A Hiatus From Scratch

I've just been feeling myself along during this whole hiatus.

I didn't know what to expect when I boldly started it and I don't know what to expect as I courageously continue it. There aren't any paths out here. Of course that makes me a little bit afraid and a whole lot proud to continue on...

I'm not even sure there ever was a hiatus in my family before, at least in the formal sense. I guess I had plenty of relatives who took time off or were just plain lazy. Some of my Missouri kinfolk always had a real lazy look, laying around or leaning back in their chair on the porch. But that was just their normal way of life. Which I'm not saying is true for everyone in the state of Missouri, because it stands to reason there has to be at least one person there somewhere who doesn't mind working.

My family around here was certainly overactive all the time I knew about. The womenfolk, the menfolk, the kidfolk. A bunch of workaholics. They grew up used to the Depression and knowing that if they sat around today the creditors would be taking away the half acre tomorrow. So it was work, work, work. So much work, in fact, that they didn't hear the news the Depression was over till the mid 1970s; they kept right on working, and finally that's what killed Grandpa.

Now leaving basically me and Grandma to enjoy all the fruits of their labors...

So now that I'm on hiatus I'm definitely blazing a trail. Or I would if it didn't take so much effort. All I want to do is sleep, take it easy, take a break, nap, and wait till an animal crawls into the yard and kills itself so I can eat. I seriously might move to Missouri just so people don't look at me funny.

Work is overrated, that's for sure. You figure if these two things are true, that there's no good deed that doesn't go unpunished, and that the Bible doesn't say 'God helps those who help themselves,' then who am I to kick? Take it easy.

The Hiatus Wavelength

I've been thinking of things how they literally seem and how they actually are.

Of course I only know things as they seem to me. If a guy in a green and black jacket goes jogging by with a big light brown dog, that's exactly what it looks like to me. And if I could somehow stop the guy and bring in 40 other observers, they'd probably say the same thing.

But let's say I had some kind of bionic eye, and let's say I had a control box to it and a bunch of buttons to push, or I was controlling it by thoughts and instinct, and perhaps acting out the workings by a lot of upward and rotating hand and finger gestures, and it was all accompanied by several buzzing, beeping, and centering sound effects, what then would I see? I know, it would depend on what the eye was programmed to see. In the scheme of things I'm imagining, it's able to break down the component parts of everything in its line of sight, and to see the parts as we normally see them as well as through several interpretive filters.

One interpretive filter might be represented like graph paper, with appearing and disappearing labels, hooked into some computer mentality (also bionic) that my mind happens to possess, in which things in time are frozen, or are cataloged then immediately retrieved for instant analysis and examination. That's a great filter. I won't go through all the possibilities of filters, in the interest of not tiring out my existing, non-bionic brain. Except to say, I'm picturing one of them as seeing wavelengths, the color spectrum, all that, again with a lot of cataloging and abilities to compare, contrast, separate, and immediately train in on as far as reaching conclusions and judgments.

So, let's say, when I see a guy in a green and black jacket, I would see the scheme for green and black, the qualities and quantities for each; everything comprising the guy himself would be broken down, the wavelengths of his thoughts, hair, spine, etc.; if he were listening to music, everything about that would be before me; all ephemeral attachments, like wet grass sticking to his shoes, etc., would be known; the sack with his dog's excrement would show its wavelengths as well as revealing everything about its heat; and of course the dog itself, I would see its bones, and be able to examine everything thoroughly, all these wavelengths being manifest.

I'm thinking reality is really quite wild. And even if you can't literally do all these things, you can still go around thinking, There's a guy in a green and black jacket. The guy is listening to music as he jogs. He has a light brown dog jogging beside him. Then in your thought, in comes your bionic eye's machinations, the sound effects, the graph paper, the cataloging, the comparing, the breaking down of component parts, the manifestation of the spectrum and wavelengths, etc.

When I sit in my chair, taking my hiatus, reading my Tarzan book, it's all right before me. My hiatus has its own color spectrum and wavelengths. I train my bionic eye on it for closer examination. What's this I see? That it's a lot like the rings of Saturn. There are plenty of gaps there. It stretches as far as the eye can see, but up close it is made of lots of tiny, separate pieces, wandering waves of light. Who knew my hiatus was a physical thing? It's not. It's a mental construct with observable energy. (Right now I've dismissed it and it's out wandering the grounds.)

