I watched most of the third season of Gossip Girl on mute, I put it on in the background while listening to music. I wanted to suss out what the fuss was about and even without sound it soon became apparent why certain women liked it; they see themselves in, what’s her name, loving her wardrobe as she goes glitzing around looking fashionably preppy.
While Gossip Girl is not for me White Collar is more my style, it airs soon and thankfully there is a second season coming as I’ve blitzed most of the first, it reminds me of two other shows which I enjoy, Life and Burn Notice, the latter is on the same network, make a knot in your tie and try to catch it.
But it is baseball that has my firm attention at the moment and in particular WCBS’s John Sterling, the Voice of the New York Yankees. It’s an internet radio broadcast that you subscribe to via Major League Baseball and once purchased you get to hear all of the games and there are many for just $25 up until October. I especially like the afternoon games which start here down South at seven in the evening, so once the working day dissipates and the evening officially begins with a beer and some internet radio, I am extremely contented.
Not contented enough though that I am able to sleep uninterupted, it’s been a battle of late and even when it happens then that blasted Fog Horn will sound at three, alarming passing ships who proceed cautiously in the misted night, and always making sure that I am kept in the loop when all I want is the pleasure of Technicolored, sweet, vermouth dreams.
As LCD Sound System sang: ‘It’s not getting better, it’s not getting better, man, it’s just getting old! Aarh whoo!”
I can feel the days shortening and the nights emotively intensifying, the world begins to have a different dimension and I begin to do the same things but it’s a new cycle.
People whose lives are more cyclical, people like farmers or baseball players or school teachers grow accustomed to these times of renewal but when you work in an office it escapes you, you realise obvious things, like when your sandals become your boots, or when your inertia is suddenly contemplative and not boundless in its extravagance.
Its different but it’s the same and things get renewed in the background, the oxygen still becomes CO2 with every inhale and exhale but the internal cycle does change.
I’m ambivalent to this process, I just accept it, and the transformation it brings. I never try to set to specific targets but my life isn’t aimless although it drifts, it flows like a trickling body of water at the mercy of the elements but on a set course.
However I do think that my renewal is different this time, in so far as that part of me is searching for something, lets just call it a clearer purpose for this phase of my life and I think that once it is found I will certainly be able to establish things new and who knows even prosper in different and unusual directions.
When I think about this the imagery at the back of my mind is of a field which transforms itself going from green to brown, from lush to barren and then suddenly somebody comes along and changes the purpose for which it is being used and still it changes but its renewal is different, something flowers, something nests, something is pruned, something stands proudly against these seasonal elements.
Now the renewal feels different and the seeds that have been sowed a little while back are taking root, you can’t see it yet but then some things are simply felt (the important things mostly and it doesn’t matter what gets said there is a chilling honesty in emotion) and I feel that these roots are strong and that they will eventually anchor a different type of renewal. Yet I’m unsure of the bloom, I know it comes in its own time but I’m thinking about it even as the roots go further and deeper down spreading themselves out and touching new nutritious territories.
I have a few more thoughts on the subject but as luck would have it, these reside on a different laptop so maybe tomorrow, I’ll explore those because I think they are slightly more tangible; part two on its way soon.
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As I lay on my bed with my back towards the ocean and my face blindly looking at my cupboard, cushion between my knees and another in a comfortable embrace, I can hear the ocean mumbling and I can feel the world turning, it turns for me.
Almost six in the morning and there is no sunlight, the days are getting shorter, my dreams are supposedly getting longer, this was a 90 minute movie now it’s becoming a 120 minute director’s cut.
Since I seldom can remember my dreams, it doesn’t much matter and I’m not a morning person so the subtle change suits my demeanor.
It’s a time for renewal, not to be confused with ‘new-all’ a distant cousin. Lent signals renewal for me, a time of renewed commitment, as the seasons are on verge of changing so too does my little life. It changes as simple as that, not for the better not for the worse, just as a precursor to seasons change.
January was hard, let me not kid you, it was for a host of reasons all 31 days.
But I tried to change things, made a concerted effort in certain areas; I ran for instance and not away from things but towards a something new, it was more than I’ve run before, in January I ran 174km. It felt like serious running, and I tried to be serious about a few things and I succeeded here and there. It’s not a heavy seriousness but rather a concerted effort, a focus.
Now the pendulum has started to reach its apex and is coming back in my favour. This is why I need to renew my focus which is far too easily lost as things transition.
March will have a work focus which is most unfortunate, I’m not the kind of person that likes for work to be at the fulcrum of my life but as the ocean ebbs in a new season this is my reality. The balance is going to be harder to maintain but I need to strive for it.
One area that does bring balance to the load is reading and I have made some changes to my reading patterns, there is a race on, I’m on three books completed and she’s on four, I’ve started another two and I’m into one so it looks like the gap could be closed. The race to 20 books for the year is on, last year I think I did about 16 and she did 24 but this year I want for it to be a bit of a scrap, so I’m reading more which is good.
This renewal is both external ( I have my vanity and reputation) and internal (a softening mental approach, a greater understanding and kindness of way) and admittedly I don’t know where else the rest of my life goes specifically during this period, it doesn’t really matter that much because in Lent, I like for my world to be insular-ish and small. I’ve got my little targets, this was always going to be a hard year, I can’t explain it I just knew it from the outset. The even years don’t do me any favours it’s the odd years that I like, they favour me. An odd thing to say but then the odd people will know what I’m talking about.
