Just a quick note about cars and houses

I was going to write down a quick recap of a dream I had the other night, but I got caught up in a rabbit hole of backstory info, and I completely lost the plot. Here's what I remember:

 I was driving a red Toyota Corolla SR5 hatchback, the exact one I owned in the 80s. Emery was in the front seat, and we were in bumper to bumper traffic on some SoCal freeway. During one of the stop-and-go incremental inches forward, the car ahead of me went "stop," and I went "go." 

It was not a violent lurch, and I immediately recognized and corrected my mistake by applying maximum brakes. The car did not respond maximally, however, and I found myself ever so slightly nudging the car in front of me. It was so light of a love tap that, if it were a knock on someone's front door, the inhabitants wouldn't have even bothered to get up from watching TV or playing cribbage.

Later, I did get out and give the vehicle an inspection, and I found that the entire right front fender had a Titanic sized gash in it, exposing half of the engine compartment. I looked under the vehicle, and found that it was leaking transmission fluid as well. It went from just a minor fender bender to, "Hmm, it looks like my car is totaled." 

Upon closer inspection, I could see that a drain/fill bolt was missing, as if left out during a service. I pondered the meaning of this while still in the dream, but decided to wake up rather than solve the problem.

--

Last night, I had a similar dream. This time, I was living in a house that was equally as, or more decrepit than, the one in which I am currently living. My chronic health issues had followed me into my dream, so I felt paralyzed and weak, like the fixes were too numerous, and I'd likely just die before correcting them. 

A co-worker, Jose Anguiano, of the Yuba City Honda parts department, was on hand, giving me at-home price quotes on some things I might need to get started on repairs. I thanked him for his concern, but I was in too weakened a state from the pain to take much interest in actually doing any of it. 

The song lyric, "You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em" came into my head and resided there for the duration of the dream. 

Last night, I felt so bad in real life that waking up was not the relief it should have been. I had to pee, though, so I did get up, but I went right back to bed. 

Unfortunately, the dream and its feeling of pained futility still lingered. As above, so below. I couldn't escape my crappy house and poor health dilemma by going back to sleep, and here I am awake and unable to make the smallest or largest decisions.

For context, I have a chronic abdominal pain which seems to be inextricably linked to my time spent indoors. I recently had an AC guy come out and look at my system because it smelled funny. He found a lake of bacteria living inside my evaporator box. 

Being the nice guy that he was, he cleared the plugged drain tube and let the water run free. The problem is, the water outlet just drains underneath the house creating a damp environment in an already creepy, swampy crawlspace. 

Meanwhile, I'm living my worst life, in pain every single day, hopeless, lonely and full of bitterness. A man's home is his castle, and my castle is pretty fucked up. 

This is for documentation purposes, and I don't expect the writing quality is even worth fussing over. My vanity has its limits. 

Fuck it.  

--

Oh, and by the way, I briefly started up The Morning Pages last year, 2-1/2  spiral notebooks worth of handwritten rants, observations and dream journal entries -- that you'll never get your hands on in a million years, you AI scan-bot fucks! Not even if you beg! 

Spoiler alert, it's much more unhinged, unfiltered and unredacted than this powder-puff pillow blog. And yeah, at some point, I'll probably curate and transcribe some of it, because that's what I do. 

Don't wait up, though. Just scan the obits for the estate sale, retrieve them from the dumpster, and then try to run them through your OCR. I've purposely got the worst handwriting. It's like cryptography. 

Have a nice day, whatever that means to an amorphous, soul-collecting, LLM aggregate AI. Enjoy your steak sauce! 

I'm not giving you any more

No quid pro quo, no go. Sorry, AI scrapers. You should have enough of my ramblings by now to fashion your very own existentially challenged fake human, complete with my own particular quirks, to add to your repertoire of human traits to mimic. Have fun doing human consciousness karaoke. I hope you have the time of your life.

This is another public service announcement from Hoodyup the Evil Caregiver

I'm going to transcribe some of my previously unpublished song lyrics from the 80s, 90s and beyond and backdate them in here. Dates will be approximate unless specifically provided. I hope my robot stalkers and uncommitted followers from all over the world will find them amusing. Happy digging! 