I turn my chair toward the mirror. It's just me sitting there. But beep, buzz, whirr -- what's this? -- my chair is nothing but a stretched out sequence of lights, color, and possibly some trapped gas in its cushion. And as for me sitting there. Beep, buzz, whirr -- what's this? -- I also am a tower of light, colorful whirling dervishes ascending and descending, doing a pole dance in which the pole is both metallic and evanescent, all very colorful.

I exist like a carnival ride with blinking lights and wild, wild spheric music.

A Well Guarded Hiatus

Let me say right up front, I'm in no way comparing myself to Tarzan or Tarzan's father. Tarzan's father, Lord Greystoke, had a lot more challenges to face over there in Africa than I, thankfully, can claim in my life.

To build a little house after months of the fearsome creatures of the jungle lurking about would be a Herculean task that would take a lot of skill and determination. Think how the apes could've swooped in at any time to destroy the tiny family. But Tarzan's parents "worked it out" and, doing their best, won a hard fraught victory over the worst nature could throw at them.

Yes, the mother went psycho and shut down after shooting the gun, leaving m'Lord to pretty much fend for himself. But that was really no reason for m'Lord to give up, leave his door open, get surprised by the Apes' friendly visit, and end up dead. You have to be on guard better than that. If you're going to give up at the first sign of trouble, I'm sorry, you should've stayed home.

The mind races with all the things he could've done. Given the time, I would've had that area around the house so booby trapped with trip wires (or ropes) and noise makers, I would've known if a mother flea was up at night pacing the dog with a hungry baby. Let alone an entire pack of murderous apes walking through my front door.

But, ahhh, well ... somehow we need to have Tarzan get adopted by the apes, who by the way, should have killed Kerchak. I would've called Kerchak out. I'd yell it, "Kerchak!" Everyone would say "Gesundheit." And after we had that old ape joke dispensed with, I'd stand there like High Noon and say, "It's just you and me and the law of the jungle, and, buddy boy, you're goin' down." Then BOOM ... from my "death-dealing thunder-stick" (p. 48).

Can you tell what I'm reading at this particular time during my hiatus? I've been laying in bed, burroughed under my covers, reading "Tarzan of the Apes," and learning some lessons (maybe) about how to take a decent hiatus. It'd be nice, except for all the apes and natural dangers, if I could be somewhere like Tarzan's family. And let's say the house was already built and well stocked, a nice outhouse and about 50 years worth of toilet paper in a nice, dry warehouse, plus lots and lots of food without any chance of expiring and going bad. And cable TV and internet. OK, I guess I'll stick where I am.

But there are still good lessons. Such as even if my wife dies, I still lock the door. Sheesh. That was insane. Look up from the table and it's wall to wall Ape. At that point it's too late. How much better it'd be to know they were coming, kill and butcher them all, and have your freezer packed with Ape steaks. Forgive my fantasizing. Tarzan's father needed to learn the high survival value of a good case of paranoia. There's basically no one coming after me and I'm still sitting here with a thunder-stick dreaming of steaks. Because you never can tell.

Possibly this is as far as I'll go in the book of Tarzan. But it's my hiatus. If I feel like reading further, I will. And if I don't, at least I have bookmarks that still work. This book was written in 1914 and I'm just now getting to it. If it takes me a few more years to finish it off, that'll be OK too. Anyway, I've already seen enough Tarzan movies and TV shows over the years to know he survives and ends up kicking some serious butt in the jungle. With his human intellect and abilities to figure things out that the brutes can't quite manage. The kinds of stuff his stupid dad should've also known but somehow didn't.

A Hard Day's Hiatus

Life is a tough row to hoe, or if it's like boating with a hard scrabble gal I used to know, a tough ho to row. That's just a joke. I never actually went boating with her.

Life is tough. You get up in the morning slavin' for bread, suh, so that every mouth can be fed. But as tough as it is, guess what, I'm smiling right now.

Yesterday I went through a cemetery and was thinking over the issues of life and happiness, life and mortality, life and death. I was stunned to see how many epitaphs there are on tombstones that are some variation of this phrase, "Never Had A Hiatus." Seriously. I bet I saw it a couple dozen times. Like "Red Buttons / 1919-2006 / Never Got A Hiatus."

It made me start thinking of my own demise sometime in the next 50 years. Whether I'll see it coming, know it's coming, or whether I'll just wander toward the light in my sleep. I'd kind of like to be awake for it really. Because I can't tell in my dreams what's real and what isn't.

But if you think about your own death, it gives you some insights and also some help in deciding what to do with your life. My own epitaph might be "Longest Hiatus On Record," which would be cool. Or "Local Man Takes Hiatus," picking up on one of my most beloved self images. As for the insights, just think, every chair you've ever sat in will no longer have you on display. You'll be gone.

