And so, the time has come to start posting/journaling/blogging again. I was originally going to wait until January, then I decided I’d resume on Solstice Day, because of the nifty symbolism of it. But no, I’m doing it today. Today seems right. Here’s why:

Today (December 17th) is the one-year anniversary of the death of my father, Robert Bradley. If you’d like a refresher of the sturm-und-drang of all that, you can go back and read these posts: [ My Father | Two Irish-American Guys and their Fathers | Father's Day]

But back to the present: I learned two days ago – in a note enclosed in a Christmas card from my aunt – that they finally decided to have a memorial for Dad and spread his ashes at the cemetery in Midland, MI where other family members are buried. The memorial was held on October 16th. According to the note, six people were in attendance. None of them was me. I wasn’t informed, until two days ago, almost two months after the memorial.

As I shared in a couple of the earlier posts, my relatives and I had a bit of trouble for several months coming up with a date for the memorial. What I haven’t shared is that the biggest problem was that my aunt and grandmother kept pressing me to bring Conor and Liam along on the trip, and Leah and I were very reluctant to make our boys’ first meeting with my family be on the occasion of a funeral. You may not think it ought to have been a big deal, and you’d probably have several good points. But in the end I know my kids, I know my wife, and I know my Michigan relatives and there is no way that I was about to mix all of that stuff together for the very first time over my father’s memorial service. I admit it is in some ways a bit selfish. I didn’t want to have to focus on being a father and introducing my highly-routinized and introverted sons to new family because I wanted instead to focus on mourning and remembering my father. I tried to make that clear to my aunt. I suggested that we should schedule the memorial, I should attend by myself, and then later in the Fall I’d bring the boys and Leah for a visit. She would say okay, then a couple weeks later she’d call and ask when we could ALL come visit and have the memorial. I’d reiterate that I didn’t want to bring the kids, but I’d come myself on whichever date they chose. Over the summer and early Fall, this happened like three or four times. Then, the calls stopped. And I heard nothing until the card came the other day. They went ahead and did it without me.

Here’s the thing. I spent about an hour being pissed and bummed about it. But then, the oddest thing happened. It awakened something inside me. Something good. Something vital.

Those of you who know me know that for all my claims of monkey-ness, the animal that I tend to resemble more often than not is a turtle. I am prone to a depressed-loner-angsty-antisocial state where I am either a sullen grump with a bad attitude, or I just retreat into my shell altogether and shut out as many external stimuli as possible. Usually this only happens for a few days at a time in short cycles. But there is a tendency in the late Fall and Winter, as the days gets shorter and colder, for me to turtle-up for longer periods and with more severity. I found myself very much in the sullen grump condition through much of November, as most of my tweets and blog posts will attest, and so early in December I decided to turtle up and stop interacting online – and as it turned out, also pretty much offline and in-person as well. I was barely functional. I took care of the boys and got the necessary stuff done, but I was totally in that mode that Michael Keaton was in midway through Mr. Mom where he let himself go and became basically a blob of a homebody, living just to breathe and to theoretically keep his kids safe and fed, but not much else.

I told myself this was not a really bad thing – it is the season of Advent, after all, and the fact is that in opposition to the joyful yee-haw temperament that most people THINK the weeks leading up to Christmas are supposed to engender, Advent is actually a time of waiting in the darkness in anticipation of the coming light. And I was definitely living in a very Irish version of that mode.  Unfortunately, I think I was wallowing too much in the “waiting in darkness” part and forgetting about the “anticipation of the coming light” thing.

But several factors collaborated to smack me out of that. Leah had a lot to do with it – she usually does. A few things I’ve read over the past couple weeks helped too. I’ll elaborate on some of that in a future post. And through all this I’ve somehow kept up with the Scarlet Masque project, which has been a creative life-preserver of sorts because my creativity in practically every other department had practically shut down. But the big trigger for my revival was, ironically, the very thing that I would normally have allowed to sink me even deeper into the pit – the note about my dad’s memorial service.

