I don't know if this is an original idea or not, but it finally clicked for me today: most internet arguments bear an extraordinary resemblance to faculty behavior at a seminar.

Or any presentation at a meeting. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. Some poor soul has been tagged to get up and give their talk. They've organized their slides, put their thoughts together. Maybe this is something they've been working on their whole lives, this is their baby.

Maybe they got handed the thing yesterday, their boss is out of town and guess what, tag you're it! Project stinks, they don't know anything about it, but this is the talk folks, here ya go.

Either way, here's the schmuck tasked with entertaining the crowd for an hour or so...

And the putz in the audience wants to argue. Endlessly. It's never about anything truly important. It might be "I discovered that years ago", the faculty favorite. Or it might be "I don't understand this, and I'm going to broadcast my lack thereof for all and sundry. At length."

Charitably, most of the time, there's a mismatch between the talk and the audience, assumptions maybe, domain of application almost always.

What bugs me, whether I've been the target or just in the audience watching someone get raked over the coals, is that these sorts of things should be taken to private conversations. Or, really, that old favorite, "I'll ignore this because it doesn't seem right."

I may be unusual though, I can get terribly embarrassed by public confrontations. I don't do social conflict, or at least I'm not comfortable with it in certain contexts. Especially when it's such a no-brainer to say "Look, we disagree, and I'm happy to figure out why. But a talk really isn't the best place to get there."

That's seminars and meetings, teleconferences, the kinds of things many of us have to deal with every day.

What I spotted this morning in a random comment thread, in between rolling my eyes at yet another endless argument, was how familiar it was, all of a sudden. And that's when I realized how close it all was to the seminars and meetings that I get so bored by.

Same kind of thing, argument that might be argument for the sake of argument, but is often just that simple path away from being more equitably relaxed: "Hey, it's cool, I get that we're not quite meeting on the same plane. No worries, agree to disagree and we'll get on to more productive uses of our space and time."

Work doesn't generally get done in a public forum. Even for public entertainers, comedians, actors, sports, the work is the stuff we don't see. The product is what we get in front of the cameras, on stage, under the lights on the field.

Not to say that I don't think confrontation has its place in the world of the mind, but the stage where it actually accomplishes something isn't likely to be the grandstanding speech. Rather this: Art speaks to Art. The best response to a paper is another paper. Or project, or patent, or program or novel or poem or song or or or...

If nothing else, a little more time to think and consider one's own assumptions, test them in private, work through them without the world looking over your shoulder, never hurts.

I'm in the middle of contemplating the imperative, i.e. I'm in the middle of the turn of the year and the natural tendency to wonder just what in the hell I'm doing, where I'm going, etc.

In other words, I'm trying out resolutions, looking for the ones that matter this year, the ones that can properly be called goals, rather than just random noise from my inner lazy bastard. Some of this noise might, likely will, rise to the level of goals, down the road; my task, just like, if the internet is any indication, most of the rest of humanity, is to sift through and find the gold.

Health, that's an easy one. If nothing else, I feel the whisper on the back of my neck, old age is coming. Someday, sure, I'm not so far gone, but this is one of those visitors one had best be prepared for. At least a little bit. Exercise and diet, those old doctor's standard orders, and maybe I can push back certain reckonings.

There are other tests of will. One I'm coming to grips with this morning, that would be my reading habits. I'm trying out different modes of reading, the when and how and what portion of the thing. Journals and literature for the day gig, stories for the night gig. Time being what it is, I need to relearn old tricks and habits, in new settings. And better, I want to do these things, build a balance I'm happy with, one that gets me through the world of words with purpose and feeling.

I've other things to do, of course. Stories to publish, send out into the world. That part will be pretty obvious, since that's one of my purposes with this space. So watch this space, and we'll see how this year 2019 does for us all. I hope it's beginning well for you and yours dear reader, and gets better as we all go along.

If you've reason
for the season, and the means
to realize it,
for you, the gift of family and
the moment to know it.

If your season
is blue, don't worry, we've been
there, for you
when you're ready, tomorrow or
the day after, whenever,
a hand ready to grab yours
when you need it
most.

For all, the stars and
the moon above, a
quiet space to digest
one more meal, a good
story to read or listen
to, a few minutes
to reflect and
find the good
around us.

Support it, carry
it, call it forth,
in good times and
bad, there'll be
plenty of both, know it.
These are the times that
fill against the bitter.
Build firm support around our
hearts.

