​When Megan talks about her beloved Bassett Hound Samson, she always calls him her “furry boy.” It’s just the perfect expression for him. Whenever you’re down, Samson is there, flopping on the ground and offering his stomach for belly rubs that are as therapeutic to the giver as they are to him.

Then of course, there was Hugo, and from the beginning, he was, and always will be, The Guy.

“It’s pure and simple,” I would say to Hugo, after he offered me yet another round of support as he purred away on my pillow, millimeters from my head, “you’re the guy. You just are. I don’t know what I would do without you, buddy. You’re the guy.”

This has been a rough patch of years for me. I don’t need to get into the gory details, because my friends know about them, and plenty of them are mighty personal. Suffice to say: these have been times that tries a man’s soul.

Three years ago, at the recommendation of Megan, I sought out a tuxedo cat from The North Shore Animal League. I always adopt cats; everyone takes the kittens, and the cats have difficulty finding a home.

Hugo, in particular, was a tough sell. He had FIV, which unfortunately sends alarm bells ringing in the head of any prospective adoptee. In truth, FIV is far less serious than most make it out to be; it simply means that the cat is more susceptible to infections. Yet unlike the other cats, he nuzzled my fingers when I stuck them in his cage; I took this as a good sign, and it was. 

I took him home with the promise that I didn’t have any other cats in my apartment, and for a few days, he hid under the couch, getting used to the new digs. He was nervous; he’d had a hard life on the streets, and in fact had a nick in his ear from his earlier days as a street fighter. After a few days of this, my father came over, and all at once he came out of his shell, winding around my father’s legs.

That was the start of it. For the next three years, he was my companion, my friend, and my familiar. I would wake up, feed him, and write my morning journal entry, during which he would jump up on my desk and usually lie down on my forearms, as if he were suggesting edits.

I wrote many blog entries from his point of view, and when I did, I would hear his distinguished voice in my head. I often imagined his voice having the cultured inflection of someone who grew up in rough circumstances and took elocution lessons, and went to finishing school. It felt right, for Hugo was, in every way, a gentleman.

He never shied away when people came over. He always walked up to them and introduced himself, eager to receive a petting or a chin scratch from a stranger, who, in a matter of seconds, became one of his friends. He was, easily, the most affectionate animal I’ve ever had, cat or dog.

There were so many times, these past three years, that I felt down, so down. And there he always was, by my side, telling me that things would be better. He turned out to be right, and I will always be grateful to him for getting me through those tough times.

Whether his compromised immune system had anything to do with his untimely passing will remain unknown to me. All I know is that he seemed listless for a couple of days, and on Thursday evening, laid down for the last time. Perhaps he was in pain those last few days, but it really didn’t seem that way; it simply was his time.

It was almost as if he knew that he had a limited amount of days on this earth, and wanted to devote it to someone. He chose me, and my life was much the better as a result.

I will miss him more than I can say, but will carry with me a lifetime of memories.

​So long, pal.

I’ve been having trouble writing and posting things, and as I think about it, most of it has little, if anything, to do with not having a desire to write.

No, instead, it’s that so much of my head is taken up with…other stuff.

There’s just a lot going on right now, and it’s that worst kind of limbo, where everything is undecided. It’s that feeling when someone is, say, going through a lawsuit, when things drag on, and resolution seems a long way off.

I’m not involved in a lawsuit (thank goodness), but there are a lot of things going on in which the general status of them is decidedly unresolved. The specifics of them are unimportant. The fact remains that there are a lot of things that I’m in the middle of, and the end, during certain moments, seems nowhere in sight.

When I’m going through things such as this, they take up valuable space inside my head that I could instead devote to, well, writing, for one, but just about everything else as well. During times like this, it’s even difficult to do everyday chores, because those unresolved things consume so much of my thoughts. So I turn my mind to them, thinking that if I dwell on them, it’ll make them resolve themselves that much faster.

How free my mind will be, I tell myself, when I have all those things tied up with a bow. Yes, I tell myself, I’ll tear right back into writing after I’ve settled them all.
Yet lately, and I do wish I’d had this epiphany decades ago, something has finally occurred to me: life is always going to be like this.

My friend Jeff’s emails used to have a postscript that included a great Mark Twain quote: “Life is one damn thing after another.” How true that is. The moment I resolve one thing, some other thing comes along, and once again, it takes residence in my mind.

So the key, I’m seeing, is not about getting those things resolved so that I can write (or do anything else, for that matter). Instead, it’s about latching on to that space in my head that’s still capable of writing words (or doing anything else), and cultivating it.

It’s not just that cultivating that space allows me to actually get things done. It’s also that when I attend to all those unresolved things from that sacred place, I tend to do a much better job of it. The worst place, I’ve come to see, to attend to an unresolved matter is when my mind is in that anxious, unresolved place, when I desperately want the situation to just end. This is when I say those things where I so dearly wish I could unsay them, and when I send those emails where I so dearly wish I could unsend them.

