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Miscellaneous 🤷‍♀️ The Soul's Midnight

maybe it's the ash tree

It could be the ash tree outside my bedroom window. It's a cool night and Lanny (that's my wife's name, you know, Lanny, since I've never actually mentioned that) has the windows open. Our whole north bedroom wall is windows, and young ash trees growing too close to the house. I keep them pruned small, because we like the foliage of a grove of tiny ash trees right there in the windows. There's a breeze and the leaves have turned yellow in places. It's fall, you know. Rained all weekend till this afternoon. I took the littler kids skateboarding over at the elementary school. Neighbor's kid shooting hoops there, talked for a few. Got a can of Coke from the vending machine on the way home. It feels like autumn today, so we made grilled cheese for dinner. I helped my freshman daughter Evie with her geography homework (can I help label a drainage basin on this diagram my HELL do I not manage part of the Upper Jordan Watershed?), read to the little kids and I was lying in my bed listening to the breeze in the yellowing ash leaves and watching a candle ticker on the dresser. I could hear a young couple talking at the corner about nothing and everything. Hardcastles, walking their dog. They're Lanny and me - 15 year ago. So I had my hand on my wife's bare shoulder while she slept there in the cool room but something brings me out here to the kitchen to type - what is it? I don't know. Maybe I think I have it too easy. Maybe I should do more with the life I've been given, maybe I'm worried that I failed my oldest daughter while I watch her struggling through this year, sort of without an anchor. Maybe I gave her too much freedom and neo-hippy advice instead of discipline and a college fund to squander. I don't know, the reality is that every day I just do what has to be done that day. Emotionally, mentally - I live hand to mouth. Dave Ramsey has no advice for that. There are no 401k loans for the soul. You only have what you have. So tonight, I'll probably go back to bed - back to the bare shoulder and the cool room and still-dark fireplace there and enjoy that even with the rain we've still got the fall to enjoy before hard winter gets here. Maybe I can fall asleep in the scent of undeservedly beautiful leaves and candles, and I can just be happy that tonight everything is OK. Or maybe I won't - but to see and feel and be awake all night in the autumn is alright with me. It's probably all due to the ash tree out there in the dark.

Good night, cyburbia. Get some sleep.

- ursus
 
ursus said:
It could be the ash tree outside my bedroom window. It's a cool night and Lanny (that's my wife's name, you know, Lanny, since I've never actually mentioned that) has the windows open. Our whole north bedroom wall is windows, and young ash trees growing too close to the house. I keep them pruned small, because we like the foliage of a grove of tiny ash trees right there in the windows. There's a breeze and the leaves have turned yellow in places. It's fall, you know. Rained all weekend till this afternoon. I took the littler kids skateboarding over at the elementary school. Neighbor's kid shooting hoops there, talked for a few. Got a can of Coke from the vending machine on the way home. It feels like autumn today, so we made grilled cheese for dinner. I helped my freshman daughter Evie with her geography homework (can I help label a drainage basin on this diagram my HELL do I not manage part of the Upper Jordan Watershed?), read to the little kids and I was lying in my bed listening to the breeze in the yellowing ash leaves and watching a candle ticker on the dresser. I could hear a young couple talking at the corner about nothing and everything. Hardcastles, walking their dog. They're Lanny and me - 15 year ago. So I had my hand on my wife's bare shoulder while she slept there in the cool room but something brings me out here to the kitchen to type - what is it? I don't know. Maybe I think I have it too easy. Maybe I should do more with the life I've been given, maybe I'm worried that I failed my oldest daughter while I watch her struggling through this year, sort of without an anchor. Maybe I gave her too much freedom and neo-hippy advice instead of discipline and a college fund to squander. I don't know, the reality is that every day I just do what has to be done that day. Emotionally, mentally - I live hand to mouth. Dave Ramsey has no advice for that. There are no 401k loans for the soul. You only have what you have. So tonight, I'll probably go back to bed - back to the bare shoulder and the cool room and still-dark fireplace there and enjoy that even with the rain we've still got the fall to enjoy before hard winter gets here. Maybe I can fall asleep in the scent of undeservedly beautiful leaves and candles, and I can just be happy that tonight everything is OK. Or maybe I won't - but to see and feel and be awake all night in the autumn is alright with me. It's probably all due to the ash tree out there in the dark.

Good night, cyburbia. Get some sleep.

- ursus
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Well written little buddy. You should consider doing more writing, as in a short story, flash fiction or novel.
 
I didn't get to do anything I wanted to do yesterday. Instead, I watched two old sisters walk together, heads and shoulders touching, and happy to be in the same place. From behind, it's hard to tell one from the other, and from behind, they aren't Mom or Aunt, but two sisters who aren't separated by distance. I heard people reminisce and express thanks, saying that while they'd been through rough times, they wouldn't change a thing. I witnessed how my uncle, who was a successful businessman, now tends to menial household chores in order to give his wife the rest she earned and deserves. It's a quiet and strong statement of his love and appreciation of a woman who made a warm and beautiful home for him and raised their children. I listened to another old woman talk about missing her husband and how lonely she is, and what a wonderful life they shared. I took a tour of homes and neighborhoods where we all lived at one time, and listened to cousins talk about growing up together almost as close as siblings. I saw my normally quiet and reserved mother open up and show affection to these two women who are such a part of who she was, and who she is. This morning, while it's still dark and while I can't sleep, I'm kind of sad that my life hasn't taken the path I expected, although I, too, can say that I really have no regrets.
 
