The Prologue

I should begin at the natural beginning.

My name is William. Most call me Bill. Some, Will.

I'm 29 years old - pushing bravely towards a third decade.

I have brown eyes, short brown hair that is yearning to go grey, and a beard.

I am what the world would call a bear. Six-feet-three-inches tall. Broad shoulders. And fur.

I am a man living in a world between urban and rural, where abandoned hulks of steel mills rot into the ground. This place, Western Pennsylvania, was the American dream before people knew they had an American dream. It was here that oil was first drilled, that steel was perfected, and immigrant communities were established, making a new world for people like my family.

Like so many other dreams, this one's remnants linger, giving hope to the deluded and the nightmares to those who know better.

I teach college English. I no longer find deep satisfaction in teaching after five years of students whose failures are self-wrought and whose blame is never self-focused.

What I want to do when I grow up remains, largely, a mystery to me. The options are myriad. The paths to them, obscured.

I cook. I paint. I read, though less than I should. I play the clarinet and am classically trained. I surround myself with music. I believe in Gustav Mahler blended with Julia Child. Aestheticism, Sensuality, Epicureanism, Romanticism, Natural Supernaturalism, and the somewhat tattered fabric of a Catholic upbringing and Jesuit education make up the belief system of this amply-fleshed frame.

I find beauty in the simple, in the gaudy, in the classically proportioned, and inside the broken edges of the rubble and decay of history.

I like long walks on the beach, puppies, and hope for world peace. If chosen as Miss America, I promise to not have pictures snapped of me stumbling out of a limousine with makeup running down my face. I attempt to be myself in spite of the wearying pursuit of cultural sameness.

I sit in the concert hall and listen as the orchestra plays my mind into the sublime.

I catch you staring and just stare right back.

I believe that a poem doesn't have to be dissected, eviscerated, and plumbed for meaning. Sometimes, my dear Wordsworth, a daffodil is simply a daffodil.

I dance to Motown music while washing the dishes. My text messages and Facebook posts are correct in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I drive by you with the windows down and the music turned up, not caring if you see this burly-looking guy singing along with Lady Gaga, Ethel Merman, or Dave Matthews.

I love to cook, own far too many cookbooks than could be considered sane, and intend to write about food here.

Perhaps this is a good summary:  I'm a strange mix of a lady of taste and manners appended to the Brawny Paper Towel lumberjack.

This is no rabbit hole you've tripped head over feet into. This is a life. My life.

Abandon your preconceptions of masculinity and femininity, of what it should mean to be a modern man. Inevitably, this blog will occasionally veer into the realm of "me, me, all about me."  However, I promise that there will be more.  What, exactly?  You'll just have to keep checking back to see.  

But I hope, with the grace of your indulgence, that we'll be able - together, mind you - to journey through a professional and personal life that is completely original, 100% pesticide free, unvarnished, and forever accelerating down the curves and twists of an existential spiral that somehow functions, sometimes to my utter bewilderment.

Thanks for coming along.

Sincerely,

Bill