thus lost

did not type much last few days, been working and running, some going out, quite tired. all work and all play make matt something something. get lazy? don't mind if i do. still not typing much, but also recognizing the fact that i've given up the creative urge as of late. which is fine, but strange. i (maybe finally?) gave up a writing project i had with my friend/professor, a book that we never got published. good story, but not packaged well. we had large new yorker publishers looking at it, which is an awesome opportunity for a petite failure. i wrote the following on a train from tacoma to portland, and i don't know why. i will post it so that it is not lost forever into nothingness, but mostly to fill space because i don't feel like typing much else. perchance:

"My Study. Always a place of peace, despite the stack of things to be done that scatters my view of it. As a child, I’d wander into my father’s study, big and bold, dull cabinets with fancy archaic locks on drawers. I’d wonder at what was in there, pry little fingers into places they could get caught. The drawers would open and I would wander around, never understanding the drift of paper, it’s order, it’s sentiment. I grew up and took a slight pity on myself for now knowing all the meticulous symbols, though I’m sure the child wouldn’t want my pity. Perhaps.
As the cells of my body grew, cells still thinner than a sheet of letterhead, the ideas of “my study” grew and grew and grew, exponentially, until they fit neatly and securely into the box constructed by my father.
He was a stark and rigid man. He was on the heads-up side of the law. He would file things needlessly, receipts, trip ticks, memoirs. He had lost his father at a young age. He still hung onto things, which constituted the makeup of his study more than actual projects or things to do. I tried, consciously, to keep that opposite.
My study currently is filled with achievement. Hung on the wall or perched on my desk are frames, slices of wood that bring protection and importance to photos of my family, art that has been made in my name, book covers. The two portraits of humans are probably the most significant of my framed collection.
The first and slightly larger of the two is of me beside my family, wife Janet, twins Julianne and Trevor. Twins with matching severe peanut allergies. Twins who astound me daily, who came from indisputable odds. A woman who tore through my wreck of a life and my torrential divorce to ---"



from "a density of time and place"