I wake around 3:00 am for no apparent reason. Then I spend the next hour trying to fall back asleep. part of me says "Since you're awake get up and do something around the house," but I do need to fall back asleep. I just want to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
 
Planit said:
I wake around 3:00 am for no apparent reason. Then I spend the next hour trying to fall back asleep. part of me says "Since you're awake get up and do something around the house," but I do need to fall back asleep. I just want to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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I feel your pain.
This happens too frequently to me.
Not happy about it.
 
I woke up at 4:00 am this morning. I couldn't stop thinking about the two staff reports that are due tomorrow, despite the fact that they were vetted through a coworker and our attourney and that they were updated. I got up and did some work on the internet before going back to bed an hour later. I later dreamed that I was at a Planning Commission meeting but I was sitting with the people in the back of the audience with an arm load of documents and I couldn't get to the Planning Commission to give my report.

Seriously, stuff like this hasn't happened to me in years and I've only been on this job for four weeks! What do I have to look forward to now?
 
working late on a grant that has to be postmarked tomorrow so I am here for a while...

:(:-|:-o:'(|-):-\:-s:s::wall::wolf::c::bike::money::toilet::screw:
 
I lost my dad on Sunday night. He'd come home and gone onto hospice, but we thought it would be a few more months. Monday night my kids and I helped the durable goods provider set up his hospital bed, Sunday night he was gone and tomorrow we will bury him.

I have, over the course of the last half an hour, typed and deleted no fewer than 10 paragraphs here about my dad, our relationship, the things I learned from him that I cherish, etc. The words keep coming and coming and then I look at them and hate them, because they don't seem to say what I want to say so I delete them...Tomorrow, I have to deliver a eulogy of sorts. If this post is any indication how the writing process is going to go I'm in big trouble and will be shooting from the hip. I was probably going to do that anyway. How do you sum up somebody's life? What they meant to you? It can't be done. How do I talk about what it meant to me to drive up the street and see his garage door up and know that HE was in there, fiddling around with something? To know that there was a drawer in there with a bunch of his father's craftsman tie bars in it? To know that his ugly cowboy hat was hanging on a peg in there? The pencil sharpener for hell's sake? How do I explain how I loved that he had a Stanley-Bostich pencil sharpener mounted on his work bench like it was a damn third grade classroom out there? I want to wrap his ugly jacket around me and smell the sawdust and Gold Bond. I want to feel his fingers holding my hand, feel that silver dollar ring he'd pounded out and wore, and have him squeeze my hand and tell me I'm a better man than I think I am. I want to go up there and see him sitting with his books, reading way too late into the night. I want him to tell me that I should carry a pocket knife with me because I never know when I'll need it. I want to be lectured about paying things on time, about going to work to set a good example. I want to see him make his way to the fence to talk to the young couple that moved in next door and tell them it looks like their son's growing up to be a "big bastard" of a kid and mean it as a compliment. I want to watch him pick an apricot just to throw it at a starling. I want to see if he's still stashing quarters in a sock in his top drawer (bet he is). I just want him back, I guess. And I can't have him back. And I know that.

I'm going to miss him for the rest of my life, and I'm probably going to foul up his eulogy tomorrow morning. Wish me luck, Cyburbia, and Dad, smile down on Lincoln County where you were born. We've got it on your headstone, just like we said. Man says it'll be ready soon enough. And for those of you who wondered - as Dad did - if they still made pine boxes to be buried in like a man....they do. Wish granted, old man. Wish granted.

-ursus
 
ursus said:
I lost my dad on Sunday night. He'd come home and gone onto hospice, but we thought it would be a few more months. Monday night my kids and I helped the durable goods provider set up his hospital bed, Sunday night he was gone and tomorrow we will bury him.
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:(
My condolences on the the loss of your father.


With just a tiny bit of editing here and there, this beautiful and candid passage reads just like the right eulogy.
ursus said:
I have, over the course of the last half an hour, typed and deleted no fewer than 10 paragraphs here about my dad, our relationship, the things I learned from him that I cherish... :scissors: How do you sum up somebody's life? What they meant to you? It can't be done. How do I talk about what it meant to me to drive up the street and see his garage door up and know that HE was in there, fiddling around with something? To know that there was a drawer in there with a bunch of his father's craftsman tie bars in it? To know that his [STRIKEOUT]ugly[/STRIKEOUT] cowboy hat was hanging on a peg in there? :scissors: How do I explain how I loved that he had a Stanley-Bostich pencil sharpener mounted on his work bench like it was a [STRIKEOUT]damn[/STRIKEOUT] third grade classroom out there? I want to wrap his [STRIKEOUT]ugly[/STRIKEOUT] jacket around me and smell the sawdust and Gold Bond. I want to feel his fingers holding my hand, feel that silver dollar ring he'd pounded out and wore, and have him squeeze my hand and tell me I'm a better man than I think I am. I want to go up there and see him sitting with his books, reading way too late into the night. I want him to tell me that I should carry a pocket knife with me because I never know when I'll need it. I want to be lectured about paying things on time, about going to work to set a good example. I want to see him make his way to the fence to talk to the young couple that moved in next door and tell them it looks like their son's growing up to be a "big bastard" of a kid and mean it as a compliment. I want to watch him pick an apricot just to throw it at...... [STRIKEOUT]a starling[/STRIKEOUT] I want to see if he's still stashing quarters in a sock in his top drawer (bet he is). I just want him back, I guess. And I can't have him back. And I know that.