And so I write this, here in that little sliver of my mind that is not thinking about those things, but is instead thinking of what I’m doing, right now. This place will, with time, become more sacred, and when, at last, some of those things finally reach resolution, there will be even more of my mind that can just focus on the here and now. At the same time, though, I know that other things will come along, and will drag on for days and weeks, sometimes months.

Yet having worked on cultivating this small sacred space, I will be ready for them. No matter how much those things fill my mind, there will always be a place in which I will see that the most important thing to do, when eating breakfast, is not to dwell on those issues and how to solve them. It is, instead, a time to think about pouring myself a glass of orange juice, and adding milk to my coffee.

Because if I inhabit that furtive, anxious place of unresolved issues, it’s a sure bet that I will, instead, pour myself a glass of milk, and add orange juice to my coffee.

Dear Sir:

Your father is a fine and honorable man. Nonetheless, I must take issue with a comment he made some days back.

While the two of you were engaged in conversation, your father looked about my empire, and his gaze fell upon my throne on which I lay myself down for occasional constitutionals after my creative endeavors, and upon your pillow. At this point, he made the statement that, however unintentional, wounded me deeply:

“Boy, Hugo sure sheds a lot.”

It is understandable that your father would make a statement that conveys such a grievous error in judgement. I admit that there are those of my kind who carelessly leave parts of themselves about their particular residences, heedless of the way in which such leavings clash with the surface on which they choose to leave these parts of themselves behind. In my case, however, these instances of what your father so coarsely referred to as “shedding” are nothing of the sort.

The tradition of an artist using unusual materials is not a new one. Richard Serra (bottom left) created vast sculptures out of huge sheets of cast iron, Donald Judd (bottom center) used milled steel, and Julian Schnabel (bottom right) used broken dishes. In my case, I use the most intimate material that I have, my coat.

I call your attention to my first work, “Rescue (top left).” Here, I used my throne as my canvas, creating a careful composition that is, in many ways, a representation of myself. My careful use of white to contrast against the black background creates, if you will, visual representation of the power that we draw from places of respite.

In this same way, the work demands that the viewer compare the so called “comforts of home” available to the more fortunate with the bleak options available to the homeless. I, of course, roamed the streets in my childhood, and before we became acquainted I knew what it was to be a man without an address, let alone a man without an empire. Given this, the work is actually a tribute to you, sir, for you rescued me from my sorry state, and properly installed me as ruler of the empire that I now oversee with an even and just hand.

It is this same tribute to you that suffuses my work “By Your Side (top right)." Here, the very pillow on which you sleep provides an intimate canvas in which I create a portrait of intimacy. When you sleep, I am by your side, and I therefore chose this very place of connection between us as the surface on which I created this work.

The gentle feathering of white on black is symbolic of my constant desire to provide you with comfort and solace during your darkest moments. In the same way that you provided me with comfort and love, so do I wish to convey, in this work, the comfort and love that I seek to provide you. In many ways, this is my most heartfelt work; it conveys my deep gratitude for your kindness and years of service as my personal valet, and how this relationship between ruler and subject has evolved into a deep and lasting friendship.

Having said all this, I ask: please urge your father to take another look. The apartment in which I dwell and over which I rule is not simply a place in which I have scattered myself. It is instead a gallery, a statement of the vital importance of art for each and every soul.

Having written these words—and, of course, having created these works—I find myself quite fagged out. I shall require a dish of haddock posthaste, and shall then retire to my throne, or should you choose to take a brief respite yourself, the pillow that we share. We are, after all, bound by our joint yearning to create, and must celebrate the symbiotic relationship that exists between those who have an artist’s heart.
​
Fondly,
Hugo
Emperor
Apartment 29D1

I’m just in this mode where it doesn’t feel as if I have things worth writing about. The basic core of energy just isn’t there, and I want it to be. For now, it’s just a slog.

I’ve tried to come up with various ways to describe this stage in my life as someone who writes, and posts things. Specifically, I’ve tried to come up with ways to post the way things are now. I’m still working on finding a specific way to articulate it.

It’s not depressing, really. And it’s not really the miserable feeling of being trapped complete stasis. It’s more of a lull, where the ideas are certainly there, but out of reach, buried under layers of detritus in the basement of my mind.

For many, this would be a time of complete silence. It is a time where some just stop writing entirely, needing to turn their minds to other things. Like those people, I’m certainly turning my mind to other things…but the drive to write something, anything, is still there.

So I write, but even though I have in the past vowed not to post anything like the thing I’m writing at this moment (and posting), it becomes clear that if I’m to convey what it is to write, I need to post this kind of writing as well. I want this to be a chronicle of what it is to be creative, and part of what it is to be creative is to have not just days, but weeks, sometimes months, where creativity is definitely at low tide.

It becomes easier when I just accept it instead of fighting it. If I’m a runner whose muscles have become sore, this is a time where I know that continuing to drive myself to a sprint will injure something, and cause me to hobble along for a long while, recovering from injuries. So it’s a time that I move along at a trot, even stopping every so often to walk.

