Up from the Ashes

I took a shower. I feel semi-human again.

In the shower I thought about all the people that had to overcome worse adversity than mine. I asked myself what the second act of my life was going to be like. I decided it'd be better to be happy, healthy and fit at 40, than never. It may take a while, but I can come out of this pit. It's easy to be glib and cynical when it comes to "inspirational" stories. They just don't fit the hipster paradigm. However, I don't care about cool anymore. I'd rather be content than cool any day. So, I will think about people who have come back from a devastating illness or accident, or achieved a remarkable life despite a serious "disability," or tragic beginnings in life.

I still have all my limbs, all my senses, and most of my wits about me. That's more than many other heroes and heroines started out with. I need to use what I have to my best advantage; to keep looking at what I do have, rather than what I lack.

I don't know why it is that I need to go down into the pit and hit bottom before coming back up, but it is my way when things reach a point of unbearable pain. Perhaps I can improve my turn around time in the future. I'm coming out of it now though, and for the moment, that's all that matters.

Clean

Okay, I'm not completely done, but I can see the bottom of my sink. All pots and pans have been washed, as well as all dishes, a lotta cups and some silverware. The drainer is full, so by the time they dry, and I put them away, I'll be up to another round of washing.

While I did the dishes, I listened to this song, and it rang so true:

Your Misfortune

When your faith in life is gone
Come and speak to me
When you're down and all messed up
Seek my sympathy
When everybody says no, no, no
Well it's
Your misfortune and none of my own
Wrong, wrong, wrong
Well it's your misfortune that sweetens my song

I can be the friend you want
I can be your confidante
I can be the right reminder at the right time
Throwing out the lifeline
When your face is caked with mud
Come and speak to me
When the chill creeps in your blood
Seek my sympathy

I can be the air you drink
Every single thought you think
I can be the right notion in the meantime
Warm you like the sunshine
Stand in the light. Stand in the light. Stand in the light.

-- Mike Doughty

petite progress

I'm awake. I got up at 1pm. This would be late for anyone with a normal sleeping pattern, but for me this is an acheivement. This whole week, I woke up at 5pm, or later. I've been awake nights and asleep during the day. I have an appointment tomorrow for the sleep clinic. It's not a moment too soon. It's primarily for my untreated sleep apnea, but I plan to tell them about all the other sleep problems I've been having as well.

I tried to sleep last night. I got in bed around 3ish, and tried to read until I felt drowsy; the problem was, I never got sleepy. So, I got up and got online. Talked to a friend of mine, and fellow insomniac. Then I wrote. I finally went to bed at 9am. So, I only got 4 hours of sleep, but I gotta stay up, so I can begin to break the nocturnal cycle.

I need to get some coffee in me and take my meds. I feel pretty lousy physically. Ugh.

Thus begins my tale...

“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul”. - Job 7:10

At the moment, this is a thankless story: thankless characters, thankless days and nights, thankless families. A story about a thirteen year old car with over 100,000 miles on it. A story that features a beloved eleven year old black cat who unfortunately vomits on the carpet all the damn time. A story which stars an overweight, chronically ill, severely depressed, insomniac woman in her late 30's who lives alone, hasn't left her apartment in three days, and hasn't showered in four or five, she can't quite remember. I'll tell ya, it's a blast, this yarn. Aren't you, dear reader, excited to see what comes next? I'll bet you are!

Why do I have to be the one to tell this story? I ask myself.

Because it's mine.

My truth is ugly. Occasionally beautiful too, but that's been harder to see lately. This story insists on being written, burns like a fever in my chest, gripping me when I should be sleeping, dogging my footsteps like a mangy cur that's trying to attach itself to me on a dead end street.

I don't even know where to start. So, I start here, where I am. In medias res.

