Purpose
I can't say I see a reason for this blog any more.Of course, I don't plan to delete it. From time to time, I anticipate I will update it. It's just to say, I don't feel it serves a purpose any more. Chances are, if you read this, you know me already, and we're close enough that you don't need this third party extension to our relationship to update you on my thoughts and whereabouts.
I look back on my posts and I smile at a younger Curtis, knowing now, what he did not know then.
I don't begrudge him his innocence, naivete, or in some cases, his ignorance or pettiness. I see his ego, his id, and that serves as a reflection I can compare myself to. It doesn't feel strictly necessary, but since this blog--this document--exists, there's no reason not to use it as a looking glass from time to time.
Of course, all of this "not going to use it anymore" talk is ironic, considering the medium I choose is the subject itself. Indeed, the more true expression of the sentiment can be seen in the preceeding year of silence.
I don't exactly know why I'm speaking into the void now, other than it's on the eve of another departure, and I just want to reflect a little--look into the looking glass, and see if it looks back into me.
Looking Back
I breathe deeper into my soul now. The foundation is settling and as I grow, the storms stay the same size, thus I rebuff and crest the waves more easily. I guess this is getting older.The Mexico trip was an excellent adventure and, in order to endure a year and a half of tedium and mundanity, a necessary preface to my present circumstance.
Beyond its ameliorating property for the present condition, it instilled a sense of self-sufficiency I'd not held previously.
Navigating foreign roads, and languages and lifestyles and coming out even on the whole provided confidence in myself and in the world that I just plain didn't recognize before. I think about an experience I had on the road from time to time. A starless night and myself and the bike, winding and wending over the pitch black tarmac, guarded by the lane markings. Inside the helmet, it's just my little messed up brain and me. Little pieces of you and, everyone else I know, come criss-cross in front of the pulpit of my mind's eye and we talk. And things happen. Your patterns and theirs--any that I've been exposed to--can come to me and then I am in company. Meanwhile, a dark night smears past our rendevous as I twist that right hand.
I'm Getting Older, Too
You know, I thought I was done with the verbose, superfluous, writing. I guess I need the outlet from time-to-time.I'm losing my vocabulary, interestingly. I speak with so few people whom I feel confident, with whom I can play and experiment with words and language. I stick to the safe, to the mundane. No confusion, no judgement. It's just easier that way. But I do miss the soaring rhetoric, the hyperbolic and the superfluous conversations. As a consequence of their absence I find that when I do wish to summon that odd word--that precise, delicious, satiating, perfect word--it eludes me.
Also, I catch myself often misreading and mispronouncing words with pure vowels. A feature of learning a pure-vowel language like Spanish, I suspect. It typically happens when I read a word I haven't seen in a while and subconsciously as I scan it. I can't think of specific examples right now, but it's like pronouncing 'bit' like 'beet' [edit: A specific example: 'river'. Isn't this just the craziest word? I want to say something like 'reev-air', or if we're going to distort it, why not 'rive-er'? Certainly, 'riv-er' is the most foreign to me, and I often find myself tripping on it.].
These curiosities certainly intrigue me, but I resolve not to fret them. In fact, I rather enjoy such an absurd behaviour as a person who truly does not speak Spanish, or any other language beside English, mispronouncing words in his mother tongue. And maybe it's just a sign of an aging, feeble mind. I don't know. With either, I'd be fine.
I enjoy diagnosing myself with strange and exotic disorders and diseases. Makes me feel special, I guess. To date, I have Pectus Excavatum, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (type unknown), and some sort of neurotic mental disorder, but I'm still pinning that one down.
I looked up dyslexia because I transpose numbers in sequences occasionally. I'm sure you do, too. It's just that I've noticed it more frequently (as opposed to noticing it occur more frequently). Anyway, the result of looking up dyslexia was a little reading on the subject and this tidbit I read that people with this condition exhibit abnormal speech and writing patterns. I'm kind of wondering if I exhibit them, too. I do feel like, if I don't monitor myself closely, if I free myself, that my speech patterns are very abnormal. Sort of Yoda-like, from time to time. Or maybe that's just my perception, or maybe it's just laziness in that I don't premeditate my sentences and just try to talk my way out of half-thoughts and upside down concepts.
Those strange patterns are fun to put to digital page, and I feel like I want to start writing again, but I don't know that it will be on here. We'll see. Really want to write a book. Really want to finish A Troubled Time of Youth.
Adios, muchachx.