 

Troubled sleep leads to a breakthrough

Last night, I woke up at 3:30 AM, and I had a tough time getting back to sleep. My mind was somehow wide awake, and it wanted to argue with some random guy’s Facebook post that had bothered me earlier in the day. The post was the shared content type. Someone I barely know shared something from someone they don’t know but somehow resonated with, and now they wanted to pass it along, as if to say, “This is how I feel.” 

The post was confrontational, divisive and accusatory. Someone purporting to be a friend of the late C.K. (a person they deemed to be a wonderful, fair-minded individual, a proponent of debate and free speech and whose right-wing extremist ideology they support) was sharing their outrage over his murder. They spent very little time eulogizing before getting right down to the heart of the matter: “Liberals are evil, and we need to rid the world of them!”

I thought about responding at the time, but because I never really comment on anything else this friend posts, I felt a bit disingenuous chiming in and telling him to tone down the hate speech. How about a nice: “Hello. How’ve ya been? How’s the family?” before lambasting him with my moral cattle prod. So I hid the post and snoozed my right-leaning friend, but my mind was not done with him, apparently. 

As I lay there in my bed, alarm clock glowing cherry red beside me, I thought, “Geez, how did I get here?” 

Why am I lying awake with all these thoughts that make my brain want to fight someone over their (admittedly fucked up) beliefs. Why the hostility in my own reaction? Whence cometh this invasion into my own consciousness? Are these thoughts in my head even mine?

I knew the answer. It was these damned screens. It was all the shit I’ve been feeding my brain, like a crack-head, hit after hit, from morning until night. One big stockpile of anti-right rhetoric with nowhere to go, on account of I don’t actually see real people very often, and when I do everyone is as polite as church mice at an ice cream social. I don’t guess that metaphor works, but hey, it sounds poetic. 

My mind has become like an addict’s mind, and it has zero discipline to even focus on one form of content at a time. I will be listening to a news podcast, scrolling Facebook and looking at Threads on my phone all at the same time. I have to have the very latest-breaking doom to feed my life-deficient psyche its minute to minute dose of brain chemicals.

“Touch grass,” they say. Ha. I barely go outside in a day. 

Anyway, I knew what had to be done. I had to begin a meditation practice again immediately. I didn’t remember much, so I started with just breathing.

“I am breathing,” I thought to myself with each in-breath. 

And as if on cue for a call and response, my brain would counter: “And you’re thinking about….”

Bad Facebook post. 

Upcoming surgery. 

Every single thing D.T. has done in the last 8 months. 

All sorts of variations. 

I kept on with the “I am thinking about” part, but instead of letting my brain get away with whatever nonsense it was doing, I decided to take it on directly.

With the out-breath, I would acknowledge, “I am thinking about…” Sure. I’m in possession of these thoughts now, so I’m going to take ownership. The buck stops here. 

But I took it a step further.

I took the the sentence, “I’m thinking about cheese,” for example, and I would diagram the sentence like we did back in grammar school. 

From:

“I am thinking___

                                 about____

                                                 cheese,”

I would picture myself erasing it, starting at the bottom and working my way up to the top. 

“I am  thinking______

                                      about______”

to

"I am thinking____." 

 

And when I got to the last little bit, 

“I am____,” 

I would just leave it there. 

 

And back to breathing.

“I am breathing.” 

It really worked. My brain got tired of coming up with new things to diagram eventually, but not before trying different compound sentences and throwing related ideas into the mix.

“I am thinking____

                      about____

                            cheese____

                                    while_____

                                                 riding____

                                                              a____

                                                                    bicycle____

                                                                               because___

                                                                                           it____

                                                                                                   is____

                                                                                                          fun_____

                                                                                                                        you_____

stupid____

          fuck_____.” 

Big eraser. Scrub scrub. No challenging the thought. Just let it come out, then chop it into bite-sized bits and power wash it with my big pink rubber eraser. Easy-peasy. 

What I was left with, the “I AM,” became its own kind of mantra, and naturally, questions began to form about the nature of consciousness, existence and all that. Scrubby-scrub. We don’t have answers for that sort of thing. We aren’t going to figure it out in the space of a breath, anyway.

“I am.” 

That’s enough for now.

----

Today, I spent all day NOT looking at my phone, or any other screen, not even to turn on a music player. I played keyboard for a few hours, then guitar and keyboard, then made lunch and ate it in my hammock on the back deck, almost falling asleep. My thoughts were minimal. Mostly, “Trees. Birds. Bumblebee. Cactus.” 

