08 April, 2009

That Damned Shower



The shower is more than just a place to pop in some ear plugs, shave your pits and scrub down your "hot zones." It's a zen like sanctuary where you can heal, learn, see and feel the realities of yourself and the life you lead.
You let the hot water pour over your naked body, and exposed, you've got nothing to hide and no one to hide it from. It's just you and a collision of subconscious fact with shrouded reality. Only in the shower do you have the time, freedom and clarity to see your real self, feel you real guilt and plan your real attack. Only in the shower do hopes and aspirations feel like reality and failures seem like clouds being carried out by a cleansing storm.
The shower rains down upon you and cleanses you skin and your soul. The heat bakes more than just the sweat off your skin and the soreness out of your muscles. You'll find yourself refreshed, your load lightened and you to-do list packed.
If only you had a pen, a marker, a crude scratching instrument.
Then gradually, the water begins to cool and your skin is noticeably wrinkly. Like a dying birthday balloon, the warm steam starts to leak out of the room. The mirrors regain clarity with the streams of running, condensed steam and you remember who you really are.
The reality sets in even deeper as you slowly turn the faucet knobs to off and watch the last bits of fresh water scurry helplessly down the rusty dark hole that is your drain. What secrets that drain could tell and what dreams it's surely captured; clogging up with the good intentions washed down after every long day.
It's your shower. But somehow you cant take it with you.

03 April, 2009

Pee Faucet Jibberish



Man, this blogging thing is getting really rough. I'm having a heck of a time staying on top of this and getting blog posts up. If its not mental, its physical and if its not physical, its mental. I always have some kind of an excuse.
My best blogging ideas come in the shower. Everything clever comes in the shower for me. Problem is, I haven't really refined a quality, consistent approach for recording my thoughts in such a wet, steamy environment. I tried dry erase markers, but the steam on the shower tiles prevents that method from even remotely working. The only thing I can think of that might be a viable option is an underwater diving pen and laminated paper or something. I think its a grease pen or something, like people used to use on over head transparencies decades ago.
And if its not technological limitations like that, its things like the excuse I've been tossing out at myself all day today: Sore arm. I went bowling yesterday with Mike Morris of the Mike Morris Advertising Agency here at BYU. I bowled for one straight hour and today, it feels like I've been hanging from my fingertips in an Iranian prison for the last 3 weeks. My arm is so sore. My fingers and all the ligaments, tendons, muscles and joins are stiff and painful. But somehow I type on.
Somehow when I crack open the seal on the Ziplock bag of ideas in my head, the freshness leaks out. But I trap it. I trap it and put it to the page. I say, "Yo freshness, don't be runnin' off. You and me gots business." And I put him to the page. Right down on the page. Its crazy how creativity works. Creativity is like when you pee. You can't just start and stop when you want to. When you open the gates, it's begun. There is no choice. If you somehow force that gate shut and switch off the creativity (or the pee), there's gonna be concequences. Those concequences range anyway from writers block to a urinary tract infection. Its messy stuff and you gotta learn to deal. There are strong forces of nature at work here so let no hand but that of God stop that work from going forward. Wait...where was this going? Something about creativity...peeing. I'm not sure.