SubSurface

Braver than me, he remembered dreams.

Imagined another life.

Dared to seek the edges.

Drew me maps.

Z List

There's a lot to be said for doing these lists, really. Did my Saturday to-do list, first thing this morn: trying again to make a habit of doing it, as I used to, and wiring it into my brain, so I'll simply do it now, scribbling it, along with breakfast.

Also did another kinda list. We all have...issues going or gone wrong in our lives we hate, or don't like, if hate is too harsh a word. Figured why not jot that down. Not some long-winded rant I wouldn't wanna write or read, let alone bore any reader with in a blog. Just a list. Things going left in my life I don't like...hate, actually. Recalling now I never used to flinch from feeling strongly about anything. It was stuff cluttering my view of Saturday morning anyway. Figured by jotting it down, staring at it, in effect, that maybe I'd see something I hadn't seen before: figure out some spectacular solution, maybe...could happen...sure...

Well. No. Not resolved in a simple list. No simple fix blazed clear as morning sun. But I don't feel frustrated about it, not at all now. I don't feel I might punch my fist thru a wall...if I was the melodramatic sort who takes a very hands-on approach to moving architecture. Jotting down all that...stuff seems to have put out the fire of it in my head. It's all only a list now. I'm left feeling, imagining it, even, that I might have done something about it already. And that'll do me fine. For now.

Could call it...Z List, I suppose. Names are good. Naming a thing makes it a knowable thing, eh? Z List, okay. Any other letter raises its importance. I don't want that. It could never be a B, for instance. Today's A, the to-do list, isn't even that big of an A. It's only an organizing tool, really: a thinking exercise intended for pointing me in the direction I want to go. Today's Big A, THE number 1 to-do I did scribble this morn: GO MEET FRIENDS. Well, of course! Because it's
S A T U R D A Y. Pretty hilarious outcome, wouldn't it be, if the exercise goes wrong and turns me from human being to human doing?

Oh yeah...To Do List

Once upon a time, when time was a thing I couldn’t catch if I swung the biggest butterfly net imaginable, I read some how-to…might’ve been How To Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. Yeah, thinking about it, that was the book. By Alan Lakein. Anyway. One useful and kinda obvious gem from it, thinking about that: To Do Lists. And I did find doing To Do Lists useful: for organizing, and prioritizing, right’right, the stuff whizzing about through my head. Wasn’t enough simply to do a To Do list: it’s only a mess of chores to do, until it’s prioritized…Do this first, then this, this, and so on. And maybe forget doing the ‘so on’, because the ‘so on’ is so low on the list.

Suddenly it’s gotten so busy…in this economic downturn, funny, eh?...and I’ve been feeling exhausted, and frustrated I can’t do more. Do more of my stuff. My projects. And I’ve just remembered this little coping device I used, when last I needed it – but forgot about until now.

So. Did my To Do list this morning. Scribbled it on some paper slip. Slipped it in my back pocket. Referred to it. Added to it. Subtracted from it through my day, as I did each, or enough of each. That was another bit of advice, I recall now: even doing some of a thing is better than doing nothing.

That bit of advice, and another…about trying to be flexible about everything. As I’m trying now. The dayjob beckons again. In overtime. Gotta go. I’ll be sure and do my stretching exercises, tho.

Sergeant's Advice

Dreamed a great one last night. A story character giving out advice. About how I might write the story. He's a soldier. More, actually: a sergeant, respected by the soldiers he leads.

"Come morning, if you find you can stand to read it, you'll know it might be worth making more of." he said.

The sergeant didn't appear...distinct. A cloaked big man standing on hard ground, and shadowed by a great tree overhead. I had the impression he wore armour under that cloak. Of course, he's only partly formed. Just like the story.

Here's the funny thing, though: I haven't recently scribbled anything featuring any sergeant.

Graphikty Truckin'

Couldn't get back to this 'til the day after.

[Whispers] The j-o-b, as always, or seems so.

Lucky, I suppose, busy workdays yesterday and today, that I got to post the prettified truck pic when I did. Can't say what I had in mind, as in comments, to go along with it. Whatever...the thought was gone by day's end.

Suppose I'm making do. As the artist did: found himself a canvas, or wall. Though I thought there was some sorta code, among graffitists, not to illustrate private property. Well, maybe artist and driver of the rolling art shook hands on some deal. Might happen, in a world perfect as this.

Saturday...Half Empty, or Full?

It doesn't feel it, still this is perhaps the most productive first half of any Saturday I've had in weeks.

Usual Saturday morning chores already done. Groceries gotten, and put away. Bills paid, online and effortlessly, and banking records recorded. Laundry's laundered, too, and all the rest of it's no longer in my way: the accumulated domesticana I hadn't time for all this workweek.

Even done, the correspondence not related to Protag, the blog, writin' projects. While the day was young and my head clear, three emails composed and sent to family and one remote friend scattered around the geography.

Still, it doesn't feel totally satisfying, nooo. It feels like desk-clearing, that spent away half the day. Now that I've done the chores part of Saturday, I'm all too aware it is a Saturday. And the sun's out...out there.

Beauty where U Find It...Aw, it's only because I can't abide untitled stuff

I have no idea what to...blog about. Don't especially wanna think. Been thinking all week. Tired of thinking. Tired of work. Wanna write. Play. Go...somewhere. Go nowhere. Don't even wanna jab at that Canada Line, easy tho it'd be to. Or maybe I do.

Spotted more Canada Line hilarity this morning, y'see, returning from grocery shopping along Kent Avenue. Drizzly Saturday. The calm before the return to work storm, I'm antici...pating, after this Labour Day long weekend, when commuters will demonstrate reality. Many of their bus routes simply gone, or re-routed. All those souls being routed to feed this. This unifying snake. Effective on Monday, the only way across the river between two swarms of population. Compelled aboard two-car trains. Now a brain might anticipate, and increase the frequency of rush-time trains: say, from a train every four minutes, to every...two.

I dunno why I'm thinking about that. It's not my job to think about that. I don't want to think about that. I just wanna jab them. Just in passing. Only to sneer about this morning. How this morning says so much about this entire pre-Olympics farce.

Construction signage - flashing sign-boxes: CAMBIE CLOSED - [then some yada yada] - BUSINESS OPEN

I really felt for the delivery van, pulled over at wooden barriers — naturally — at Kent and Cambie, his hazards flashing. When passing traffic had cleared him, the driver hurried out from behind his wheel, dragged aside the barriers. Yesss, some little human mistake. Someone didn't get the message, or didn't think.

And that's enough thinking.
Snapped a little art through the smashed open side of an abandoned building. I liked the stacked pallets as much.