Karlblog

Today has been defined by coffee and lucidity. I woke early this morning.

... Forgive me a brief digression. "Early" to me used to mean "before 5:30 am". Now it means "before 8:00 am". How strange to lose a habit of sleep — waking at 5:30 — after 30 years or more.

In any event, I woke early this morning, around 6:00 am. I started the day with a double shot of espresso in my hazelnut creme coffee. That's a good thing. It's now after 18:00 and I've finished the pot. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

While drinking coffee I've updated my Poetry Journal and my Prose forum. I'm not particularly proud of either effort, but at least it is an effort. I feel like writing for the first time in a long time. Correction: I feel as though my impulse to write may be practicable for the first time in a long time. Now that is most definitely a good thing.

I find it difficult to finish anything and that has been a deterrent to even beginning creating. I find myself thinking "What's the point?" or some equivalent when I decide to write (or draw or whatever) something. I am sensible that such negativity has long infused my thinking and my actions but my awareness of such is only now impinging on my more organized thought processes. I've long been aware that my thoughts are fragmented, my memory unreliable. Today I'm experiencing a lucidity that lets me know this and its extent.

I wish I had near to hand someone who knew me in the '60s. I'd like to compare notes and see if they see the same changes in me that I perceive. Now I'll grant you 40 years would change anyone, but the acuity I have lost since those days seems to me to be appalling. My memory of favorite books was so extensive that I could quote "chapter and verse" from Lord of the Rings and (Oh, for pity's sake!) In Cold Blood. Mother Earth News was high on my list of "authoritative sources" and I was enthusiastically Athiest.

I'll have to cut this reminiscence short. My sister has returned from a distant grocery with hams for Kim and Mario's upcoming wedding. Fool that I am I went down to help carry them upstairs. I've thrown my back out … again.