Thursday, February 19, 2015

The Viscosity Of Life


Final weekend of quail season. Not a bad spot to spend it if you're a geographic claustrophobe. Few too many trees for my liking, though...

Not many birds on this piece of ground, if I'm honest, but I had it all to myself, and the dogs could stretch out and run. That's worth something, I suppose. At this point it's not about numbers, anyway. Never is, really.

The dogs found enough to be satisfied. I missed enough to get frustrated and hurl invectives into the unsympathetic sky, hit just enough to keep me going. So it goes, as Vonnegut says. I am finding that time does indeed speed up as you get older, and days and moments such as this seem more finite, more part of a larger whole rather than simply being a moment for the moment's sake. There is an arc to what I am doing, what I am, and I guess I'm beginning to realize my place on that arc.

But it's not a bummer. Far from it. True, some things that once mattered greatly to me no longer interest me at all, and dreams once fervently held have been slowly replaced with a new reality that is neither better nor worse, but simply what is. But that's just life. We are fluid, all of us, from birth to death, and right now my viscosity is still sitting at about a 10W30. I'm still OK, still flowing forward, albeit a little more slowly and in a slightly different path than what I once thought I'd take. And that's something to be grateful for.

And I'm grateful that days like this still matter, still have meaning, even though I do not know what, exactly, that meaning is in the grand scheme of things. But then again I'm beginning to suspect there is no truly understandable or graspable meaning in anything, any experience, any reality, other than what we choose to take from it.

The dogs and I walk the lonely hills because that is still a part of what I am, what I've become to this point. I have not left it behind. My enjoyment and interest in these moments have survived that long distillation process that transforms what we were into what we are, and will of course continue to distill us into what we will be, right up to the moment we hit the bottom of the arc.

So I will continue to chase the dogs and the birds on these long walks; hitting, missing, cursing, thinking, and trying to find vague answers to vague questions I don't have the foggiest idea how to pose in the first place.

Restlessness is a good thing. Can't wait for next year.

 

13 comments:

  1. This just nails it. It absolutely describes my ennui, no, not ennui, my ineffability. I'm jealous of your prose. Again.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, CG. You still giving the lumpens over on the F&S site fits?

      Delete
  2. You are bothering me again, I thought I was unique.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Reflection is good, but don't get hung up on too much navel gazing, Chad.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True, true. I'd be the first to admit too much naval-gazing is a bad thing.

      Delete
  4. Maybe the day job provokes something in you Chad, that was spooky-good
    SBW

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, if I'm honest, the day job 'aint half bad. It's interesting, learning a lot about the book world and such, but I think what provoked me here is the grim prospect of facing a month of cold winter boredom before I can really start fishing...

      Delete
  5. Restless indeed. Thanks for the reminder that there are others who share my current state of being.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Chad: I've elected to leave private practice and take my decades of litigation experience to the fight against pollution. I'm 15 years in so I can kind of do as I please for a while. What would please me would be to find a niche in which to attack manure lagoons,

    Updates to follow. And no, I no longer humiliate people at Field & Stream. That magazine's readership is such that i just isn't fair to ask their readers to engage in literate debate. And that completely sucks.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your writing inspires me...and I find an immediate identify with what you write. Please don't stop.
    BJ

    ReplyDelete
  8. "identity". too much scotch...

    ReplyDelete