traditions

I wasn't going to decorate this year.  For anything, be it October or December.

All things considered, the point in doing so seemed a little bit lost to me.  While I adore Halloween with a passion that rivals my love for my own parents (...), this year I haven't been feeling much in the spirit.  I had my costume decided on of course because that needs to be taken care of before August ends.  And I had my plans in store for what I'd be doing, but everything else?  Figured I'd pass.

I've always been a "go big or go home" kind of guy and decorating for things is no exception.  Unless it's the 4th of July, in which case, like... no.  But Halloween and Christmas?  Absolutely!  While Christmas decorating is a little more intense with the amount of greenery, berries, plastic ornaments to fill clear vases, a gigantic tree and all the lights, Halloween is almost as just.  Spooky cloth and skull lanterns, lots of pumpkins and general creepiness.  So to DO all of that takes time, and effort, and commitment.  And I've been lacking the last two.

Anyway.

The other day I was outside chopping the hostas down to nothing (because screw them, right?  Pretty for like two weeks when they're flowering and then they just take over and serve as homes for spiders.  And rabbits that scare the shit out of me when I'm mowing and go streaking out from the leafy cover, but I digress.) and throwing them into the yard to mulch up with the mower.

I mentioned in a video recently how I was concerned about my neighbor, Ray.  He's the nicest man, and I'll tell anyone the same that'll listen to me.  The day I moved in he came walking across the yard to introduce himself (he'd just pulled into his driveway, so it wasn't like... he'd been watching out the window and came running at the sign of the Budget Truck).  We chatted briefly and have randomly since.  He brought treats over for Christmas and I did the same, saying at the time that his wife made them and I kinda scoffed internally because I'd never seen her before.  I assumed he was an older gay man and just pretending.

Flash forward to this September.  I was kinda caught up with my own life but had noticed over the summer that Ray wasn't really taking care of his lawn.  Now this is a man who mowed his lawn twice a week, sometimes three times a week, and was always outside trimming and maintaining and doing all the things.  So naturally it wasn't hard to notice something had changed, and flat-out I just hadn't been seeing him.  One day when I was mowing the lawn I noticed a bunch of cars outside and people making their way to the house wearing suits and dark dresses.  I assumed the worst.

Back to the hostas.

I was attacking them with reckless abandon and looked up briefly because the garage door next door was opening up.  Ray walked out and waved at me, and I have to admit I was relieved to see him.  So I pulled out my earbuds and we started to chat.  He was quick to tell me his wife had passed away in September from cancer, "so I'm alone now," and my heart just about broke.  We continued to chat and I discovered some more details about his life, that as newlyweds he and his wife purchased the house a year after it was built in 1964.  They raised all five of their children in it, put small additions on (a sun room and the garage), but that it was largely unchanged.  He explained that all five kids live within 20 miles, and combined he has 10 grandchildren from them.

I felt comfortable telling him I was alone now, too.  That it was a different circumstance but how I understood the general feeling.  He sort of nodded and said he was sorry.  He must have known we were "together," even though we never frolicked in the backyard holding hands or anything super gay like that.  But he knew.

Then Ray asked me if I was going to put my Halloween decorations outside like I had last year.  "I really enjoyed seeing those... no one ever decorated over there before."  And without hesitation I said yes, and that I would be putting them out that same day.  So we said goodbye and he drove off with his sister that had come over to visit, and I walked down to the basement and pulled all of the totes of Halloween stuff out, grabbed 20 strands of lights and set to work.

While I know it's not too late to make myself happy, I haven't really been wanting to.  But for Ray?  For someone who went through a much harder loss than I did and could maybe find a simple pleasure from a few lights and cobwebs?  I can do that.  I am happy to do that.  This also got my mind spinning on other creative things to do.

So with that I got my mind cooking on the next multiples video and how I want to start producing them more frequently.  They cheer me up, give me an outlet, and allow me to play around with makeup in one form or another.  Especially this time.

