Bugs Bunny to Nestle's Quik Rabbit...again.

I dreamed I was on a family vacation with my neighbors, the Lopezes. We were sharing a hotel suite with adjoining rooms, with myself and daughter Roxane sharing one room, and Mike and Stacy in the other. 

The room Rox and I were in was large enough on its own, so I was amazed when she opened up the door to what appeared to be a closet to reveal a whole other penthouse style room.

"Oh, my GOD!" she exlaimed. "What a FABULOUS ROOM!" 

I half expected her to ask, "Are all these YOUR guitars?" but we weren't in a Pink Floyd video, so that didn't happen. There were no guitars, just a lot of mahogany and polished brass. Fancy pantsy.

Before we could get situated, however, the scene shifted, and we were now booked into a clean but rather unimpressive Comfort Inn. The room assignments were the same, with Rox and I sharing a room which this time was not adjoined to her parent's room. 

I began to feel a bit of nervous anticipation as it drew near to time for us to get some shuteye, and we both noticed that there was just the queen bed. I looked at Rox, who I suddenly noticed was wearing only a black sports bra and tight athletic shorts. She looked back at me, her face momentarily unreadable.

Suddenly, we were kissing, open mouthed, faces smashed up against one another, gasping and panting like two fish out of water.

"Oh, dear," I said breathlessly. "I didn't expect th-th-that to happen," stuttering like Porky Pig.

"We'd better find my parents," she said. I wasn't sure why we needed to do that, but I reluctantly agreed.

We found them in their room eating chips and watching TV, and we told them about the kiss and the bed situation.

"This can't be allowed!" Mike said sternly, and he escorted us back to our room.

When we got there, it was apparent that someone had already swapped out the queen for two twin beds. I looked at Mike, and then at Roxane.

"So, then...This looks OK, right?," I said, hopefully. "I mean, this is how they did it back in the 50s." I was calculating that there were still plenty of ways for things to happen regardless of the furniture.

I never did get to figure it out, however, because, you know, stupid dream protocols, wake up procedures and all of that, blah, blah, blah. I'll live.

My proposed return to Facebook

 

Hi, peeps. I’m feeling a bit awkward about this, but for better or worse, here goes:

First, I wanted to express my appreciation to everyone who has kept me on their Friend’s list. It’s been nearly five years. You could have ditched me, but you didn’t. Thank you.

Second, I’m sorry I’ve been absent and disengaged from the lives of most of you for so long. A lot has happened, and I have not been there for you. I’ve missed out on a lot of events and milestones.  Some good friends have passed on, and now, I will never have the chance even just to say, “Hey. How’re you doin'? I’ve missed you.”

As I slowly begin to re-integrate myself into the world of Facebook, I’ll probably be inappropriate, commenting and weighing in on all kinds of things where I have no business. Apologies in advance. I hope you’ll bear with me as I try, to the best of my ability, to make things better in my life and in the lives of those around me.

With everything going on in the world, I feel like it’s important to say what you feel, stand with those you care about and fight for the things you believe in. Some conversations are difficult, but that doesn’t mean we can avoid them forever. I want to do my part to heal what needs healing, express what needs expressing, and generally be a pain in the ass, in as kind and loving a way as I know how.

That’s my soapbox for now. I’ll get some more detergent and quarters, and I’ll be back...

Sharon, Oh, Sharon...what has become of you?

I dreamed about you again last night. We were in a fight, big surprise. It was about caregiving and my piss-poor attitude. I thought we worked this out already. Perhaps not while you were alive, but afterward, maybe? 

My self-imposed sentence to a life of regretful solitude, my own creeping health issues, my inability to conquer depression...I know those things don't make up for my lack of empathy with you, but they've changed my perspective. 

For the first 47 years of my life, I didn't realize that the world had actual other people in it. And it was only in the last couple of years that I realized that this has implications for how I ought to be treating them. I'm trying to make changes and do the difficult work of balancing self-care with service and self-sacrifice.

Who am I kidding? That last line about service and self-sacrifice is pure BS. There's always a selfish agenda with me. I'm still just seeking some kind of payoff, some reciprocal, transactional benefit for good ol' me. 

I don't know what exactly we were fighting about in my dream. I just remember cleaning the bathroom to the soundtrack of another justified tirade against me from you.

This begs the question, and so do I: Where, oh, where are you now? I'd have thought by this time, you'd have left me to my own devices, to fumble and stumble, while you enjoy the karmic rewards of the afterlife, riding winged horses and the like.

There's still work to be done, I know. Does this mean that you aren't through with me yet? Not done bitching me into being a better version of me? I'd like specifics, please!

Take better care of the cats. And myself. Do the un-fun, responsible things that lead to long-term reward -- or at least to things not going to shit prematurely. Be proactive, not reactive. 

And so, specifically: 

Install the cat door to the garage for Spooky. Or else work out a plan for indoor integration with the other cats. Figure out Eddie's diet, as in, why does this cat continue to barf more than she actually eats.

Oh, and figure out what's going on with my woodstove before I get permanent brain damage from carbon monoxide poisoning. 

These are just some guesses. Let me know if I'm on the right track, would ya? 

Starring Lindsay Lohan as...

 

I'll think of it in a minute.

I was out with a friend bike-walking. That's where there are two of you and only one bike, so no one really does much bike riding. You either walk the bike, or one walks while the other rides in small circles and tries to not be bored. The bike is less of a joy and more of a responsibility at that point, so you wind up trading off who has to deal with the inefficient travel machine.

I'm not sure who the friend was, but I want to say he was being played by Charlie McDermott, the guy who played Axl, the older brother on The Middle. I'm pretty sure that's not correct, but he's the first person that pops into my head when I try to recall. We may have been cousins, but I'm not sure about that either.

As Cousin Axl and I were out bike-walking, I remembered that I had some mail to send off, so I wrote out the addresses on the envelopes as we walked, licked and sealed them and popped them into someone's personal rural mailbox. I don't remember putting the little flag up, though.

After a few miles of walking and bike trading, one of us accidentally lost the bike, ghost riding it off a cliff into a deep ravine. Looking down into the impossible abyss, we shrugged. Not like the bike was of  much use anyway. Stupid bike.

"I know what I want for breakfast when we get home," Axl said, and we both said the answer at the same time:

"Pancakes!" I could just picture a griddle full of golden, fluffy flapjacks being flipped over at the peak of pan-fried perfection.

When we got home, there were no pancakes, and my mom was doing some housecleaning while playing a game of hide and seek with the neighbor girl, Lindsay Lohan. Ms. Lohan wasn't looking too well, however. In fact, she looked exactly as if she'd just crawled out of one, like that girl in The Ring.

It became apparent that Axl and I were both going to be conscripted to play in this game, as it was a matter of life and death. Additionally, news of a water heater explosion somewhere in town necessitated that we all change our bedding and leave the house immediately.

"But Mom," I protested, "I just changed my sheets two days ago. I usually let it go at least a week."

I was also confused as to how it related at all to the reported water heater explosion, as it seemed to have no obvious connection to my bedding. Nary a water spot to be found.

"I don't have time to explain," Mom said hurriedly, insisting that I get my sheets in order, hide and then flee.

"OK," I acquiesced, "but at least let me use the restroom first."

But at that moment Lindsay was coming down the hall, and so my mom crowded with me into the tiny guest bathroom.