I'm going to miss him for the rest of my life..... :scissors: Dad, smile down on Lincoln County where you were born. We've got it on your headstone, just like we said. Man says it'll be ready soon enough. And for those of you who wondered - as Dad did - if they still made pine boxes to be buried in like a man....they do. Wish granted, old man. Wish granted.
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Good luck, ursus, on delivering this beautiful piece that people are sure to cherish.
 
Ursus, my friend, I'm so sorry for your loss. Your heartfelt words touched me.

Keep the jacket that has your dad's essence close to you.... I'll say a prayer for you and your dad.
 
Sorry to hear a good man is moving on. It's hard to explain how the little things are what's important.
 
Ursus, I am so sorry for your loss. Losing a parent is never easy. Know that we're here for you. Sounds like you've got a good start on the eulogy. Have faith the right words will somehow come.
 
Sorry to read about your loss, Ursus. I have tears in my eyes reading what you did put out there for us. He sounds like a great dad.

We will have both of you in our thoughts.
 
You guys, thanks for all your words and thoughts and prayers. You're good people. Good, good people, and it means the world to me to know you care. Big hugs out to all of you. :)
 
ursus said:
You guys, thanks for all your words and thoughts and prayers. You're good people. Good, good people, and it means the world to me to know you care. Big hugs out to all of you. :)
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ursus, I hope that everything went well. I am sure your heart and emotion were felt. Sorry for your great loss.
 
Ursus,

I am late in getting to it, but my condolences to you and your family. Losing a parent is hard. We all eventually have to go through it once or twice. The loss never goes away, but time soothes the pain and then you have only the good memories. I miss my Mom, but now I don't remember her passing so much as I remember how she packed a great Christmas stocking even when I was a grown man and how she could peel and eat crawfish and match you crawfish to crawfish.And when I open a letter I use her souvenir pocket knife and think about her.

It sounds like Lincoln County, WY is a better place now because there rests a good man.
 
I'm so sorry to hear about your father, Ursus, my thoughts and prayers will be with you and your family, especially through the holidays.
 
I know you're out there

I know you're out there, fellow insomniacs. You're watching TV or reading. Some of you are staring out windows at dark streets. Some of you are walking quietly, around the block, maybe just around the house. It comforts me to know that you're there, even though I can't see anybody. I know there's nothing but dark and air out there, and people living their lives outside of mine. I remember very clearly when I realized that people had lives outside of mine. I was walking home from my friend Ricky Hadden's house, two streets over. I'd stopped there after school to hang around and I was walking home along Orchard Drive (street that connected ours, if you've ever wanted to google map my neighborhood :) ). I was watching the cars coming toward me. It was this time of year. Not dark yet, but not light anymore and grey, grey grey. I locked eyes with a fat man driving a van and he saw me but didn't really see me and I realized he was thinking about something. Something important maybe. He seemed preoccupied and I wondered what it was that he was thinking about and BAM: the floodgates opened. I realized in that moment that there were all of these people whose lives had NOTHING to do with mine, but who had very real problems and thoughts and memories and plans. It was startling. I felt small. I felt overwhelmed. But I was transfixed at the same time....and I've been transfixed ever since.

So when I tell you that I'm comforted to know that you're out there, know that I really am. I wonder about you. Not just the stuff that you tell. I wonder about all the stuff you don't tell. Don't flip out and block me, I'm not a stalker, I just - I guess I just like knowing that you're YOU, and that your experience is unique to you, and I desperately wish I could know all the things that make everybody on this planet the way that they are.

What am I babbling about? Shouldn't you be in bed? :)

goodnight all,

-ursus.
 
I missed this last night and I missed the post about your Dad - I know how hard it is and I am so very sorry
 
You weren't alone. I was awake many miles away from you, thanks to a noisy snow plow and some things going on at work....
 
A long way from my ash trees

It's funny how far I am from some of the geography that's dear to me. I'm sitting on s horrible sectional in a basement unable to sleep in whole new ways. Some of my family is asleep in the next room - but not all of them and that's on me. That's a hard realization I think. I've avoidex blame for lots of things in life with my funny disposition and my peanut-butter ad face,but my family's situation is not ideal and clearly all my fault. And the real kicker is tonight I can't sleep because of my boss, not my wife.