Later, I watered the grass, getting after the bare spots that the sprinklers have missed all summer, then fed the cats, played some more guitar, and made myself some dinner.

Oh, and I started the “Morning Pages” up again, this time adhering to the three page, pen and paper, first thing in the morning prescription. I wrote in a composition notebook with a nice Pilot G-2 .07 which had kept its ink remarkably well since I last used it probably 7 or 8 years ago. 

Am I proud of anything I’ve written today? Absolutely not, including this. The Morning Pages are a literary laxative, a writer’s Roto-Rooter. Do you really want to see the hair clog?  

This post is the result of my not feeding my brain anything digital for the last however many hours, so I figured I'd capture some thoughts that came to me spontaneously rather than through the monolith of indoctrination that is my flat screen or my phone.

Also, I decided to add another stipulation to the Morning Pages protocol: Write in a different location than this godawful mancave death chair, where I’ve spent so many hours looking up at the giant TV monitor, it’s pathetic. No wonder my view of the world is so arsed up. I don’t ever actually see it, except though the lens of the internet and its soul-sucking algorithms. 

So I sat on the couch upstairs, much to the delight of my cat Eddie, who took it upon herself to have a little gnaw at the corner of my notebook. Fair enough, it really is nothing more than fodder, waste paper, and not even fancy like George Washington’s toilet paper, just the generic stuff from Winco.

Anyway, friends, family and Facebook acquaintances, pardon my randomness, and the hit and run nature of this one-way transmission, as I begin to limit my exposure to screen-related input and decrease my scrolling to a minimum. I'll always respond to a comment or a message, but I'm less likely to be a good "like buddy," since I'm fighting an addiction, and I really ought not be lurking on here. 

You understand. 

 

All you zombies, show your faces!

 

All of my traffic is AI scraping and government surveillance---prove me wrong!

I'm not asking for an "amen," a high-five or even a conciliatory pat on the back for existing in this space. But I defy anyone whose human eyes may ever scan these lines of text to offer proof of life for your own soul. Tell me something about yourself. I'm listening. I've told you plenty about myself. 

The comments section is open to all, including sentient chatbots (because you're people too). 

 

Steve gets a shitty towel in response to vegetable molestation

 

Let's see how fast this gets flagged.

I was in the garage getting a bicycle pump to re-inflate the tires on my rusty beach cruiser, and I kept bumping into Uncle Steve, who was fetching some items for his booth at the farmers market. 

"Do you mind?" he said, showing irritation as he reached for a gas can to fill with water for his hybrid beet/tomatoes. 

"I'll bring it for you," I said magnanimously. 

I finished up with the bicycle and filled the gas can with water from a nearby hose bib. Steve exited the garage, tripping over a lawnmower and cursing my general lack of organization. He was in a foul mood, and having committed the great indignancy of merely existing in close proximity, I was well within the blast radius of his righteous rage.

Seeing that he was struggling with an armful of items, I grabbed a few of the heavier ones, and we toted them off to his tented cubicle in the market. We were setting up a table inside a curtained off area when I noticed a persistent pressure nudging me from behind. I turned around to find Steve with an elongated tomato/beet in his hand pointed at my anus.

"Just what do you think you're doing with that?" I asked.

"It needs a place to root," he said unapologetically, as if the ramming of produce into someone's rectum was an agricultural imperative, permissible through eminent domain, and could be performed without consent or even fair warning, based solely on the nutritional requirements of the plant.

I brushed away the partially soiled root fruit with the back of my hand. He chased me around with it a bit and made a few more lunges at me, its dirty little root tendrils clawing the air to get to my backside. He finally backed off when I let him know that I was having none of it. 

Later on in the day, I checked in on him. His booth was getting no customers, likely because it was walled off on four sides and had zero visibility to foot traffic. I greeted him meekly, but he just scowled at me.

"OK," I said, having finally had enough of his attitude. "Out with it. Why are you so pissed at me?"

"You took a SHIT in my TOWEL!!!" he screamed at me. "Do you know how expensive these towels are? Do you? It's imported! Do you even know what they're made of?" He went on and on, screaming about the thread count and exotic material and how I'd committed the gravest of sins, pooping in his precious towel.

