I have been working on organizing my iTunes library. Yes, that’s the creative thing I started on this morning. Not very creative though. Just a lot of work, but it needs to be done.

At the moment I am burning data DVDs of all the TV shows. I have already watched them, or am not likely to watch them any time soon, and I don’t want to just delete them and throw them away. I do want them off my hard drive though. They take up too much room just sitting there not being watched.

The next step will be to go through all the music I have bought or gotten free from iTunes and burn to disc then delete anything I don’t absolutely love and listen to a lot. There are a lot of those. Once again, I don’t want them gone forever, but I do want them off my hard drive.

After that, I want to go through all the music I ripped from our CDs and once again get rid of anything I don’t actually listen to regularly or really love. There’s a LOT of those. I just ripped whole CDs, and the fact is I usually only like one or two songs on any album. Also, anything I have on my computer that I would call Lin’s Music, most of which I can’t stand and never listen to, is going, going, gone. He has a computer now that will run iTunes and he can set up his own iTunes library and rip his own CDs. There is really no need for me to have more than a handful of Metallica or AC/DC songs on my hard drive anymore.

I should probably do something about my vast collection of podcasts too, but I am still living under the delusion that one day I will get caught up with them all. It will never happen, but we all have to have little lies we tell ourselves don’t we? Maybe I’ll burn data DVDs of them too. Just in case I get a chance to catch up when I am sitting in the nursing home some decades from now.

The last step will be to go through whatever survives the culling process and make sure all the tags and album art are in place and set up some righteous playlists.

Then I will finally be ready to actually listen to music on a daily basis. I’ve piddled around with doing this for months, because it is such a monumental task. I’ll be so much happier once it’s done though. Trust me, I do not anticipate getting all of this done today. I’ll be lucky if I get it all done by the weekend, because there is no way I can sit here long enough and stay focused enough to do THAT much work in one day.

And once the music is organized, I really should start going through all those damn folders with names like Clean Up Now, and Go Through Today, and Now Now Now. Really, my organizational skills are so lacking, it isn’t even funny. What really isn’t funny is how I keep so much crap on my computer that I just don’t need to keep. Want to know what web sites and news stories I was reading a year ago? Let me find the dated folder, and I’d be able to tell you. It’s ridiculous the amount of useless data that exists on my computer!

One DVD of TV shows down and two more to go. This is going to take forever!

I found my Messiah’s Handbook a few weeks ago, and then I promptly forgot that I had found it until this morning. Being in the mood to read some words of wisdom to get my day going, I opened it to a random page:

Pretend that you honestly
truly deeply want to know
who you are
where you came from
and why you are here.

Pretend you are willing
never to rest till yo know.

Now:

Can you imagine yourself
not finding out?

No, I cannot! OK, I can, but what I imagine isn’t a very pretty or happy existence. I guess that gives me something to think about today as I clean the kitchen and do something artsy-craftsy.

Obama is having a town hall meeting at the Austin Convention Center on Thursday morning. Tickets are free but required. You can read more about it here.

I’d like to go, but that would require me to leave the house in search of tickets today, and then it would require me to leave the house at an ungodly hour of the morning to take the bus downtown, because I wouldn’t drive (parking and traffic are both awful at that hour of the day). So, yes, I’d really love to go, but eh … it’s cold, I already ache all over, and maybe it’s best I just keep my butt at home and watch it on TV.

McCain will be holding a town hall meeting in Round Rock, but it’s only for Dell employees. Aren’t they special.

Once again, Austin only gets Bill Clinton for a few hours at one of the community college campuses. Gee, thanks for the attention, Hillary.

UPDATE: Walked Lin out to the truck and froze solid two steps out the front door. It is well below freezing outside at the moment. There is no way in hell I am going out this morning to find tickets for the thing tomorrow, because it would be even less likely I would want to leave the house even earlier than this to go anyway. Just too damn cold. I’m going to go into hibernation until it warms up a little.

Didn’t I just declare it was spring at Casa de Orb yesterday? Yes, I did. The weather doesn’t seem to agree.

J: What do you desire?

Orb: Though I would like to desire nothing … being as that always makes life easier, I want more than anything to understand everything … and to not be alone in my understanding.

J: You are my protégé for a reason.

Orb: Care to share said reason?

J: You just did.

I had to boot my old Win98 computer. Good thing I have been lazy about removing it from my desk, I suppose. What I discovered, while trying to find one particular thing I wrote some ages ago, is that I have a great deal of writings and other text files that only exist on floppy discs. I will be doing something to fix that soon. It took me 30 minutes to get the old computer to boot. It is very much on its last legs, and there aren’t any other computers in the house that read floppies anymore. Yipes.