I haven't spoken to my father in three days. I can't. Something he said spiraled me into such depression that I haven't left the house since. I don't want to see a living soul. I especially don't want to see my landlord's elderly parents, who are staying downstairs, in his part of the house. I cannot wait for them to go back to Florida. Of course, they live in Florida, it's in the handbook: New York Jews of a certain age are practically required to retire to Florida. They return once a year to Long Island on pilgrimage, driving impossibly big boat-like grandpa cars twenty miles below the speed limit. My landlord's parents watch my comings and goings. And when there are no "goings," I worry what they are thinking of me. I worry that they are going to tell their son all about me, that they'll tell him the results of their spying: that I am a weird tenant he should get rid of because they know I haven't been out in days, and my mail is piling up too.

My dishes are piled high in my sink, and on the surrounding counter. There are pots and pans on the stovetop from things I cooked days ago. My laundry is in a pile on the bathroom floor. I can't find a very important set of papers; the last required section of my social security disability application. I forgot to pay my car insurance on the due date, I'm hoping my policy is not revoked. Today I set my alarm for 2pm. It seemed reasonable. It was about 7am when I got in bed. I overslept, and woke up at 5pm, but there must have been hours when I was churning in the half-sleeping state hitting a snooze alarm every nine minutes. As I groggily made my way out of bed, a thought occurred to me: "Did I have an appointment with my shrink today?" I ran to my little pocket calendar, and sure enough, there it was in black & white: Kevin, 4:30pm. This already was the re-scheduled appointment, because I missed last weeks also. Shit. Damn. Fuck. Shit. The frustration with myself gathered itself up and spewed out in torrents. I went to the bathroom, still furious with myself. I came out and called the clinic. My shrink had already left and wouldn't be back till Monday. Swell. At least I had enough meds to get me through Sunday. I'd have to call him Monday and ask him to phone in my scripts to the pharmacy.

Then I looked at my answering machine, no messages. Good. It means my father did not call me, which he did twice on Monday and I think once on Tuesday. In his messages, he spoke normally, as if nothing whatsoever had happened on Sunday. He didn't say he was sorry. He didn't try to suck it up, and wheedle his way back into my life, no; he simply acted as if it hadn't happened. An event that triggered me to recall tragic past events and sent me crashing hopelessly into dark alleys in my consciousness, words that caused the darkest waves to rise up and crash inside me, and to him, it was something he was planning to ease past, gloss over, and sweep under the rug. I didn't return his phone calls.

And I won't. I wish I would never have to deal with him again, but the day will come soon when it will be unavoidable. How I dread that day. I will put it off as long as possible. Maybe I can avert it somehow? Maybe I can fall on the cold mercies of the social services department instead. Convince them of the dire need for an emergency grant, or something. The only thing that ties me to my father besides blood right now is money. The only thing that will enable me not to have to have contact with him is money.

I still have some things at his house, but they can be packed without any real conversations between us. He doesn't understand, doesn't begin to understand this soul murder he does to me. My soul has far more than nine lives. A body only dies once, mercifully, but a soul can die a million times, and still be raised up again, only to be murdered again. I feel each death as if it were the first one. There is no fading with time.I am never inured to the pain, vacant or absent when the strike hits me. It doesn't get any easier, and I'm never more used to it than before. I never am able to expect it, because nothing happens before hand that would allow me to predict that danger is coming, get out of the way. It's like a tornado suddenly striking on a sunny day. By the time you see it coming towards you, it's already too late.

There are so many things I didn't learn in time to save myself. I never cared about money when I was younger. I was utterly steeped in romanticism, and possessed few realistic notions. This suited my mother very well. She had long cultivated me to be dependent, and to have no survival instinct whatsoever. The outcome was flawless. She told me that everything common was beneath me. I was going to be a prodigy. A writer, an artist. I was special. Talented. I had an abnormally high IQ. I was called into the principal's office and told this in elementary school: "Great things are expected of you." This sent me into a tailspin of pressure and anxiety. My report cards often read: "Tess is smart, but is not working up to her potential" "Tess often daydreams and does not pay attention in class".