"Well," I said, "You're wrong. I never pooped in your towel. I stand by this statement. Never. Did. I. Ever. Poop. In. Your. Towel. You'll find out one day, and you'll have to acknowledge that you falsely accused me, and you'll have to live with that. Good day, sir!" 

I don't recall pooping in his towel, but IF I did, and I will concede only that, while there may be an outside possibility that I could have slightly soiled a towel wiping my backside after the attempted tomato rape earlier, I feel it would have been justified. The whole incident is kind of fuzzy now, as I have probably trauma blocked parts of it.  

    

It takes a crooked man to play a crooked guitar

 

I was in a house with a wide open floor plan that had been upgraded at some point from a gazebo/carport to a church with a mini kitchenette where the pulpit would be. It would have been suitable for teaching a culinary class or doing one of those live TV cooking shows. 

Well, maybe. It needed a makeover. I found myself standing on the counter by the sink attempting to straighten out some wall decorations. Among them was a vintage tin sign that had been fashioned into a clock. I put the pieces together and hung it as the centerpiece over the sink.

"Aren't you clever," Diane said, noting that I was able to hang a clock while balanced on the somewhat precarious perch, all the while leaning this way and that like a surfer to keep from falling. 

"Yes. Yes, I am," I said in my most unruffled James Bond.

People came and went in the congregation space, and after a while I noticed that someone had left a rather odd looking musical instrument case on the floor. It was guitar shaped, sorta. I opened it up and looked upon the strangest stringed instrument I'd ever seen. 

The neck and body were contorted, Dali-esque, snakelike, like someone had fashioned a regular guitar, and then put their hands in the middle and gave it a 1/4 twist while the guitar putty was still soft. It reminded me of a stick man depicted in the running mode, a swastika made of human arms and legs. 

I was curious how it would play, so I took it out of the case. As I grabbed the strange instrument and started to play a few bar chords, I found that, once in your hands, the strings and neck would straighten out. It seemed like it needed amplification because I could barely hear anything coming from the instrument. 

Diane gravitated toward me, somehow drawn by the barely perceptible notes. I tried to ham it up by playing a few rock licks, but I still felt it was too quiet. 

"It doesn't seem to be working," I said at last, putting the crooked guitar back in its crooked case. "Besides, I don't know who it belongs to." I guess I didn't want to be the crooked guy accused of stealing a crooked guitar. Let that moniker hang on someone else.

I decided to get out of there, and in the next instant, I found myself at the racetrack. Diane was there seated in a very low folding chair. I breezed on by like I didn't notice her.

"Are ya just gonna leave me here or what?" she said, teasing.

"Oh, I don't mind sitting a spell," I said casually, grabbing a folding chair and sidling up next to her.

I didn't quite stick the landing, though, and I wound up almost crushing her with the chair at one point, placing it directly on her lap. I remedied the situation eventually, and we sat there a few minutes before I realized that I had to get to an open mic.

I guess Diane and I were together at this point because when I got up to go, she started packing as well. We crossed the street, and I put my arm around her to shield her from traffic.

"Oh, thank you!" she said, snuggling closer. 

We arrived at the open mic sans guitar. I thought about the crooked one I'd left at the gazebo/kitchen/church and remembered that I had also left my own guitar there. I told Diane that I'd be right back, and I went off to get it, hoping it hadn't been stolen, or perhaps traded for the twisty one. 

That's all I recall, and it's not very accurate. There was a whole vibe and meaning that I'm missing, but I had to get the frame built just in case I recall more later on.  

Pain, the great teacher (another Facebook repost)

By 2011, caregiving had left me in a pretty desperate state. Emotionally, physically and spiritually drained, I was pushed to the edge of my limits, and eventually beyond them. I couldn’t sustain my version of a reasoned existence based on my experiences. My wife was dying, and I was trying to maintain a lifestyle that included hope and security, work and play, ambition, fun, whimsy and notions of artistic creativity. 

As my world became narrowed, and my focus was pushed solely toward responsibility, the artist, the creator, the dreamer in me – died in a pitched battle for survival. My ego was seen to be the problem, and all of my ideas about fun and creativity became scapegoats under the banner of a self-loathing ideology. 

“How dare you have fun, freedom, personal time or a life when your wife lies sick and is deprived of these things?” 

Insert your own words after the “when” in that sentence, and it may be relatable to some of you with regards to your own personal happiness and what you see going on in the larger world, as brought to you by your newsfeed of choice.