I found what I was looking for though. Good thing I used to label discs. Too bad I have never named a file anything that might be useful for locating it. I have been using dates as names for files since … forever, apparently. It’s a pretty useless system, unless you want to reread snippets, quotes, scribblings, IM conversations, and emails covering decades one day at a time.

It was an interesting romp through another lifetime though, if not just a little sad too. Who the hell was that young woman with such fire and passion about everything? Who the hell am I now? What the hell happened?! I used to love everything and everyone so much more deeply. I have let my cynicism get the best of me. I’m hoping that process can be reversed.

It all ties in with that epiphany I had the other night (which I still need to explain further) about modern art being all about the artist, and how to understand it you have to understand the artist and in some way relate to them or their experience. I’ve been trying to find myself in any of the canvases I have worked on this last year, and I am simply not there, and that’s why I think it all sucks. My own art doesn’t move me, because there isn’t any me in there. I don’t know why. I am not even going to try to figure out why yet. What I want to figure out is why when I search inside myself, it feels like I am walking the halls of an empty building. There’s just nothing there, as though I am an empty vessel, a husk, a simple shell.

The really stupid thing is … that is exactly what I have been striving to achieve for the last decade or so: to be an empty vessel, a clean slate, devoid of desires and wants and baggage. So, it looks like I succeeded, and I now find I am not happy with the result. I am comfortable, and I would even say I am rather happy, but I utterly and completely lost my passions. Sure, I tempered the fires and cooled the coals, which I’ll openly admit has made me a much more stable person emotionally and mentally (and probably a better person as well), but … I lost so much in the process. I lost so much of myself, perhaps things that should not have been lost. I just swept it out like week-old dust thinking all along it was the thing I needed to do, that it was exactly what I should do, and now I am carrying a candle through the halls of my mind, and all I see are empty shelves.

How the hell do I fix that?! Up until an hour ago, I didn’t think anything needed to be fixed. Then I read conversation after conversation with mentors and loved ones and the writings these conversations inspired, and it made me cry to read the things I believed so strongly at the time they were written. I was a bonfire of passion and love for life and everything and everyone in it. Now I am just a flickering candle in a dark and empty room, if that.

I think I need to go through another goth stage. Perhaps it’s time to dig out the all black wardrobe, buy some eyeliner, dye my hair black, smoke clove cigarettes in dark bars while drinking large glasses of thick, heavy merlot … and feeling all the highs and lows and passions and desires … and the freedom to do as I please, hell be damned. Yes, I have successfully managed to treat my manic-depressive ways without the use of mood pills, and I have discovered I feel just as empty as I would have felt had I just popped the pills.

Is it possible to regain your insanity once you have learned to be sane?

• I am standing on the back porch, in the dark, allowing my eyes to adjust. Fence walking shall commence shortly. #
• No monsters in the back yard, but there are two living in the house. I love my cats. I really do. No, seriously! #
• I’m still awake. How stupid. Too much tea. #
• It has been a beautiful day today! A little chilly but such a blue sky, and my flowering trees are blooming! #

The other thing I did out in the back yard today was gather some well-weathered but still soft dry bamboo leaves which I hope to turn into a papyrus type paper. Naturally, I don’t have much of a clue about how to do that, but I have never let that stop me before. I’m going to start by soaking them in a bucket of water overnight. Seems like a good place to start.

The pear trees and the Redbud in the back yard are blooming! I guess I can officially declare it spring at Casa de Orb!

No monsters to be found in the back yard. No critters either. Nothing but big dark back yard with a strong breeze smelling (and tasting) slightly of vanilla-flavored cigar or pipe tobacco.

In a hilarious turn of events, and by “hilarious” I mean hilarious to the two critters/monsters that live with us, while I was about 1/3 of the way into the really dark back yard, I hear a crash from inside the house. I nearly jumped out of my skin, but it was a familiar crashing sound. It was the sound of the folded up ironing board in the hallway being knocked over by two very inquisitive young cats.

By the time I got into the house, there were no cats to be seen anywhere, but there lay the ironing board all sprawled out in the hallway. Additionally, it appeared to have slid down the Box Room door, and knocked the door open. Great. I closed the door and then verified the existence of both cats in rooms other than the box room. Luckily, the falling ironing board freaked them out, as it always does, and they didn’t think to run into the Box Room when the door opened. Had they gotten in there, we’d have never seen them again. Well, until they got hungry anyway, but by then, they would have destroyed who knows what.

