Day 3: Simplified

This will be short, because I just spent all my word-writing time on my other blog. I take on blogs like Chirac took on mistresses.

Draguer is the French verb for flirt; bloguer is the French verb for blog. And here in Michigan, with a limited array of options, I can focus on the latter.

That's one thing I've noticed while up here. In the city, with seemingly infinite possibilities, there is stress involved in making those decisions. Every decision is an act of violence, killing off all unwanted possibilities in favor of the one. My mom told me a story about some friends who were in Saudi Arabia for a couple years. Going to the supermarket was a breeze because there's only one store, one brand, one choice. Here, in the land of unending possibility, I find grocery shopping incredibly taxing, because I'm always thinking about price, quality, value, etc. i have since committed to some decisions that limit my choice and so free me from that burden. Same store, same products, a few impulsive buys.

Here, in Michigan, I don't really know anyone and don't really feel the need to. So far. There's no question about what I'll be doing with my time: I've made that decision already and now just have to follow through with it.

The den in which I compose (or arrange like today) is a forgotten corner of the house that no one could figure out how to use. It had been mostly used for storage until I came along. Now we are finding our purposes intertwining.

Tomorrow, back to the city for the weekend. I don't quite feel like I've worked enough to deserve it, but I'm just starting to build momentum.

A quick note on the blog title. The first two options were already taken. One, "into the void", I liked because that was my stock answer to people asking where I was moving to. The other, "noise and haste", was once the name of a stillborn website project. So I searched around a bit, found nothing, and then remembered Rilke. I have read his "Letters to a Young Poet", but it didn't seem perfectly applicable at the time. It seems more so now, so I started to read the first letter. In it, he cites Jens Peter Jacobsen, a Danish author, as being one of the authors whose books he keeps with him--along with the Bible. So I downloaded a free e-book (project Gutenberg) called "Mogens and Other Stories". More later.