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When a child is reading a book or watching a baseball game, I become inconsolable.  I want to cry, and were my SRTIs to allow me to cry, I would–happy, joyful, hopeful tears.  These two things, both imperative to my own sanity and understanding of the world, I fear are drifting further and further from the normal rearing of children.  Of course, on it’s face, that is a preposterous and presumptuous statement; I have no children of my own and when faced with the prospect of raising one, I seize up and reach for the Tums or the nearest door handle.  I am not fit to be a father, or so I believe; but if I had children, a son say, I’d like to believe that he will be well behaved and patient enough to sit still in this world, to be totally at peace with the quietude that is possible but not encouraged in this culture.  That is not to say I would want him to be immobile or to stare simply at a book all of his toddler years; rather, I would want him outside scuffing and scraping and hearing and creating that pop in his glove, taking an awkward step forward and cocking his hand, the sun breaking just off his blond hair and catching the brand new whiteness of the ball, his arm not at a perfect ninety-degree angle, but close enough for three years old, one foot dug into the earth and the other teetering on newly learned balance and he releases and as the ball flies through the air the lessons I could teach him or the places I could tell him to avoid would spread across his face in the most triumphant smile.

This is all so easy to say and dream.  I imagine most people have something like this bouncing around in their head, just inserting music for baseball or bricklaying for book reading.  Just like our hobbies and pursuits, our dreams and projections are there to distract us from this current moment.

Or perhaps this is simply myself projecting my young self onto my own future in hopes that I will better understand my children.  A sin in and of itself, but then again, I was forgiven for my sins.  Can I turn away from my own understanding of the world and allow my child to form his or hers?  I hope so and I know I will, at some point, allow that to happen, but will it be too late?  This is speculation and if my track record is correct, it certainly does not come from an objective place.  In my world, I am always the culprit for all wrongdoing–the center of attention and the problem child always slouching under a dunce cap.  Being at fault means being in control.

Forgive me, I’ve had two glasses of wine.

I wonder if my teeth are they were in Ohio–purple and smiling.  I drank a lot of wine that summer in Ohio and I became very accustomed to that drunk: a wine drunk, rich with joy and forgetfulness, very different from the torrents of drunk I would have from Gin and Orange Juice.  Of course, I was in love both times and was probably trying to escape something; or, I was young, or both.

I had a plan tonight: Call my sister, Kelly, and pose a question; here’s how I think it would have gone:

“Kelly, ask me what I love more than anything besides friends and family.”

Kelly would be chasing a kid or peeling a potato or just simply living the American dream and would not know, or pretend not to know.

“Books.  That’s what.”  And she would say, “Ah, yea, I could have guessed that.” But could she have?  Growing up, I didn’t read much.  Sure, I had the Roald Dahl fascination, but I was mostly concerned with the way books lined up on a shelf, the way they added up to something as a whole and what it might have meant to have read all of them.  I remember sitting up at night in my friend Craig’s room, looking up in his closet at the shelf above his clothes.  There was a whole line of books and it was rife with adult classics and I assumed he just must have read all of these and I was in awe.  I said, there’s no way I’ve read this many books and he just kind of laughed–Craig had it figured out–and said, sure I have.  Well, I think Craig was wrong, but he had good intentions.

When I need a break at work, I go into a small room with a built in desk and kick off my shoes and put them up and adjust my sitting posture and open up a book and read.  The world goes on outside and it’s not like I can’t hear it, I can.  But I can ignore it or soak it up or even appreciate it, in those moments.

I want to read all of Sue Grafton’s Alphabet novels.  These started in 1982 with “A is for Alibi” all the way up to “V is for Vengence” which I think came out in the last few years–that’s something, that series.  Mystery novels with the same detective, but I would like to be a completist and read them all.  Of course, I own all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, I suppose I could begin there.  If it’s good enough for the BBC, then it’s fucking good enough for me!

My therapist said an interesting word to me the other day: “projection”.  I had heard it so many times, but never in connection with my behavior and it explained so very much!

I should be volunteering to help tutor kids to write.

I am off to bed, for now.  A diary entry on here–who knew?  I sure as hell didn’t.