Later on, other normal kids had paper routes or did odd jobs. I was encouraged not to work crummy jobs. My mother told me they were a waste of my intellect and creativity. Read some more books instead, go to your easel in the basement and paint some more. So I did. I listened to lots of music, and burned a lot of candles and incense. I wrote in journal books of various sizes and shapes. I practiced calligraphy. I went to the opera with my father, and symphonies with the whole family. I masturbated compulsively two or three times a day, wracked with guilt, tears and prayers for forgiveness. I prayed to God for forgiveness every time, but invariably failed the next night. I stayed up late, reading. I read Shakespeare and psychology textbooks about drugs, because I was curious about the mind, and I decided after reading about all of the big guns, that I was a Rogerian, with perhaps a pinch of Jung on the side. I also read the psych texts because wanted to know what illegal drugs did to a person. I also read "Go Ask Alice" and wished I had been around in the sixties, it sounded so much better than the seventies I was living in. I also read illicitly acquired copies of "A Secret Garden," and the "dirtier" Judy Blume books that now seem as tame as oatmeal on a winter morning. I never wanted to go to school, and I hated waking up early in the morning. I almost always missed my bus. I almost always missed it on purpose so I wouldn't have to face the teasing. My mother frequently drove me to school. Often I'd be seized with sharp stomach pains as soon as we'd pull into the driveway of my school. I was often doubled over, and could not go inside. I'd often beg and plead to go home, until she'd finally turn the car around. Sometimes she'd say no, and I'd hobble in. A few class periods would go by, and I was calling for her to come get me. I had wretched stomach problems. I now know it was anxiety. Extreme anxiety.

I wasn't thinking about the future. About good test scores. About college. I was thinking about how to get through the day without coming apart at the seams. There were reasons I was in such sad shape. Reasons I'm not ready to talk about yet. I'd have to go to that place, that place that holds a dungeon of locked up nightmares that are always trying to break down the door and invade my life. Tonight is not the night to let them out. I'll keep the chains on the monsters a little bit longer.

To my suffering friend...

I feel your pain alongside my own. We suffer for different reasons, but we suffer. I can't say exactly why, and I won't render up the stock answers. They are not enough to staunch the pain raging through your blood, or mine, anyway. For the moment, there is but one answer. To weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn. So I weep. For you. For me.

As much as it feels the farthest moment away, I know one thing -- in days to come, at a moment when we least expect it, we will laugh again, and life will flood back in.

Little triggers pull big guns...

I was writing a disturbing post about something my father said and did yesterday that prompted old issues to rear their ugly head, when the lights in my apartment flickered on and off, the computer restarted itself, and I lost the post. I shall take it as a sign. I won't re-write it. Maybe somethings are better left unsaid, even in unsayable.

* "How am I not myself?"

"We are all freeloaders under God" - Nanny in "Vanya on 42nd st." http://imdb.com/title/tt0111590/

There is so much unrest. Anything I write will only skim the service. People are suffering. I can feel it in the air. It feels odd to know I'm safe when people in other parts of the country are fighting for their lives. I feel lucky, blessed, but unworthy, and somewhat guilty. It's like survivor's guilt, even though I'm not in the path of the latest hurricane.

Stranger still is that I feel like I'm fighting for my life on the inside, and it seems to me to be a luxury others don't have. Well, it's my health too, my sickness that may be causing the other problems, because would I be as angst-ridden if I wasn't in pain, could function and live the way I want to? It would, I think, decrease my existential churning. I feel like an overactive mind trapped in a broken down body. Thus, I feel continual frustration, and the tension of those oppposites. I seem to be trapped in an endless cycle of chaos & entropy, and am not sure how to halt it's daily advance.

There is more, always more, but I am tired.

"We go from pure being, to suffering and human drama..." "It is inevitable to be drawn back into human drama".
Caterine Vauban quotes from "I Heart Huckabees" http://imdb.com/title/tt0356721/

*subject heading is also from the huckabees film.

home fires

My cat & I are both home, and both very tired. She's doing much better thank God. That's all for tonight. I'm gonna go crash.

For want of her form curled on the floor

My cat is in the animal hospital tonight. There was just a noise in the stairwell. For a moment I forgot and I turned my head, thought it was her. My apartment is so quiet without her. I can't sleep. I'm watching the clock as hours slip by. My body aches. Sadness. Touch. Emptiness. Skin so forgotten, but my hands remember silken fur. She's my hug, my cuddle, my shadow. She's a persistent muse. A demanding diva. A finicky fickle princess in want of favorite foods. I'm just her chef, waiter, butler. I do the chores. She runs the house. Sits where she wants. Goes where she's not supposed to. Drives me nuts. Exasperates me with her willfulness. Is immune to training, discipline, or any sort of behavioral deterrents or reinforcements. I throw up my hands, ah well, she's just like me, what else can I expect?

