Betwixt the Diver and the Astronaut

I figured as long as I am doubling up on my daily tasks this week, I might as well double up on my posts as well. It's not like I have a job on which to attend instead.

Day 20 is a Poetry Day, and the prescribed task is to compose a line in iambic pentameter and submit it to Benrik, the authors, on their website, to enter into a collective of metered lines, in the hopes of creating a mass poem. The first line of the poem is, "Mercy, cried the popinjay to the pope." My line is the title of this blog, and it was composed using Day 26 (yesterday) as its muse; Day 26 reads, "Today choose what you'd prefer to be reincarnated as," and then provides a page of silhouettes for one to circle. There are animals, mud-flap type trucker girls, inanimate objects, etc. The silhouette that stood out for me was the astronaut.

Think about astronauts, and the fact that maybe 2% (I made that percentage up, but it's still low) actually get a chance to see outer space. The ones that do have an entirely different perspective on our world. Most of us only get to see one plane of this planet.

Then there are divers. The divers that plunge down, or crawl into the planet, and look back up see Earth from another entirely different perspective. They get to see the world from the inside out, while the astronauts are looking from the outside in. The astronauts that also dive get to see it all, I guess.

There are astronauts, and astronomers, and architects, and ornithologists, who all spend their lives looking up, and then there are geologists, and grave diggers, and deep sea marine biologists, and vulcanologists who spend their lives looking down. It made me think about how I see the world. As a writer, I think my perceptions of the world derive from introspection and extrospection, and the continual interplay of these two; it's like breathing, only I breathe out in words.

Without pondering too deeply the nature of reality, ask yourself: How do I see the world?

...

How do you see it?

"Though pompous, he was an entertaining person."

Although these words could aptly be said of me (or a friend of mine) in a eulogy, this was actually the first question on an assessment form I needed to fill out in order to be considered for part-time employment at the local Blockbuster. Phrased in this way, "_____ pompous, he was an entertaining person," I next had to fill in the blank with one of these four choices: Before, Never, Though, and Despite. I never expected grammar to be so highly valued by Blockbuster, especially when considering the employees with whom I have been in contact. See, there it is again, that darn pomposity of mine.

I Hate A Hiatus (And I Bet You Do Too)

It's been about a week since I did my last daily task for This Book Will Change Your Life and I'm thinking that this next week will be pretty interesting as I try to double-up on tasks in order for me to be back on schedule.

Saturday was the Polar Bear Plunge, an event sponsored by the Maryland State Police, my old friends, to benefit the Maryland Special Olympics. The final tally isn't in, but it was announced at 3pm on Saturday that they had raised approximately 11 million dollars. Not a bad chunk of change.

When I rode the bus into Sandy Point State Park there was ice slush accumulating on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Earlier that morning, snow flurries had been blowing in from the side. The water was somewhere in the thirties, the mid to low thirties by the feel of it. I met up with my rugby mates, and for the next two hours there was hilarity in the parking lot as we built courage for The Plunge.

We went down to the beach when it was our hour to plunge. A guy in a red cod piece ran in front of the crowd, a la Braveheart, psyching everyone up. The count down began and after we yelled "ONE!" everyone was making a mad dash for the frigid water. As soon as my delicates hit I achieved something I didn't think was biologically possible--I was reduced to two raisins and a second belly button. There might have even been the beginning of a nub of a tail.

If was chaos, and it had been far too long since I had participated in some good chaos. Some celebrated The Plunge with bourbon and cheap brandy; I chose to celebrate with a good cigar and my love by my side. To misquote Kafka, it's what I needed to break up the frozen lake inside of me.

Overtime at the Olfactory

"Day 17: Eat nothing but asparagus all day long to ascertain just how noxious your pee can get" (Benrik).

With no one in the house today but me and the mutts, I was able to get a lot of work done on the house. My biggest accomplishment was painting the runners on the stairs, which took about 6 hours after two coats of paint. Between the sauteed asparagus, me stewing in my overalls all day, and the odors from the john after having eaten aforementioned asparagus, the house was pretty ripe. Even the mutts, who are almost always underfoot, decided to leave me alone most of the day.

The asparagus was tasty. My recordings of the smell? Well, let's just say I'm still working at finding the right words to convey the actual smell which emanated from the porcelain all day. From a personal maxim I borrowed from poet Kim Addonizio, "Always be a student of something," I'm sure something more creative than a blog post will develop from today's events.

Smoke Letter

"Day 13: Send a letter to a mass murderer" (Benrik).

After getting past Day 5, this is where I normally stop. However, I found a way around this yesterday and I am now successfully on Day 14, which is a lot easier (pay someone a compliment). Although the book provides a list of nine mass murderers, complete with their addresses, it does not specifically state that I have to mail the letters. So, I decided to write a letter, and then burn it, hoping the smoke would send a form of ethereal message to the intended. The Native American Indians used to signal each other with smoke--granted, they weren't burning a letter they had written first--why couldn't I?

If you had been standing in my backyard, or on the highway ... If you had been the neighbor, resting on the adjoining fence of our properties, taking a moment to remove your knitted hat to let your head breathe, steam rising from your wet black hair, leaning on the fence for a brief reprieve from picking up sticks in your back yard, and you looked over to the neighbors, you saw Cassie's full grown son, almost 30, standing above a flaming pan on the ground, maybe 6 feet from the house. Maybe you saw the black smoke first, and you wondered what a fire was doing so close to the house? And then you see him, standing above it, an odd look on his face. You ask yourself, what is he burning? And why? Out of all of the possible conclusions you would have run through your mind--No. In fact, I was burning a letter written to a not-so-nice person.

This Blog Will Change Your Life

Well, OK, that might be a bit of an overstatement. ... But it might!

To keep myself occupied and to generate some new ideas for writing, I have been following the daily guidelines set upon me by the book This Book Will Change Your Life (Benrik). It is 365 instructions for little things you can do--little odd things, such as "eat nothing but asparagus today to see how noxious your urine can become"--that, in the end, will result in a life-changing experience. As if I needed another one of those.

Bee gave me this book years ago and I have stopped and started it many times, sometimes without any reason at all, and other times with very good reason, such as the time Day 5 got me arrested. Day 9's mandate? "Do something before breakfast." Well, Dear Readers, this blog is it. At the very least, I hoped this blog changes your day.

Castle, Nursery, Prison

I've been back in Grace a little over a week now and what once was my nursery is now becoming my prison as I roam from room to room of my childhood home, sensing my coffee getting colder, sensing my unemployment stretching out.

I did have an interview yesterday, and I will have a second interview with the same company on Friday, but it's a job for the money and no other reason. I've come home to two neurotic dogs, a missing box of books (containing my Austen novels), and a small mountain of mail I've neglected to open in months. Somewhere in there are past due college loan bills.

I need a hobby. I need friends that don't work during the day. I need inspiration, a muse ... preferably naked. If your hobby is being a naked muse for freelancers that need inspiration, call me.