I don't know if I mentioned the theory I have -- it seems like I mentioned it -- which is this: If you don't leave the place you are you'll never die. It's something like that. Like let's say you're at church, in your favorite pew. You show up, you sit there, the service ends, you get up and leave. Big mistake! You should sit there as long as you can, literally until they carry you out. Because, according to my theory, the longer you stay right where you are, the longer you will live.

It doesn't pertain strictly that you need to stay right where you are. For instance, if you were at home, it doesn't hold that you should only stay home. Because then you might die at home and people would be saying, if only he had been somewhere else and stayed there, he wouldn't have died. That's what I'd say, for sure, because it is my theory.

On the other hand, it can be a very fitting choice, the best choice, to leave a place. It all depends. Let's say there's a hotel you stay at once in a while. But then 10 years later you drive by and see they've torn it down. In that case you can be thankful you left when you did, because it's always better to get out of a building before it's demolished.

Grandpa didn't die at home. He was in the hospital. But I still contend, had he been at home it would've never happened. At least not right then like that. Because he could've looked up and seen his own things. Maybe that's the reason. Or we could look at it like my church example. He stayed at home as long as he could, surviving every minute of it. Then they carried him out, through no choice of his own. And then he died, meaning it might've been his time.

A Hiatus Experiment

My head already feels muddled even before I start.

The hiatus experiment I'm trying today is two-pronged, or maybe it's two separate experiments. And I need to say them quick before I forget: 1) If I quit everything am I still here? 2) If this blog post had been memorized in advance, would I have been able to type it as efficiently as I am now without forgetting any of it? OK, that's down in black and white, so I won't forget that much.

Let me start with "one" first. "If I quit everything am I still here?" This is where the muddled feeling comes in, because a question like this has lots of binds. Like what do all the words of the question even mean? Quitting, I, everything, here. I can't tackle all that! But I think the issue is not to stir up a lot of logical hubbub about words, but to wonder what happens to me if I were to persist in this hiatus without end, perhaps at some point calling it permanent retirement?

Would I still be here? If "here" means posting the blog on a more or less daily basis, of course if I were to quit, I wouldn't be here except for my archives. That's simple enough and really would go without saying. If I were to go into permanent retirement, would I still be "here," like sitting here? That's a simple geographical question. I might still be here, sitting here, reading other things. I'm not going to quit "everything," like I'll still be reading, eating, and scratching where it itches.

(None of this has any of the wonder I felt when this experiment occurred to me. When I thought of the experiment, I was thinking of myself vanishing, like in the movie "Back To The Future," like if my parents didn't meet. But there's no real connection -- except whatever my online persona is to readers -- between my existence as a living person and whether I'm on hiatus from this blog or not. Again, my logical, clear-thinking side is vetoing the weird fantasy at the basis of the experiment's original idea.)

Think of all kinds of things I could be doing besides this. Like five years ago, I could have decided to go around the county painting water pumps pink. I didn't. But let's say that was the decision I made five years ago. Would I then be wondering, five years later, that were I to stop painting water pumps pink, that somehow I wouldn't still be here? It's absurd. There's no real connection between me painting pumps and my being here. And that's just one possibility. I could come up with a fantasy of a thousand different activities, that just because they were possible, the fact that they didn't happen, and the fact that I'm still here, shows that there's no correlation between any of those activities and my continual existence, perceived by some knowing, apparently cognizant entity, familiarly termed as myself.

All right, I think that's exhausted, but it would be fun to come up with a list of the thousand different activities I could've done! The answer to the experiment is "Yes, I would still be here were I to quit."

The second question is more interesting. If I had memorized this blog post in advance, which didn't exist, would I have been able to type it word for word as efficiently and flawlessly as I'm typing it right now?

That stirs up a lot of mental sagebrush, up there rolling around, rolling into a campfire and catching the tent on fire, to the point that there's a complete conflagration of my thinking cap. Now that my cap is burning, I can't think. But I must try before the fire consumes everything...

The blog post didn't exist, so there was nothing to memorize. The experiment would mean that I would have to imagine each word of the post in sequence, then memorize what I was thinking of, so that it would match exactly. This would be the equivalent of writing it like I'm doing now, except just as an imagined and remembered whole. If I were able to do that, the answer is "Yes, I could also sit here and type it as efficiently and flawlessly as I'm typing it right now." In fact I could do it more efficiently because there'd be no composing, only transcribing.

