Rock Lobster

Rock Lobster fashioned by M. and I, 13 June 2010

(Rock garden alongside Frisco Rec Path en route to Copper Mountain)

If doing nothing is merely the musing of the poet, then I have not been at much leisure to muse. The Romantic MO often appears self-indulgent and contrary to that industrious spirit that is ordinary to the American condition, that is its standard, even. But I find it to be a work that is dear to me, to muse. There are aspects of every experience, every situation, that must bubble up from under the basics of who, what, when, where and why. To write, I must give those aspects time and space in which to bubble. For me, therefore, writing is not about the writing, but what's done between writings, in those long stretches of pen absence.

I am about to embark on one of the most rigorous and trying training periods in all of civil service. I must shield and guard my "nothing" time, my time spent contemplating the proper size and shape of rock for lobster claw. There is nothing finer than pulling something out of that nada, being pleased with it, flinging it off into the world.