Contemplation

It’s interesting what happens when perspective is adjusted. I see conflict now as pointless, anger as a loss of self, a weakness of infinite depth. But Why? A push was all I really needed, maybe even for years. Scientifically, I know the brain is nearly endlessly malleable, and barring significant cases of genuine chemical or physiological distress, it can be guided to fit a specific end. In this case, I’ve long considered myself helpless to disrupt the cycles of anger that have plagued me since some of my earliest memories. But in those cases, it was impetuous youth tainted by a chain of terrible father figures and worse examples of acceptable behavior, spiced with a general lack of guidance.

It’s a beautiful Sunday night in Illinois, and Jen and I have just enjoyed a wonderful pot roast, complete with some gravy I whipped up from the resulting stock. A nice night to relax with some hot chocolate under a warm fleece blanket with a fluffy kitty curled up my lap.. It’s a good time to reflect, recuperating after two and a half hours of exercising yesterday. A time to finally write up part of the outline I wrote while riding home from work one evening.

A tawny force a’canting,
in a melancholy spire,
does cry and waver, ranting
among blackened souls afire.

The split and crackle churning,
always wrought by leavened hale,
attempts to quench the burning
in a mixed-up, sundry tale.

By sultry fates asunder,
those calamities do gaze
into most guarded plunder,
only whets desire to raze.

Well, there we have it. Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. For the most part, everyone I know views this as a preferable outcome. One, for whatever reason, perceives Obama as a “dangerous charlatan.” Now, I’m not going to appeal to authority here, but the man is a former professor of constitutional law, wrote two books clearly outlining his core beliefs, and only recently paid off his student loans. Regardless of the hilarious and often wildly inaccurate labels applied to Obama on a fairly regular basis, he seems genuinely devoted to, at the very least, pull us out of the gaping void Bush has been–and until next year, will continue–digging to hide the battered body of America.

Bob: Wow, I was beginning to think you’d fallen off teh intarwebs.

Shaun: Droll.

Bob: Well, I certainly thought so. What, nothing to say for the last over a month?

Shaun: …

Bob: I’ll take that as a no.

Shaun: Do you think this is healthy?