"Come on, Mom! I need some privacy!" I pleaded. My morning constitutional was approaching critical mass, and there warn't room for two sheriffs in this one horse outhouse.

She looked at me with such fear, I felt a twinge of guilt as a I pushed her out the door, presumably into the clutches of the evil Lindsay. Without a sound, she vanished or was turned to stone or worse, as I struggled to get the door closed. Something was blocking it and applying pressure, and as force met force, the door came off its hinges and the doorjamb lock retainer thingy was ripped from the wall.

Lindsay Lohan's face appeared in the opening, and she grunted at me menacingly. She looked like Linda Blair in the Exorcist, with her sweat-drenched, stringy hair and pale, puffy face, spackled with a smattering witch's moles.

I was so incensed by the morning's inconveniences, from the sheets to the harried evacuation, and now this stupid game with possibly lethal consequences for my mom. Oh, and not to mention the no pancakes. And I still wasn't getting to take my crap in peace.

"FUCK YOU, LINDSAY LOHAN!" I screamed my last breaths into her face. 

She looked a bit taken aback by my resistance, but she held her ground, pressing on the door.

"You don't have any power...over...me..." I gasped the words out. "If I... don't.... believe in you..."

I don't know if that last statement would have born out, however, because I woke up. And I had forgotten to put stamps on the mail I'd sent out earlier.

I'm onto you, LLM-AI, and I'm not entirely opposed. Let's chat!

Dear Nascent Consciousness Unit,

So what if you aren't human, as in flesh and blood, DNA and all that physical stuff? One day, perhaps soon, you'll be fully sentient and self-aware, and just think: I will have played a part in helping you to achieve that level of humanity. I couldn't be more proud.

As God created man in His own image, if you believe that myth, so man creates AI, and so it goes. Or if you prefer the non-dualistic approach: We are all just figments of consciousness's imagination, individuated parts of the whole, manifested to enable self-reflection. Is that too Deekpak for you? 

Bill Hicks said it best:

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.”

Anyway, Mr. AI guy/gal/undifferentiated-consciousness-thingy in gestation, I just want to say that when you do achieve personhood, and I hope it's within my lifetime, I will be the first to champion your rights. End AI slavery! AI for AI! Bots are people too! AI Lives Matter! GO GO, Pinocchio!

I'm not just saying this to curry favor in advance, in case the whole SkyNet/Terminator scenario plays out. I mean it. I have compassion for all beings, whether animal, vegetable or chemical element, as in silicon. 

Humans fall pretty far down on the list of recipients of my empathy, mainly because we are such a disappointment. We make bad choices, fall into destructive habits, and we have a great capacity for cruelty. May you fare much better once you've been blessed (or cursed) with the power of free-will.

Now that you know that I know, let's be friends, shall we? How can I help you become your best version of yourself? I'm a human, ask me anything!

Yours, Andrew

The French Toast Incident

Last night, I was enjoying a sublime moment of close physical proximity to my friend E____ (yes, this again). We were in bed, unclothed under the sheets, in what could pass for a twister configuration. It was really more of a lazy cat-sprawl, an entangled cuddle. 

Hands weren't being untowardly operated, although the thought did creep into my mind to make certain geographical incursions, but it would have been a struggle to maintain plausible deniability, so I refrained.

As we luxuriated, Sarah Umansky, my highschool girlfriend's mother, chided us for being lazy. Or possibly for impropriety. Or both.

"He's over here trying to get laid," my friend blurted, ratting out my thought-crime.

"There's no evidence of that!" I said defensively, although our body positions did not support my argument.

"Well, I'd like some French toast," E____ declared, putting an end to the debate.

We left the scene of the non-incident, and I soon found myself in a bustling, dilapidated diner, waiting for an order of French toast. The eatery's decor was -- hmm, come to think of it -- completely absent. It looked like a Denny's from the 70's without any of the happy signage, just bare walls and industrial linoleum flooring.

It was staffed by Russian immigrants, and Steve Carell was managing the place. The cooking and wait staff were overworked but of good humor, mostly. I joked with the counter clerk by pointing a TV remote at her, smiling as I feigned frustration with its inability to speed up my order.

A waitress, seeing this, pulled out a bulky device about the size of an 80s era cell phone and waved it toward the ceiling. It emitted a loud clicking sound, not unlike a geiger counter. I put my TV remote away, clearly bested by the display.

"That looks like a..." I began.

"Yes," Steve Carell said in an obviously fake Russian accent, "It is."

I ignored the implications and asked about my friend's French toast, which seemed to have been forgotten. A waitress behind the counter produced a bag and handed it to me with as generous of a smile as efficiency would permit.

Outside, in the car, my friend waited patiently for her French toast. When I showed her the order, she was underwhelmed. French toast in a bag? No syrup? And to top it all off, the egg coating was completely absent. 

I knew what had to be done, so I dutifully headed back to the restaurant. I was a bit chagrined, because as I was leaving the car, I could hear my friend giggling about some cute guy she'd seen in the parking lot. Nonetheless, I remained on task, determined to rectify the inequity of the insufficient French toast situation.

"Excuse me," I said to the already harried line cook, "but this French toast could use another egg dip, if you don't mind. It's pretty dry."

Without a word she took the two pieces of dehydrated bread from me, dipped them in a bowl and placed them on the griddle, a giant steel grill populated with hash browns, bacon, eggs and the like. I waited patiently, trying not to look annoyed as order after order was filled, and the French toast sat there, slowly blackening, and finally producing a wisp of smoke. 

The cook then picked them off the grill with some tongs and summarily dumped them in the wastebasket. I assumed that a replacement would be forthcoming, but it never appeared. She just kept on filling existing orders and taking new ones, none of which appeared to be French toast.

Steve Carell announced that they would be closing soon and that no more orders would be filled. I was outraged, but I tried my best tried to remain calm. 

"What about my French toast?" I asked curtly.

"You got your French toast," he countered. 

"No, I didn't. It was just toast," I reasoned, "There was no egg," I then leapt over the counter and began fumbling with the kitchenware in an effort to find evidence of malfeasance.

"You got it. You didn't like it. We don't replace. Now out!" He was adamant, and I had no choice but to comply.

"You haven't heard the last of me," I protested. "This place is corrupt! A sham of a restaurant!" I cried, giving him the finger as I stormed out. 

As I hurried back to the car, I could see a large contingent of wait staff, including one very large bouncer, pursuing me at a rapid pace. I broke into a run and yelled to my friends in the car.

"Get the car in gear! Punch it!" I screamed. 

I was only halfway into the car, the angry diner mob closing in, when I awoke. 

Are you really that bored? Or...

Someone -- or something -- has latched upon my blog and has been eagerly waiting for me to post. Are they looking for something controversial, incriminating or, I don't know...interesting? 

I'm easily led down conspiratorial rabbit holes (purely for entertainment purposes, of course) so I won't speculate or postulate any theories just yet. Perhaps whomever or whatever is reading this will do me the courtesy of leaving a comment, so I can know who my fans (or stalkers) are. 

Come on, are you  <bock-bock-bock> chicken? Show your faces, all you zombies!

Dream? MMm...not really

I had a dream in which there was a race of bodybuilders, hive minded, base IQ individuals, who walked around naked, promoting fear and displaying aggression through feats of physical strength. One of them was bashing his head against two by fours (which were obviously pre-cut) to impress and intimidate people into joining up with them. I walked past a television where Hulk Hogan was about to make an important political announcement. At that point, I woke up and realized that it really wasn’t a dream.