So I'm out of my woods and onto the frightening open plain of some uncharted country for me. You know, you keep your job and don't recognize your own work anymore and you start to wonder if you gained anything keeping that job after a bad review or reprimand. Uncharted is the right word. Bad geography. So tonight I needed the souls midnight because it's familiar where so much feels foreign right now. I'm staying away from the burbs right now for work, but tonight I just couldn't. It's raining in somebody else's back yard into a window well six feet to my left and I'm thinking about my own soul's geography and how very without map or compass I feel tonight.

See you soon, cyburbians. Goodnight till then.
 
ursus said:
It's funny how far I am from some of the geography that's dear to me. I'm sitting on s horrible sectional in a basement unable to sleep in whole new ways. Some of my family is asleep in the next room - but not all of them and that's on me. That's a hard realization I think. I've avoidex blame for lots of things in life with my funny disposition and my peanut-butter ad face,but my family's situation is not ideal and clearly all my fault. And the real kicker is tonight I can't sleep because of my boss, not my wife.

So I'm out of my woods and onto the frightening open plain of some uncharted country for me. You know, you keep your job and don't recognize your own work anymore and you start to wonder if you gained anything keeping that job after a bad review or reprimand. Uncharted is the right word. Bad geography. So tonight I needed the souls midnight because it's familiar where so much feels foreign right now. I'm staying away from the burbs right now for work, but tonight I just couldn't. It's raining in somebody else's back yard into a window well six feet to my left and I'm thinking about my own soul's geography and how very without map or compass I feel tonight.

See you soon, cyburbians. Goodnight till then.
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'm sorry that things are weighing on you....I'll keep you in my thoughts.
 
ursus said:
It's funny how far I am from some of the geography that's dear to me. I'm sitting on s horrible sectional in a basement unable to sleep in whole new ways. Some of my family is asleep in the next room - but not all of them and that's on me. That's a hard realization I think. I've avoidex blame for lots of things in life with my funny disposition and my peanut-butter ad face,but my family's situation is not ideal and clearly all my fault. And the real kicker is tonight I can't sleep because of my boss, not my wife.

So I'm out of my woods and onto the frightening open plain of some uncharted country for me. You know, you keep your job and don't recognize your own work anymore and you start to wonder if you gained anything keeping that job after a bad review or reprimand. Uncharted is the right word. Bad geography. So tonight I needed the souls midnight because it's familiar where so much feels foreign right now. I'm staying away from the burbs right now for work, but tonight I just couldn't. It's raining in somebody else's back yard into a window well six feet to my left and I'm thinking about my own soul's geography and how very without map or compass I feel tonight.

See you soon, cyburbians. Goodnight till then.
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kms said:
'm sorry that things are weighing on you....I'll keep you in my thoughts.
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Same here. Sometimes the traveling without a map is the best thing you can do for yourself. I've done it several times and come out better for it.
 
I just scrolled through all the FAC titles to find this thread and I have come to the realization that we are all freakin crazy people (myself included)

working late from home
 
ursus said:
It's funny how far I am from some of the geography that's dear to me. I'm sitting on s horrible sectional in a basement unable to sleep in whole new ways. Some of my family is asleep in the next room - but not all of them and that's on me. That's a hard realization I think. I've avoidex blame for lots of things in life with my funny disposition and my peanut-butter ad face,but my family's situation is not ideal and clearly all my fault. And the real kicker is tonight I can't sleep because of my boss, not my wife.

So I'm out of my woods and onto the frightening open plain of some uncharted country for me. You know, you keep your job and don't recognize your own work anymore and you start to wonder if you gained anything keeping that job after a bad review or reprimand. Uncharted is the right word. Bad geography. So tonight I needed the souls midnight because it's familiar where so much feels foreign right now. I'm staying away from the burbs right now for work, but tonight I just couldn't. It's raining in somebody else's back yard into a window well six feet to my left and I'm thinking about my own soul's geography and how very without map or compass I feel tonight.

See you soon, cyburbians. Goodnight till then.
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Oh man! Ursus, I have been there. I don’t know the details of your situation, but its no joke to say that we are our own worst critics (or enemies). True, we have never met, but I can tell that the way you view yourself and the decisions you have made at the midnight hour when you are tired and down is nowhere close to the way others see you. I am certain of that. And the truth is (and I am still learning to accept this) EVERYONE IS WINGING IT – THERE IS NO ROAD MAP! I used to think grownups had it all together. Then I became one and waited for it all to make sense. It never did. For a long time this translated to thinking there was something wrong with me – that I was not as together as those mythic “grownups” of my youth. But then I realized that even way back when, when I physically looked up to the adults, they were (and still are) just making it up as they go.

Why didn’t anyone tell me?!

My personal neurosis-driven fest of sleeplessness is fueled by the fact that I am in the process of extracting myself from an executive level position that was eating me alive. Feelings of self-doubt, a fear that I have no frickin’ idea of what I am doing, that I am leading the organization to ruin, that I am not working hard enough, or smart enough or efficiently enough. And that’s just related to the job. Long hours, evening meetings, weekend obligations and more have kept me away from the family and that creates another unhappy scenario. Tension, resentment, distance. I missed my daughter’s play last month because I had a board meeting. She said it was ok and understood, but it really wasn’t. This is the kind of shit they make made for TV movies about. Or that people go to therapy for. Just another opportunity to put a notch on the tightening belt of self-hatred.

