to capture his thoughts.

My thoughts are always fleeting. Today I am writing longhand in my journal. Writing longhand is tough because it forces you to pay attention to the thoughts in your head. You allow the thoughts to play out on your mind's stage, and you watch this performance and interpret it before you know what it is exactly you are witnessing. You report on these events as you see them. But not only are you the reporter, you are the editor, you are the columnist, interpreting what is in your head and writing down what makes sense.

I've been writing a lot in my journal lately. In addition to a breakup of a relationship, I have grown a lot in the last year and face many challenges in the future. That is a lot to think about, and sometimes it comes at me all at once, and I can't make heads or tails of it. Today I seem to be making progress in jotting these thoughts down. But then it was lunchtime, and I had to eat.

I made myself a sandwich and while eating, I continued thinking about my journal entry. What would be the next paragraph, what would come after that, etc. I want this journal entry to make sense, I want it to show that my head is not simply a glass jar filled with fireflies buzzing around inside. But the ideas kept buzzing by and within a couple of seconds, they were gone. I have a general idea where I want to go with it, but it would be great if I could capture my thoughts and pin them on the clothesline.

So that's when it hit me. "I wish I could capture my thoughts." What a great opening line to jump into a blog. I've been wanting to start a blog for a year or more now, and more so within the last month when the writing bug bit me. I had thought of another way to start it off, by quoting Pablo Neruda of all people, but I suppose my hesitation illustrated my uneasiness with that idea. Maybe it will work as a future post. Be on the lookout for it.

So here it is. My first blog post. I decided to call this blog "Dank Thoughts" on a whim, but it works for a number of reasons. First, "Dank" was one of many nicknames I have had. Second, although I actually didn't care for that nickname, it seems to work here on a more literal level. These thoughts are coming from the recesses of my mind. People may be surprised by what I think. It is my hope, then, that I can capture them, not only to help me figure things out along the way, but also maybe to show that I'm just as human as anyone else.

OK, back to writing my journal entry.