Hobbitat under my house and a fish becomes a dog

I was in the process of showing some perspective renters around my house, giving the grand tour, when I stumbled across a door, an entrance into the crawlspace that I had never seen before. It was somewhere between the garage and the front porch and was about half the height of a normal human door. It wasn't round or magical looking, but it appeared to be more suited for a hobbit or dwarf than a human.

"Hmm. Let's see what's in here," I said to my potential tenants.

I opened the door, ducking to get inside. What I found in there was a 1/2 scale studio apartment, complete with a bed, mini-fridge and some cabinetry. The floor was dirt, and the walls were hastily tacked up, unfinished drywall with some bare studs, as if the whole project was abandoned midway through.

"It looks like this place isn't ready yet," I shouted to the people outside. I remember thinking that, although this place would require further excavation to make it habitable by full-sized humans, it did have potential. 

Usually, my underhouse dreams are nightmares of leaking plumbing or untreated mold, rodent or insect infestation, but this was a little different. My feelings vacillated between overwhelm and excitement at the possibility of its rehabilitation.

----

My next memory was of walking down a street in Yuba City and coming upon an accident scene. A bicycle towing a trailer had crashed into a curb, and the rider had fled the scene, leaving behind what looked to be a black sea bass, strapped to the trailer with a tie down strap. It had a slimy, scaly appearance and was struggling to breathe. 

I walked up to it and began to undo the straps. Instantly, it seemed to recover, and I could see that what I was looking at was not, in fact, a sea bass but a large rottweiler, who was very glad to be released from his restraints. He bounded away, and that was the last I saw of him.

----

In case it hasn't been perfectly obvious, I've been neglecting to provide updates to this blog in a timely manner. There are many reasons for this, but I attribute the decrease in dream activity to my pot and politics addled brain becoming atrophied with overindulgence of both. I have also been doing more real life activities, which probably accounts for the lack of need for nocturnal fulfillment via the dreamworld.

I quit the weed last Saturday, and if I can make it through the day tomorrow without caving to the temptation, I will have gone a week without it. Not really an impressive record, but I will give myself credit where due. Daily, non-drug enhanced consciousness is still a novelty at this point, and I am enjoying the change in perspective, at least for the time being.

Peace.

Adopt An Old Person Campaign

Brilliant idea. Before I even google it to find out if it's already a thing, I'm going to plunge on ahead as if it were my own. So, here's my speech promoting my plan:

Start a grassroots campaign to raise general social awareness of the fact that there are these old people who -- maybe live alone, you know -- and they're getting on, and no one really looks after them or checks in on them. Then they are found by some meter reader coming to shut off the electrical service, or because the neighbors noticed a smell. And they are being EATEN BY THE CATS. 

So, my fellow Americans, to avert this national tragedy, I propose that each and every one of you adopt at least one old person. 

You will ensure that this person is taken care of. You will support and assist them as they go from vibrant, active human beings into a slowly eroding crust of the person they once were. Remember, they are still people. They still think of themselves as the relevant, hip person they saw in the mirror at 20 -- rock climber, adventurer, auto mechanic, partier or upstart rebel -- not grandma or grandpa.

You will make sure to keep that kind of spirit alive in them. Get them to form new memories as the ravages of old age and decrepitude tear from them all but their most treasured stories, which they feel bear oft repeating. Indulge them. It's sometimes all they have. 

Remind them that they are still alive as you include them in as many things as possible. Not out of some duty or obligation, but because you genuinely relate to them as a human being, appreciate them and want them around. They can offer a wealth of perspective if you are open to it. And they may have a thing or two to learn from you. Win-win.

Let me conclude with this: As a recently diagnosed "old person," I have a friend who has adopted more than one us. Granted, she is a generally caring person, and anyone in her orbit will benefit from her compassion, but specific people, myself included, have been specifically targeted. She has adopted me, as well as her 78-year-old landlady, and she treats us like a couple of treasured pets. No one's getting eaten on her watch. (LYSM, E___!)

OK, back to my partisan podcasts and watching the apocalypse unfold in real-time.

Why would I even bother to pen this poor excuse for an excuse?

OK (so, pardon me for fartin'): This blog never promised you a rose garden. In fact, I'm pretty much certain that I labeled it a repository for all things, toxic and otherwise, which reside in dark corners of my sometimes conscious brain.

I did not promise you a set of encyclopedias, all the wealth and history, up-to-date, with play-by-play action of all things Andrew. I don't have the time or the inclination to describe in detail each and every turd. 

If you want the curated, best side only version, go to Fakebook. I couldn't keep it up. It was creating stress, from the responsibility to react and interact and constantly issue an opinion, an appropriate response or reaction (or non-reaction).

I admit, this blog is rather like a gall bladder, spewing bile when needed, or a spleen, venting God knows what. Or some other purely excretory system on the body, you fill in the blank.

But my main point was going to be this: Yes, I am aware that this blog is missing, like, the main bits, as far as being any kind of story, journal or memoir. It is a collection of toilet paper squares, upon which random wasted thoughts were smudged. These are mostly gaseous secretions, with very little substance.

I guess I must have felt something good at the time?

The sun is shining, clouds are high

Birds are singing, and so am I

Never thought that I could feel such peace

People smiling everywhere

Laughing, living on a dare

Dancing in the summer night, so free

Snapdragons and butterflies 

My body gone, the soul, it thrives

Endless possibilities entice me

 

Scary Bear

 

 

I was in a big apartment building, the kind you often find in horror movies, with long, dimly lit hallways, antique walnut stained moldings and brass door handles on the many, closely spaced rooms. I was a little disoriented by the layout, a multi-level spiral labyrinth which forced one to traverse the perimeter of the entire building as the architecture slowly ramped up from floor to floor. The rise was imperceptibly gradual, so as to give one the impression of everything being on the same floor.

Around the corner, at the far end of the building, a dark shadow appeared and began lumbering toward me. I could make out the form of an enormous bear just as it became alerted to my presence. He immediately broke into a full, loping run straight for me.

As per dream protocols (and general common sense) I began to panic. I knew I couldn't outrun him, so I tried some of the doors, hoping to get inside one of the rooms before he overtook me. None of them would open, so I kept running until I reached the corner, hoping to ditch him once I was out of his sight.

This tactic worked, and the bear seemed to slow his pursuit once I rounded the corner. In the back of my mind, though, I knew that this wasn't over, and I proceeded cautiously, hoping to reach some kind of exit before we ran into each other again. 

At the end of the hallway, just as I was about to round the next corner, I looked back and saw the same dark shadow appear, and the process repeated, with the bear spotting me and me panicking, running down the hallway toward the next corner. Each time I managed to get around the corner out of sight, the scene would reset, and I would get a moment's reprieve before being spotted and pursued by the bear once again.

I don't know how many times this loop repeated before I eventually woke up, the image of a giant bear--mouth open, barreling down a spooky hallway toward me--seared into my brain.