I keep everything for Halloween.  A lot of it I really should toss at this point because it's gotten kind of junky, but for better or worse I still have it.  Maybe because as a child there was no greater thrill than opening up a box mom got down from storage and seeing all of the familiar and spooky things from the year before?  So I keep it all.  I also keep all of my costumes, even the bad ones.  I polled Facebook for what costumes I should break out of storage for this next video, aptly titled "Halloween Party," and here are the winners: Superman, Winifred Sanderson, Dr. Frank'n'Furter, Paulette Bonafonte, and Nicole.

Doing this required a lot of makeup, a lot of time, and a lot of planning.  Facial hair is one thing; five eventual faces of makeup is another.  Frank'n'Furter had to be a standalone paint job.  Paulette had to be a standalone paint job.  For Winifred I had to glue down all of the hair on my chest, come it outward, and set it with powder and foundation (because the FUCK if am I shaving it off (didn't quite turn out how I wanted but whatever)).  The good thing about Winifred Sanderson is that she actually doesn't have eyebrows.  So for the face I only had to wipe off the lips, refill them, add extra eyeshadow and then brows.  Done!  And for the final look, well... you can see it above.

I think when Halloween wraps this year it'll have just been a slightly "off" year for me.  I still decorated in a small way, it cheered me up a bit to do so, and hopefully it made Ray smile to come home and see the house lit up in orange, purple and green.  Halloween night I'll get the fog machine out and some creepy music to play through a crack in the garage door, and I'll do my usual tradition of chili all day long while carving pumpkins and watching movies.

Because I do love Halloween.  I love the feeling that comes with it, the finality it seems to bring of the warm months being officially over and kicking off the final "ugly" stage of fall as it leads into beautiful winter.  I want to recognize it and celebrate it and do whatever I feel willing to do.  I was afraid as the day drew closer that I'd be feeling more down in the dumps.  No one to carve pumpkins with, no one to make said chili with, no one to watch movies and hand out candy with.  Then it kind of struck me.

Those were my traditions.

I started those when I moved out, some of them had continued on from my childhood, but all the same.  They were mine.  Why did I think I needed a boyfriend to be with me for them?  That's just bullshit no matter how you look at it.  Ya did it before, do it again.  So I did.

Traditions done the right way; with the guy who created them.

I woke up this morning and started the chili, listening to Halloween music as I chopped onions and got out the crock pot.  I enjoyed my coffee, watched Strangers Things 2, and sat with the cats.  Got an idea for a multiples picture, did all that, and then ran to the store for champagne to make a cider cocktail tonight.  I can't say I'll feel the same way for Thanksgiving, but who knows?  I shudder to think I'd say the same thing for Christmas or my birthday.  Maybe I'll get a tree and do all the lights.  Fill my vases with cranberries and snow, gather up the garland and string it around the house.  I don't know yet.  What I do know is how that's the funny thing about traditions.

When they go bad, you can always make new ones.  If they were never bad traditions before and really aren't still?  You can keep doing them.  People come and go, circumstances change and ebb... and maybe I'm starting to change too.  It's a little early still, but like the finality Halloween brings to fall and the traditions that are ingrained in my heart, it's there.  Just need to start reaching out for it.

Happy Halloween gang (c:

seventh iteration

I'm looking through the panes of a huge window right now, broken up by metal grids.  Outside it's 70 degrees and there are a dozen people sitting on a deck enjoying coffee and conversation.  An old couple; he has curly white hair and a bald spot on the crown of his head, she is holding his hand and staring absently at the traffic.  Two young girls; both in yoga clothes though I doubt they just came from yoga, messy buns and drape shoulder tops, and absorbed in their cell phones.  A table of apparently old friends in their 30's; they're vaguely hipsters, all wear wedding bands, and one has a teeny tiny little baby girl in her arms.  All of these people are at different points in life, all of them have a story, and I can't help but wonder what those stories are and maybe also why.  How'd they get here?  Where were they before, where are they going next?  I wonder this of myself too.

