Scattered

People have been asking me lately why I haven't updated my blog recently.  This question crossed my mind about a week ago.  I was standing in a port-a-potty (of all places), reading the scrawlings on the wall.  Messages left from previous patrons, from those who carry sharpies around in the hopes of leaving their mark on the wall in a bathroom stall or port-o-john somewhere, and thus on society, I guess.

As I perused the declarations of "going home in a week", and "I was here", and dirty pictures, the thought occurred to me that these scrawlings, these vague and fleeting attempts at self-expression are like a blog. Like my blog, anyway.  They say nothing of importance to the reader,  and I question whether they mean anything to the person who wrote them.

Truth is, I have a lot to write about.

I've been living in Missouri for 4 months now. Missouri can be a beautiful place.  The problem is, being trapped in a place for Army training tends to take the beauty out of a place.  Most soldiers complain about how miserable the base is, wherever they are stationed.  I tell them it's only ugly because they don't see anything but the base, and because the training makes it miserable.

Two weeks ago, the leaves were changing colors here...and that is all I need to say right now...

More to come.

And that's my scattered brain in a Nutshell,
Hop

Soy Tu Sueno

"I had a dream about you."

Conversations that start this way never seem to go well.  Not for me, anyhow.

In your dreams...

Sweet dreams, my love...

Dreams can be wonderful things.  They can be encouraging things.  Powerful things.  Troubling things.

I have been troubled lately.

It is a teacher's job to encourage his students to follow their dreams.  Yet, how can he do so, if he himself fails to follow his own dreams?

It is not the failure to follow dreams that is so troubling.  It is the lack of clairvoyant dreams that keeps me from restful slumber.

Those who have dreamed dreams have been both revered and ridiculed throughout history.  Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz's dream of a snake swallowing his own tail led him to the discovery of the structure of benzene.  Paul McCartney awoke from a dream with a melody still in his mind, and quickly stepped to the piano and worked out the tune to "Yesterday".  Days before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln dreamed he was at his own funeral in the White House.  It was the famous words, "I have a dream..." that stirred an entire nation to move toward a more civil and equal society.

And yet, people act in despicable ways in the pursuit of their personal dreams.  So too, do people act when they have no dreams.

If you asked me twenty years ago what my dreams were, I could rattle off a fairly specific list of things I wanted to acquire, accomplish, or complete.  But now, I don't know.

I want to dream.  I want to feel that wonderful compulsion and drive toward some dignifying or enlightening end.  To have a dream and to work toward it is the greatest experience one can have in this life.

I awoke from a vivid dream this afternoon.  I was imprisoned.  I escaped.  I was pursued.

Better to be in prison, than to be constantly on the run, never having peace of mind, ever wondering what lies around the corner.  In this dream I was a convicted criminal, and I was pursued for all my terrible deeds.  My terrible dreams?  Dreams and deeds are virtually inseparable...so without dreams, you don't have many deeds.  (And vice versa?)

I wonder, have I taken my dreams into custody?  Imprisoned them?  Deprived them of the thrill of freedom, of the thrill of being pursued?  Are they slowly starving?  Or are they kept alive with hope, like Edmond Dantes, who spent all those years dreaming of revenge, plotting his escape and planning his revenge?

I'm so glad I'm not in high school, and I haven't been given the assignment to write about my dreams for the future.  I would have writer's block.  Or would I?  A writer who doesn't write is just a dreamer...isn't he?

So many questions...

And that is my week in a Nutshell,
Hop

Winter comes but once a year

Are you some kind of medicine man?
Cut the demons out of my head?
--Wintersleep, "Weighty Ghost"

It's finally beginning to feel like winter in Vegas. And not a moment too soon. I was thinking I was not going to get to wear my new hoodie at all this season. With winter comes the cold and chill. Both literal and figurative. As I've resorted to putting three blankets on my bed and sleeping in sweats and a touque (this because I save a lot of cold hard cash by keeping the thermostat at a cool 62-degrees), I wish there was a way to ward off the cold I've been fighting the past few weeks.

So traditionally, I used the Nutshell as a way to keep my family and friends informed as to the major, minor and minute events in my life. What I have come to realize recently is that the Nutshell has been my own personal therapy. It kept me lucid when I really wanted to go insane. The weekly act of writing, of sitting down, and thinking about what has happened in my life, and deciding how I was going to present that to the outside world--deciding how I myself would view those events--helped me in ways I'm only now beginning to recognize.

Also, it has been a tradition that the Nutshell contain tidbits of my dating life. I had hoped that would end when I got married...but it didn't. So, it's back to bachelorhood I go.

And with that, here is the first in what I hope to be another good collection of snippets from my life. My friend's daughter invited me to her 11th birthday party. "It's a skate party," she had said. I agreed to go, in part because I hate to turn down an invitation to a birthday party, in part because I haven't used my rollerblades in quite a while, and in part because I hoped it would in some way impress her mom. (A bit of background: her mom is gorgeous, and single.)

So, I showed up to the party, not really having thought about what I had gotten myself into. There we were. At the skating rink. With a bunch of 4th-5th grade girls. And I don't know any of the parents. By "parents", I mean "moms", because no dads would even think of going to a skate party, unless it was their own daughter's.

Which brings me to the source of real awkwardness. My lady friend's ex-husband shows up. (Do you like how I just referred to her as my "lady friend"? Yeah, I thought you'd like that.)

What to say....

Well, I am not taking any classes this semester...and I'm wondering why I miss it so much. Actually, I know exactly why I miss it. Because, if I could I would be a professional student. I would gladly take classes for the rest of my life if I could somehow make a living doing it.

The last exciting thing I'll tell you about before I go: the phone call on Friday. I had just arrived to work, and was settling in to grade my students' final exams for the first semester when my phone rings. It's the company commander. "Hey, LT," he says, "I just wanted to let you know we've been alerted and we may be deploying to Northern Nevada. There is a brush fire up there that's threatening a high school and some homes. If we deploy, we'll leave at 1500 today and we'll be gone for 7 days. I should know by 9:00 if we are going or not."

My heart sinks and races at the same time. I don't want to leave because I still have to enter the grades in the computer, and there are still two classes who need to take their tests. Two classes who still need to write essays that I still have to grade. And I don't want to leave that to my fellow teachers to do. But, I'm also excited about the prospect of getting to work with my unit in a real-life situation, rather than just training exercises. He calls me back fifteen minutes later and tells me we are deploying and I need to have about 20 soldiers from my platoon to the armory by 1100.

So, I make arrangements for someone to cover my class, and I rush home to pack. On my way to the armory I get a call informing me that the situation is not as urgent as originally perceived. And we may not be going to Reno.

When I get to the armory, we sit and wait for word from our leaders, who finally decide at about 11:00 that they will not deploy us, and we can all go back to work/sleep/home. I left exhilarated and somewhat disappointed.

And that's my week in a Nutshell,
Hop