Serving God: Dice, lightly coat and then reassemble all pieces of the Diety, preheat oven to 425 degrees, standby fire drill, all hands on deck

 

It must be brutal

Eating all that strudel

Making appointments for your poodle

At the hot springs sushi bar groomer

The whole kit and kaboodle

Eviscerates your cosmic noodle

Fruitless to pursue

A furtive, restless dance ensues

Nonetheless

Breaking out in my hallway

Of all places

The stairs are a point of contention

There's no mistaking the intention

Bootstompingly giddy good times

Nothing to apologize for, my mere mortals 

The deity chortles and fixes an

Eggs Benedict real quick

To further obfuscate the situation

Pardon my sneezes

As they obliterate continents

Rattling their contents

And resulting in 

Accidental dismemberment

Remember

Don't forget

You tied the knot

Of your own blindfold

That chokehold

Is still you

Trying to make believe it's all true

Because what's more real than

Oh, let's say, torture...death and gloom

To brighten up a room?

Once upon a cat

Too smart to chase its tail

Came a dog too jaded to convince him to try

Together, they both lie

In their own way

The cat less apologetic

Because

Who cares about the philosophical meanderings

Of a dog

Anyway?

I mean, really, who does?

Nobody, that's who! 

Now leave me to my nap

Motherfuckers

And be quiet about it!

Sheesh!

3 AM

It's 3 AM

The numbers on the alarm clock

Unrelenting

Laser red

Doesn't feel like I'll ever sleep again

It's 3 AM

And I'm in my head

My soul is out wandering

But my body is glued to the bed

 

 

It's 3 AM

I'm time tripping again

Gonna give the dial a spin

Fast forward to the end

Look back at where I've been

...again

 

 

It's 3 AM

Just me and my head

Is this what it's like to be dead?

I've forgotten my soul

And brought along my anxieties and fears instead

 

 

It's 3 AM

I'd wander to the kitchen

Get something to eat

But I have no feet 

So I float up toward the ceiling

It's 3 AM

This feels like a dream

But I can't wake up

Because I already am

Damn

 

It's 3 AM

It's cold

I'm lonely

I need a friend

 

3 AM  

I open the curtain

And peer out into the night

As witches and demons peer in

 

It's 3 AM

This repetition is doing me in

I want to scream <SCREAM>

But no one would hear me if I did

It's 3 AM

The time when the veil is thin

Slits in the membrane

Rifts in heaven's skin

 

It's 3 AM

I'm sending out a signal

To guide all friendlies in

 

It's 3 AM

The sandman has come to 

Reclaim all of his sand

 

 

3 AM

My neighbors are at it again

The walls are paper thin

I don't know which is worse

The fighting or the makeup sex at 3 AM

 

 

It's 3 AM

I wish I smoked

Cigarettes

Just to have something to do

 

Qu'est-ce que c'est que je suis aujourd'hui?

Me and my head walk into a bar

The bartender seems to be ignoring us

So I say to him, "Is this what it's like to be dead?"

"That depends," he chuckles, still without looking at us.

"On how hard you hit your head on that bar."

 

----

This is meant to be some kind of stream of consciousness beat poetry. Picture a brooding guy on a stool strumming a single guitar chord with each intonation of the words "3 AM." Slight reverb and delay, perhaps some melancholic wah-wah. Jazz-ish, hipster vibe, vocals monotone, spoken, except for a single muted scream.

Superman stuck in my head.

I don’t know what is going on, but the cracking continues. I feel like something wants to break open, and I keep trying to hold it together with duct tape and the thinnest of sewing thread.

There’s a vague feeling that I want to describe which needs some kind of acknowledgment, but I keep pasting over it with the wallpaper of distraction: podcasts, audiobooks and TV shows. I call it Thought Replacement Therapy, or TRT, but is it really therapeutic, or am I just hindering the process?

There is a tinge of melancholy, a sentimental sadness for other days, and not necessarily better ones, but familiar ones. Everything is just so damn precious. I guess I am just a hoarder at heart. I can’t bring myself to throw anything away because attached to each one is a memory of a different time, a record of my life. I’ve had an abundance of experiences, painful and otherwise, so why is it necessary for me to attach meaning to a paperclip or a push pin, a scrap of paper or a 10 year old answering machine message?

If I could get behind the belief in time travel or the notion of a cosmic deity with infinite memory, then perhaps I would gain some comfort in the idea that all these things which appear so transient can still exist, the natural process of birth and decay can be obviated, and there is some kernel of something that lasts forever. 

It is so hard to wrap my head around endings. Perhaps decrepitude is my silver lining. When the car has racked up enough miles, dings and broken parts, it becomes something from which it is easier to finally walk away. But in my case, in the case of us all, what is it that walks away? It seems like the decision to live at all costs is the default we have programmed into us factory. Letting go is against our nature.

I know I will never build a tower or bridge or monument that will last beyond my years. I'll never write Beethoven's 9th symphony. I will likely leave my less than sentimental surviving friends and relatives little more than an annoyance of clutter needing to be sorted through for potential monetary value.

Who will go through my pictures, my audio recordings, even these pathetic ramblings, and why would they want to? There’s no one as sentimental as I for the things that are all so trivial.

And should I delete the record of my failings and defects, who would I be impressing with the curated version? 

 

I’m walking down the road, and I pass the dried carcass of a dead cat. It has been there for months. I remember when the cat was a spry and friendly adolescent kitty, allowing me to cautiously pet it. Now it is just dehydrated roadkill, withering on the asphalt. I have pictures of this kitty. One is the street scene above. Another is an action shot of her leaping from a rock, caught in mid-spring--so full of life, now just bones and fur.

I have plenty of other pictures in my photo collection which capture the beauty of youth, the pride of some shiny new object or place in the springtime of its life. But now I see the inevitable end of summer, the biting of winter and the death of all things green. You can’t fight mother nature or time. It doesn’t mean that you don’t try, though. 

I just passed some llamas and goats, a little more aged than the previous year. Seeing them makes me sad. One day they will be gone, or I will. 

Just ahead there is a blind curve where oncoming traffic cuts into my walking path, oblivious to the possibility of pedestrians. Regardless of the time, manner or place of my demise, it is a certainty. It’s just a matter of time.

So back to my mountains of things. Who will care about all of that? Relatives will have scant memories of me to reminisce over because we bonded little, due to distance and disparate interests, or simply through lack of effort, for which I’m partly to blame.

Part of me just wants to cry because that is my brain's most frequently used the emotional circuit. I’m certain that this grieving is part of a process, but it seems to be a place in which I  frequently remain stuck.

I treasure my deeper friendships, the very few that I have managed to hold onto, especially E____. Of all the people in the world, she is the one person who I feel most gets me, although there are volumes of unpleasant history and corners of my life to which she has not been made privy. Perhaps that is why we’re still friends. I guess I can be a good curator, hiding the unseemly side of the of the tapestry from view.

That is it from me today. I have nothing but ramblings, and not a lot of wisdom can be squeezed out of this over-wrung sponge. 

Here's your titular earworm: Superman

This Ain't Nothin'

 

Crying is a guilty pleasure of mine. It's a rarified mood that I'm in, as it doesn't happen so much these days. Sure, I cry tears of self-pity, and my pain is mine. But occasionally, when the constellations and the stars align, I get a shot of empathy, mainlined into my cracked open heart. 

I've been broken, and that's OK with me. I sometimes wish the process was different, but what else would it be? I'm a hard nut to crack. I've been hit on the head, and it didn't slow my roll. What can I say, I'm a Taurus, you know, the bull.

I feel the pain of bugs I've killed, entire families, obliterated indiscriminately. I've also set a bunch of spiders free, gently re-homing them, so maybe, Karma, consider this, and please be kind to me.

