Chewing My Cud

 

I suppose all human contemplation is to some degree derivative. Even in our personal ruminations we think what we’ve thought, spout advice to ourselves for which we’ve been the object from others, and retrace rabbit trails that didn’t lead anywhere the last time we went down them in the wee hours.

There are times it just seems like Groundhog Day–been there, done that, I know exactly what comes next, and next after that–not that most of those things are terribly bad. I just don’t seem to find traction to move me to another view of things, standing pretty much in the same place chewing on what I bit off yesterday, last week, a decade ago and never really got all the roughage processed to swallow. That’s the kind of listlessness and ennui that feels like walking in a bog this morning, going nowhere fast.

Now that paragraph is to some degree just stream of consciousness while looking at this luminous cow. And it also holds some truth.

I truly don’t have a sense of What Comes Next, something that I have had this time of year for the past several. On top of that is the lethargy that comes with hot weather–not that, with the exception of early June, we’ve had the oppressive heat and humidity yet that makes me want to bury myself in the creek sand up to my neck until mid-September.

But there is a summer torpor nevertheless. And I have lost the sense that writing out my perplexities–either in a personal journal, must less in public view–is going to gain me what it once did. So I have no idea at this moment if I’m doing my morning keyboard exercise or blogging here in the Great In-Between.

I have the tools now–the camera and lens, computer and software–that I could use to do most anything I set my mind to. Ah, the setting of the mind, there’s the rub. Whether ‘tis nobler to…sorry, got sidetracked.

To get into photography in a more evident and serious way, as I’ve mulled on Fragments, will mean getting prints out there. This will most likely mean investing in a new printer during the same year I’m needing to make enough in the wee biddness to pay for the MacPro money already spent. Slow Road Home languishes for lack of any marketing effort on my part; I think I’ve burned out on speaking to tiny groups of silverhairs an hour’s drive off mountain, and this severs the nerve of getting Book Two done.

I feel like the press pieces might be just filling up column-inches. I get scant feedback from the Roanoke readers, and only sporadically from Floyd paper readers to know if what I say entertains, enlightens or bores. The deadlines of four columns a month at times becomes oppressive. Maybe I’m just getting lazy.

But a pox on all my cud-chewing. We have big events happening here today and must prepare–some real bling and glitz and fanfare and my l’il heart is all a-twitter: we’re getting a new dishwasher installed! How can I keep from singing?

LATER THAT SAME DAY: Post posted (or attempt made) at 6 am this morning: no net juice, out for three hours. Back on, thunderstorm shutter down. Back up, back down again with the next storm. Whadda day.