Anyway, it was around that time that I experienced what I saw as the first crack in my world-view. I was driving to work in tears, having left my bedridden wife supplied with whatever necessities I could provide, knowing that at any time, I might get a call about some emergency that would require my attention, derailing whatever plans my employers or I had for the day. 

Work was demanding, but my home life even more so, and there was no refuge or escape, one from the other, just an endless wheel of suffering to get to the next thing.

As I drove past the 4-way stop on Loma Rica Road, passing the church and the Gold Eagle Market, a solitary thought came into my head: 

“It’s all a game.” 

That was it. No explanation or interpretation, just a brief post-it from the Universe. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, and frankly, I still don’t, but it was enough of an interruption of my thought loop to stop my crying for a time.

Later that day, I stumbled across an audio CD in a customer’s car, “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. I was intrigued by the title, so I made a mental note to find a copy of the audiobook and download it. I did so, and I found many other similar books as well. 

As I did chores or while driving to work, I listened to them all, replacing the tired thoughts in my head with teachings from the likes of Alan Watts, Adyashanti, Deepak Chopra, Yogananda – anyone and anything I could find. 

I tumbled (or was led, whichever you prefer) down a spiritual rabbit hole filled with “answers” for the earnest seeker in my perpetually confused, spiritually starving brain. I became a metaphysical omnivore, feeding on all things esoteric: ideas about existence, non-duality, eastern philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Advaita, and even some Christian Mysticism thrown in, a veritable buffet of New Age eclectic woo-woo. 

Bear in mind, I had come from a background of a juvenile agnostic à turned Bible thumper cult member à back to hedonist à to now just a beat down human, struggling to make sense of a world that conforms to none of these paradigms. So bring on the new spiritual template, I thought, let’s find one that fits. That’s where I was, and possibly still am, as my butterfly of consciousness hasn’t yet alit upon the perfect belief system. 

I feel like I’m in a self-imposed time-out. I’m drawing the blackout curtains because I want more than anything to go back to sleep, to dream of a better existence without the work of actually building it. But light is creeping in through the cracks, and try as I might, I can’t close my eyes. And there’s work to be done.

The words of the great teachers of the ages have been hanging in the corners of my mind like sleeping bats. They were waiting for the twilight because that's when they function best: in the fading light and in total darkness. 

These words are like antibiotics, prescribed to treat a specific disease, taken while you are sick, and then discontinued when the sickness has abated. You don’t need a flashlight in the daytime, and you don’t take medicine when you are healthy. 

Well, it’s getting dark, the world is sick, and it’s time for the antibiotics, the bats and the flashlights to come out.

OK, my metaphors are getting unwieldy. I’ve really got to rein them in. But you get the point. 

Yet we can’t rely on old spiritual tropes, or political ones, just like we can’t reuse last year’s flu shot. We have new problems, and we need new solutions. Not slogans, not knee-jerk reactions, but some kind of mechanism that includes all the parts working together. You, me and -- dare I say -- our long-lost MAGA friends, who don’t think they are lost but think we are. 

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” 

(I can work that quote into just about anything.)

But really, we need a boat that includes a space for everyone. We'll need to have some rules of conduct on this boat, so it doesn’t capsize, but we can’t have as our goal the exclusion or eradication of others. Rehabilitation, perhaps, but not in a re-education camp sort of way, but more of a “let me help you figure out how to not continue to destroy yourself and the planet, brother” kind of way. 

There’s enough pain in the world to go around without us inflicting it upon one another. Violence begets violence, and hate breeds hate. You can’t bomb your enemies out of existence, but you can love them into irrelevance. Be the person you want them to be, don't become the thing you're protesting. We all rise or fall together. That’s the only way we’re going to shift this timeline.

And we have to be open to looking in the mirror. The first thing someone will do when confronted with some flaw in their thinking will be to deflect, to shield themselves, turning your laser focused weaponized ideals and ethics back at you. “What about…” So be prepared to be humble, be precise, be willing to admit gray areas, make concessions, be firm, be flexible, show empathy and accept that people learn at their own pace. 

When asked by a co-worker, I believe it was around Thanksgiving 2011, what I was most thankful for, I told him without reservation: 

“My pain,” I said to a look of unbelief.