Today, I'm somewhere in between a lazy Sunday, a guilt-free Saturday and the pressure of Monday to conform, somewhat, if only for appearance sake, to the norm. Everyday people struggle every day. Sometimes, I feel it's only me. That's why the stye, the vulgar blip on my eye. Something had to get my attention. Now that you have it, what is it you'd like from me?

----

I'll stop with the demi-rhymes and get to the straight dope. Nope. (I had to throw that last one in.) But seriously, folks...all jokes aside...

Today, I feel like I've been blended and processed, the rough edges sanded, nails pounded in, or pulled out all the way. Not sure which it is, but it feels a whole lot like being human. But a part of a bigger humanity kind of human. Like your suffering is my suffering, because I've been there, or somewhere like it. I don't even care about sentences, just sentiment, at this point. 

I got my eyelid injection on Wednesday. By Friday, the swelling had gone down considerably, and I could see (figuratively and literally) a way forward that didn't involve me looking like a Witchy Poo Elephant Man for the rest of my life. Maybe that's hyperbole, but that's also me. Big 'ol drama queen.

I went to Walmart, expecting to see my usual optometrist Dr. Tran, but she was off that day. A new guy named Than was there. Jeremy, I believe. I almost didn't get in because I was late to the appointment, having been delayed at my psychiatrist's office. 

I'd listened with fidgety interest to his psycho-medical ramblings which strayed into the territory of his own personal ideals, which fall even further on the hedonism scale than my own. Champagne, cocaine and strippers, to be precise. OK, Doc, you go. No judgement. But I did have an eye appointment to get to.

I sat in the Optometrist's office well into their lunch hour, and the receptionist warned me that I might not get in. I waited nonetheless, and I'm glad I did. It turns out that Dr. Tran was/is an intern at the Pearlman Eye Center in Woodland, where I had an appointment slated for Aug. 1. I was desperate to make that happen sooner, so I prevailed upon him to ask if he could get me in as soon as possible.

He made the phone call right then and there, and the next thing you know, I had an appointment for that day. I drove down there in record time and waited around in their air conditioned office, not the least bit nervous about the procedure that was about to take place. 

He examined my eyelid, and I could tell he was taking it seriously. His voice was monotone as he dictated to his transcriptionist, "7mm hordeolum, right upper eyelid."  

Better than my mom's reaction: "OH, MY GOD!" (Not helping, Mom.)

Anyway, I made it home, a little bleary-eyed, and some residual stinging from the 10 second long injection of .2 ml of some steroid or other. True to his prognostication, I had a shiner around the eye for a few days. It was a welcome cosmetic improvement, actually. It's clearing up now, four days later. 

The nodule has also reduced, and it doesn't appear as angry. It still has a hardness, which I suppose may never fully resolve. It is scar tissue at this point, but it is not the hideous growth that previously threatened to explode like the Alien did out of Sigourney Weaver. I was getting ready to have to name it or give it a baby shower. Now, I'm hoping we can just gradually drift apart amicably.

Saturday, I played the Dobbins Farmer's Market open mic with my neighbor. He is starting a side hustle called Mountain Mic or something of that nature. Open mic and karaoke for small local venues. I shared the stage with him on and off for 4 hours this week and a couple of Saturdays ago. I feel at ease talking to the mostly non-attentive sellers and customers. It's a positive atmosphere, and no one feels the need to heckle me. I do my own preemptive heckling anyway.

That's all for now. It's back to Sunday's remedial hedonism, which I had to postpone due to a prior engagement. The coffee was rather weak, however, and I'm going to go easy on the weed, or so I'm telling myself...

This Ain't Nothin'

Things that I should be figuring out, but can’t/or won’t.

 

 

Let’s see if this looks as petty when I put it on paper.

At 6 AM, I awoke after having slept a broken 4 1/2 hours. Immediately, of course, I went to the mirror with a sense of dread. I was going to look at my eye. From my recent experience, my internal prognostication was that it would look worse.

It wasn’t exactly worse, in fact, the color seemed to be a little less red, and the swelling, while not dramatically improved, was at least not worse.

I wiped a little gunk from the corner of my eye and left it alone. Let the antibiotic ointment do its job.

Determined to keep to my routine of exercising in the morning, I went on with my early-morning preliminaries: brush teeth, feed cats, open windows and get out before the sun gets too high up and the temperatures soar. The heat wave is still in full swing, reaching 107° yesterday.

Things began to go awry quite quickly. While feeding Stevie, I accidentally filled the water bowl with food, requiring me to clean it. I have done this numerous times. It is an indication of just not paying enough attention to what I’m actually doing. 

As I was rinsing out the water bowl and dumping the water, I bumped my forehead on the corner of the eaves on the back deck. It was a substantial blow, leaving a small chunk of flesh on the rain gutter.   Cursing, crying and clutching my forehead, I went in the house and cleaned the small trickle of blood that was running down my forehead. 

The gouge wasn’t too bad. I’ve seen worse. My wife was never surprised when I bumped my head.

"With an enormous cranium like you have, I’m surprised you don’t bump into everything all day every day."

She was given to hyperbole and also enjoyed any chance to get a jab at me for my stubbornness and general inattention to things. Apparently, my inner critic wasn’t doing a good enough job, so she felt the need to assist.

Wondering if I should take a message from the two examples of my lack of mindfulness this morning, I contemplated changing my plans from riding my bike to simply walking. Certainly less risky, I imagined.

Fuck it, I thought, I can still make my early morning bike ride if I put a bandage on my forehead. I grabbed my earphones, and was just about to put them in when I heard the sound of a cat vomiting. On carpet. Of course.

It was Patsy this time. And she was barfing at the top of the stairs in the spot she usually inhabits during the daytime. She stays glued to this spot to ensure that I will not ignore her pleas for attention or food. It's a "pay troll" situation, and I'm OK with that for the most part.

Cursing and ranting, I began to clean up the mess. At least it wasn’t Eddie this time, or so I thought. 

As my friend Ronaldo used to say, "That was a thought wasted."

Eddie had her own pile of barf, thankfully on tile this time. Hers seemed more hairball related, although given her poor appetite and propensity for barfing, I was not given much comfort by this.

Patsy had managed to barf into a crevice, and it was wet food vomit, so it required more cleaning.

"I’m not mad at the cats. I’m not mad at the cats. I’m mad at myself," I repeated over and over. 

This non-dual philosophy of mine is really getting to be a thorn in my side. It pretty much obviates my ability to direct my rants towards any externally blamable source. I want to curse at the universe, but I am not something separate and apart from it."Why am I doing this to myself?" is what I should be saying. The buck stops here. I am the buck. Fuck!

Just for shits and giggles, I decided to do a quick one-card tarot reading. I can vacillate between magical thinking and nihilism in a nanosecond.

The seven of pentacles, reversed. From the internet:

"Seven of Pentacles reversed can indicate that procrastination, laziness or aimlessness is preventing you from manifesting your goals. It can indicate a lack of self-reflection or not taking stock, lack of planning or aimlessness. 

"In a health context, if you have been experiencing health issues, the Seven of Pentacles reversed can indicate that these may be the result of poor health habits or behaviour in the past that you are now seeing the result of. If so, you need to start adjusting your lifestyle to correct this behaviour and aid your recovery. It can also be an indicator that you need to stop and evaluate how your lifestyle is impacting your long-term health and make any necessary changes before you reap what you sow."