I pick up my guitar. I play the chords that are part of the basic major scales that form the basis of most popular songs. In the key of D, it’s D Major, E Minor, F# Minor, G Major, A Major, and B Minor. I could also play an augmented C chord, but I rarely mess with that.

I play progressions, which is the term for playing certain chords sequentially. I think about which popular songs have those progressions. Then I put down the guitar, and check out something on Netflix.

I watch a few minutes of Ken Burns’s documentary on The Vietnam War. I go back to my Scrivener app, type out a few words, and then practice the basic major scale chords in the key of G. G Major, A Minor, B Minor, C Major, D Major, E Minor.

I notice that on a four string guitar, I can switch between C Major and E Minor by just lifting my index finger. When I play C Major, the four notes I’m playing are E, G, C, and an E that’s an active higher than the low E. When I play the E Minor chord, the notes are E, G, B, and E, an octave higher than the low E.

Megan gives me the morning breakfast order from Dunkin Donuts. A sausage egg and cheese croissant for her mother, a Bacon egg and cheese wake up wrap for her. I will have cereal.
​
And this is what it is like now. There will be days like this. Maybe weeks, maybe months.

I've been writing a lot, but right now, it's outlines for essays and stories. With that said, I offer a couple of links to previous essays I've written for newcomers to my blog. 

Read. Enjoy. Hope you like them

WRITING AND THE AMARGOSA OPERA HOUSE (5 January 2018)
About a pure love of what you do

JOHN CAGE'S 4'33" (8 January 2018)
What is music?

ON THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF EVER AGAIN HAVING TO KNOW WHERE I'M GOING (10 January 2018)
How Google Maps has allowed part of my mind to atrophy

WHY IT GETS COLD IN CERTAIN AREAS EVEN THOUGH THE WORLD IS GETTING HOT (12 JANUARY 2018)
A simple, calm, reasoned 800 or so word rebuttal to climate change denial

BLADE RUNNER 2049: A FILM THAT, MORE THAN ANY OTHER I'VE SEEN, REQUIRES A SECOND VIEWING (16 January 2018)
On completely and totally changing my mind about a film in a way I never quite have before

O NEGATIVE (20 January 2018)
On being the universal blood donor

There is a leaden feeling that overtakes me as I think about the last couple of weeks, during which my blog has been absent of posts. I see people, over this period, noticing, as they check my blog, that there’s nothing there, and then maybe coming back every few days, and once again seeing nothing. Finally, of course, I see them giving up, and moving on to the billions of other websites that are out there.

It is not that the words aren’t there. It is that the drive isn’t there.

For reasons that I won’t get into, this is a tough time in my life. As I said, the specifics really don’t matter, because everyone has specifics when times are tough, but the general result, for everyone is the same: the times are tough.

It is a wearing thing, going through tough times. Things that were sources of strength and energy—in my case, writing and playing the guitar—become things that collect dust. This then leads to feeling worse about the fact that I haven’t done these things. Which makes me feel worse, which makes me not write or play guitar, which makes me feel even worse, and away I go, down the rabbit hole.

In the past, I’ve written about what it is to write when the desire isn’t there. It’s been a while, though, since I’ve known what it is to write when the energy isn’t there. There’s a general feeling of enervation, of not even being able to take much satisfaction in the things that I produce. It is, right now, more than ever, simply something that I do.

Which is why I do it.

Right now, this doesn’t just feel like typing out one word after another. It instead feels like mowing the lawn on a day that I have absolutely no desire to mow the lawn, nor the energy to do so, a day where I’d rather stay in bed and sleep. It is fighting against the feeling of having nothing to write about, having no desire to write, and above all, lacking the energy and the ability to feel even the slightest sense of satisfaction over having written anything.

It’s definitely a time in which the stick is far more effective than the carrot. No, there will not be satisfaction when I’m done writing this…but there will at least not be the miserable feeling of not having written anything. No, there will not be satisfaction when I play the guitar, but there will at least not be the miserable feeling of not having played anything.

So perhaps there was actually something good in not posting anything for the last few weeks, however dubious that good thing was. In that time, I came to see that it is an absolutely miserable feeling to not post something for a while, and to not play my guitar. With that said, I know that these posts will, for a time, be nothing more than a series of words that I post, words in which someone will read the first paragraph, and probably say “that’s quite enough, thank you very much.”

But at least the words will be there. At least the chords will be there. It may not make me particularly happy, and it may not fill me with a deep feeling of satisfaction.

It also may cause my friend Joe to call me up and say “are you okay,” something that he often does when I write blog posts such as this one. To Joe, I say: yeah, I’m okay. There’s a difference between being on the ledge and simply sitting in a room, looking out the window and saying “aw, geez…I gotta mow the lawn.”

​Yep, I gotta mow the lawn. Might not be the most satisfying or gratifying endeavor, but at least next week the yard won’t be overgrown.