Month: May 2011
Today is the first day in ages that I have had time to try and write my collected thoughts down… Looking back it has been a little over three months.
I turned in my last paper of the semester today. I don’t think I’ll ace it, but I am beyond caring at this point. The paper, which had no formal structure/defintion in its assignment was returned to me (second revision) for being "too long" (okay, maybe 18 pages was overboard), having too many sources cited (prof only wanted me to cite the core textbook) and for "taking on more than the core of the paper’s assignment". I translate this to lazy professor, personally, but, I guess you get what you pay for. Assuming all my life credits go through, I will be free and clear of this nonsense come the fall semester’s end.
The Sea Monkey is going to come along any day now. We are t-minus six days to the rune-cast date the sawbones conjured when we first sought her insight on the matter. It amazes me, somewhat, how little science, and how much tradition there still is to the assignment of something like a due date. I cannot believ how generous friends/families/coworkers have been in the baby department – it is stunning, really. I hope we end up with a kid worth all the pre-emptive admiration.
In other news, my twitter entry to the creative process of the 8in8 initiative of Palmer et. al (Nighty Night) ended up being the title/subject of the first track of the album! Tesla is a hero of mine, and I am glad there is now a song about him, in addition to all the other dear little factoids orbiting my central cortex that I maintain. The entire 8in8 concept is really awesome, and you should go read all about it if you haven’t already.
In related but out-of-left-field news, yesterday marked the close of my annual reading of IT. This is the twenty-fifth year I’ve stumbled across the epilogues of Derry, Pennywise, and the kids who took a stand. As always, I find myself taking away something new from the reading – this time, I was focused on the brief musings King offers on the nature of fear, and the elasticity of the mind. Throughout King’s works, there are examples of children confronting situations which would drive a rational adult mad, and taking those situations on with a limited impact on their day-to-day. When I pause to think about how much stupid little things can phase me sometimes, it is almost discouraging. I try to remain mindful of both my impulses, and my imagination, which I agree with King, are the spark-plug and cylinders which the mind of a child run on. Somewhere along the way, in me, these have transitioned to the power steering belt, or the automatic transmission – still important,but not core.
This scares me, a little, in the face of being a father. More than anything, I want my child to have a powerful imagination, but it is going to be born into a world which seems more than a little limited in the opportunties to flourish, and keep that mindset intact. Besides the worries of the yet unborn, there is a bit of a selfish worry in it for myself, wondering if I will be able to maintain the responsibilities that come with being a father, and the limited time indulgence I allow myself to maintain my innerspace – my conenction to impulse and imagination.
My hope is that I will channel it in storytelling and games, of a different sort than the kind I engage in now.
I am going to try to take three weeks off work whenever the Sea Monkey arrives. I am highly dubious I will be able to pull this off, but I am generally positive about his providing me with the means of negotiation (having secured the three weeks in wiriting) of taking an easeful summer, as A. and I adjust to the thousands of changes family life will bring.
The foremost of those, in regards to estate planning and potential mortality, comes in a signifigant shift in my post-mordem allocations. I have long maintained that I want no traditional funerals or burial processes, and have set aside a fund for having a big-old party. I am afraid that plan will have to be curtailed to a meagre reservation fee, as the bulk of whatever possessions I would have (monetary or otherwise) are now the key domain of this child-to-be’s future and prosperity. I’ll have to engage a lawyer whenever my revisions are complete – when I contacted the lawyer I have been working with for the past fifteen years last week, in order to get the paperwork rolling, I found out he died of a stroke in December, and his partner (who I loathe) has taken over the business.
Anyone have any referrals?