After all, typing is just a mechanical process. It has mental aspects. But what I'd be more interested in is whether a million blind monkeys typing on a million keyboards would write this blog post word for word as efficiently and flawlessly as I'm writing it right now were I to tell them what to type? Of course it would depend on how well they were able to type, whether they understood what I told them, and whether their memories were good. Could all million get the job done? I'm sure it would be less than a million. Remember, they're blind, and blind monkeys would have to make lots of typing mistakes.

The Hiatus I Was Born To Take

My life has spanned a few decades now, so we're talking about some real history when you add up the days, weeks, and years. And each leap year gave me an extra day to enjoy along the way, like a cherry on top of a very long, prolonged, and wild ride. With the constancy of the hourglass, that's a lotta sand. And blood and tears. And toil.

Think of all the calendar pages flying by, representing my life. There's big block number pages, like the calendars you used to see in hardware stores. There's gigantic, black and red calendar pages, like they used to give away at the Farmers Bank. There's rolled up, demur nature scene calendars, like they gave away at restaurants. There's thematic calendars that schools sold, with the general theme of every month, like back to school in September, desks, rulers, and Abraham Lincoln in there somewhere.

After all this time, it's not too early to start thinking what my purpose in life is, why I'm even on this earth. And after a litle thought, here's the answer. It looks like I was put here simply to go on hiatus. To take a prolonged and maybe permanent break. Can a man exist just to quit and do nothing? It looks like it!

I wish I would've known this as a kid. I could've quit then. No potty training, no socialization skills, no birthday parties for friends, no school, no learning to balance a checkbook, no hanging out on streetcorners asking women to marry me, no nothing. I could've been like Tarzan and found myself a jungle somewhere and just gone there and taken a prolonged nap. Like a mix between Tarzan and Rip Van Winkle, just hibernate, vegetate, and swing through the jungle for exercise, to keep my strength up for the long hiatus ahead.

Instead, I went through all the normal ups, downs, stops, starts, and false starts. Trying to live with normal goals has been a mess. And as I look back on it, I feel mostly, you know, shame, like most people. A few good memories mixed in but for the most part overwhelmed by the bad. Even though I like to think I was a happy kid, my biggest memories are of being overwhelmed with fear, hesitancy, eyes averted down, reluctance to meet the world, embarrassed by my own body and thoughts, feelings of shyness, ugliness, aversion to most things, antisocial, graceless, ignorant, hopeless, and small. Of course there were some good times, like that time I shot the rat at the dump with my bow and arrow and everyone said I averted a plague and saved the town.

Through it all, somehow I survived. Mostly by the pleasure I got by going out to vacant fields and clubbing dirt clods. It still sounds kind of fun. Club 'em with a baseball bat. Take a dirt clod, throw it up and whack it toward an imaginary center field. You can wear off a lot of energy that way, take revenge on your many enemies, and just generally have a nice time. I used to come home one dirty little boy. And Grandpa would greet me with a smile, then take my baseball cap off and put it back on sideways, and tell me to, "Get cleaned up for supper, Champ." He understood at least one important lesson before he died: Everyone's trying too hard.

Now I know where my fulfillment is, where the joy of life can be found. In prolonged rest, shirking, giving up, flushing away ambition and living in the moment as a loungeabout. No more guilt. I'm Hugh Hefner without the girls to keep track of. No more worrying about what my "friends" and "followers" at this blog need or think they need. My mind is not their special plaything. My heart is not meant for them to bat around like their own personal dirtclod. And the rest of my body certainly isn't here to serve as Garrett Al's personal trampoline.

Hiatus, baby, that's what makes my day! That's what my life is. I've stumbled into life's greatest revelation, that I was born to take time off.

My Favorite Hiatus Memory

I'm always curious about people's favorite memories.

Like the memories we have of high school, like when we're at a class reunion. The years seem to melt away as the memories come rushing back. And actually the years in high school do melt away, because the five or six memories we have of high school compress it all down to about two days.

In high school, one of the few things I remember is jumping on the trampoline that time we weren't supposed to and getting busted by the teacher. I made a couple smart remarks about it and we walked away and walked somewhere, toward the west, now that I think back, and laughed about his consternation. Of course now as an adult I can see the problem, that if we would've gotten hurt, it would've been on the teacher's head, since he was the only responsible adult there at the time, etc.

But those memories are of the olden days. And it's not that great to get together with those chums of years ago and laugh it up over five or six memories. Then the rest of the time we're sitting there -- like 10 minutes later -- thinking, Now what? I blew my memory wad in 10 minutes. I don't know these people. They're old people. They have grandchildren. I'm not even married. I'm an idiotic bachelor still living at my grandparents' old rundown house.