Then I went back into the back yard and finished checking for monsters. Yup, none to be found out there. The only monsters around here are the ones I just had to have because they were so cute.

For the record, Lin, who is asleep on the couch, didn’t even flinch during the entire ironing-board-crashing-down in the hall just a few feet away. I imagine had there been monsters or other evil-doers in the back yard, I’d have been dead and gone long before he noticed at 6 am tomorrow when his coffee wasn’t ready.

How the hell do you sleep through a metal ironing board falling into a hardwood floor?! How?! So not only am I the protector of the realm, I don’t even have any reliable backup! I need bigger weapons.

I should take a photo of myself in my monster-hunting get-up. Shades of Sarah Conner indeed in my little white wife-beater, lose beige pants, ponytail, barefoot and carrying a six foot long black staff. Snort.

Now for the post I was going to make when I sat down over an hour ago, before I got sidetracked talking about politics.

Do you ever just get spooked and can’t shake it off? Say something only slightly out of the ordinary happens, but it sets your nerves on edge, your flight-or-fight instinct stays turned on ever so slightly, and you find yourself jumpy?

While I was making dinner, I heard Lin open the outer back door, the one that makes all kinds of noise when you open it. I came to see what was going on, and he was standing out on the back porch, such as it is (tiny), staring into the dark back yard. He came in, and I asked him what was up. He’d heard crashing sounds out in the back. It has to be an awful lot of noise to get Lin to go investigate, so even though I didn’t hear it myself, having been in the kitchen rattling spoons in pans and listening to the TV, it must have been something of a noise to get Lin dressed and out the back door. It put me a little on edge.

I went back to working in the kitchen. The kitchen window was open, and during a quiet moment, I heard the sounds of movement entirely too near the window. Walking sounds. I froze in my tracks and somehow magically transported the four feet into the den, breathlessly saying “I hear walking sounds in the back yard!” Lin was moving too slowly for my tastes, so I slipped my feet into my plastic gardening clogs, moved through the laundry room in one step, and threw open the outer back door. Doors and danger are like band aids on wounds. You might as well just pull it off/open the door all in one grand movement. At the worst, you die a minute more quickly. At the best, you freak out whatever is freaking you out and it runs away. Well, that’s the way I see it anyway. Best to be brave and do these things quickly.

I stood ever so still just within the darkness of the laundry room and listened and looked. Nothing. I closed the doors and went back to making dinner, but I turned on the back porch light so I could see the immediate surroundings through the kitchen window.

Just as I was pouring the beverages, I saw something move across the lit part of the lawn. Just some movement out of the corner of my eye. Smaller than a possum, smaller than a cat, larger than a squirrel, and not the right kind of movement for a bunny or bird. It’s not possible to see clearly through the screens on our windows. They are those darker heavier sort that blocks sunlight (and suck at even that). I dashed outside shoe-less. I even wandered into the yard a ways. I saw no more movement. I heard no more movement. I went in and ate dinner.

But … now I am all jumpy. Every little sound from outside makes my heart skip a beat and my adrenalin to flow. It’s as if I am sitting here waiting for something awful thing to happen. You know … monsters in the back yard. It’s a completely silly sensation. I should go put on my tennis shoes and force myself to go walk the whole perimeter of the yard right now. The worst that could happen is the monsters get me a few minutes earlier. The best that could happen is I scare off whatever critter it was out there in the first place. Right? I’m never going to get to sleep otherwise, so I should just put on those shoes right now, grab my staff (yes, I said “staff” — don’t make me kick your butt with it), and go walk the fence. It’s the only way to be sure the thing that is smaller than cat and larger than a squirrel isn’t going to break into the house as soon as I am asleep and kill us.

As soon as I have emptied my bladder, eaten another cookie, and determined why I am smelling what smells like a cigar on the breeze outside the den, I will be venturing into the back yard. Though I think I will wake Lin up first. Neither monsters or critters smoke cigars, and I am most definitely smelling a cigar or pipe … and the cats are acting a little freaky now too. Though they are probably only doing that because I’m jumpy at every little thing, and considering how strong the breeze had gotten, that cigar or pipe could be blocks away. Must … not … freak … out.

Why do I always have to be the one to investigate stuff?! The damn cigar-smoking, smaller-than-a-cat-larger-than-a-squirrel, back yard monsters are going to get me this time for sure!

There are times when I wish we had a dog. This is one of those times. The cats are being totally useless in this particular situation.