The darling buds of May...

Rogue Valley Roasting Co.
Big Iced Hibiscus Tea
Banana Bread

If you know and love me then you should come visit me.  Right now.  If you have only a lukewarm interest in me, personally, but had enough free time to kill to read this blog, then you should use me as an excuse to get to southern Oregon.  It is epically gorgeous right now.  It helps if you're into lush green parks and quaint (if somewhat overpriced) crafty, kitschy small-business-y stores.  And Shakespeare.  He's kinda big here.  In all honesty, I have yet to go to a single play, but I enjoy all the Shakespeare puns around town (Puck's Donuts, As-You-Store-It, and the new Oberon's Tavern).  I also admit to buying a giant eraser with the words, "Out damn spot!" printed on it.  I kinda had to.

There is also a little Artisans Market thingy on the weekends that I wandered through today.  It is so inspiring to see things, you know - made.  The first stall had lovely hippy skirts and dresses, and I thought, I could do this.  Then the different types of jewelry makers... I could braid hemp chokers... I could work with metal wire and pretty stones and crap like that...  Oo, fabric again - pillows!  Hats!  Braided rugs!  Pithy fridge magnets made out of metal bottle caps!  A guy singing and playing guitar - I could... well, I could sing... while I sat at my little booth and made... whatever.  Handmade journals.  Purses.  Useful things.  I was so full of ideas and confidence for three whole blocks.

Then I got maudlin.  Craft faire stuff.  That's what I want to invest myself in?

If you haven't guessed, I'm in one of those "what the hell am I doing?" kind of mental states.  What do I want to do? to be?  Where do I want to be?  Should we stay in Ashland?  If not here - where?

Since I did not go straight back to work this time, after O-boy, I've been trying to reconcile myself with this non-employed state.  I have thought about just trying to focus on being totally engaged with the boys, and getting a little "off time" on the weekend.  But that has felt wasteful and unstructured and unproductive.  The problem is that there is so much "week" that I can't take care of that it has to be done on the weekend.  But I feel bad if I'm not doing something beyond the tasks of just staying alive.  So I started this bloggy thingy, trying to cultivate some writing habit.  Mixed success so far.  I'm not really satisfied with how things are going, to be honest.  But I feel like I have to stay with it, mostly for the sake of staying with it.

But to what end?  I feel like I have things to say, arguments to make, for the "greater good" or something grandiose like that.  But I mostly feel like I'm soapboxing the walls.  Who cares what I have to say?  What difference will it make?  I look at the world and I cannot let it stand as it is.  To watch the (expletives and adjectives deleted) people running things into the ground, to the detriment of all, it makes my stomach burn.  But to put myself out there feels like I've just stepped out of the bathroom with my emotional skirt stuffed into my emotional undies.

I like Ben Fold's retort, "Do it anyway!"  But do what?

Despite our fragile financial state, I've decided that it's a waste to continue to seek out a job that doesn't advance whatever ultimate goals I have.  But I'm still not quite sure what it is I ultimately want to do.  Before I die.  I'm trying to remind myself of that to - in a healthy way.  I'm going to do whatever I'm going to do and then I'm going to kick off.  The future world will go on without me and then it, too, will fade, or explode.  The current thinking of the great thinkers is that the universe will expand and cool and grow dark and still... and that'll be it for everything and everyone who may have been around at some point ever.

So who cares?  Why get stressed about anything?  Why stick around, especially if you have no afterlife in mind to scare you or to give you peace in thoughts of a perpetual life beyond a frozen universe?

Well, that's your existential quandary to square yourself with.  For my part, I have chosen to live.  And I shall respect the rest of those who have chosen the same.  So if we're here, we're gonna do this whole life thing, then we need to make it liveable for each other.  For "rough winds do shake the darling buds..."  But it is May.  The universe may die in winter, but the sun has just pushed ahead of the clouds, and the world is beautiful.  Right now.