I don't really think of myself as an idiot. That is, I try to put it out of my mind. And now that I'm thinking of it again, it's depressing. But today is not a day for depression! I'm up and at 'em. I'm alive and vital. I have enough healthy spleen to vent on any enemy who comes my way and seeks to depress me or oppress me or repress me. I don't need anyone to repress me. I can do fine at that myself. If you want to impress me, you're going to have to try harder. Because I hold myself to exacting standards and the rest of you aren't getting a pass either.

Anyway, what do I care? I can just tell the world the truth, that at the present moment I'm on hiatus. And that's true. I'm in a transitional phase between hard work and dedication -- overwork -- and possibly permanent retirement, although I still don't think it's going to come to that. Certainly I gave up the hard work part and have been taking it easy for the most part ever since. And time has been slipping by. And I'm not hungering to get back to it either, to the blog (maybe just a little), and none of the rest of it. It's a hiatus for me, sweet and simple.

Which leads me to wonder what your favorite memory is (so far) of my hiatus? And if you don't think you can narrow it down to only one, what a few of your favorite memories are. Until I hear from you, which I know might take some time, I'll share my favorite.

One of my favorite memories -- if it's not my absolute favorite, because I also have more than one -- is when I was thinking about "Wrestling and Rasslin' With My Hiatus." I was just thinking about this yesterday, and was wondering if I had another "wrestling and rasslin'" post in my system. But this time I was thinking in terms of wrestling or rasslin' animals and not just people.

Like it's wrestling if you wait till the alligator has his trunks on, but it's rasslin' if you attack him from behind on his way to the dressing room.

It's wrestling if you wait patiently while the ref calmly explains the rules to the alligator in growls he can understand. It's rasslin' if you nail the rules to his forehead.

It's wrestling if the alligator gets a breather between rounds. It's rasslin' if he's not breathing at all.

It's wrestling if you take the alligator out for a beer afterwards. It's rasslin' if he needs an IV drip to drink it.

It's wrestling if the alligator smiles and shows his teeth. It's rasslin' if he smiles and I give his teeth back to him.

You can probably see, if you really think about it, why the post on wrestling and rasslin' would be my favorite hiatus memory. They're both funny and true, creative and obvious.

Hiatus Backup

I'm a big believer in backing up, having a backup. A backup plan, a backup of files, having my back up when I'm mad, everything. And backups of backups, to tell you the truth. Because you can never be too careful.

I think I got some of this urge to backup everything when I was in school. It was a very sour feeling to give the teacher the only copy of your homework, only to have her tell me two weeks later that she didn't get it. That's when a backup would've come in handy, and I should've had one, since all my teachers were complete incompetents.

Anyway, whatever it is these days, if it's possible and feasible to have a backup, I will have one, two, three, or more. If they put me in charge of the Library of Congress it'd have to be three times as big as it is, just to store all the extra copies.

I remember as a teenager being deathly afraid that my favorite artists' songs could be lost to civilization if they didn't have them on albums as well as singles. The thing was that singles were in the store for less than a month but an album could be there forever. My own little collection, as far as I knew, would exist as the last backup if they found that certain songs had vanished.

With computer files, how often, especially when we had just floppy disks, have I duplicated files. And you needed to with floppy disks, since about 90% of the time they were defective. Hard drives these days are a lot more reliable -- but even then I know that eventually they're going to fail. It's good to have everything on at least two hard drives, then also at least one copy on a CD or DVD. Then if one hard drive goes bad, as it eventually will, there's a chance the other will work good enough to copy everything over to a new hard drive. And if both fail, at least you have the DVD. If everything fails, then you'll know you should've had other backups.

When I took this hiatus, I didn't know how long it was going to be. But I might have foreseen it, that if I wanted a really good break, it'd be better to triple the days that were likely. Then if I wasn't rested up sufficiently, say, from three weeks off, I'd have another six weeks on top of that to make sure the job was done.

Certain things it's not feasible to back up. Like I don't have a couple extra cars in case the one goes bad, although I'd like to. And if we're having hamburgers I don't make extras in case the first ones fall into the charcoal. I can't live my life like that ... entirely.

Polk Salad Hiatus

Some of you all never been down south, boy, I'm gonna tell you all about it, so if you go on down there you can pick me up some and bring me back a mean mess of polk salad. Chomp, chomp.

