Owning Up

I have been known to say with a degree of flippancy, routines are for squares, sighting the banality of such a thing. There are times I will own up and say my hypocrisy knows no bounds, if, for no other case, than at least it's funny. Case in point; after waking and getting myself presentable, as it were, I fed Milarepa and started my tea water. Checked the stove for pellets and recorded the morning low. Let the dog out, answering that age-old metaphysical question, and lit some incense whilst I got my pack ready for my day's walkabout. Activities very indicative of a free-day morning. Despite my appreciation of chaos, I too, have a routine.

This is owning up...

Not too long ago, Sabina was asking me about her outfit. I told her she looked luscious as usual, and glibly asked about my look. When she said mountain, I found myself a little insulted. I abhorrer stereotypes, finding them boring. To be pigeon-holed in such a way was a bit of a metaphoric backfist.

See, I thought about it; the curse of self-awareness and a mind that never shuts off. I have longish-okay, long-hair. There's the beard. My raiment most of the time is of someone either leaving for or returning from a multi-day, multi-mile backbacking trip. I drive a Subaru. Nay, I drive an older Subaru with some mechanical...eccentricities...that's all but smothered in bumper stickers.

Mountain. Sometimes, you just gotta own up. I just hope that doesn't make me boring.

The last parting shot the jewel-eyed girl said to me in those moments of Machiavelli when the break-up got good and ugly was she'd rather stay home and sleep or watch Cartoon Network than hang out with me anyway. I was boring. It was a terrible thing to say, the kind of barb spoken in the tongues of pure hate one uses when they are absolutely not getting their way and really want to wound.

I did not rise to her bait. During that period after the glass broke, right before my birthday, and mid-October of that year, she tried that sort of thing a lot. Hateful asides whispered from dark corners, trying to get a reaction. I didn't feed that dragon, but endeavored to rise above. There were a couple of reasons I was still in places she could encounter me during that period, perhaps the most poignant was to show to her and her harpy of a sister, whom was much more Machiavelli at times, that she didn't break me.

However, I was bothered by being called boring. I can own up. Certainly, I found myself being entertained, but perhaps I had sank into stagnation and not realized it. I remember speaking with Jezebel on the subject.

"I've know you since you were nineteen, and, one thing I definitely know about you is you hate to be bored," Jezebel said. "It's almost like you're afraid it. If I really wanted to hurt your feelings, I do just as she did; call you boring to see if you'd wince."

Ergo, I found myself having to own up. Jezebel would go on to tell me she was proud that I didn't rise to jewel-eyed girl's bait and that I was still one of the most entertaining cats she's ever known. Sometimes, late at night, when the demons come for tea, I wonder if she was just saying that as a balm for my verbal shock. Other times, I remember it when I worry I am slipping into mundanity.

So, I own up; I have a routine. I am mountain, although, Sabina digs the term mountain bohemian, but that probably has to do with the artifacts and funk-because you gotta have the funk!-about the house and property. I loath being bored, even for perceived nanosecond.

My hypocrisy knows no bounds...

There are those I know who want to hear stories of my adventures. What meals I've cooked recently or what books I've read and my thoughts upon them. Maybe I am entertaining. Perhaps, when it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts, it only matters that own up to what I am and do not find myself banal because of it.