all men dream

book season starts for me on Evergreen Campus, fresh meat with financial aid money hot in their little pockets for me to fleece. all these crazy books come in handy once in awhile. tons of fun but utterly exhausting to talk to two hundred people a day, rehash sales pitches and chase toddlers around Red Square. it's good to socialize with other parents and kids and students, makes me sentimental... I want to go back to school too [insert whiny tones here].

i try to be strong, open, punctual, supportive of my friends in need, honest with myself and others... but parts of me want to just suck up into my shell, not depend on anyone for anything, internalize anger and resentment and bitterness and grudge like men are supposed to do, nose to the grindstone, belly to the bar. That same classic stance we all learned from our fathers before us, one of the keystones of the nuclear family and one of the reasons those ideas are dying and changing... I think we're learning, however slowly.

alternate between intense conversations with other radical young parents and light-hearted joking alpha male book-sales humor, my own special blend of literary flirting that gets the girls to cough up the bucks and maybe wins me a smile or three. so many new faces and styles, teachers, trees, dogs, gemstones, bicycles everywhere. enough eyecandy for ten thousand days for one who's grown used to the woods again, finally.

i go from having four or five full days at the farmhouse to having one, with no transition to ease into like a warm pool of thought or blood. just bam! no time to decompress or get the million tiny responsibilities of being psuedo-self employed swept under whatever rugs you've got them filed beneath. at last i get an afternoon at home and plug away on a few projects, still managing to ignore the dishes. Eamon gets back from his sailing trip and we talk a bit, plan some work times, business dinner at the bar and grill, loosen up a bit and look towards tomorrow.

I feel strangely lonely today, despite all this recent contact, these streams of words I dip my soul into again, slowly, slowly, like learning to walk again after an accident strips you of that fundamental skill.

i leave you for my books and beer with this small piece: whatever it is you want to be, forget it. it's who you are that counts, and if you're not striving with every ounce of your being at every moment to be your dreams then you aren't being honest and you won't ever truly discover them.

"“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” T.E. Lawrence