After I got the note, Leah suggested I go off on my own to a bookstore or get some Christmas shopping done. I took her up on it, and found some cool stuff for the boys, for Leah, and for some of Leah’s relatives that we’ll be visiting over the holidays. This probably sounds kind of Christmas-schmaltzy, but the act of shopping for stuff that’ll be enjoyed and is a perfect match for someone’s personality is actually a good way to put your love and appreciation for those people into the front of your mind. Suddenly, instead of moping about my own very broken relationships with the family of my past, I started feeling really blessed about the truly good relationships I have with the family of my present. Something clicked. I realized that really, this negative stuff didn’t have me in its grip nearly so much as I was holding onto IT – and realizing that, it became pretty easy to just let it the hell go.

Next, I went to the bookstore to pick up a couple more gifts, and while there I checked in the arts and crafts section for any books that I might be able to find on paper-mache mask making – researching the history and symbolism of carnival masks for the Scarlet Masque has me wanting to actually create some Venetian masques as a side project – but there were none to be found on the shelves. What I DID find, however, were several books on sparking creativity, self-expression through art, the spirituality of creativity, and the hobby of art journaling – which is essentially what it sounds like: keeping a journal/diary but mixing various forms of expressive media into the pages rather than merely writing text. See some examples here.

Coming on the heels of my epiphany about letting go of my family issues and angsty-worries, this stuff stoked my fire even further. It was literally like a one-two punch that woke me up and clearly, loudly, and joyfully reminded me that I DO have plenty of monkey inside me, along with the turtle. I’ve been doing some reading on a thing called “creation spirituality” and it has been really speaking to me. I’ll probably post more about this approach to faith later on – for now, suffice to say that for the purposes of this moment in my life, the whole concept affirms the notion that the cast of RENT sings about in “La Vie Boheme”: The opposite of War isn’t Peace – it’s CREATION.

Shortly before my hiatus, in one of my “up” moments, I shared a link to a site called Magical Nihilism, where I discovered a really cool slogan that sums up who I want to be: “Get Excited and Make Stuff”. I guess it took some time for that notion – and the things I’d been reading about creation spirituality, and the things Leah was trying to tell me – to percolate under the surface of my soul. But it all came to fruition there in the art aisle at Barnes & Noble.

So, I’ve crawled out of my shell and I’m ready to be a joyful creative fool of a monkey-man again. Turtle-hiatus over, crap let go of, head clear, heart revived.

Therefore I have some resolutions. It’s a few weeks before New Year’s Day, but since I generally think of Winter Solstice as the big turning of the year anyway, and that’s less than a week off, and I can see that little silver lion statue memorializing my dad out in my yard right now as I type this and it makes me a bit melancholy but not at all mad, then I’m claiming this as an appropriate turning-point-landmark of a day.

First thing I’m going to do is start keeping an art journal. Some of that will show up here on the Harping Monkey, but I’ve realized that in addition to the heavily digital aspects of my creativity, I also want to actually work with my hands on tactile things that take up some space in the real world. I’m going to get a blank journal, and get it prepped with a cool cover and interior page, then start journaling in it as often as possible – every day if I can, starting January 1st.

Second, I plan to keep working toward regular entries here on the Harping Monkey – although I imagine that the focus for awhile will be posts in the “Creativity” category, I also want to keep sharing my thoughts about roleplaying, and increase my level of sharing about my kids and wife and our life here together.

Third, more play. Creative play. Alone, with my kids, with whomever I can get to play with me.

Fourth, carnival masks. There will be carnival masks.

Fifth, going deeper into creation spirituality and committing to using my creativity to enrich and support other people. To work harder to make sure it’s not all just introspective wankery and I really reach out and relate to, support, and befriend my fellow humans.

This is a big order, but I feel up to it right now. I’ll share more in the coming days as I start making tangible progress.

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