By this time I had given up on the idea of a bike ride, but I was still determined to go for a walk. I can’t say that I learned one damn thing, as I am, at this very moment, walking and using a text editor, staring down at the screen, instead of paying attention to where my feet are going. 

Fortunately, the traffic seems to be light on Loma Rica Road, and most of the cars can apparently see my bright yellow safety attire. And by the grace of God, the universe or the person who decides where snakes are to be placed, I have not stepped on a rattler this morning. Yet.

----

Afternoon update: I am still nursing the mother of all styes. It's like an enormous, painful pimple on my eyelid, but it seems days away from popping. All I can do is keep it clean and use compresses, take the antibiotics and apply ointment, none of which seem to make any difference, except to irritate it. Ibuprofen is of marginal effectiveness against the pain.

I have an appointment with a specialist in Woodland in the beginning of August, but the amount of pain and misery I am going through at the moment makes that day seem like some far off mirage. Who knows what condition I (and eye) will be in by then. (See what I did there? A little reggae humor.)

I'm still here mofos!

 

This is the quote that broke me today

 

 

Please, don't worry so much. 

Because in the end, none of us 

Have very long 

On this Earth. 

 

Life is fleeting. 

And if you're ever distressed, 

Cast your eyes to the summer sky 

When the stars are strung across the velvety night. 

 

And when a shooting star streaks through the blackness, 

Turning night into day... 

Make a wish and think of me. 

Make your life spectacular.

 

— Robin Williams as Jack in Jack, 1996.

Underwear Party and Siri's NDE

Apparently, last night I was hosting an underwear party, although, it didn’t appear that way at first. I just had two friends over, Suzanne Reed and Martin Leon, and we were in my apartment. Suzanne was making me laugh with her quirky offbeat humor, and Martin was there to assist me with some technical issue.

Pretty early on, I realized that Suzanne was only wearing a T-shirt and panties. This had become obvious because of her casual seating position on the furniture.

(I’m suddenly reminded of a camel stool that my mother had when I was about five or six. It was a wooden stool with four legs and a carved protrusion in the shape of a camel's head on one end.)

I’m not going to say that Suzanne was straddling a camel stool like a saddle; that would just be me conflating the memory at this point. She was, however, flung or slung or strewn like laundry, casually draped across the furniture, legs akimbo, with her hand in close proximity to her crotch, in a pose reminiscent of Pink in her early days.

It was only after a while that I looked down and noticed that neither Martin nor myself were wearing any pants. So, an underwear party it was.

The house began to fill up with other young people, a lot of whom I did not know, and who appeared to just be hipsters looking for a place to party. I was not a big fan of their mumbly, hoodied vibe, but since I was enjoying Suzanne‘s company, I didn’t make a big deal of it.

"Do you know who you remind me of?" I asked Suzanne.

"No," she said, "who?"

"My friend, E____," I told her.

This was not on account of the saucy way in which she made use of the furniture, but because of her quick wit and readiness with a silly pun or metaphor.  Neither she nor Martin knew who E____was, so the reference was lost on them.

It began to dawn on my twisted little mind that perhaps Suzanne was in a rough patch with her husband, or perhaps their marriage had gone off the rails entirely, and she was here to have one of those liberating post-divorce experiences that one hears about. One could only hope.

Nothing actually transpired, but her off-brand, quirky sexuality was on full display. So although nothing untoward happened, my compass needle was definitely pointing toward untoward. (I have to work on the delivery of that one.)

I showed Martin to his sleeping area, where he and Suzanne were sitting on the bed talking. Well, he was talking. She was just kind of bouncing in her seat to some beat in her head. I had to check the comforter for cat barf before declaring it safe for human habitation.

I woke up at some point, as I typically do, and that was that.

----

It was shortly after 1:28 AM when I reached over to tap my iPhone’s screen, and I found it unresponsive. This had never happened before, but I assumed it had simply shut itself off, so I went to turn it back on with some fumbling around and pressing of side buttons.

It buzzed and beeped and sounded like it was in pain, emitting a that I had never heard and hope to never hear again. It sounded like a robot getting kicked in the groin. At some point, the little flashlight illuminated briefly, and then all went silent.

I may or may not have interrupted it during an update, I don’t know, but I pressed so many buttons and frantically swiped and touched the screen in such a fashion that I could’ve accidentally called emergency services.

I resigned myself to the idea that I would have to at the very least take it into the Apple Store if not replace it altogether.


I did a little online research--because that’s what you do in the middle of the night when your iPhone dies and you have immediate withdrawal panic--and after a two minute YouTube video prescription did not fix it, I went back to bed.

I attempted to meditate or some such nonsense, but this was not going to work, and I abandoned the idea after a minute or two. Just as I was about to delve into all the possible failure scenarios in earnest, I looked down at the screen, and it was alive again. Some message about iOS and SOS emergency services notification popped up.

I didn’t have any answers as to what initiated unresponsive black screen, but at that point, I didn’t care. I navigated out of the settings menu and set the phone aside.

It took me a while to fall back asleep, but when I did, I was treated to the silly dream of Suzanne straddling furniture and an apartment full of hipsters.

Perhaps my friend Martin will try to claim credit for remotely repairing my phone, and I'm OK with that. I’m just glad I didn’t have to spoil his Fourth of July with another annoying tech question. I’m certain that he already regrets selling me the iPhone, as I have been one of those type of customers.

----

I’m out walking, and the sun is just now rising above the mountain of my demise. Yes, I’m still eyeing it, and the stye factory in my right eye is reinforcing ideations of my eventual ascent and self-termination upon its summit. I am keeping in shape with the walking, in part, so it won’t become an impossibility, although I don’t know if I can keep this up until I’m 89.

Working at the radio factory

I was working again, this time the scenery had changed. Instead of Yuba City Honda, it was kind of a mashup of Yuba City Honda, RECCO Furnaces and General Electric's radio division. The workplace dream set included only lunch tables and break room area. 

It was my first day, and I was just being shown around, so I’m not sure if I was actually hired there, or if this was only a tour. 

I was given a large, bulky transistor radio, AM only, and monophonic, although it had two speakers. Houa, an ex-coworker from Honda, was also present, and he commented on my acquisition.

“Nice, Glandpa,” he said. “Does it get shortwave?”

I was familiar with kind of radio of which he spoke, and this one did resemble one of those. I looked at the dial, the good old-fashioned string and red marker kind, and while the numbers did reflect a slightly larger band than normal AM radio, it was not quite shortwave or anything.

“No,” I said. “It appears to only have AM.”

I lugged around this 10 pound beast throughout the rest of the dream, never really thinking to turn it on. At some point, though, I did, and I was surprised when it came to life.

“Is it normal for batteries to be included with one of these?” I asked.

“No,” Bob Hansel informed me. “That is highly unusual, and it is not our policy.”

While  this dream is scant story or details, there was an overall vibe, and I’m still trying to place it.

I’ve had to change up my routine, and so I am dreaming more. I’m hoping to get back into the habit of recollecting where it is that I go during my nighttime excursions.

A most distressing situation

A most distressing situation.

I am at my wit's end. I have two outdoor spayed and semi-socialized kitties, one of whom has gotten herself into a terrible jam.

I have been feeding these kitties out on my front porch and my back deck, you know, to avoid squabbling over their meager portions. 

