virtual reality

I've turned off my virtual light on the world - resigned my membership from digital clubs - turned in my key to the electronic gossip gallery = I've quit Myspace and Facebook.

So far - so good. When my email isn't enough, I check the newspaper now. My brain has to skip that time-suck of a beat and move on to something else, something more worldly than a collection of pixelly pictures of my oldest conocimientos.

It makes me wonder, is it better to spend time reading about the mundane details of my most far-spread least contacted friends - "S0 and so is spreading around her dissertation," "Such and such are feeling sick," "Him and her went on another trip to another place and took another photo! - or is it better to read the New York or LA Times, the Washington Post, the Onion - "Bear Stearns Rich Old Guys Arrested!" "Obama still continues to push buttons and kick ass" "Area man has a sad little routine when he needs cheering up!"?

I'm going to say...I will put my money on...well, really either. The news of the rich and famous is only interesting in regards to the scale they accomplish it on. I suppose if good and interesting things are done on large scale then we appreciate them more - they seem more significant. But then again, to see that my old classmate who used to inspire me by running a marathon at the same time as the school newspaper has now has two children still gives me important insights into how the world can work. Do we learn from lessons of strangers or our friends? Probably both. I guess the question here was, how do we distract ourselves? Do we entertain ourselves with the external world or a more closely connected one?

I chose to get off the sites to avoid conflict, avoid wasting my time, avoiding trying to pay attention to everyone I've ever known doing so in hopes that I can pay more attention to the details of the lives that I do know now. My current friends, my current loves, my current life. That is - I'm giving up my virtual life for my real one. I'm giving up the idea of everyone for the reality of one.

When I lived in NYC _and_ when I had realized it was the "only place to be" I noticed that non-new york new yorkers, that is emmigrants or immigrants yet-to-be, were always reading the NYTIMES with a religious devotion. It was as if those outside of the city somehow could really keep apprised of the city and therefore the world by consuming the black ink and off-white page, leaf by leaf.

As a new-yorker in new york proper, I rarely touched the thing. It was as if the city itself was enough, and that reading about it on top of living it would have been some sort of overdose, and self-centered at that. Like a stage-mom searching the tabloids for news on her daughter, it would consume me, instead - the wide review of life as I knew it.

Of course, that left me well and good ignorant about many things. But I always had the comfort that paper was there when I needed it. Now - on a Sunday morning, that paper will only ever be delivered onto my laptop screen as long as I live in this town of 16,000, Donna, Texas. I believe I can get the paper in my box, if I wait a day or two.

So I am up, it is a warm beautiful sunday morning, and I've made my coffee and now I'll click through the Times, page by virtual page.

April 18, 2008

Its a rainy morning in Donna and about the perfect time to honor my re-commitment to the art or lousy hobby of part-time writing. Be it a blessing or a curse I have not the chance to devote myself to this effort full-time. I have just hours here and there to give a shot and then complain that my lack of success is due to equal lack of time. This is not true. Ideas and persons and most things will fly if you put them out there and give them a hard enough push, a showy enough sell. Then there are those artists who don't push to hard - they become famous after their death. Way too late to gratify that need to be acknowledged.

I have had a few ideas in the past 24 hours about what to write about. One was a girl filing papers to divorce her father in a church she never joined. The other was just an essay about Ruby, the young girl we've befriended at the laundry. Her story will fill out later though, I'm sure. Perhaps if we go to her Quincenera, as she invited us yesterday. All the folks from the laundromat will be going. One idea I had awhile ago was something about a psychiatrist driving his daughter to insanity - but I forget how it was going to happen. Ah well - these things will come. That's why I am back here to the process of blogging, of getting these non-legalese words onto screen - so I can see them - a promise that they exist and will still come when I need them.

This weekend is a calm one - a front is blowing through and the rain will lift (Its the first rainy day in months) and then it will be sunny and warm. I did all my chores yesterday so today is merely enjoying, well, whatever it is I decide to enjoy. We've assembled quite a collection of potential hobbies now - oil painting, guitar and violin, the landscaping, cards and games, computer games, my quilts, his reading, cooking. We are jacks of all trades and hopefully we will master some at some point.

I've been thinking more and more about NY in a month and a year from now. In one month I visit. In one year its possible I could move there. Nevermind that next week I visit Austin for a conference, then the next to San Diego, then a couple after, Mexico. All I'm thinking about are cupcakes from Amy's, Coffee from Irving, and wandering small around the corners of great buildings.

Ah.

Its a rainy morning here. I've got to get to the car dealership, then to work, and see what else I can get done before the weekend. Time is flying. Weekends begin with weekdays, it seems. Everything turns into each other so fast. Theres so much living to be done - there's hardly time to think about it.

Its been on and of this week, with the heat and the sun, in random mixtures of the two. My father came to town, and while I was hot and old about the whole affair, it has turned out to be a very mild pleasant weekend.

winter news - winter blues

greetings from donna, where words have been short and days have been long of late.

mother came to visit from new york city and it was true meeting of two worlds - my old life my new, but more than that, it was two parts of me coming together. two halves figuring out if and how they can make a whole and whether or not the addition of the pair will come out to less than or more than 100%.

as such when she left it felt as little splintered, schizophrenic, as if perhaps part of the whole was taken, or maybe it was the extra 25% percent, i know for sure that 95% remains, and perhaps now, a tiny bit more.

i miss new york and still consider coming back. i miss having all my friends around so i like to think about making plans for a year from now. But damn if in a year from now i won't finally feel like i've made friends here and wonder if maybe i shouldn't have just stayed. asi es la vida a veces.

the warm winter has helped. its like a brief reprieve from a life sentence of snow. but as i've recounted to many of you, its as cold inside in this little country house of mine as it is outside. so in some ways i've been colder than before.

so i've been a little sad. it turns out february was still hard, even with sunshine, even with the most wonderful valentine. its been nine months in texas, 6 on the job, and 3 as a real live lawyer. since i measure all of life in units of 3 months, this is an important moment to stop and measure.

precinct captain

Its a warm rainy morning here in Donna and I don't feel like going to work, though I probably will. I feel like sitting right here with a hot cup of coffee alternately my glances from the view through the screen porch door and this buzzing little screen right here.

Ted Kennedy will be in town today, and its rumored that Obama will be two on Friday. The Obama campaign was so confident about super tuesday that they didn't print enough signs and now are scrambling to get us to make phone calls. They are looking a bit at their own lives, their own leading roles, and wondering if their commitment doesn't have them on the road a lot longer than they thought.

I was excited about Ted Kennedy but now find myself a bit lazy. What is this? My long standing aversion to politics? Yes, probably. I'll go for obama, but think maybe I'll skip out today. I want all this change to happen but darn if I don't want someone else to take care of it for me.

remote posting from nyc

i thought i'd move south and be so slow moving i'd have a novel by now - but instead its become hard to keep up my blog. In fact I'm writing now from the coffee shop on the corner of Church and Nostrand, middle of Flatbush, the trinidadian section. Herein, in various shades and colors of the tropical accent they are discussing the copy of Ben Hur that the one particularly squirrely grey character brought in and held in front of him for 20 minutes until someone else would come so he could announce his great find.
Ben Huurr!
Yes, Bin Hur
Ben Her!
Oh Ben Hur. That classic from 1957 (That's alot of years, the coffee man hurumphs) here is the delight of the afternoon.

I'm just waiting for mom to come home so I can get inside, drop my bag, and enjoy a nice week of nothing to do in NYC.