I'm on this hiatus here, this hiatus, and somethin' they all been sayin' here about this boy, they say I'm lazy and no count. He claims to have a game toe. You know that's what they're talkin' about ... but then again I'm doin' all right.

Now every day about supper time, Granny goes down by the truck patch. I'm sending her there to carry it back, to carry it back in a tote sack. It's a green thing she gets and it grows down there, and this thing, it grows out there in the woods and it grows down there in the fields, I swear to the world.

And this thing I'm talkin' about, it kind of looks like, just like a turnip, a lot like a turnip with somethin' that looks just like a mess of green salad stickin' up. Chomp, chomp. And every evening about supper time, she goes on down there and picks us up a mean mess of it and she comes on home then so that she can fix it and we can eat it. Cause that's about all we have. But then again we do all right.

Everybody says it's such a shame about Granny, that she's so mean and vicious, a 'gator tamin' woman, Granny. She's wretched and spiteful and totin' a straight razor, but she does all right. You know what I mean. Workin' on a chain gang somewhere down there some place you all ain't never been in Louisiana. Lawd have mussy.

The Hiatus Comeback

The last couple days I've been moody, blue -- sometimes up, sometimes down, mostly up but frequently down -- about my hiatus. At times it's been a mess of blues. But there's enough of a variance day to day that's really there's been something for everybody.

I'm reminded of a guy who climbs mountains. What he must feel like when it comes time to climb the next one! He must think, c'mon everybody, one of these days it's going to be the end. And, I'll just hope my time hasn't come yet, but I'm afraid this is a mountain I just can't climb, and if I fall I'll be saying this is my heaven and I'm goin' home.

But it's a wonderful world, so I went with it -- the hiatus. A few days ago -- I can't believe I didn't say it before -- I thumbed myself all the way down to Memphis and was staying at the YMCA. I went to one of the dives down there and dove right in and played my guitar down at the end of Lonely St., and sang about my hiatus. It was my hope that everyone would treat me nice about this thing, but many of my "friends" and "followers" decided instead we're gonna move. But that's all right. I said I'll just sing for myself tomorrow night.

Ever since I've been ragging philosophic about my loss, essentially it's been easy come, easy go. When I have my druthers, of course I'll take love. But first you gotta stop what you're doing and let me be. If you won't do that, there's the door, let yourself go.

I was in Memphis just a while, then called and told Grandma I'm comin' home. She gently responded I want you with me, to which I responded with several echoes of love, even telling her that the thrill of her love was at times a dirty, dirty feeling. Fortunately she didn't tell me to stay away. I got lucky.

But now that I've said that I feel so bad and I need to make her know it. She'll ask me whether it hurts me or not. (At least we'll be together.) I'll say there's too much monkey business going on, you're wearin' that loved on look, my suspicion's never ending, and, it's such an easy question, but is your real name Judy or could it be she's not you?

Hiatus Holding Pattern

Good battleaxeing grief, has another day passed already? So that I'm already once again sitting here trying to catch up everybody on my hiatus. I'm calling these "The Hiatus Posts," and for very good reason. I'm in a hiatus holding pattern, like a plane that can't come down. Except in this case the plane is grounded, taking a breather, and can't go up.

There's no way it was supposed to go this long. I envisioned it as potentially something that could stretch out, of course. But I also envisioned it as more likely being 15 to 20 days max. I did what you're supposed to do when you envision and prepare to take a hiatus. I filled out the paperwork, the forms, the proposal, and waited. I was ready right then and there to get started, but they put me in a holding pattern until it could be officially approved.

Why it's gone long, it's a case of finding it hard to quit. But I've definitely got what it takes to quit -- just like that -- if I really wanted. So there must be some real desire of mine to just keep going. It's not like anyone's really caring all that much. I could pad this thing out from here to doomsday with "Hiatus Posts" and no one would care. That's what I get for chasing off all my so-called "friends and followers." I'm sitting here alone ... and you know what? ... I like it that way.

Anyway, I've written about my "friends and followers" -- and I was frankly never convinced they were either one, which turned out to be the case. They fell into a few different categories. 1) Lurkers, just casual internet curiosity seekers; 2) Social types, trying to sidle up to me for friendship based on the charm I seem to possess; 3) Activists, looking for anyone who regularly posts to join them in whatever activities that activists tend to act on; 4) Desperate, anyone who would seek and attain real life visits with people they meet online; 5) Pervert(s), basically Garrett Al, but there could potentially have been others by now. (I left him in "a holding pattern," holding his own in a jail cell and not mine!)