So, you see how it happens? All of this is my fault. I took the job, I decide how much of my personal time it eats, I am the one distant and distracted on the weekends. At work, I am the one the staff is frustrated with or hasn’t raised enough money or who failed to review that contract closely enough. Its all my frickin’ fault!

But it isn’t really. I am well-loved at my job and home (as I expect you are). I am leaving in a responsible way, ensuring overlap with the next director. I have been accommodating and patient with my staff. In the light of a well-rested day, I see all of that. But when it turns dark, the goblins come out and mess with my mind. Sadly, there is always a little truth to the narrative of how horrible I think I am in the middle of the night, which is what makes it so insidious. But its not 100% true. It never is.

Besides it’s the good, thoughtful, reflective and sensitive people who actually do the retrospection that results in self-doubt. These are the people I most relate to because they give a crap. But apparently giving a crap comes with some baggage.

I don’t know if any of that relates to your situation, but hang in there nonetheless. Everything is always better in the light of day. You are a good man.
 
This ^^^

Thank You. This was very nearly the best truth I could have heard. :)
 
I just got out of my zoning writing committee's 2 hour meeting and I learned I can only function and focus on zoning policy discussions (form based code in particular) for an hour :-|
 
It's only 8:30 p.m., and hardly the Soul's Midnight, but I had to share something my daughter (the one I call Goldie) wrote. I can't see a homeless person the same way anymore. She was talking about how all these caverns and trenches and canyons and mesas and mountains used to be the bottom of the Tethys Sea. People all start out like that; like the Tethys Sea. Our lives are the passing of eons, and the years keep coming and the wind and the water carve us into what we are when we are old. No person you've ever met - she lectured me - is only what or who you are meeting.

In her story, the Tethys Sea, an old homeless man meets and befriends a young man, and gives him this analogy. It's all very involved, but the kicker is this: he tells the young man a story about being very young, living poor with his mother on the coast in California before they had to leave. Recounts how he came out of the ocean on a day they spent at the beach and was shivering, how his mother told him to lie down on the hot cement to dry off, and of feeling it against all his skin while he watched her shadow on that hot cement beside him and listened to her talking to him, and the gulls. Then he says to the young man: "I didn't know then that I would lose her before I was twelve, or how much it would always hurt. But I'll tell you this, all these nights I had to spend sleeping dirty on the cold ground, I never ask God for a bed. I ask him for that hot cement, and my mother's shadow."

I'm not crazy. The kid's a philosopher at eighteen. Have faith in Gen Z, folks: if anybody can save us, it's them.
 
Night Birds.

It's lonely here tonight. Lonely is strange. It's a state that you choose. In that way, it's not the same as being alone. My wife is sleeping, arm's length away, snoring. She's still propped up, having tried and failed to watch reruns of British mysteries with me. A valiant try, but a swing and a miss. The washing machine is chirping away on spin cycle in the hallway from behind its louvered doors. Half-dark, top of the stairs, rhythm: chirp, chirp, chirp. The dog, Dr. Leo Marvin, or Leo for short, is watching me curiously. His feet are quiet on the rug padding toward the foot of the bed to assess what I'm doing. I can hear my youngest son barking orders at his comrades on-line, and laughing; his muffled words floating down the hall to me while his team of digitally connected friends who've never met face to face swear like sailors and storm a desert stronghold with absolute precision. He's not alone either, I suppose. My window is open tonight. It's just cooling off enough around here these nights to leave it open, to let the desert air flow down the slopes of the mines and mountains, cool itself while it runs over the rich bastards' watered and manicured lawns, and finally cross the street to slip up against the wall and through my screen. I'm sitting across the room in my chair, and I can hear the neighbors talking quietly on the back porch of their townhouse. Their place sits in the row opposite us. Our little patches of back yard - it feels wrong to call these tiny spaces "yards" , but there isn't another word - are separated by a common garden path and trees. Their voices wander through the leaves and branches, past the fence, and up through my window screen. Something about whether Ben is going to come home when summer is over and start school again. They hope he does. My neighbors, my fellow night birds, chirping quietly, muffled calls for Ben to come home; a night bird's high summer mantra. Ben's name has been invoked at least a dozen times. For god's sake, Ben, come home; your parents don't want to push you away, but dammit if they don't miss you terribly, and want you to get that history degree. Maybe meet somebody, and be happy. Be happy, Ben, and come home.

No. not alone. Night Birds are lonely, but we aren't alone.
 
ursus said:
Night Birds.

