The Emptiness of Days

I like that title. Though it isn't mine. Nah... belongs to Panda and is but one chapter in his epic tale that I hope beyond hope he publishes one day soon.

I've been letting myself get too far away from the blog lately. I keep looking up and weeks have flown by, the stench of jet fuel searing the hairs in my nostrils. What the hell? How is Labor Day within sight?

Within sight... hell, it's breaching the hull. And there's a part of me that sits here wondering if I have the time to post today. That's the brunt of my lapse in blogging -- the worry that there isn't time for such luxuries these days.

We all know how I hate the recaps, but here are some highlights of the past month:

• I became an award-winning writer! Yes, my essay "Hard Stop" (which was born of this blog) took 1st prize in the 77th Annual Writer's Digest competition (in the personal essay category). And how stoked am I? Pretty frakkin stoked. I got the voicemail while I was driving to work and that made for a fantastic day.

• Reconnected with an old friend from my trumpeting days at school. We were in band together in college and through the magic of Facebook, we learned that we now lived in the same town. So we did what any good Irishmen would do, we found a pub, ordered some pints and spent many an hour catching up. I'm sure we'll be hitting the pub more and more this football season.

• I moved a couch. Not a history making event on any global scale, but many a friend of mine teased me for years because I was never what most humans would call "strong". Fortunately for me, I'm older and stronger than I was then (the actual difference being that I do workout on occasion) and I'm not so bad at heavy lifting.

• And though I don't much care for the heavy lifting, there was a good chunk of it happening in mid-August as Keaton moved to grad school. And I helped. There's probably an entire blog-post that could happen on the ineptitude of Budget truck rentals, but at this point I don't wish to relive that morning of my life that I will never get back. Keaton is now off studying Playwriting and I'll touch on that in a bit.

• We moved offices. (Are you noticing a theme here?) My work built a new facility next to the old one and we moved in this month (the same week of the Keaton move). For the office move, there was no heavy lifting. Office people don't lift. We just don't. We pack little crates and moving people do all the hard work while we sit at Panera wondering why our boss skipped out on the breakfast meeting.

There was much more, but it's all been a blur. My chief time committment has been to the theatre this month.

I'm directing a play called "The Guys" by Anne Nelson. A beautiful piece about a fire captain and a writer dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11, and trying to pen the eulogies for the captain's fallen men. The play touches on themes of coping, grief, being a New Yorker, being human, and really taps into the idea that we don't really know people until we stop to really see them.

That's one of my favorite messages in the play. "We have no idea what wonders lie hidden in the people around us." Such a simple, elegant, statement. I remember after Sept. 11, how there was a surge in patriotism in America. But more so, there was a surge in humanity. For a time, everyone "knew" everyone and we were all united.

I was driving home from rehearsal, through my neighborhood, and can recall how there were American flags soaring proudly from every doorstep and window that late autumn. But now... they're gone. And I wonder why.

I guess things change.

That's been a reoccuring theme this month. Change. And yet, what's really changed. I look around my house. I've had a lot of time to myself this weekend as my two housemates are both off on mini-vacations. Anyway, I look around... and the house... nothing's changed. Though it needs to.

I have this overwhelming urge to cleanse the house. Both for the sake of cleaning, but more so for the sake of—for lack of a better term—growing up. I noticed, when we were moving Keaton to grad school, that he lived in, what I would deem, a man's apartment. There was art on the walls. Books on his shelf. Yeah, he still had a Playstation, but when you walked in, you knew a grown man lived there.

When I walk into my house. I feel like I'm back in college. Living in a really large dorm room. It doesn't help that the house has never been ours. It's a hodge podge of me and my housemates trying to blend in with the twenty-five year old tastes of my parents (who owned the house before we moved in). My childhood hovers around me. It's like we moved in and I turned the house into how I would have liked it to be when I was a teenager.

I look around and see a manifested Peter Pan complex. And that's not a good realization to have on a Sunday morning.

Apollo is curled up next to me, one chair over. And there he goes... Why is it that cats always do the most obscene things when you glancee over at them?

It's funny. I started the month without a voice. And the silence taught me a little but more about how to listen. How to connect.

And now I finish the month in an empty house. A few days now of me spending time with me. Alone with my thoughts. Surrounded by the silence. The emptiness. And I think I've sort of got a picture now of how to fill that. How to make my life a little more fulfilling.

Man has to cut loose, learn to stand on his own.

I have some things I need to tend to. I'll be back. Sooner than you think.