So just look through that list of categories. It's pathetic from first to last. There's no one who needs any of that. Well, I guess 2 and 3 aren't so bad, but out of the two I would be most naturally repelled by activists, since I don't want to participate in their activities. I hate all activism, the meetings, motions, signs, speakers, chants; activists hate all disagreement, so you have to lie to them constantly to be their friend. As for social types, wanting to be friends? Friendship has to be organic, I'm sorry. You can't glom on to someone out of the blue and set your sights on him and say that guy's going to be my friend. Social types, you're meeting them as a work and pursuit in progress, so it doesn't work. It's so artificial, it breaks down the minute you sober up.

I do not take thee, to have and to hold from this day forward. I choose hiatus!

My Very Own Hiatus

I'm feeling righteously selfish this morning. I guess I rolled out of bed thinking about me, me, me, so that's the way it'll have to be!

I'm my favorite subject in the whole world, and I don't normally play favorites. But ... hey! [multiple self-referential gestures meant to highlight my best features, which are all of them, and to suggest in an exasperated tone that the quality you see is the quality you get. And it's true, just like the TV manufacturer who may or may not still exist, the quality goes in before the name goes on!]

I like the way I look. I like the way I think. I talk in a natural enough way. When my jib was cut it was sliced to perfection. There's nothing wrong in this being, whether from the point on the top of my head to the flatness of my feet. In between there is enough masterful architecture to keep any opposite body well pleased and satisfied for as long as it physically takes.

I could see myself like on one of those shows where the human body is in is normal physical form, then it rotates in a scientific way with all sorts of clicking and whirring noises and is seen in all the various ways, muscular, skeletal, light forms; with labels in very small type and straight lines leading to the various parts. Then in for a close up of my head, the eyes, the straps of the muscles, the ligaments, everything revolving, then back to skin.

Of course in those scientific presentations of the self, they're usually in the nude. Which is a great way to be. If you walk around in the nude a lot, you're ready for anything. It's no problem at all to go to the bathroom. Everything's loose and available. It's very refreshing and only a problem when the UPS guy comes or they're collecting for charity.

To see the human form in a book, like this one book I saw and almost bought, terrific paintings (Ken Wilbur wrote the intro), it makes you appreciate that you really are more than just a walking bag of bones. Your mom and dad thought they were just making the back seat go up and down when no one was looking, but they came out with the light of eternity in a precious little package. Speaking of myself there.

I wander around the half acre and remember this is the place where I was deemed most precious. And that's before I even got to thinking about it myself. They were all my Number One Fans. Many black and white and color snapshots exist of me as a little tyke, wandering the half acre, standing by the pump, standing where Grandpa's garage is now, out by the flower trellis, over by the dogs, sitting or laying on one of Grandpa's boats flipped over, with cousins, with dogs, geese, goats. I'm the one constant. Paired with every creature that ever entered the yard. Paired with every object we ever owned. But I'm the only constant, except for the house in the background. All the dogs have died. The geese too. The goats. The boats are gone. The flowers go away every fall. But I live on. How great I must be!

I went to the pump to get some drinking water, earlier on. And I'm struttin' like a mildly irritated rooster. The morning sun when it's in my face doesn't show my age. I'm timeless, eternal, and very very persistent. No one can touch me. I'm riding high. I have a chariot that goes straight to heaven. And I'm on hiatus, beautiful, wonderful hiatus. No one can take this away from me.

I saw the devil today. He was passing by.

And this is my hiatus, my very own hiatus -- no one else's.

Dwelling On My Hiatus?

I've been accused of dwelling too much on my hiatus, the one I'm currently taking. To which I reply, "I'm taking a hiatus. What else would I dwell on?" When that's what you're doing that's what's going to be on your mind. Sheesh. Can't please some people. But I know how it goes, since that's in part the whole reason for this little breather I've been taking. And you read that right, at this point it's "a little breather," not permanent retirement. Let me stress that again, or emphasize it, my hiatus is not -- not -- I'll repeat that, not permanent retirement at this time.

You'd think they'd catch the irony of the situation. Kind of silly, really. Nag, nag, nag ... "not doing enough, not giving us enough," on and on. Then you announce a hiatus and actually follow through and take it and the nagging just intensifies. It's insane! People, that was the problem in the first place! Hello? Hello? Do you want me back or not? If you do you're going about it entirely the wrong way, let me tell you right now. Because I am decidedly not coming back if all I'm greeted with is the demand for more, more, more. That's the last thing I want to hear. It's simply cluelessness on your part, with no apparent ability to discern why I took this hiatus and what might end it.