Frequently I feel that time passes slowly if it passes at all.  The day to day trivial nature of my life has at times felt stagnant and if it was moving, it was moving at a glacial pace.  Conversely, I've written about how quickly time can seem to pass us by without our notice, sort of a blink and you miss it type deal.  Not this last year... not for me.  Like water through a crack in the dam it does pass, and I now find myself facing the seventh iteration of this blog after what feels like a lifetime of waiting.

So without further adieu, I give you the announcement of the day:

THE SIX YEAR ANNIVERSARY FOR 

MUSINGS OF A 

SELF-PROCLAIMED AUTHOR

It's funny for me to look back at six years of blog posts and see where I've been, what my story was and why.  Moments of the past are easy to forget for most people but for me I've essentially been writing a guidebook to my life.  I have the luxury of walking backward through time and reading about all sorts of things.  Moments of panic, moments of lust, and moments of anger.  Times of laughter and times of joy and of course a few times of sadness.  I can see where inspiration struck, I can see where jealousy took hold, and I can see the benefits that came with a job well done.

The "iteration" blogs are peppered through all of that, the roadside markers of my half-written life, and they give me a little bit of guidance if not a little introspection.

When I wrote the sixth iteration a year ago I spent a lot of time mourning over the boo-hoo nature that came with living in Texas and how great living back in the north was going to be (which it largely has been).  You could argue how moving to Austin was an attempt to leave my comfort zone for something new and daring, and moving north was getting back not necessarily to said comfort zone but a place where I could progress the most.

2016 in large was spent white-knuckling the steering wheel of life.  My own reality was absolutely shooting past the windows at 100 miles per hour through changes in jobs, locations I worked and lived in, and the people around me.  After moving to Minneapolis and writing the sixth iteration, I wanted to wrap the year by slowing it all way the hell down.  Then I could follow with a 2017 where I'd preferably be able to focus my attention on (as I wrote back then) a "return to form."

Admittedly when I look back on the last year I do see the benefit of a life where time passes slowly.  The slow passage of time allows for plenty of moments to look at your surroundings and truly see clearly into what is good and what isn't.  If you're paying attention... as I was... seeing things clearly allows for tremendous change.  Life cannot always move at such a breakneck pace because if it does, or rather if it is, you're not present enough to notice what's going on around you.

Looking back at the sixth iteration it's with a certain anguish in my throat that I read how I wanted to "return to form" and get back to my roots.  Some of you know how I tend to put things out to the universe, my idle thoughts and hopes, only to see them become self-fulfilling prophecies in one way or another.  Only now as the year wraps do I see how this particular prophecy came to fruition.

A return to form with the blog meant going back to what started "musings" in the first place: heartbreak.

I think for Derek and I, everything was just always moving so fast.  Quick to say I love you, quick to move in together, quick to move across the country together... quick to move across the country again together.  It was only when things slowed down that we started to relax and look at our lives.  What'll make us happy?  What steps do we take to get there?  So on and so forth.  That's when the problems crept in.  Through hindsight I realize moving so fast kept the problems in a blurry state; I couldn't focus on them because they weren't huge, and they weren't very severe in relation to everything else that was going on.

They were always there though, and it was certainly easier to just ignore them.  I think that's true for many things in life, don't you?  It's often easier not to deal with the white elephant in the room; it's standing quietly in the corner not doing anything, why make a big deal about it?  The trouble with that is how the big white elephant starts to break the floorboards under it's weight, splintering and cracking the foundation until eventually it erodes beneath you as well.  Not the best analogy but you catch my drift.

You put out into the world what you want to get back and I got it back.  Not that I'm some crystal-ball wielding gypsy or that I can predict lotto numbers, but I tend to search for meaning in things any way I can.  In this one I found meaning quite simply.  Doesn't make me happy necessarily, but it does bring a little bit of contentment.  If that makes sense?

All this makes me look at the future with a different perspective.  One component of a return to form came about by writing through Blogger again and not a website I never fully understood or took advantage of.  Another component came in working to write solid blogs that told a story from the heart, not just fluff to get something out (i.e. monthly updates).  I have to remind myself how sometimes it's only better to speak when you can improve the silence, even though my every instinct is to just talk and talk forever.