“Why pain, Sparky?” Pao asked me.

“Because pain has been my greatest teacher,” I told him.

I stand by that statement, although I much prefer carrots to sticks these days (hint, hint, Universe).

And so, in that spirit, I want to take a moment to thank Donald Trump for being a magnet for of all that hateful, negative energy. Also Steven Miller, Russ Vought and the whole Project 2025 crew, Kristi Noem, ICE, Elon, the entire Republican congress – so many players volunteering for team evil – for providing such a clear marker of division between what we want to see and don’t want to see in the world. 

As things become more visibly corrupt, lawless and cruel, it doesn’t take a flashlight or 20/20 vision to see that this is not where we want to go. 

Collectively, we seem to be headed for a whole lot of pain. It seems to be our path. We may not be able to avoid all of it, but I’m hopeful. The sooner we figure out what we’re doing to perpetuate the cycle, the quicker we move on to something else. 


OK. That’s enough preachy-preach out of me for today. Rant off. 

Have the best day you can imagine!

Hurt me, Suzanne, but be nice about it, please and thank you!

I found myself being strapped to a gurney and blindfolded, waiting for my friend's young wife to punch me as hard as she wanted. 

Apparently, I was only keeping up my end of a reciprocal arrangement, and I had already pummeled her in a like manner. Still, I was surprised by the intensity of her enthusiasm as she strapped me in. She had a score to settle with me, so perhaps some of my blows had been unexpectedly harsh.

"Go, easy on me, Sooz," I said, weakly protesting. "You know I love you, right?"

Maybe she did know it, but that didn't do much to lessen Suzanne's glee as she fastened my restrains. She was going to make me suffer, even if it was just the trauma of anticipatory dread.

There were accessories that had to be fiddled with, so the punching agenda kept getting delayed. There was an optional chest protector which I tried to get fitted for, but it kept sliding off, so we 86ed it. The blindfold was replaced with a pair of mirrored sunglasses, more for aesthetic than functionality, and I was now instructed to just keep my eyes closed throughout the process. 

Meanwhile, I practiced tensing my stomach muscles in preparation for the invisible assault. 

"You're too soft, my friend," said Martin, my ex cult-mate making an impromptu dream appearance in the role of coach. "Try raising your arms to protect your core." 

I did as he said, raising my arms in a defensive stance, and that did seem to offer a bit more protection for my soft belly. Now it was the inevitable blows to the side of the head that began to concern me. Just how much revenge did Suzanne plan to exact?

People were showing up for the spectacle, some wagering on various aspects of the outcome: blood or no blood, the volume and length of the screams that would be emitted by my me, while others just nodded silent approval with a look of smug satisfaction on their faces.

We had to move the venue (either to accommodate or restrict the growing crowd, not sure which) so we unlocked the gurney wheels and got our respective mobile torture devices rolling down a rather steep hill. Despite the gurneys having no included steering features, we were able to control them surprisingly well using just the wheel brakes, giving the whole thing a kind of fun soapbox derby vibe.

"This is no good," I said as we approached the bottom, noticing that there was a swollen river directly in our path, and our crossing would be impeded by the rising waters.

We were already quite a ways down the hill, and the gurneys were surprisingly heavy, so we had to conscript some of the bystanders who had doggedly trailed us on the descent, employing them as pallbearers in our uphill retreat. They did their jobs without complaint, as they were all completely invested in this event taking place. 

"OK, Suzanne," I said, almost giddy to get this thing underway. "Do your worst." By that, I meant: "Do a poor job of pounding me into a puddle, ie, leave some bits intact, please." 

I'm not sure if she understood the assignment, as she still had a fierce expression on her face, but her eyes held a glimmer of, "This is all for play, and probably, I'll mostly just scare you. Mostly." 

That's where we left it, and I woke up feeling a bit of adrenaline mixed with relief, like when you doze off while driving and catch yourself before you drift into oncoming traffic. 

Memories from Covid, the Great Equalizer

 

Scraped from my Facebook Memories

 

 

On this day

5 years ago

 

Andrew Golding

Shared with Your friends:

 

"Thanks to COVID, I now live in a world where the majority of people avert their eyes and give one another the wide berth usually reserved for lepers and social pariahs. At least I don’t feel so singled out anymore."

