A catalogue of 2012

It seems the days are slipping into years and I have found myself forgetting segments of time and certain memories.... Maybe this is what getting older feels like-the past getting blurrier and certain memories falling out of one ear as others are stuffed in the opposite ear....

I used to recount my life through individual ages and "eras", but lately it seems I can't pick up a photo album without finding a picture of myself doing something of which I can't remember in the foggiest.

So....in order to combat my growing dimensia, I've decide to make a list each year of the basic going-ons of the previous year so that I can recount memories like the Christmas we spent in the Everglades or when my son went a whole winter wearing shorts, or how exciting it was when I used to part my hair on the left, etc. etc.

So here it is:

2012 :
• During Christmas break, we took a road trip to Missouri where we celebrated Santas birthday with grandma and grandpa trice... Most notable memory of the trip: getting snowed in on a mountain pass in Idaho and spending New Years in a hotel playing the original Zelda on our new wii consul.

• Nicole surprised me on valentines day with a box of cheap chocolates and a pair of baby socks. I think she was trying to announce a major occasion in our lives, but I was too busy eating the socks (nothing gets in the way of me and my sweet chocolate).

• In march, we visited Southeast Asia for the first time where we helped the non profit "SEED" as they worked along livelihood/micro enterprise groups... Definitely life changing, although one of the greatest moments of the trip was fling Korean airlines....they loaded us up with champagne and sushi and then tucked us in and let us watch as many movies as we liked. Nicole likened it to being in an adult day-care and I agreed as I padded my face with a warm towel.

* In April, we invited a couple of Mira's friends over early in the morning, and serenaded her with birthday songs.

* June through August was spent constructing a tear-drop trailer (see earlier blog post) from scratch with my father in law (this was my birthday gift to myself)...we celebrated our achievement by camping on beautiful Trillium lake over Labor day weekend.

* October was a big month:  I launched my new small business (see upcoming blog post) making custom paintings for restaurants, by hanging a show in the Lovejoy Bakery.....Nicole and I launched our new RED on RED! album (a collection of the music we have worked on over the course of our marriage), and Nicole launched a new baby into this world....Charlotte Hamilton (Nicole's middle name) Kennelly.

* In December, we spent the month hunkered down in our hand-made bunker, waiting for the end of the world as the Mayan's predicted....of course, when it didn't happen, I ate all of our stocked food provisions, which happened to be all chocolate, which worked out nicely.

Love, Destruction, and the Weight of the human heart

This next week my goal is to finish an "album" I have been working on for the past year, which is centered around the theme of love--its banality, transcendental beauty, its cliches and revelations. There exists no other subject so often expounded upon yet so incomprehensible. So necessary to the human race, yet taken so for granted. Love is a dichotomy, love is a harmony, love just simply is, darn it!

Love (or the lack of) is the driving force for most of our actions yet it itself is an abstract notion or "force". How strange that in these times of scientific enlightenment and discovery, we can not antiquate a biological code for love or narrow it down to a few synapses of the brain. Does anyone else find it odd that the main force behind whats driving us humans to do what we do is an abstract, floating, mystical "energy", universal to ALL men and unpinned by any one singular formula?

Anyways, I think the album is exciting and Im excited to finish it. It will have covers from Bob Dylan, Yo La Tengo, and Slint. Unfortunately, it will not be released until sometime next year (maybe Valentines day 2011?).....stay tuned, maybe Ill stream some audio from it in the upcoming months.