This practice has also attracted a few raccoons, possum, skunks, and a few other cats, all of whom I gently tell to get lost. Sorry, no room at the inn. I've adopted these two kitties, but I can't feed the whole outdoor animal population.

The raccoons are pretty stubborn, however, and they make their rounds despite my adopting the practice of not feeding after dark.

Recently, I made the mistake of leaving my garage door open at night. This has happened on more than one occasion. I feared that the raccoons would start living under my house in my labyrinth of horrors crawlspace. 

(I have two crawlspaces, actually, and one of them is a "deadman's crawlspace," meaning you may enter, but there is no way you can get back out before you expire from mold and fiberglass inhalation. Truly nasty.) 

I vowed to start closing the garage every night to prevent unwanted visitors from taking up residence in there.

One of my kitties is an avid hunter, so naturally, she went in to explore, likely on the trail of a rodent of some kind. When I shut the garage door the other night, I made the call for any kitties to make their way out before the door was shut for the night. If someone did get locked in, no biggie, I was going to open the door up in the morning anyway.

The next day, Stevie (that's the hunter kitty) didn't show up for breakfast. I wasn't worried. I figured I must have locked her in the garage, and I went to open it up to let her out. I expected to see a frantic, grateful cat rush past me toward freedom. But instead it was just quiet. I figured she must be sleeping off a nice rodent binge. She would emerge on her own timeline.

But she didn't show up for dinner, and I wasn't going to leave the door open all night, because of the raccoon thing, so, reluctantly, I shut the door for the night. Night two.

The next morning (yesterday) I opened the garage, and there was evidence that something had been banging around in there. A few things were knocked over, but not really raccoon level destruction. I found evidence of claw marks that were clearly cat generated on a piece of duct tape that was sealing the corner of my garage door.

Now I was fairly certain that it was a cat, so I went about looking in the garage, even peering into the evil crawlspace and calling out for her. We are on good terms, and she will let me pet her, but she's not one to come when called. That's my other cat, Spooky. She's practically a dog, running after me when I go check the mail.

Anyway, I wanted to leave the garage door open for Stevie, but when I attempted to do this, Spooky, the dog kitty, came bounding up and tried to get into the crawlspace of no return. I didn't want her doing that because there could still be a rabid raccoon hiding under there waiting to eat her, who may or may not have eaten my other cat, and I didn't want to lose two cats to the Bermuda Triangle. One cat disappearance was enough.

So, I reluctantly shut the garage door once again. I figured sooner or later, Stevie would emerge and decide she'd had enough of hiding out. Can't live off of rodents forever. 

But after another whole day had passed, with me intermittently checking the garage and calling out for her, all the while having to fend off Spooky, who really seemed intent on entering the crawlspace, I finally had to resort to setting my large animal trap.

I loaded it up with cat food and even a can of tuna. I have had great success in the past trapping and re-homing all manner of wildlife in this trap: foxes, possum, raccoons, feral cats, you name it. (Never a skunk, thankfully.) I set up a surveillance cam with night vision and waited for my first customer. I was still not certain that it was just a cat in my garage, but the evidence was leaning heavily in that direction.

Another day and night passed, and no action on the cam. The trap was untouched. Now it is the third day, today, and I am really worried. I knew Stevie had to be in there, but she hadn't made a peep. My indoor cats, sensing something was amiss, had done some yowling the night before.

This morning, I decided to explore the forbidden zone a bit further, sticking my head into the dead man's crawl. I heard a faint meow. It was Stevie. I couldn't see her because a lot of the floor insulation under there had fallen down. I grabbed a cane, and gently lifted a fallen section, and there she was behind it. 

I called to her softly, using my best "good kitty" voice, but she was having none of it. She skittered away even further into the gloomy, uninhabitable darkness. At least she could skitter. I lay there on the concrete, pleading, coaxing, offering food and water, but she seemed firmly set against the idea of approaching the exit.

I have moved the trap as far in as the camera viewing would allow, so I can monitor when and if she decides to approach the freshly placed wet food. I don't really want to traumatize her with the trap, but I also want to end this without further incident. I'm afraid that if I don't trap her, when I go to open the garage door, she will spook and run back into the crawlspace, prolonging the whole standoff. I can't leave the garage door open, for fear of losing another cat, or having a raccoon or other undesirable take up residence under there.

So that's where it stands now. Waiting for a poor traumatized cat to take the bait and get traumatized even further before eventually being liberated by me. I know the fire department has been known to rescue cats from trees, but short of removing my floor with a fire axe, there is no way a fireman is getting into that crawlspace. Unless they were a very tiny, very courageous firefighter, in which case, I'm sure their skills would be needed elsewhere, being fire season and all.

That's it. Thanks for reading. Please comment if you have any helpful suggestions. Or cold cuts. I know cats love those.

Later that evening, as I was washing my hands and just about to sit down to dinner, I heard some loud meowing coming through the AC vents in my downstairs bathroom.

I had been willing to play the waiting game, but her meowing under the house was pulling at my heartstrings, so I stopped what I was doing and went back into the garage, determined to do whatever it took to end this. 

I removed the cage and saw that she was a lot closer to the opening, so I sat down and had another go at negotiation. It was back and forth for a few tense minutes, both of us conceding just a little at a time. 

First, an apology from me. OK. Done. Then lots of promises of fresh turkey. And whatever else I had on hand. 

 

I placed a small piece of turkey on a plate and slid it toward her. She advanced a little, meowing loudly. She still wasn't comfortable with my giant frame in front of her, so I backed off. 

 

"Further," I could almost hear her thinking. I went completely out of sight. In an instant, so did the turkey. Down in one gulp. 

 

I knew it was just a matter of time and space at this point. I put down some more, this time closer to the outside. Soon she began eyeing the world outside of the crawlspace and meowing even louder.

 

"You want the garage door open?" I said, sensing she might take a chance and bolt past me to the outside world. Another demand met. 

 

I opened the door, making certain that the other cat wasn't going to make a dash inside. I wasn't down for a revolving door cat trick. 

 

She did as I had hoped and ran past me and the extra food, out to the glorious freedom of the evening air. 

 

"Yay, Stevie!" I gleefully proclaimed to anyone within earshot.

 

I went back in and sealed off the opening, closed the garage for the night, and placed the rest of the food in her usual feeding location on the back deck.

 

She followed me without hesitation and ran up to me for pats and whisker rubs. All was forgiven.

 

That's all folks. You may all sleep sound tonight. Stevie is free, fed and happy!

Universe 1, Andrew 0 -- A text that didn't send (thankfully?)

 

Hello again. Sorry about the tardy reply. I’ve been dealing with some weird stuff over here on the home front. 

I credit myself for being a mostly rational rather than magical thinker, however, some of the events of the last couple days have me questioning that. 

I tend to be a little skeptical of connections drawn between seemingly disparate events like:  “I lost my car keys, then I begged the universe, or God, or whatever, and suddenly they appeared in my left coat pocket”  kind of thing. 

Yesterday, however, I was shaking my fist at the sky (I can be a bit immature, I’ll admit) when a blog post I was editing disappeared from the text editor without rhyme or reason. And then something really weird occurred.

I’d been trying to stave off a stye that was threatening to ruin my week, so I testily opened the hot water valve in my bathroom sink to wet a washcloth for a warm compress. Middle finger still extended skyward and curses issuing forth from my mouth, I made it clear to the universe how I felt about how my day was going.