I rewatched 26 Golden Things a few nights ago.  I'd been messing around on Youtube and stumbled across a song I'd used in the video.  Immediately I knew I needed to find one of the DVD's and put it in to watch.  First and foremost there was a lot of crying, lemme get that out of the way right now.  Tears shed over the movie in the past came about as a sort of lament for how things used to be.  "Look how much fun you were having!  Look how happy everyone was!  Why can't it be like that now?  What had to change?  Why can't you just try harder?"  I do that to myself often... blame myself for not trying harder.  As if to say I don't try hard enough on a daily basis which isn't a fair observation.

This time, unlike any other since I made the film, was different.  There was a familiar draw, I suppose, for lack of a better word.  It's easy to forget why I made the movie in the first place.  I think on the surface 26 Golden Things came across as "I have a bucket list and I'm gonna spend lots of money to do all the things!" but I really only did it because I was adrift in my life.

Confusion over who I was, what I was doing, why I was doing it... all brought about because of a breakup that disrupted my life story.  Not a breakup, but really the breakup, the one that would end up defining who I'd later become.  Me filming my life for a year didn't even start when it was supposed to, it began at the end of January in a split-second decision.  "I'm going to do this."  I'd been single for 9 months, went through a brief relationship that burned out way too fast, and ultimately decided I didn't want to find love again anytime soon.  With that decision came the first item on the list of 26 things and it was #1 - Letting it die: the realization you are finally over your ex.

I can look at 26 Golden Things now as a roadmap to eventual success.  Make a list, start crossing things off.  Involve your friends.  Involve your family.  Acknowledge the challenges, don't shy away from tears.  Be open and be direct and go after the things you want because each step you take forward will only put the past further into just that: the past.

Take what happened and learn from it, grow from it, and be better because of it.

I'm not over Derek yet, and no I'm not going to try to recreate 26 Golden Things this next year as... what... 32 Semi-Tired and Usually Cranky Things?  But I am going to do something.  I'm not sure exactly what form it will take yet but my plans are evolving and coming together and that's a step in the right direction, isn't it?  To have hope for something?  Maybe I'll announce it in the New Year's blog, maybe I won't.  Maybe I'll show up in 365 days and shout out loud in the eighth iteration "hey, look at this neat thing I did and guess what else, I'm happy!"

Happy.  I write it like it's some elusive thing right now, which in many ways it is.  I feel like I can get back to "happy," as if it were a destination, at the drop of a hat.  I also feel like it's at the end of a hallway that keeps getting longer and longer.  But like I said before, sometimes all it takes is putting it out there and then it comes back to me.  Maybe not how I anticipated, and maybe only in hindsight does it smack me in the face, but it does come back.  I think focusing on myself for a year, uncovering what makes me tick and what drives my passion, can only be a good thing for this iteration.  And while I'm at it, I might as well address that sometimes it takes a long while to make your millions, but sometimes it happens over night.

Never hurts to throw that anecdote out to the ether.

Last year for the music video component of this blog I posted one by the band Lucius for their song "Dusty Trails," choosing to focus on the lyric "we'll all be okay."  Listening to that song today I can't help but focus instead on a different lyric: "painful as growing is, we can't forget it's our ticket to taking the reins."  I'd like to take the reins again, I think.  I'm ready to be in charge again and start thinking for myself again.  I assume only good can come from it, but that is something only time and this next year can tell me.  The key is being open and mindful... and if you have the privilege of a slow-running life as I currently do, then it also just takes a little bit more presence.

This year it is "Crystals" by Of Monsters and Men.  The lyrics that speak to me are "But I'm okay in see-through skin, I forgive what is within.  'Cause I'm in this house, I'm in this home, all my time."  It's best with the volume turned way up, in my humble opinion.

That's all I've got for you with this iteration, thank you for reading and listening and a hundred thousand other things you have no idea about.  Thank you.

Ciao for now (c;