Setting the Table for '08

Fork? Check. Steak knife? Check. Marmladae oozing out my veins? Check. Rick Vaughn heaters? Check.

Alright. Let’s eat.

It’s 2008. Hard to believe. It seems like yesterday I was hacking at plastic golf balls in a Louisville backyard, preparing to peddle my Big Wheel down the driveway at a seemingly suicidal 9 mph.

Incredibly, the innocent 80’s of my youth are now a hypercolored thing of the past. Morning is spent, and my life is onto afternoon. It’s my 31st year on the planet. I’m tempted to stop counting once and for all.

Except, as much as I hate to admit it, counting matters. Aging reminds me that I am a finite equation, and while modern medicine may extend my x-axis incrementally, on this earthly plane my life comes with two discrete points: a start and an end. A reality which also screams, “get busy livin’ or get busy dying.”

That’s right kids. You know the ten-year plan: “Zay-wha-ta-nay-o.”

But before we all unite on that Mexican side of the sea, I'd best do some livin’ on the shores of Chicago. And for the first time in a good while, I think the necessary components are in place.

For me, 2005 and ’06 were about as happy as a warm gun. I was a castaway with a pair of floaties in the deep end of the ocean. Thankfully, in 2007 the pendulum finally began to swing back in the other direction.

In a nutshell, 2007 was my year to relocate inertia. It was a year to have fun, and to be whimsical, and to start to believe again. It was all those things and more. Just not at first.

Before inertia could start rolling I had to regroup -- in my own place and on my on terms. Enter blessed Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires was an 8.0 on the richter scale -- a seismic occurrence which comes along once or twice in a lifetime. It was incomparable. Quenching. Erotic. Restorative. Uplifting. A saving grace, when no other remedy would have sufficed.

Ahora, y por siempre, soy porteno en mi corazon.

Detaching from life is one of the hardest things I've ever done. Innately, I wanted to push, or try to change direction, or do nothing at all. When in reality I needed to get outside of my own skin; remove myself from the equation. Going to Buenos Aires was like sending myself a text message: “Get out of here. I’ll meet up with you farther down the line.”

And now, thanks to that curative month away, I will always hum the chorus to a second, national anthem: “Vamos Vamos, Argentina.” Buenos Aires: you couldn’t have been better to me if my life depended on it. And in some ways, it probably did.

Now, having been back stateside for ten months, I can feel the winds of inertia. Either that or the artic winds off Lake Michigan have fooled me all over again. I'll hope it's the former.

A prodigy of Socrates once noted, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you just might find, you get what you need.” That sounds about right to me.

I’ve got incredible friends and family. A decent consulting gig. Six books in my queue. Plenty of good music for the hibernation months in Chicago (jazz is winning the current iPod battle). And out-of-town weekends galore for January and February.

Does that mean I'm satisfied with my lot in life? Not in the least. Can I see how life will unfold? Only a tad, if at all. Am I convinced it will include revelry, spontaneity, and ballyhoo? You betcha.

So bring on 2008.

On a singular note in minor key, my Chowder entries may decrease in ‘08. My new consulting contract plus a twice-a-day (75-minute) commute is cutting into my writing. Simultaneously, I'm getting pickier about posting. It takes more for me to feel content with my rambling. Probably a good thing. But trust me, a lot of revisions go into this soup medley. Campbell's I am not.

That being said, know this: I love (!) having someone ask me, “when is the next post on the Chowder?” And with that specific thought in mind, I’m going to hold myself to at least three Chowder posts a month throughout 2008.

The Monthly Stew will remain a staple of the proceedings. I have too many random thoughts that beg for sharing to dismiss it. But the Stew will have a few changes.

I’ll be doing away with the Warren Zevon Quote of the Month and introducing three, new regulars: 1) A “Small Town Alert” 2) A “Grape of the Month” and 3) “Words of Wisdom from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

That leaves me with two entries a month to dissect random observations on earth (and beyond). And this year I’ll be attempting more “think pieces.” I guess you could call them that.

Envision some of the more random Stew numerals being expanded to two-pages. Subjects like: “Elastic Waistbands: Friend or Foe?" But before I write any blue sky entries, I’ve got a two-parter queued up on dating.

Inhabitants of Venus, you have been warned.

Also, in 2008, I'd like to concede the floor on occasion. So if you've been holding onto a thought -- something appropriate for sharing in this forum -- write it up and send it along. I'll post it.

But take the time. Do it right. Make it an ode to a frying pan, but make the bacon sizzle.

When I started this blog nearly a year ago I was after an easy means to share my "experiences" in Buenos Aires. Twelve months and a gay foam party later, the Chowder has turned into a (near) weekly respite. All thanks go to you, the readers of this molecular corner of the web. I wouldn't be writing without you. Hopefully, just maybe, you get something out of it too (bud heavies?).

So as we close the book on one year and catapult into the next, I'd like to share a story I stumbled upon recently.

A wandering traveler is walking down a country road in 13th Century France. Along the path the traveler runs into a stone-hauler, obviously exhausted, pushing a wheelbarrow full of rubble. The traveler asks the man what he is doing. “God only knows,” the man replies. “I push these stones all day and they pay me barely enough to keep a roof over my head.”

Farther down the road the traveler meets another man pushing a similar wheelbarrow of stones. He asks him the same question of the man: “I was out of work for a long time,” the man responds. “My wife and children were starving. Now I have this. It’s killing me. But I’m grateful for the work.”

Then, just before nightfall the traveler meets a third, exploited stone-hauler. When the traveler asks the man what he is doing, the man replies: “I’m building Chartres Cathedral.”

Some years bring new love and unexpected joys. Some years are filled with hardships. But most years are within a standard deviation or two of the mean. And in our own way, regardless of the year, we each haul stones towards an unfinished foundation.

Regardless of where you call home, bring your wheelbarrow and join me on the road in 2008 if you can. I’ll be at the Derby, and the 500, and at Einstein’s for breakfast sandwiches.

It’s a year I’ve ear-marked for a Cathedral.