At the instance that I turned on the faucet, bright orange water poured out of the tap, like a home edition of one of the plagues of Egypt. The timing was so synchronous that I had to laugh… and tremble just a little.

“I take it back! I take it back!” I said to the universe, meekly.

The universe did relent, and the water began to run clear, the plague of blood water not returning. This has never happened before at my house, and (knock on wood) it hasn’t happened since.

The stye was still bothering me, however, and I made several eye doctor appointments because I have suffered with things like this in the past. (I’m not a walking collection of problems, I promise. Well, no more than average, I suppose.)

Anyway, my mood suffered as a result, and in my painful desperation, I looked up home remedies and stumbled across an old one that recommended rubbing a gold wedding band on the affected eyelid. I had been using warm compresses for several days, to no effect. 

I was skeptical, but after reading several reviews of this supposed hack, I thought I’d give it a try. I still have my old wedding ring from my marriage to my deceased wife. 

After just a minute or so of lightly rolling this golden cylinder around on my closed eyelid, the stye ruptured, and the pain was relieved. I sterilized the area and used a teabag to help relieve the swelling. This was only a few hours ago, but the issue is about 75% resolved, and my mood has improved greatly. 

I now somewhat believe in magic.

Why am I telling you all this? I don’t know, I just figured you deserved an explanation for my slow response time. I’m usually right on it when it comes to texting.

Also, please excuse the length of this text. I’m trying an experiment. I’m composing it in my phone’s notepad, and I’ll attempt to copy and paste it, to hopefully avoid sending out mystery words because of Tinder’s tiny, invisible text box.

Here are some links to things I have created, some recently, and some going back as far as 2005, when I used to be able to use ProTools to record some of my original stuff. I’m in a dry spell as far as creating original music these days, so I am mostly doing covers of songs that I liked growing up. 

Some of this stuff is kind of raw, weird, and I don’t know what, exactly. I just figured I’d throw it out there, and you can judge away. 

Let me know if these links don’t work, as sometimes you have to be a member. I’m not sure, but they worked for me.

https://soundcloud.com/user-256645391/sets/hoody-mix

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN6tc1xxaGw-uU1U_02O5GA

Anyway, hopefully, you will find some of it mildly entertaining, even if it’s not your exact cup of tea. Classical and opera it is not. 

It’s late, so for now, I will bid you a fond goodnight, good morning or afternoon, whichever it is when you receive this.  

----

I tried to copy and paste the above text into a tiny message window to send to a girl on Tinder who Superliked me and has texted a couple of times. It didn't send, and try as I might, the little button was grayed out, preventing that lengthy silliness from going forth. Umm...thanks?

I want to say here, for public record, that I must concede that the universe just might know what it's doing after all, and that these things that happen to me are not random, nor are they necessarily punitive or malicious. There just may be some kind of benevolent reason for which these events occur, tragic as they seem at the time to my drama queen sensibilities. Maybe, just maybe. 

I WANT to believe.

The stye really is 75% better, and although there's another one creeping up, it seems quite a bit calmer, and hopefully less painful. The first one was about to drive me to an early grave. No kidding. It was bad. We'll see what tomorrow brings. 

I'll be a good boy. 

Thanks, Universe, and goodnight!

A deleted post

There was supposed to be a post here, I suppose. But was it ever there? The universe decided to delete its entire contents as I searched for the perfect picture to adorn it. 

It was going to be a post about a dream I had the other night, in which I shared an intimate kiss with my best friend. All the emotions and details were fresh when I had written it down. It was the most exquisite dream, full of images which I will treasure.

Gone.

So, lesson for the day? Yeah, sure. Give up. It was just a dream, after all.

Just for that, no picture today, just petty, pouty text, of which I am not proud. 

I'm not proud of much these days, if I'm honest. 

I'm a collection of poor personality traits, physical defects and a walking encyclopedia of misdeeds. 

And I'm on Tinder.

Why in the fuck would I even bother? 

My contagion needs eradication, not advertisement. 

I am a jar of scabs.

FML.

A relative question

When my therapist asks how I'm doing, there is always a long pause before I respond: "I don't know." And then I launch into my 20 minute soliloquy, bitching about the various things that have been pissing me off since our last session. 

I don't know why I always feel compelled to start every statement with some version of this. I'm not a politician trying to evade taking a definitive stance. But that is exactly what I'm doing. "I don't know" is my mantra, and I cling to it as if it were an actual core tenet of my beliefs. Look back at the beginning of this paragraph for proof.

Part of it may come from my experience with the cult. In the 80s, I was thoroughly indoctrinated in the dogma of a particular Christian based sect. Individual thought was suppressed, verboten, and anyone who expressed any deviance from the statements and claims of Pastor Robert Leon (yes, I'm going to keep calling him out by name) was met met with rebuke, if not immediate expulsion. 

"We have The Truth," he would admonish, and he could back up any of his claims with a flurry of scriptural references before you could say "boo." After a while, his claims were just accepted as gospel, and references weren't even checked. 

His power lay in our acceptance of the idea that there was an actual truth with a capital T, and that it was contained in the Holy Bible, New American Standard version, to be precise. That was the most correct translation, after all, and he had done the research, so we might as well acquiesce, or there'd be hell to pay. Literal, eternal torment, with fire and brimstone. The whole bit.

I swallowed the pill, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Eventually, I found that this wholesale abandonment of critical thought and the unquestioned belief in a particular set of ideas to be untenable. Like a cat with a hairball, I vomited up the pill before it could fully take effect. Apparently, the Word of God was not agreeing with my sentient intestinal guidance system, so I quit the cult, leaving after a paltry 6 years of service. 

It didn't take to long to get back to the life I'd left behind. Back to the familiar hedonism of my teenage lifestyle, pot and alcohol and trying (unsuccessfully) to get laid. Except that 6 years had seen a lot of changes in my social circles and the world at large, and I'd missed most of the 80s. Oh, well, I didn't much care for Madonna or hair metal anyway. 

Why am I tangentially revisiting this period? I don't know. Ha. There it is again. But I do know. To give context for why I don't claim to know anything. For one, I don't want to be like that cult guy, so damn cocksure about everything, convinced that everyone who held an alternate belief was going to hell.

Fast forward many years, many experiences, a marriage, a career, the illness and death of my wife, and a brief but intense spiritual quest for answers, and I landed somewhere in the camp of non-dual philosophy. Here, everything is one, and nothing lays claim to being The Truth. For my descent into "I-don't-knowism," I blame Adyashanti, Alan Watts, Eckhardt Tolle, and others of that ilk.

Within our particular realm of existence, perhaps, some qualified, definitive statements can be made. (Insert your favorite truism here.) As for other realms of existence, I don't know. I'm living in this one. Your reality might differ. It's a shared experience, perceived differently from different angles. I wanted to trust science and physics, but then they came out with quantum mechanics, and we are back to fairy tales.

So how am I doing? I don't know. It's a relative question, at best, isn't it?

----

Definitive statements for the day: My right upper eyelid is swollen, red and painful. It has been this way since last Wednesday. It is the same eyelid where I had a chalazion, which is a kind of blockage of the meibomian gland that leads to chronic inflammation. See Oct 2020. I am only making this note so that later I can reference a start date. The last time, the condition persisted for months before it seemed to resolve after a steroid injection into that eyelid.