Day three of 2009.

Failure:

It is not yet a full week into the new year, and I’ve already broken one of my resolutions.  {“Which resolution?” You ask, voices united like a children’s choir.}  The important one.  The reclamation-of-my-creative-soul one.  That is, the ‘I must write or blog at least once a day’ ambition.  I failed, and I failed early.  There are a number of reasons for this.  Yesterday was busy.  Went to work.  Power was out.  Got distracted.  Went to visit Nicky, my Beloved One’s eldest.  Went downtown to walk around.  Went to Powell’s city of books, safe haven when the world’s gone smokeless.  Got home late, watched a Rolling Stones concert on DVD, and was then quite feeble-minded, if not tired. 

There is another factor at falt for days in which no writing transpires.  I lack a computer of my own.  The two people I spend most of my time with both have laptops.  My Beloved one, and my Father.  Of course, now and then, I use my Beloved One’s laptop, with permission, if the timing is right.  Most of the time, my Father’s on his, playing mahjong or writing his own blogs.  Victoria’s using hers, playing solitaire, downloading music, or some such.  I sit in the middle of the two watching eating M&M’s.  To be one of the three monkeys, as we wayward three often seem, I must get a laptop.  It currently, momentarily seems so imporant.  Like the only way to save the world.  It’ll pass.  It just did.  (That was fleeting.) 

Writing or no writing, resolution or no resolution, Winston Churchill told us:  “Success is going (or was it jumping?) from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”  So, despite one day of delay, I have returned to my WordPress, to hammer my wrath upon the keys.  {“Good for you, Jeffy.” you all say, united like a children’s choir.}  I agree.  Gold star for me.

On the related sobject, a note about WordPress: 

It’s selfishness that’s driven me to WordPress for my wordcraft.  Having written three or four years worth of entries and articles on my Myspace blog, I recently stumbled down a rabbit hole into a blue funk.  Myspace, you see, is a special spot for social butterflies.  Social butterfly I am not.  I’m not really any sort of butterfly.  Because of this, I’d somewhat stopped writing for my own benefit, and started writing overcooked, precious, little bloggy things with the goal of social appreciation.  That is, comments.  Not even intelligent feedback, just comments.  It’s all about comments on Myspace.  I know, it’s terribly sad to think that there are these worlds-within-worlds, and clubs-within-clubs, and cliques-within-cliques even on the Internet, but there you have it.  WordPress is about writing.  Myspace is about comments, and I wanted them.  Comments from the Myspacers on my Friends List, even though it’s filled up with people I’ve never met and have no intention of meeting.  Comments from people I do know, comments from people who for some reason want to know me.  Comments, comments, comments.  It didn’t happen…  I didn’t get them.  At least, not to the degree that Myspace had somehow manipulated me into craving them.  And, absurd though it may be, (you do not need to tell me) I found it deeply disturbing.  Depressing, really.  I found myself riddled.  I said to myself:  “Self, a frat-boy can post a picture of himself sleeping under the numerous jockstraps and thongs that were piled upon his face while he was passed out at a party, and he’ll get seventy comments.  Twelve random cross-eyed, fashionista school girls can blog about pretty pink shoes, and accumulate eighty comments.  Comments, comments, comments.  They get them for being cute, they get them for being drunk, they get them for being idiots.  I write, for a few, or none at all.”   

Believe it or not, I actually cared.  It wasn’t until the holidays, when my sister gave me a Christmas gift, that the answer became clear.

“I’ve never known quite what to get you…” she said, handing me a gift-card for Starbucks.  That’s all it took.  Cling.  Like a little bell of clarity.  My beloved one gives me feedback all the time, because she knows me.  She loves me.  She gets me.  Also because she has time.  To the rest of the world at large, I’m a confusing entity.  I say ‘confusing’ because it’s realistic.  I’d love to say ‘mysterious’, but it’s too glamorous.  I’m the person for whom people can’t think what to buy, come Christmas.  The person to whom people don’t quite know what to say.  Therefore, more often than not, they don’t. 