It's lonely here tonight. Lonely is strange. It's a state that you choose. In that way, it's not the same as being alone. My wife is sleeping, arm's length away, snoring. She's still propped up, having tried and failed to watch reruns of British mysteries with me. A valiant try, but a swing and a miss. The washing machine is chirping away on spin cycle in the hallway from behind its louvered doors. Half-dark, top of the stairs, rhythm: chirp, chirp, chirp. The dog, Dr. Leo Marvin, or Leo for short, is watching me curiously. His feet are quiet on the rug padding toward the foot of the bed to assess what I'm doing. I can hear my youngest son barking orders at his comrades on-line, and laughing; his muffled words floating down the hall to me while his team of digitally connected friends who've never met face to face swear like sailors and storm a desert stronghold with absolute precision. He's not alone either, I suppose. My window is open tonight. It's just cooling off enough around here these nights to leave it open, to let the desert air flow down the slopes of the mines and mountains, cool itself while it runs over the rich bastards' watered and manicured lawns, and finally cross the street to slip up against the wall and through my screen. I'm sitting across the room in my chair, and I can hear the neighbors talking quietly on the back porch of their townhouse. Their place sits in the row opposite us. Our little patches of back yard - it feels wrong to call these tiny spaces "yards" , but there isn't another word - are separated by a common garden path and trees. Their voices wander through the leaves and branches, past the fence, and up through my window screen. Something about whether Ben is going to come home when summer is over and start school again. They hope he does. My neighbors, my fellow night birds, chirping quietly, muffled calls for Ben to come home; a night bird's high summer mantra. Ben's name has been invoked at least a dozen times. For god's sake, Ben, come home; your parents don't want to push you away, but dammit if they don't miss you terribly, and want you to get that history degree. Maybe meet somebody, and be happy. Be happy, Ben, and come home.

No. not alone. Night Birds are lonely, but we aren't alone.
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I often do a lot of little things around the house at night when it's quiet and no one else is up. Unload the dishwasher and put the dirty ones in. Scoop the cat litter. Sweep the kitchen. If I'm working from home the next day, set the coffee pot up to brew automagically in the morning. Let the dogs out one last time. Eventually when all the little things are done I crawl into bed.
 
Volunteers.

It was an evening for driving. August is getting pleasantly long in the tooth, and real fall is just on the edge of the breeze, you know? Evening came just noticeably earlier enough to make the family feel like the canyons would be nice and we should drive. It's sunflower season. The roadsides all belong to their big, sprawling, golden-haired glory. They aren't perfect. Those drier parts are for the sunflowers, but anywhere near the canals are full of bull rushes; great green, swaying stands of them, bowing politely when you pass and waiting to flash the next passer by with their unusual dark green for these parts. Like the sunflowers, they're far from perfect; not manicured, not planned. They are what my dad used to call "volunteers." Like the Russian Olives, the Trees of Heaven, the wild Elms, Cottonwoods, and Box Elder trees out here. Nobody asked them - hell, nobody invited them - but there they are. It occurs to me, that these roadside and empty lot volunteers create the most beautiful backdrops for the drives, because we are never expecting them. When you go to the parks and the peace gardens, it's lovely, sure; but it's supposed to be. It's planned. You go to the canyons and the wildflowers and the aspens and the pines are gorgeous, but you knew they would be. We knew they would be, so we drove to see them. I spent the drive thinking about how those volunteer sunflowers threw up their green arms and showed us their golden faces, and all between the rock and the hard place, reaping gasoline fumes for their best effort. We owe a debt to every volunteer - whatever type grows in your parts. How very much like those plants people are, I think. Be willing to recognize and appreciate the unexpected and often unconventional beauty of the people around you. The smiles nobody asked for, the courtesy that didn't forward anyone's career, the kindness that only you might see. Anybody can be beautiful in the garden. Wild things are always beautiful in their own way. Most of us, we are just volunteers. And I like us best.
 
Almost every night, I have to get up and use the bathroom. For about the last three or four years, I occasionally have a difficult time getting back to sleep. When that happens, I go ahead and get up and sit in the living room where I enjoy the night and either read or play xbox really quietly. I never mind it, but sometimes it catches up with me a little bit at the office the next day. Like today, where I've downed half a pot of coffee on top of my breakfast coffee.
 
Raven said:
Almost every night, I have to get up and use the bathroom. For about the last three or four years, I occasionally have a difficult time getting back to sleep. When that happens, I go ahead and get up and sit in the living room where I enjoy the night and either read or play xbox really quietly. I never mind it, but sometimes it catches up with me a little bit at the office the next day. Like today, where I've downed half a pot of coffee on top of my breakfast coffee.
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I've gotten a case of BBS at night myself. Its invariably work related. The frustrating thing is that it's over nothing.
 
I slept through the whole night for the first time this week last night. It's sort of gotten to the point where it's strange to do that and not wake up. I even fell back asleep after Mrs. Me had to get up early to take kids to school.
 
It's not even close to the normal 3:00 a.m. hour, but I'm feeling pensive this evening as I wait for Planning Commission meeting to start, as I have so many, many evenings before. It's a curious profession, this being a public planner. Not the reason I'm pensive tonight, it just is the standard weekday evening that so many of us share.

I've been hearing that song, Austin. And I know it's poppy as hell but that opening chorus line keeps hitting me and making me feel 27 again: "Did your boots stop working? Did your truck break down?" It's reminding me of Paula Cole from soooo long ago: "I don't want to wait for our lives to be over, I want to know right now, what will it be?"

