greatness

So, done.  I've shared my manuscript with a few key people.  Now it has a life of its own.  I still have to perfect it and find a way to get it to a larger audience.  The process is daunting and makes me queasy, but it has to be done and technology has made it that much easier.  I've done harder things than that.  But nothing as wrenchingly personal

I must pull myself out of my self-ascribed mediocrity to reach for greatness.  Not for him, but with him. 

book

I'm trying to wrap it up.  I already wrote the ending, but I'm not sure it stands up as a whole.  I've never written anything as long.  I start reading it to revise it and I get caught up in it and change almost nothing.  I guess that's a good sign.  But I'm not sure a casual reader would understand it the same way.  Some of it is written almost in shorthand.  I've done this twice now.  And yet I'm not satisfied with it.  It seems both too short and too long for what it is.  I'm not sure what it is - it's a hybrid, really, of trying to reconstruct my feelings about his death and his character traits which might explain it.  A lot of it is his words. That I'm satisfied with.  He needed a forum.  But I'm not ready to part with it.  Will I ever be?  I should let someone else judge.  Soon.

birthday

Mine. Had my first surprise party (was really surprised), got my first bike (am really intimidated by it). Shows how little I've lived. I've basically just hibernated.

A friend wrote to me that she dreamed of my son.  She's not the first to say so, but she described it so eloquently.  His hair was like spun gold, she said, streaming with an otherworldly light.  He was sitting at a big table and he wasn't eating but she knew he has everything he needs to be satiated.  I'm sure that's right.  He lacks for nothing now.  And I'm still accumulating stuff.  For what?

mother

“She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.” - Kurt Vonnegut 

Really that says it all.  I can try to dissect it and reconstruct it, but it seems that one truth is inescapable.  

regret

"some mornings its alright, some mornings you pet your cat with bare feet and watch him eat breakfast"

If you have a cat, that is. Maybe if he'd stayed with the cat, he would still be here...  They say that animals can regulate your heart rhythm if the connection is there.  He said he missed him, when the question of love and loneliness came up.

But that's not what I wanted to write about.  Some days you just can't put one foot in front of the other without thinking of all the missteps you made.  It's common wisdom that only the present exists - the past is gone and the future is uncertain.  But I think only the past exists for sure.  And it's unchangeable.  The present turns into the past with each breath.  Just as you can't change the past, you can't change yourself.  That's why regret is useless.  Even if you return to the past you would still be you.  How could you do things differently?  Even with hindsight.  It's not like I lacked foresight.  I was just powerless to change things.  The game is rigged.  All you can do is wait for it to play out.  Then you'll know the score.  And then it doesn't matter.