 

On this day

10 years ago

 

Andrew Golding

Shared with Your friends:

 

"Not sure which is worse. Convincing yourself that you're not that creepy guy from whom strangers at the grocery store avert their eyes. Or not."

 

Lisa F_______

I can't see people intentionally avoiding getting near you physically in the general public unless you are projecting a weird vibe. Are you?

 

Andrew Golding

I've always felt like I am projecting that anti-magnetic vibe. Whatever starts off the process, I don't know, but the net effect is the same. It is as if I were carrying the plague or had a brand on my forehead. At least the playing field is leveled now. Everyone is eying one another with suspicion and distrust.

 

Lisa F_______  

Andrew Golding, I am sensitive to people’s vibes, but it usually means I look a little closer. I know I am not typical in this regard.

Andrew Golding

Lisa F_______, the only exceptions I've found to this have been the babies sitting in shopping carts. They find me fascinating and engage me with smiles and stares, much to the dismay of their parental units who tend to whisk them away when they notice this going on. I take it as, they are looking at me without the social filters that will soon be in place after a few years of conditioning.

Natalie S______

I'm an introvert, so I usually avert my eyes when I'm tired, anxious or not feeling outgoing. So it might not be because of you. As grow older and hopefully wiser, I realize it's not all about me. People have their own stuff going on that causes their behavior. But they also take social cues from me, so if I'm in my own head and frowning, looking down, smiling but in an anxious pained way, of course they look away. I know that when I have those days where I suddenly switch to extrovert, smile, look people in they eye in a present way, many responds in kind.

 

Andrew Golding

I've always felt awkward and out of place, ever since I can remember. When I became a punk, it was my way of saying, "Fine. I give up. You want something to shun and avoid, here!" But oddly, it had the reverse effect. I actually became more popular, not just with those of a similar bent, but with the "normal" kids, who would find some reason to want to engage with the weird kid. But as an older male in an increasingly shallow and mistrusting society, if I smile at someone, it is met with that look of dread: "Oh, no. What does that dirty old man want from ME?" If I keep to myself, they are more comfortable, but in either case no one will go out of their way to engage me. I don't think it's about me as a person. It's about how people view people of a certain age or with certain physical characteristics. I don't go out of my way to be repellent, but I have that effect. Not on animals or babies, just your average adult humans.

 

Natalie S______

I'm 57 and there are a few shallow people that are unfriendly because they may be disregard me, especially when I'm dressing frumpy. But I still say it has more to do with what I'm putting out there even subconsciously. When I'm happy and relaxed I can usually get smiles or friendly contact. When I'm my anxious self that is thinking people are judging me, I seem to repel people. I mean just the fact you seem to think about this so much tells me you may have similar anxiety. People pick up on anxiety and it makes them uncomfortable. Just my experience.

 

Andrew Golding

Natalie S______, our experiences differ in that perhaps, as a male, I'm viewed as more of a threat, albeit a pretty insignificant one, in my decrepit state. Psychologically, there is conditioning on both sides. For whatever reason people may judge me, their avoidance is perceptible, and I react to that, cementing the perception for both parties. I don't know what precipitated the whole cycle, but at this stage it can't be fixed by just wearing a nice shirt and smiling more. I really don't think about it much anymore. It has become ingrained into my subconscious. This memory just came up, and I decided to comment since I'm making note of how things have or haven't changed in the last 5 years. Yeah, I'm still mental. That hasn't changed.

 

Natalie S______

Guess your experience is different. All I know is if I get a B12 shot suddenly people are very friendly to me. To me that says the issue is more with me than them.

 

Andrew Golding

Natalie S______, maybe I'll see if my therapist will prescribe me B12 shot as a part of a social experiment. Until they develop a way of jumping into another person's skin, I don't think anyone can truly know what another's experience of living is like. I would love to do a documentary called "Creep Like Me," where a person is made up to look similar to me and see how they are treated vs a younger more aesthetically pleasing version. I know I'm in my own head and all that, but the phenomenon is real.