I don't mean to suggest that the women of the world are just constantly trying to get the men in their lives to just commit - it's not that simple. I don't think it ends. I'm lumping all men together here, so indulge me, knowing it may just be me I'm talking about. We - or I - seem to by default generally let things happen to us. When those things happen, we smooth out with the direction of the happening. I was so afraid to fail my little family when I was 27 that it was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And sometimes when my wife would get quiet at night, I could feel her wondering if this had been a bad idea. If I was going to fail her, and what she should do about it. She wanted to know right now what the deal was. Was I going to demonstrate that I had what it took, or was I going to play Roller Coaster Tycoon some more and ignore our problems. Being a man, I chose Roller Coaster Tycoon and guilt - at least at first. I did get serious, but then, well, when things happen badly it just feels like I'll roll with that wind, you know? And I should have happened to the world, instead of the world happening to me. The thing that has always eaten at me is that she would never say it. She just felt it so loud that I could hear it inside me, and it would make me feel - not small, but something like that. I feel like that again. The other side of some pretty good success, I feel smallish again, and like I'm making her nervous that I don't have it in me to keep trying for better.

Have my boots stopped working? Has my truck broken down? You know? It keeps getting me.

Gotta finish setting up.
 
ursus said:
It's not even close to the normal 3:00 a.m. hour, but I'm feeling pensive this evening as I wait for Planning Commission meeting to start, as I have so many, many evenings before. It's a curious profession, this being a public planner. Not the reason I'm pensive tonight, it just is the standard weekday evening that so many of us share.

I've been hearing that song, Austin. And I know it's poppy as hell but that opening chorus line keeps hitting me and making me feel 27 again: "Did your boots stop working? Did your truck break down?" It's reminding me of Paula Cole from soooo long ago: "I don't want to wait for our lives to be over, I want to know right now, what will it be?"

I don't mean to suggest that the women of the world are just constantly trying to get the men in their lives to just commit - it's not that simple. I don't think it ends. I'm lumping all men together here, so indulge me, knowing it may just be me I'm talking about. We - or I - seem to by default generally let things happen to us. When those things happen, we smooth out with the direction of the happening. I was so afraid to fail my little family when I was 27 that it was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And sometimes when my wife would get quiet at night, I could feel her wondering if this had been a bad idea. If I was going to fail her, and what she should do about it. She wanted to know right now what the deal was. Was I going to demonstrate that I had what it took, or was I going to play Roller Coaster Tycoon some more and ignore our problems. Being a man, I chose Roller Coaster Tycoon and guilt - at least at first. I did get serious, but then, well, when things happen badly it just feels like I'll roll with that wind, you know? And I should have happened to the world, instead of the world happening to me. The thing that has always eaten at me is that she would never say it. She just felt it so loud that I could hear it inside me, and it would make me feel - not small, but something like that. I feel like that again. The other side of some pretty good success, I feel smallish again, and like I'm making her nervous that I don't have it in me to keep trying for better.

Have my boots stopped working? Has my truck broken down? You know? It keeps getting me.

Gotta finish setting up.
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It's tough having an introspective, poetic soul in a culture that does not value such things. I know how you feel.
 
I spat this out a little bit ago, but I was unsure about sharing it as I think through and struggle to deal with some things I have felt about my faith crisis, or transition, or whatever you want to call it. The metaphor seemed to fit, providing language that felt apt to the feelings and thoughts I've been navigating for a while that I just wanted to let it keep flowing. So now, here I am, offloading it into the Soul's Midnight: repository of all things that need saying more than they probably need hearing.

Mutineers

I am a mutineer on God’s great ship. Though I was never at the helm, or barking commands, I used to sail proudly on that vessel. I used to like to feel the pitch and yaw as it rode up the larger waves it could not cut smoothly. A great, gleaming thing, it is. Creaking and whistling out on that vast ocean we all have to traverse, and teeming with sailors, too! Sailors of all kinds, hoisting and adjusting the sails to catch the wind (I wanted to do that for a time) or manning the crow’s nest, scanning the horizons - standing at the ready at the helmsman’s elbow to deliver a message. There are lesser - that is to say other - works to be done, scrubbing her decks and working in her many galleys. Fetching, carrying, cleaning, stocking, tending and butchering and peeling and sorting. But all work was to be done quickly, thoroughly, and without hesitation or sloth - there is no room for lounging on God’s big ship. Helm! Hoist! Cook! Muck! Watch that horizon! See what’s coming? The great and the glorious! Be at the ready!