She danced,
she sang,
she chased moonlight.
Her other half, her
sister by choice
tolled along behind,
wondered at the choices.
The ones that she hadn't
yet made.

No no no, she said.
This is the way it might be.

She chased him away,
she ran as far as
feet could tell.
Her other soul watched,
pulled her own sled.
Worked on her own paths,
didn't listen to the
voices that called
for something more.
Said, "Don't just take."

No no no, she said,
this is the way it may be.

She laughed at the freedom,
cried at the next wave,
the worlds born anew.
Her sister-love followed
behind, dancing now and
ignoring the oncoming
end of things. It would
be and come when it
wanted. No use to hurry.

No.
This is the way it will be.

I chanced to meet an old sailor,
just the day before next
he lives down the row, the little
yellow house. The one with the
pear tree out front.

He congratulated me, as usual
on being unemployable. A noble goal,
he allows, as there are precious
few noble employers.

The sea bashed us, in boats old before
I was young.
Cold and windy, hot and still. Humidity
always, though you'd not notice it
after a front pushed through.

Nets and lines, cast for days
follow the birds; they may
not always know for sure, but
they are always hungry enough to
find out.

He's younger now than last I saw
him. Stout as the little fireplug
that guards his place.
Less arthritis, easier back,
knees flex without as much
of the popping.

I wonder how the catch is? It's
been so long. I've been worried
about chasing the scales of
distance, time, force, entropy.
Ideas rather than the fish you
grasp, wind that tears, birds
and beer and cigarrettes snuck
under the moonlight.

Not dead dreams these, just
unacknowledged, there's birthdays
and holidays and school coming
up (it's always there, the turn
of the semesters for me, the new
school year for the little terror,
I hope her teachers forgive me my
sins and trespasses).

He'll not be there next I look.
Too many waves to catch. And
there's duck season, geese
coming in. After that, well,
there's a pig in the barn getting
nice and fat.

Then it all starts over.
As it didn't do tomorrow. I think
I'll watch a fishing show
and think about, dream over,
forget yesterday the
memories I have forever.

A rambling update of sorts, as I stumble through the end of my day.

Writing, yes, that came first. I've fumbled a bit ramping up after a busy fall. I got less writing than I'd hoped, more than I'd feared, I'll call it a win. My schedule scrambled and now I'm free, I've been ambivalent. When I sit down, the words are there, the characters and the story, stories await.

What gets in the way is the hesitation. What if I do this, that, the other thing? Always other things, most days not an issue, it's all just part of ramping back up again. The mind has its ways.

I had a wind-up this evening. Started thinking about marching ants, army ants, swarming insects of all sorts and the differences between them, some get riled up, some just are. Wasps, bees, even their far distant cousins jelly fish.

And then, the mind clicked, and a story frame came into being. I'll have to note it away for later, tuck it into the memory banks. There are moments in the future where I'll meet the characters, he and she and oh there are definite connotations here, I wonder who they are? Will they know when it's time? When it's their time? Or will they find themselves on the stage counting the marks and looking for the joker in the cheap seats, the one with a notebook and a smile on his face?

O storm of waters,
placid today, but only for a few minutes, I think. What have you in store for us,
later
this early morning pass is gearing up I see. Will the dogs be asleep?
One can only hope.

I see many other things out there, as I listen to singin' Simon, an old concert PBS has thrown up of an evening. When Carrie Fisher was doing her show, one of her great lines was something like "If you can get Paul Simon to write a song about you, I highly recommend it." The other thing I smile at, from Carrie, a story I heard several variations of, she loved so much the fans who thought of her, and told her they had her in mind as, a writer first and foremost.

The day gig versus the work of the heart; a reminder too of the power of That Story. The one that kicks out, finds its way to the hearts of the readers who've been waiting for it, That Story, maybe they've never known it and there it is, old friend just met.

Art slips away, grows beyond any fields, boundaries, we set. Becomes other. Fan-fic in all its glories. Does the Bard look on and giggle; revel in the forever high school productions, the re-skinnings, the re-tellings? Sure.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was my favorite. Then again, that might just have been Oldman and Roth hamming it up. So what, it's a wonderful thing. But then, I didn't write Hamlet. What would it have been to see instead Hamlet 2: Revenge of the Zombie Prince?