Still, since my ambition is to write; to chronicle my days and times and thoughts with the ease of typing, instead of scribbling with my fist in a journal, I’ve switched to the more egocentric wordpress.  I want to blog, it’s a blog.  It’s my blog.  No thongs or jockstraps, no pink shoes.  If someone is deeply interested in what I write, which would be flattering, they may comment if they wish.  Whilst Myspace can sometimes work as an advertising or networking tool, the rest of the time it feels frightfully like Cyber High School.  I didn’t like High School.  Moreover, WordPress allows me all sorts of gadgets and bloggy-tools.  Polls, categories, chapters; it’s practically paradise for the semi-literary Internet exhibitionist. 

And that is my note about WordPress.  Any comments?  No, I thought not.

. . . . .

The Blogship Of Jeffrey Puukka shall remain a smoke-friendly environment until otherwise announced.

So Long, Sweet Land Of Liberty:

“Farewell, farewell, great ship Titanic.“  (Titanic, the musical.)

Day three of 2009 is a Saturday, and it’s unravelled as Saturdays do without many conclusions being reached along the way.  Wake up.  Smoke.  Putter around.  Mumble.  Sit.  Mumble more.  Shower.  Mumble in the shower.  Smoke more.  Mumble more.  Wait for bus, (smoking, mumbling) catch bus.  Walk to work, stopping at Starbucks along the way while mumbling and smoking.  Arrive at the building, walk into the building, avoid the Red Shirts, ignore people while walking down the corridor.  Walk up the steps, unlock the office, sit in the chair, start typing for three to four hours.  Get out of the chair, walk out of the office, walk down the corridor in the opposite direction from earlier, although still ignoring people.  Walk faster, and faster.  The parking lot seems so bloody far away.  At last, gasping, gasping, exit the building, and light a cigarette so I can breathe again.  That is a fairly accurate description of all Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, as well as Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.  After I run screaming out of the building and light my cigarette, each day branches out in its own peculiar direction. 

A staple of most days in a bygone era was the (now fabled) pubbing.  That is to say, a trip to my stove-snuggling spot at Edgefield.  There, I would sit, think great thoughts, enjoy the fire, and converse with my Father and my Beloved One, Victoria.  While enjoying the evening and firelight, I’d be sipping a coffee, nursing a brandy, and enjoying my cigarettes.  This was a very relaxing way to spend an evening.  However, such times belong to the distant days of 2008 when people could actually smoke by the fire.  I’ve taken two trips to the pub since the smoking ban fell like iron blocks from the sky and crushed my people.  

As I have previously written, I think it an absurd thought on part of the government.  This land of the free is more and more becoming the land of freedom in moderation.  “We want people to be to be free and happy in this Country, so we’ll restrict your freedoms in hopes of cornering you into a statistically healthier lifestyle.  In time you’ll forget the way things were, and because you’ll be statistically healthier by then, you’ll be happy.”  Doctors want to see a decrease in heart attacks and lung cancer?  They must have missed the fact that when that happens, they’ll be taking a pay cut.  That’s alright, thought.  It must be.  If they wanted to make money, they never would’ve become Doctors, would they?

Even the bloody lottery caves!  You know, those dark little holes, where old women with seagreen hair-curlers sat on stools playing video-bingo for money and chainsmoking.  Even those places are now anti-smoke.

The piece of all this business that doesn’t fold up into one’s pocket so very neatly, is this:  whoever signed off on this decision was ignoring the fact that there’s forty-plus percent of the population who do smoke.  Who choose to smoke.  These are people who’re already chemically imbalanced and emotionally unstable enough in the beginning, and that’s why they smoke.  When people start telling them they can’t practice their coping strategy, they have fits.  Some fits are fleeting, some are not.  Some are ugly.  Some fits–sometimes–end in acts of ludeness, crudeness, wrath, and depressed flopping around on the floor.  Sometimes even terrorism. 

Meanwhile, my home away from home, my snug little spot by the stove, is insanely different.  The atmosphere is grossly sterile.  It is so strange.  I know the people, I recognize the furniture, I’ve sat on that bench a thousand times, but, it’s no longer my favorite place in the world.  None of my favorite places are what they were.  I used to feel free in these places.  I used to feel very much like myself.  Now I feel like I’m sitting in the cafeteria of the hospital wing.  Who wants to do that? 

No.  The great ship sank.  The glory days are gone, and there is nowhere–for now–that I can’t wait to go, or get back to. 

© Jeffrey Puukka, 2009.