clams

July 16, 2006

Have a little time more to keep downloading all my junk from the phone…….
          
This thought came to me in a song I heard from one of those more pretentious movies i watch to put me to sleep. - an old classic.

               
Unfortunately, the more I live , the more I learn,
The more I learn, the more I realize the less I know,
Each step I take, each page I turn, the more I try
The more I believ that I have to go!
What’s wrong with wanting more?

                          

This is a reference to settling and fighting against the most pernicious of all of humanities faults. SETTLING!

                        
I always fancied myself a farmer or maybe a fisherman. would have used the fisher of men bit had it been applicable but it doesnt make sense and I am not one. A sampler of life maybe but even then I always know that I am the cautious one. So I content myself of being a farmer or fisherman or farmer/fisherman. Then again I always had this fancy for clams. I like clams. Always liked it and if deep in my desires it whispers that clams make the world go round. It probably does. So I am a clam digger after all. And right now I know I get maybe twenty five or thirty clams for every fishing-farming expedition tour I make. Not that I take them all given that infernal revenue bloodsuckers would have a go at it first before I ever see it. And of course those that actually think that I will get to live to sixty wants a piece or two of what ever is left. On what is left maybe twenty two odd clams intact. And if i dig seriously enough for another ten hours or so id probably get another clam to hold, behold and savor.

             

Lately though I got this offer - there are more clams on the other side of the fence. Bigger? better? Clams are clams so they cant be any better but certainly more…exactly twice more so they claim. And this offer makes me wonder even more. My digging and digging here, is it all worth it? I dug and dug  far more than I know I should!. I am a clam digger and yet from the looks of it, I do farming too and now some fishing and carpentry and heck.. Cooking and serving seems to be on the list as well. One cant exactly leave thing hanging. Not when you are so into the NOW NOW NOW now mode. Sadly still while I should do the now, there seems to be disconnect in the homework of the then and some more on the those far and beyond my little nook of now now now. And now demands that you cook and clean and fish  and so I cook, i fish and clean. Which brings me back to wondering is it really worth the twenty odd clams?
      

I always believed that you always get what you deserve. The gods of seas and rains and the bringer of clams rains clams on those that deserve those clams. I know i used to get more…a lot more in fact when I was a smaller fry clam digger. Now with a bigger stick to pick and dig the clams with I kinda lost eight or nine clams. And now worse still, I worry that the bigger stick I use may break down and a million other things that clam digging entails i now worry too. These days its never just another clam picking day. I cried buckets abd ranted to high heavens for those clams I lost. But they never really came back. And I am faced with a more sober reality that other clam diggers of far smaller sticks  get more than I do. And turning away from those clam diggers of smaller sticks, I see  where the other clams we harvest go…and i see more and bigger portions and pickings for some other clam pickers.. Forty or fifty six more and oh just for fun ten more for something that sounds like a city slick term for metrorail.

                    

So today as I pick uo my half a harvest of clams. I realize that I am not raking clams.. Not that I would ever even need a rake for those clams. I think its gonna get served for me on those itty bitty forks they use for hors d’oeuvres.Gad I really hate clam harvest day. I am not happy with these clams anymore. Maybe the digging beyond the fence will make sense after all. Maybe it will make me happier. Maybe. This once was a happy clam digging place. And I was happy digging, planning the digging, making sure the digging went well and all the other digging things that goes with more digging. I sure miss those days.

                      

As I turn down another clam digging expedition beyond my small CLam world, all because I feel i’d still grow here, I fear the next one that comes along. Will I have the strengthto refuse the next time. As my hunger for clams grow and my feeling that my deal is many clams short, I know this cant go on forever. Something will break.

                     

Love does not stand alone, nor do convictions and certainly no amount of devotion can weather the storm of discontent or doubt. That storm comes from within. I am in a season of discontent. Winter if I can steal that literary pretention. I cant go on and so I i go on. (another great pretentious literary line stolen)I will be all I can be (there!  something downright market and commonplace). After all life is a box of chocolates. (Wow - even more lowbrow) I did not get to where I am by birthright or luck.I’ve arrived to this place and time by my strong decisions. (Ahh back to erudite pretentions) The cards we are dealt with do not matter, it is only how one plays it that ultimately decides your fate. And while I will sit here pokerfaced superfluously lamenting the death of that beautiful dream. I still dream that somehow things do get righted back. How long I wait, I do not know. How long do wakes last? How long do you watch a child cry? How long do you take the heat before getting out of the kitchen? If I end this useless ranting and meaningless meandering lamentations it would end with NOT LONG. NOT LONG AT ALL.

         

Again sad that I could wait and think for eternity, I could sit forever in thought and come up with the same answers or questions. The same thoughts. Sooner than later I will bid goodbye. One does not stay where one is not wanted, appreciated. And this exercise of words come back to clams. I love clams. There are a million things beyond clams and clam digging. And I know that clams are just clams. And while I clamor for clams I know it was not the clams that matter more. Its the pervasive though that I do not ger what I think is due. Aaaaahhhhh! It was never the clams after all. Clams were inconsequential but for the value and the honor that it represented. What it signified was the what ultimately mattered. One really gets just what one deserves. So am I? I am spent. I do not like the thoughts getting arranged on this line of thinking. I will clam up.

                              

The saga of life does not have endings. What we percieve as endings are mere beginnings of another episode, another chapter, a side story. One should embrace such beginnings. They herald the newer things to come. I’ve often said that now extending forever is just another form of death. And while even death is a change and should be welcomed in its time. It is after all just another beginning of what we just dont know.

                           

Going back to clams for what i see it or what it represents makes one happy or sad. In this depressed state, instead of looking down for more clams or looking up to see the heavens, I look beyond. Can one be blamed for it? Again I think not. Pursuit of happiness can be a tricky road to follow but worse so if one does not. Can one really rot in the recesses of ones disenchantments and canone wish to stay there and try hoping that all the rot will just go away. We delude ourselves at times till we are ready. Ready for what? Am I ready? Again for what? I really dont know!. This reminds me of one parting a long long time ago in another life and scenario. His words ran the way his personality was. Pretentious and likely literary with half his thoughts this way and the other half the other way.

          

” I sense drastic change in you”
That was a strange one for me. A surprise. One does not really change and drastic at that is close to unthinkable. I would have asked why but i knew it was a bait for me to open up. So I didnt say a word. And then he said:
“You are preparing to leave me”
Denying and trying to disprove him I asked why he thought that. His answer was because I no longer asked. I’ve lost my curiousity to ask and in short I’ve lost the spirit. It took me that encounter to realize what i could not admit to myself I was doing. DISENGAGING! Am i disengaging now?  Too bad I dont have that friend anymore. but then again no one here to say that I had drastically changed………………………………………

So where am I really? I do not know but I know i dont like the way it takes me. In time I will know. I will my thought to write in absolutely nothing so that I can construct what I have from way within. An eastern thing of building thoughts from nothing to create the real picture of the thoughts that run in the mind.
      
           

Creating perfections from imperfections
Inviting chaos to bring order
Blacking things out to see the light
Thinking nothing to bring the ultimate thoughts
Creating nothing to build everything
Giving up everything to gain everything.

Tell me have i written the my thoughts from the recesses of my mind.