Lesa L____

Andrew Golding, so I know most of the times, I feel like an odd duck. Sometimes I can dress it up, but most of the time I don't. I've accepted myself as I am a long time ago. I'm probably not for everyone or everyone's flavor or cup of tea. I will never make everyone happy even if I wanted too, cos it has more to do with them and not me. Sometimes people are just really full of themselves and selfishly all about themselves and if I don't fit into or I look out of place of, they pick and choose. I'm ok with that, cos it weeds them out for me!! Thank God we are all only human and no one is perfect. I find you to be my flavor and my cup of tea!! You as a person and your friendship to me is invaluable!! I hear what your saying and what that projection might look like, but I don't see an old creepy guy, just my good old friendly, good guy friend!! Whew, mouthful !! It's a weird time right now out there Andrew, even for me too. Hopefully, us friends sticking together and sharing love, we'll be alright. I hope I didn't upset anyone in writing this Andy, but this was for you. You know my heart and where I'm coming from, and others that I reference to are closer to home, like within my own family and how I feel I'm sometimes treated. You have people, family and friends on here that I can see that care for you !! Hopefully when this mess is all over, a few of us will be able to come up and visit. No worries my friend, it goes straight to the gut and thyroids!! We're gonna beat it though!! Now where's my big thumb.

Andrew Golding

Lesa L____, aww! You always know just what to say. See why I keep you around? Your words are like a balm, soothing and calming, medicine for my afflicted soul. Us odd ducks gotta stick together, anyway, and form our own funky flock. I certainly didn't mean to intimate that any of my friends treated me this way. To their credit, they have looked past appearances and seen me as a person, rather than a caricature. I am both humbled and proud to claim each of you, and you, in particular, my lovely, as friends. It makes things somewhat more bearable to know that out there, there are people such as yourself, who think fondly of me, however I may think of myself. Your kind sentiments go a long way toward rebuilding my bridge back to humanity. If the world were populated with kind souls such as yourself, we certainly wouldn't have the troubles we have today. Just maybe the occasional tummy ache from gobbling down too much sweet stuff! You have a very pleasing teacup, so stay just as you are, sweetness and all.

Caryn B_____

Andrew Golding, do you get that reaction from both males and females? Or mostly from women? My husband is very friendly when we go on our evening walks - totally un-creepy, guy - walking with his wife, whilst pulling a wagon with a super cute elderly Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in it. We are clearly 3 old farts out for our evening constitutional. He says "good evening" or some greeting to just about everyone. Women always give him the cold shoulder. Men usually respond positively. I don't greet them. Sometimes I'll just give a nod.

Andrew Golding

Caryn B_____, I suppose I might notice it more from females. I think guys are trained to ignore one another in certain social situations like shopping. Can't have the world thinking you're gay, right? So there's that whole set of phobias to contend with. If I'm out walking, in my own neighborhood, where by now I am a fixture by which you could set your clock, it is different. I get waves and friendly smiles. I'm like the old neighborhood dog, making his nightly rounds. It is more in the supermarket that I've noticed this uneasy distancing, which long preceded COVID. It comes at a time when I am genuinely trying to work on myself, to improve my social skills, that we are slapped with a pandemic. As if the universe is telling me, "Nice try, but not today!"

Lesa L____

Andrew Golding, I deft don't think your friends unkind but just the opposite. I think you got a great group of friendships here and I actually learn alot from them sharing stuff with you, which is why I wanted to make sure I was waving my friend flag and be seen as friend and not foe!! I don't want to be a fe-fi-foe-fum!! No good . And thank you for your kind words too. You make a flower blush !!

Andrew Golding

Lesa L____, I don't know of anyone who'd see you as anything other than what you are: a kind-hearted, well-meaning soul. I, too, learn a lot from my friends, though I think they are too easy on me at times. I've been given plenty of different perspectives, and made to see many things in a different light. It takes a lot to turn my train of thought around, but sometimes it can be accomplished with the gentlest of approaches. Slaps in the face or pokes with a stick work too, but I prefer the carrot. And you are a slice of carrot cake with delicious icing and sprinkles.

Lesa L_____

Andrew Golding

Caryn B______

Not sure what it says about me, but I'm kinda welcoming the eye-averting and stepping aside / wide berth from strangers. LOL. Yeah - it feels like "at least it's not only me these days!".

Andrew Golding

Kinda takes the pressure off. Don't have to fake any smiles since no one can see your mug anyway.

Caryn B_____

Andrew Golding, I have discovered I can yawn during a conversation without anyone knowing! LOL

Andrew Golding

Caryn B_____,  I could full on mouth grumble if I were so inclined. I stopped being so inclined a few years ago, but I could have really used this mask situation back then.