Random thoughts to Move the Project Forward

I'm just tired of the post that's occupied front-and-center since last week, and while I have a host of thoughts I might blog about, they're all either too banal, or too involved, to feel like working on any of them. So here's a grab-bag of what's been on my mind, none developed too thoroughly, just skipping across the surface of my mind.

The Apollo 11 anniversary, while impactful for me, a bit, not nearly so important in my memory as the sheer nail-biting drama of the near-disaster of Apollo 13. I will have to eventually fully blog about my Apollo 13 experience; as a space-obsessed kid I was still fully committed to following our exploits in space, and I remember being angry and frustrated when the networks failed to broadcast their "live from space" TV broadcast. Like the scene in the movie, I was waiting for the broadcast and wondering what the heck was going on; I remember turning on the radio when I woke up the next morning and hearing the report of problems with the spacecraft; I was worthless that day at school, I couldn't get my mind off the situation up there. I knew enough to understand how slim the chances of their getting home were. As the days mounted I became more and more obsessed, to the point that, by the last 36 hours or so, I couldn't even sleep. My mom let me stay home from school to watch the return, mostly because I was so sleep-deprived I wouldn't have been able to do school work anyway. All of this for another time.

The passing of Frank McCourt. I'd heard some of the buzz about Angela's Ashes, but it wasn't until I'd heard McCourt on NPR that I realized this was a book I'd probably like. What a memoir! What a life! I read it twice in one go, was thrilled with how good the movie was, and rushed to buy 'Tis and Teacher Man as soon as they were published. They were every bit as good as Angela. Although I'm two generations removed from the old sod, I've always identified with the Irish, and the Irish experience; and it seems to me there really is something to the Irish stereotype in me, introspective and a bit melancholic, reflective, always feeling a bit out-of-step with the rest of European-derived American culture, feeling sort-of disenfranchised from the whole American middle-class experience, even though I was born into it.

The Irish are the race that God made mad;
their funerals all are merry,
but all their songs are sad.

I remember my father's mother, who was VERY German, telling me "you've got too much of the Irish in you; you'll never be happy if you're not sad, too." I was just a little kid, I had NO idea what that meant, until many years later, when it started to make sense to me. Because I was a bit in my cups, and feeling very sad about a rejection, and feeling the weight of my life and the world and all the sadness and melancholy of emotion, and longing, and love, and realized I was actually pretty happy about it all, that I was happy that I could feel so much, and maybe this was the bitter that gave savor to life, and balance to the times of sweetness. Maybe only an Irishman could find solace in that way; I don't know, but that's how it felt.

The broken-down wreck. That I am. Where went my youth? How did this all come to pass, sneaking up on me like an apache? One minute everything seems fine, and the next I know my hip hurts if I sit too long, my knee hurts if I stand too long, my guts hurt if I eat too much fat or drink too much beer, everywhere I turn it's this-hurts or that-hurts this-is-stiff that-is-stiff, today my glasses seem fine, today both, or should I say all four, prescriptions seem off: just what the hell is going on?! Why am I tired all the time? Except when I have some gratifying work to do, in which case I'm not tired at all, even after I've worked my *ss off all day?

So many thoughts now crowding into my mind, I can't seem to sort them all out. I'm not even sure I want to try.

I know what to do when this happens to me: start counting my blessings, and get involved in some trivial project that I've put off time and again. That usually does the trick.