Blue As Ice and Desire

A few minutes past noon.  I am sitting in my spare bedroom/office, listing to Blondie sing "Maria" over the rain outside.  It is a beautiful, rainy, cool California day. I met Tony and Ty for breakfast, stopped at Radio Shack on an errand, and then came home to attend a brief coordination meeting to get my arms around what I needed to focus on for the week ahead.

Other than that though, I am not planning on doing an work today.  I am going to mainly just relax and let my brain recover.  I think I am going to head out and catch a movie this afternoon, or maybe head over to the pool hall to shoot a couple of games.  On the other hand, on a day like today, it is an almost perfect day for just hanging around the apartment and not doing anything.

Music is an amazing thing, with it's ability to transport us to another time, another place, another state of mine with a few bars.  I started out today listening to Eddie and the Cruisers (John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band) and that has landed me in a seemingly endless queue of sixties and seventies music on YouTube.  That is a dangerous place to be on a day like today.  Definitely going to hurl me into a nostalgic mood.  (Right now I am listening to Abba "The Winner Takes It All".

"The judges will decide, the likes of me abide..."

I am not sure I could define the mood I am in today. Physically I am feeling very well. Emotionally I am, mostly centered and introspective.  Work has been obsessive lately, but I know that will eventually pass. In my heart there is silence where a voice should be.  (I like that, that is a good line, I might have to set it aside and do something with it, incorporate it into a poem or a song.)

Sometimes it is strange the things our friends and our lovers bind us too. Promises extracted. Promises given. For some people, a promise is a binding thing. For years I've always spoken obliquely about my personal relationships, not because I am concealing anything but because, early on, when I told her about my blog, when she first read it, she asked me not to write about her, since she was very uncomfortable with any aspect of her personal life on the web.  I've always honored that request, and even now I am writing obliquely about her.  Are we bound by the promises made in one aspect of a relationship when that relationship changes?  I think we are, I think I am.

Well, where ever you are, who ever you are, I hope this day has found you well, content, perhaps even happy. Always remember - the judges will decide, the likes of me abide...

Zen at Work

I put my zen training to work today. Specifically, I used the technique I learned from Thich Nhat Hanh's book.  When I was walking and found my brain running at a hundred miles an hour, I stopped, I looked around me, I breathed, and then I focused on simply walking and breathing.  It worked very well and pulled me down a couple of notches a couple of times.

I am two days into the UAT on my portion of the project (this would be the UAT that I pulled out of my butt on four days notice) and things are moving rapidly forward, with good feedback from the users and most importantly, no major findings yet.  There have been a couple of minor configuration issues that we'll take a look into as we go along, but other that the very long days, things have been going well.

I am settled in for an hour or so of relaxation and then I am going to curl up and spend a little time reading.  One advantage of the high work load is it keeps my mind off the tangles of my personal life. I will of course work my way through them too, but for now, they are pushed aside. That ability to focus on the immediate and the external has stood me well over the years.

So, let me leave you with a snippet of the song running through my brain tonight...

It's one I've mentioned before, from John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band (on Eddie and the Cruisers):

Tender Years

When the moon hung soft and low
Catching stardust in the light
You held me closer and closer
There was magic in the night.

A sweet love song, a melody
That I still can recall
Two young hearts filled with dreams
To walk away with it all.

Whoa, whoa tender years
Won't you wash away my tears
How I wish you were near
Please don't go, tender years.

A summer love, a beach romance
Sought her kisses in the sand
Two young hearts filled with fire
Lost in never-neverland.

 Whoa, whoa tender years
Won't you wash away my tears
How I wish you were near
Please don't go, tender years.

Whoa, whoa tender years
Won't you wash away my tears
How I wish you were near
Please don't go, tender years.

Whoa, whoa tender years
Won't you wash away my tears
How I wish you were near
Please don't go, tender years.