I can't get no dissatisfaction

Really, one of these months or years I've got to stop using this thing as a personal diary and start doing something with it that has social value. Or intellectual value. To persons, that is, other than myself and the handful who know me personally. Politics makes me sad, and angry at myself for how easily I give up on all of them. I see how hard they're trying, yes, but I also seem to see what it is they're trying to do. And none of 'em feel plugged in, as I see them. The things they are required to do, the things a person has to bet all their spiritual chips on in order to succeed in power politics, seem like lies. All lies, in the defense of lies, to cover over yet more lies. Lies which carry the form and name and stamp of leadership and service, and ape those things to a degree. But which, in practice, only take the driven and ambitious and highly visible and turn them into blunt instruments gripped in the hands of beasts.

Contemplating that stuff only depresses me. Which is why I've been thinking about politics et cetera only in short bursts, more out of a sense of civic responsibility than because I feel there's anything at all useful I can do about any of it. Much better to narrow my focus and think about nicer things. Like the present!

Over the past couple of weeks I have lived in a floaty cloud of great happiness. Dave and I have spent our time together either dashing excitedly or ambling contentedly between one enjoyable or useful activity and the next. Even going to the grocery store and taking out the garbage seem worthwhile. This sort of idyll is assuredly what I hear being called the "salad days" of a relationship. Which seems odd to me, considering that:
1. our eighth anniversary as a couple is coming up next month;
2. the salad is not the favorite part of a meal for most, merely the first.
It is more like getting to have an extra dessert between the soup and the entree.

I have often come onto this blog and excised the long list of complaints and whines from the various portions of my stream of consciousness where I found them gumming up the works. Now, at this moment, I really have only two. Complaint number ones: I really ought to become a better person faster in various ways, most of the ways relating to responsibility in the maintenance of social ties and neatness and organization around the home. Complaint number twos: I have written, in I believe the past month, only one lousy sonnet. Though it was a good one. (And thanks to Amber for letting me know you liked! :D ) But writing and composing, or the lack of "enough" of them, is something I always hope to be able to complain about. I forget who wrote it--someone I once knew had it up over their computer desk, and I remember the sense of the quotation better than the name. A famous lady modern dance pioneer. But it declared the crux of impetus towards art is a sort of divine dissatisfaction, something that shakes you up and makes you uncomfortable, a restless impulse that makes you need to create. Or destroy, I suppose, though that's a damn waste of it.

I'm really glad I dug [distance] out of the old folder and arranged it. It's fast becoming one of me and Dave's favorites, despite being somewhat challenging to play well. That dissatisfaction, that creative discomfort is really what that song's about. Holiness lurks within ordinary things, so easy to miss because our skulky selves tend to edit out the uncomfortable from our awareness of reality. The presence of divinity may be joyful, but it is never precisely comfortable. Having passed through the presence of something holy may, afterwards, bring you a feeling of peace and an ability to truly and properly relax that you never before possessed. But in the moment of contact all you can feel is the little wrinkles, the roughness of fit between your own tiny soul and the majesty you dimly perceive. As though your soul is a pillow that's lumpy and you can't fall asleep because it won't settle under your head just right. So you sit straight up, swearing under your breath, and pummel and fluff and knead it until it assumes a different shape. That is art.

Looking back through my blog, the last song I write was [the only road], way back on August 5th. Which is like, a month and eleven days. Yowza! I do believe the most major reason for my creative "drought" is that I have been well and truly comfortable and well comforted. Which is not at all the state I seem to need to be in to sink in my claws and drag the musical creatures out from between the interstices of time. Or skitter so frantically back and forth in front of their illusive hidey-holes that they can't resist the temptation to leap out onto my brain and become literal. I am never quite sure which it is.

Back to work. At last they've found things for us to scan and copy and make ready for filing, or whatever it is these streams of documents are bound for after they leave the processing room.