Decajour VI: Feb 22 - March 3

 2/22  Today I found myself esp. delighted by the fact that I Did Not Know what the gods would put in front of me for the next 10 days.    And lo, when I reached into the jar, #3 popped out, a project I haven't touched since moving to New Mexico!   I (actually, Alana Keres) published a related piece last March, but it was only a fragment of the story - which I will expand over the next ten days (and again, whenever Tyche deems).

Upon moving to New Mexico in 2013, I figured it would take about a year  to re-establish my writing practice, as I caught my bearings, paid off the move/other debts and restored my savings.   Mentioned in Decajour V,  news from my  employer last week brought new confirmation to that timeline.  I find myself fantasizing about transferring my 10-day creative week to Real Life - modeling the work/life balance that one would imagine a post-industrial world could sustain: 3 days in high focus/2 days lolling around/3 invigorated days/2 days in a lower key.   Repeat the whole thing twice more to complete the 30-day month.

That would give people (well, for now, me) 18 days of high focus (what we now call 'work') and 12 days of going easy (current parlance: 'days off').   Compare that to the contemporary 20-22 days on/8 days off every month.     Perhaps I'll soon be able to experiment with this rhythm.

2/23  Discovered the campus Satellite coffee house last night; dunked a red-eye at 7 p.m., was asleep by midnight - such is the power of my serotonin production.   Got a couple of pages written as out of the corner of my ear I listened to a kid --maybe 23 or 24, just back from Afghanistan-- bang around the scales of his emotional body.  PTSD and then some.   I just wanted to put my arms around him and transfuse clarity, balance - and wipe off the clotting of so much violence. 

Yet the writing rolled out. . . Something about this particular project has caught me, as though it has my sleeve and is drawing me along.   Woke up this morning thinking:  I can't know the whole picture of this lifetime, but through the work, I can call the pieces together.  The very action of seeking/creating narrative not only changes what this life (well, these lives: Mystes', AlanaKeres', Eleusis') means, but what it can accomplish.  That has to be enough. 

2/24 - In which I realize that some time soon, I will have to just take The Leap.   It's not a suspicion anymore.   There's a depth that I can't even touch at this point, one that only comes with falling out of time. 

2/25 - 3/3  Squeezed out about 1000 words on this piece, but realized that I have buckets of background to review.  Printed out the letters between the various players (Eric, Jesse, Paco, moi, Sally); started drafting some questions to deepen the pool; reviewed my journal notes from Feb/March of 2013.  Curious that this floats up for consideration during exactly the same period in which I produced the first review.    Though. . .  this desert is a far cry from Texas wet last year.  Hell, Texas 2014, with its polar vortices and ice fairies, is a far cry...  (maybe the artist's Icelandic girlfriend stirred the cauldron widdershins). 

Then my friend Wu revised the preface to his book.  And re-revised it.  I think he's on version 4, and I am still reading V.2.    Sigh.  

(I suspect the next decajour will be devoted to reading. )