BACK FROM BLOGBLIVION: What happens to this blogger is that after a certain point, when so much has happened since last I wrote, I get stuck. What to write, where to start, so what, etc. That's where I am right now. And usually the only thing that gets me unstuck is to just start somewhere in the middle.

One thing I've been thinking is how much better it might be if I could just write everything that happens, unvarnished. Use real names. Cite real problems. Wrestle with demons incarnate. Y'know? My boss this. My wife this. My mom that. My son etc. Blah blah blah. But then even when I'd be trying to get somewhere good, to wrestle down angels in demon's clothing so as to better celebrate the bestness of my life...you know...to sling mud with good intentions, to alchemize mud into chocolate fudge, to turn bitterness into tanginess, to make sour into something to be savored...well, people's feelings can get hurt, even when that's the last thing you wanna do.

Can't a writer wrangle his way off the hook by disclaiming at the outset: "I know nothing. I'm just sayin'..."

Nope. It don't work that way.

So I'm back from a week away, went to another high school reunion. See I split time between two high schools. One was a kind of redneck public school in a post-industrial Ohio town, the town where I spent some of the best years of my life in what, years later, doesn't look like a very great place to grow up. Lots of latent Type 2 diabetes, I'd wager. Not a lot of ethnic food or racial mixing. No Starbucks. Etc.

The other was a preppy public school in a post-industrial suburb of Detroit, another city on the decline, and yet this second school was still afloat in a major and stable way, as old money worked wonders plugging holes and propping it up.

The Detroitish reunion was first, a tony, cocktail-centric affair not out of line with the kind of social stuff me and the wife do here in Chicago. Bunch of college-educated folks comparing notes about babies and corporate travel and then repairing to each others' nearby sailboats for a nightcap. A pleasant, occasionally ecstatic event.

Then came Ohio, a wedding band-bolstered beerfest where various social strata mixed somewhat uneasily, with talk of stepkids and teenage offspring, of city jobs and smalltown scandals ("yep, he's back in crack rehab") even as a surplus of goodwill held everything together. It was like, hey, we went to friggin' SECOND GRADE together, we are friends 'til the end. Sincere. Seriously. Loved it.

Thing is both were great, the best entertainment values a 38-year-old soul searcher is ever gonna find. People were open and kind at both events, genuinely thrilled to have a few hours together. There were these aforementioned social differences, some nuances of content and context (in Michigan we wondered who might have Mob ties; in Ohio we wondered if a fistfight would break out), but all in all a big smile and a wide-eyed sense of wonder were the common wardrobe at both events, and a kind of "holy shit, look at us" attitude permeated the music and memories and kept most of us up past our bedtimes.

So that's one middle I can give you, readers. There's also the stuff about drinking, about friendship, about not being able to go back home but doing it anyway, about realizing that all you have is your time and it's not yours anyway, so you have nothing, and then circling back through all the damn Zen books you've been reading and wondering if you're still trying too damn hard at something that requires no effort.

The question I keep coming back to is: Do I focus on the much ado, or on the nothing?

And the answer I keep coming up with is the infernallly true: Yes.

If that makes as much sense to you as it does to me, Hello!