A Brainful of Books

I think it's more accurate to say that I'm trying to be more intentional about some specific aspect of my life this year than that I've made new year's resolutions, by the way.

That said, I've been a somewhat obsessive reader since.....well, since before I actually learned how to read. (I'll tell that story in another moment.) The past year found me reading fewer actual books than usual--partly due to crappy eye insurance and a need for good glasses, partly due to busyness in a thousand other parts of life and distractions ranging from the necessary to the merely distracting.

I've been increasingly intentional about picking up books and reading them lately, though, and from time to time I'll toss some assorted book-related thoughts out here. In the past eight weeks a few particular titles have wrestled and floated and danced through my brain:

*Last Night In Twisted River by John Irving. (Random House, New York; 2009)
*The Road by Cormac McCarthy. (Alfred A. Knopf, New York; 2006)
*Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Co., Boston; 1997)
(I've completed these ones.)

I'm currently nearly racing through Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Co, New York; 2008)
and taking in a few pages at a time of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (Shambala Books, 1986).

There are a few other semirandom things I'm kinda half-reading at the moment, but they don't particularly count (theyre mostly things I'm just going back to for their familiarity or to find a few particular insights, quotes or information that I want or need for ideas or projects I'm playing with.)

I'd like to come back and share some thoughts about some of these at some point, but, well, you know--two roads diverged and all that. We'll see.....

now we begin....again.

My dad sounded at least half incredulous (and simultaneously forceful, as if anyone who didn't agree could be convinced simply by his speaking more declaratively) on the topic of the passage of time: "'t goes faster every year. I don't know how it happens, but the years just start blurring together!"

Falling on the ears of a child weeping at the end of the magical Christmas season, too-aware of the distance from Epiphany to Advent, his words held no comfort; rather, they just illustrated how little he understood my grief at the passing of this wondrous time. Same thing when I yearned for summer vacation to begin--or cried at the end of the Ashtabula County Fair week--or waved through tears to my grandparents as we drove away from their home after a visit; through the seasons of life, he kept telling me that time moved in a blur and I kept wishing he'd understand that the NEXT Christmas, the next fair, the next visit would not be the SAME, that we would NEVER be "here" again, and that even so, time moved so slowly that the wait for the next Christmas/fair/visit/etc seemed intolerably ponderous.

The significance of the passage of time--and a thousand tangential themes--haunts, challenges, amuses and preoccupies me; always has, I think. 

Imagine, then, my amusement as this new year, this new decade begins:

I sign into blogger.com, intent on upholding a pseudoquasiResolution to write more, and to do at least some of that writing in a blog. I click through the paces to set up a new blog, but the name I choose is taken already (Grrrr: I mean, I'm pretty sure that *I* have some sort of cosmic right to the name RuahKampf.)

Didn't take too long to figure it out: the owner of that blog reserved it nearly five years ago. There's just the one set-up post. She's 2005 ME. Yup, it's my blog. One post long--from half a decade ago. 

How could I have set up a blog five years ago and then just never really come back to it?

Who was I on that day--the day before my birthday, no less?

What did Paula.2005 mean to say?

And why did she take five years to find her way back here?

How fast do the days 

and weeks

and months

and years

.....oh, hell: and decades(!)

pass?

And can I capture at least some wee glimpses of the breath, the spirit, the struggle, the challenge, the LIFE in a day

week

month 

year 

decade

.....one entry at a time?

That's what I'm about here, I suppose. 

And that 's what the name is about: ruah is the Hebrew word for both breath and spirit; kampf, the German for struggle, fight, challenge. For years I've gone on about the intensity and wonder, the profoundity and delight of entering into the life sustained by breath and spirit, the struggle to keep breathing and keep living spiritedly in a challenging universe, the beauty and worthiness of conspiring toward the good.

In daylights, in midnights, in sunsets, in cups of coffee and words of entries--at least some of the fleeting, astonishing, amazing, challenging, spirited moments (if not seasons) of life will show up here along the way. 

'Cause Dad is right: 't goes faster every year. 

And I don't wanna miss a thing.