How many incomplete starts, do you think? Lost plays? Bits of poems, notes for a play from Chaucer's Tales? Would he have cared if someone came along and turned those into a new play, "Based on the works of William Shakespeare"? Sure, of course, the check cleared right? What some people will do for the money, and honey we've all been there. Bills to pay and the kids will go to college (please God let the kids go to college...)

Witness all the rock gods, and the commercials. When the adulation is done, and you've still gotta make the nut, pride ain't in it. And it's a lot easier on the hips and back and knees than getting up on stage and spending a few hours a night pretending to be eighteen again.

Old friends passing email between them
"You haven't..." "But I did, you never..."
like that.

Facebook and Instagram, who follows whom and the kids and their days.

Old friends have broken up and gone their separate ways, others, the ones
who settled in, keep pushing the oars. Pulling the chain. Digging in the mines
and trudging up the hill to tote the bale and haul the water.

Days wind down, winter in the wind, a bit brisk and aren't we supposed to
hibernate? Yet?

Airplanes warming up in the distance, a trip on the calendar, holidays coming
yesterday and tomorrow and gifts and food and and and...

silence. It wasn't it was. It ain't now. Pass it on pass it through the pass
of the yester-year was a moment that never existed not even a little bit itwasamirageidiot.Hatelovefear

deep breath. The work is here, where it's always been. The work and the love and the new and the old. The tangled tanked up
path
between
the here
the now the
tomorrow
yesterday. none of them more than figments, either. Yet all together? All together now all together now.Hmm.

Sometone someone that one. She will be fine, write.

Gather close, oh ye hesitant souls; I have a story to tell.

Once upon a time, long long ago, a dignitary came to visit.

In the place that dignitary came from, he was reckoned by some to have small power, by others a placeholder. There were even those who whispered behind their hands of old treacheries.

These were ignored, those few poor souls seen as chasing vapor trails. Whatever kernel of truth formed their conspiracy theories, however, to this story they are of no moment.

So the dignitary came to visit, there at a university in the middle of a city.

The university itself held small fame in certain scholarly corners. Mostly, it was a place where people who had to work for a living could manage to scrap together a degree, in between shifts.

It was the way of things at the university, at that time, that the centerpiece, in artistic terms, of the university campus was a fountain. A magnificent edifice, with one unfortunate flaw.

It didn't work. Not in living memory, which on a university means no undergraduate or graduate student yet walking those almost-hallowed halls, had water been pumped successfully, through arcs and sprays to reverberate across the almost two acre showpiece. The students rather enjoyed this.

Apparently, the university powers-that-be didn't share this ironic joy. The thought of the dignitary visiting, walking by an empty concrete pond, was too much. This couldn't stand.

One hundred thousand dollars was requisitioned. The fountain was repaired.

Temporarily. The fix wasn't permanent.

A fact known, publicly, as soon as the money was devoted. This slightly ridiculous state of affairs wasn't hidden. It wasn't pushed into the background.

It was the headline of the university paper in the very first article written on the subject.

Now, there are students for whom such a state of affairs wouldn't have merited anything more than a raised eyebrow.

There were very few of these dedicated scholars, these higher souls, at the university. Working-class kids all, they had a certain element among them.

There was no need to vocalize the discontent.

They didn't target the dignitary's trip. Not quite. They targeted the week before, while there was still time to fix what they had done.

Rumors abound. I'd imagine that, if one were so inclined as to go to a certain wholesale warehouse just down the freeway, pull out records, then a pallet of a certain well-known brand of powdered laundry soap would be quite readily found among the sales on that time and date.

Hard to say, though, since there were only acres of suds to be seen, that Monday morning when all the self-congratulatory administrators walked into their offices, opened their blinds.

And beheld what they had, ah, wrought.

Could be worse.

There's another rumor, you see. One that your humble correspondent hesitates to report. Since this rumor was one that circulated among the members of only one very small group of chemistry students.

That rumor, you see, suggested that, if one were to go into a certain lab, at a certain time of night, one could, without too much trouble, find a minor supply, merely grams... of cesium.

One likes to think that this particular dignitary would have gotten the joke, that this august personage would have recognized the ridiculousness of spending such an outrageous sum on a temporary fix, to be run for only a few hours and then shut down promptly after the visit.

Well, the suds, anyway. Even the progenitor of the cesium possibility had to admit, given sufficient time and space for meditation, that such a step might have been going just a bit too far.