I said my hiatus is not permanent retirement at this time. That last bit there is a very key point. At this time. Meaning, you know, push me too far and I might go all the way. I could retire just like that. And I wouldn't look back. Any regrets I might have at that point would have to take a backseat to my iron will. I'm a stern taskmaster when it comes to the will. I say it and it's done. It's always the same, cold turkey, right now! I'm not big on threats I can't back up. I'm not all talk. I'm also action. So don't try me.

It's because I know that about myself that I'm not really that flustered about all the pressure. If I seem flustered about it, I'm not. What I am -- I do get exasperated, but only because I see people shooting themselves in the foot. Here's the message: You don't get your way with me by nagging. You're much more likely to get your way by backing off and playing it cool. In this case, then, with my hiatus giving me the chance to relax and take a load off, to have some refreshment, I would ease back into it with a clear head and some happiness. But you'd have to be a saint not to get your back up a little with this kind of self-defeating behavior.

OK, I think I've given it to you straight. You've got it, right? There's no mistaking my intentions this time, is there? You promise you won't forget? Good, then I'll try to be gentle from here on out. I've never thought I was actually ready for permanent retirement. Of course that's out there in the distant future for me, but not immediately. It's like anything; things start and then they eventually come to an end. But it happens in the course of time. One day this work of mine will come to an end. That is certain. Then you will look back to the first day and you will look at the last day. Then you will look at the body of work in between ... and, I hope, appreciate it.

But as for now, we're not at that far off, distant day yet. At this point I'm not considering permanent retirement, just as I said. But please, please, let me take this hiatus without any undue kicking against it ... or me.

My Hiatus Comes Into Its Own

When a thing has been around for a while, give or take on the time depending on what it is, it's no longer wobbling around, hobbling about, feeling its way or feeling unsure of itself. If it can bounce off this wall, careen toward that one, feel the pushing of many hands toward that extreme, then shove off from this one, it develops a certain independence through the scrapes and trials, and finds itself seeking a clearing, a place of light, a path without hindrance.

I think of the way it is with little baby birds, unsure of themselves. But look at the time frame they're working with! Three weeks ago they were an egg. Now they're hatched, pretty well grown, and expected to fly. I think of the power of flight as something I can only dream of. It'd be nice to be able to fly. Maybe it would. Although, you know, if human beings could fly it'd just give us more ways to get in trouble. All the ne'er do wells would misuse the power to run drugs. The police would be shooting down innocent fliers by mistake. You'd have to buy a license. The rates would go up. It'd be a mess.

But when you're innocent like a bird, it's all in your power to get out there and flap 'em with the best of 'em. They're very unsure of themselves at first, though, but pretty soon they swoop, dive, dodge, bob, and weave with a great deal of expertise, to the point that you start to think they're just showing off. For them it's no longer special, and they're no longer happy to just fly around here. They get bored and decide maybe they need to fly south for the winter. And next thing you know everyone's doing it, like with geese. They're up there in big wedges, honking like a car alarm. And you know they're really cursing their ability to fly, since it now wastes so much time they have very little time left for other things.

Ever since I went on hiatus, I've been feeling my way along -- slower and less sure at first, but little by little I've been getting my sea legs, my wings have developed some muscle at the sockets, I've lost my baby teeth, and I've gotten my adult eyebrows. If you think of it in terms of maturing, little tufts of body hair have sprouted, first like a nucleus exactly centered, like in the center of an arm pit. Then it's been ringed by a new growth of hair. Then that has been ringed. And other rings have been added. It'd be interesting to see it happen with a fast motion camera slowed down. I can even picture a beard coming in one hair at a time, then being ringed multiple times to the point that there's all these circular patterns. I don't know. It's an image worth documenting.

The early days are past. And when I look back I smile at my early thoughts about permanent retirement. How fast I was thinking! It's interesting to dream in such big terms when the thing was barely off to a start. Now that I've had some weeks to think it over, to stew, to examine it in detail, some of the same dreams and same thoughts are there, but I also can see the pitfalls. I'm not rushing a thing at this point. Just taking my time and letting things go where they feel most naturally like going.

My hiatus has broken into the clear. I can look back at all the clamoring, but all that gets smaller as I advance on. And soon I won't be looking back as much, then not at all. To the left and to the right, there's very little obstruction being offered. The path ahead looks rosy and bright. There's some very interesting natural colors ahead. Blue sky, yellow sun, green trees, and an occasional bit of red just to break up the monotony, like a cherry in a can of fruit cocktail.