But it happens that I scrubbed a deck clean too quickly once. My father, who had manned some lesser cannons on the gun deck in his younger days, had died. We buried him at sea. I had carried fuses and hefted cannon balls for his station in my best days. I might have taken over his gunner’s status, it was thought. I was on a small ship, but still so lost - hIs passing and burial felt wrong to me. It felt to me that the great ship moved on and on and on - it infuriated me. It maddened me. I could not quiet my mind on the matter. I did what I knew - fill your hands and empty your mind - and I scrubbed a deck I had not been asked to. I scrubbed it clean, probably cleaner than I should, and I did it so quickly that I caught a glimpse of the wood beneath the oil. There was rot there, dry but pungent. I drew back my hand from it, alarmed. Angry with myself for the things in my mind, I stood, my bucket discarded. After a time, I leaned on the rail, which on the Great Ship is not allowed. Endangering oneself as a crew member is a very, very selfish thing to do. Why? Because you endanger the whole crew, of course! And the rail is only there to keep the crew safe. There is nothing to see out there but the great and terrible sea upon which we sail, and the only point of sailing this sea is to cross it! Cross it and conquer it! This great, deep, unknowable thing that is not for us, except to cross it without question or hesitation or thought. But, God help me, something was caught in my brain, in my being! We had dropped my father into that blue abyss, and I had gone back to scrubbing decks. Straight back to it. I was filled with a strange and terrible tangle of rage and wonder and bitterness and it was so real that I could taste it in my mouth! I was disgusted by it, but It felt familiar, too: as if I had held all these feelings before, but had not been awake for the feeling. And so almost without willing it or thinking, I went to the rail, and I leaned upon it. Hands first, then elbows, and eventually my chin on the backs of my hands. A vessel came into view. I drew back slightly at the sight, but didn’t turn away. I don’t know how long I watched that other great ship on our port side. A long time, probably. I was captivated by the way it cut the water, by its immensity, its beautiful lines, and the strange flags it flew from the mast. It cut the water like a sword made for the ocean, and I admired it. I found that the longer I watched it out there cutting a different path through the endless blue, that I could hear the shouts and calls of that ship’s crew. Of course I knew that they would be talking gibberish, and would not know what they were doing, not being true sailors but only frauds and pretenders. Their ship was doomed to sink into the forever blue and watch it turn to a black and crushing darkness around them. Not long now, and they would sink, this Ship of Fools. These ships all have names, but we on the Great Ship do not know them and do not care to know them. They are not our concern. They sink, and are lost to the eternities. But the ship with the strange sails and the gibberish calls and shouts stayed its course, cutting the waves as true as ours and quite parallel. Running the same wind, matching us closely, rising and falling. I found that I enjoyed their calls and shouts. I found that they made me feel less alone without my father. I thought of my father and the sea and its great and forever blue and I watched the water, and saw it for the first time, I am sure. I let myself wonder for the first time truly if crossing it was not the point at all. My father’s burial and the strange ship and the rot on the deck I scrubbed made me wonder if simply being upon that sea might be reason enough, and I wanted to know it. I wanted to feel that water surround me and carry me to wherever it had carried my father. I wanted to feel the currents of it, and the cold of it, and the spray and salt in all of its painful and destructive beauty. I let myself wonder if I wanted or even needed to be upon the Great Ship. I was selfish. I knew it the moment I allowed the thought. There was work to do and I was leaning on the forbidden rail, endangering myself and my fellow crew, staring at the sea and wanting - there it was. Wanting. And before I could make amends and quit my selfishness, the night came. Beautiful, dark, mysterious, glorious, deep, and solitary. Only the Helmsmen and His Watch are above deck after nightfall, it is very dangerous for the common sailor. Night on the great ocean is perilous and full of terror. I was mortified to be in the darkness of the real world instead of in my bunk where I belonged - for just an instant before a billion stars were reflected in that great ocean and the night sky in all its voided glory blinded me with beauty and I knew. It was really just one moment to the next. I knew very simply that we were wrong. We weren’t steering the Great Ship wrong, we weren’t off course. We had misunderstood that there was even a need for a course. What is an endless ocean if not endless? What other side was there for my father, buried at sea? Was there not only the sea? The Sea is our home, not the Great Ship! And then as suddenly as the realization came the alarm and the hot and putrid spitting and slurring and the shackles were brought out. What was I doing on this deck anyway? Was I a stowaway? A saboteur? I must be, it was declared, and so the shackles were my fate. But the endless sky was still in my eyes, and the ocean was still moving beneath me while they carted me away. I was at peace while the tears I needed finally came.


So it was shackles and the brig for me, but only because I lacked the courage to leap over that rail and to ride the currents into the unknown the way I wanted to. I don’t want to cross this great forever blue anymore; I want to be part of it. I want to feel that spray and salt and know that it is killing me but know that nothing can really kill me because I cannot die. Dying is something, but it can’t be what they think it is. I want to know. I must know. I will know. And so I am become a mutineer, skulking in the brig. But they don’t know that the wood of the Great Ship is rotten in the brig. No oil here to keep the planks tight and the pegs fitted. We taste the spray when the big waves hit, and we hear others up in the other decks, murmuring into their elbows while they work in the galleys and the gun decks about what they saw through the porthole when nobody was watching to bring them back to their task, or about their own family burials at sea, or the voices they heard on the wind from those other doomed ships gliding through the black of night when they were on some errand for the Captain. They wonder. And we, the Mutineers of the Great Ship, wonder when they will join us in the brig, and when the weight will become too much for these neglected and eroded walls. When we, who chip away at boards that keep us will join ourselves into that blue. So there is my secret shame, worse probably than any I carried while I scrubbed and fetched and carried above the decks. Bad work is still honest work. I call myself a mutineer, but what I am is a waiting coward. Waiting when I could simply push these bars open, call my mutinous comrades to arms, and sink God’s Great Big Fucking Ship. I can’t make that decision for other sailors. I should have thrown myself overboard that first starry, starry night.
 
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