It is not yet six. I've been up since four. I will be sick with fatigue by day's end, I'm certain. The morass of a life I am leading has been of my making. It is time to rethink, restructure, retool. Gov. Walker's win in Wisconsin is an unpleasant reminder of the world I live in. The Arab Spring that so sparked the imagination of the American press is no Summer of Love. It is made up of radically religious people by and large, not wild-ass kids who want more freedom. All about me, people are retreating from the world they cannot shape and cannot stomach. Sports and dumb beer commercials fill the empty hours of mid-level businessmen, Dancing with the Stars for as many more. Fox News draws more viewers than any other news source. Many of my friends amuse themselves with Bill Maher and John Stewart. And I. . . am no better having turned my life into a frantic, lunatic mess.
"Slow Down or Die" will be my new motto. I guess it is another way of saying "Speed Kills." I like the sound of the word"retreat" right now. I guess it need not be thought of in a pejorative way. I will make a nice "retreat." My public image can, if it must, suffer.
Everyone deserves a retreat, I think, a chance to leave the fray and regroup. It is not at all the same as this other, this distraction that I/we practice. I am working this out as I write, perhaps. A retreat from distraction. There it is. . . or not. It must be a disciplined retreat. Proportioned. Centered. Focused.
It begins with the hours. They are not infinite. It is time to take control of them again. It is time to settle down.
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
ReplyDeleteAmbrose Bierce
I should take control of my hours too but I think I'll catch up on a few episodes of Mad Men first.
I saw an advertisement for Richard Hawk in Art News and his work made me think of your photos with the text...
ReplyDeletehttp://hawkstudio.com/paintings_on_copper.html
particularly "Escape Artist" and "Rest for Dancers." EA is a marvelous pose with the hair falling down and then the image turned. (If I were a photographer I would try this.)Dress the model in black to provide a background for the text which would have to be inverted.
R, You and I are just grasshoppers fiddling the days away.
ReplyDeleteA, On the surface, we have something in common, i.e. subject matter. I think my symbols and themes are much colder and destitute that what I see there, though. I don't find the irony in his images, but I really didn't spend much time searching for it, either. Thanks for the link.