Memento Mori

I don't have anything profound to say about 9/11. Not now. Maybe I never will. I have to acknowledge it though. I have to remember it, because for some people that live in my area, their lives will never be the same. Whether they are survivors, who got out somehow, or weren't at work that day, or family and friends that lost loved ones, there are lives that will be indelibly inked with that day as if tattooed. Then there are all the dead -- gone, and by most people, forgotten. The individual lives faded into a mass of collective loss. The individuals are mostly remembered only by those whose lives they touched. Their names were read today at least.

I will never forget that day. I was driving to work. I got a phone call from out of state. I couldn't fumble with the cell while I was driving, so I let it go to voicemail. I checked the voicemail when I pulled into the parking lot, and it was a friend of mine saying she was watching TV, and there were planes flying into the World Trade Center. I called her back: "WHAT?" She started to explain. I walked into work, people were shell-shocked, somber, panicked, upset, the entire range of emotions. People were phoning their spouses who worked in the city. I raced into my cubicle and called my two best friends in New York city. My friend L. already knew because she smelled the smoke and saw the ash and darkness in the air, heard the sirens, and she was on the Upper West Side, miles away from ground zero. She had the TV on and was watching what was going on. I called my other close friend J. in the Bronx and told him not to get on the subway, not to go into Manhattan (which I feared he might because of going to his grad school there). He was still asleep when I rang him, we spoke, he was groggy and safe. I was relieved about them both being safe. However, I still paced the office, and looked out the windows. It seemed inconceivable to me that this was happening because as I looked out the windows it was the most beautiful, picture postcard perfect Autumn day; the sun was shining, the sky was blue and nearly cloudless, and the trees were green and lush, and blowing in a slight breeze. Yet I knew that less than 45 minutes west of this idyll, something catastrophic was happening, of which I didn't even know the proportions. We weren't allowed internet access, so we couldn't get on CNN.com or anything. There were no TV's, and only a few people in the office had radios. We were all trying to find out what was happening.

We were sent home early at 3pm. All major roadways were closed and I had to take back roads home. A less than half an hour drive took me over two hours, due to the route and abnormally heavy traffic. I was exhausted, and frayed when I arrived. My stomach had been sick all day.

When I got home I crawled into bed and turned on the TV. I watched coverage for about seven hours straight trying to get my head around it. Little did I know, that intense saturation with the horrific images and stories would give me many weeks of nightmares. I just felt like I needed to watch it till I could snap out of shock, till it could seem real. But it was unreal.

I wanted to hop a train and go into the city and help, do something, but my best friend assured me I would not be able to cope with the air quality with my asthma. Everyone was walking around wearing masks. There was building rubble and ash, and human remains floating in the air. L. said the smell permeated the air, even in her neighborhood so far from the trade center.

I cried a lot. I hated that people were adopting a "business as usual" attitude at my office. I felt like life as we all knew it was over. Then the anthrax scares started. The company I was working for got some hoax mail with some fake powder in it, and then we had to go through this seminar on biochemical weapons, terrorism, and all sorts of safety stuff that made me feel like I was in some kind of bad dream. I worked in IT and I was getting some weird de-briefing on what to do in case of biological weaponry?

At Thanksgiving dinner with my extended family I found out that a sorta step-"cousin" of mine, the son of my uncle's second wife, had been in the second tower and got out. He ignored the overhead announcement that said tower one was on fire, but stay put. His officemates all acted tough and decided to stay. They all died. My "cousin" quit his job in finance and took his girlfriend on a sailing trip that lasted months. Somewhere on the open waters he proposed to her. They got married, and I don't know what they're up to now because I'm not very close to my uncle and his blended family anymore.

The bottom line is, I didn't lose anyone I knew. I was one of the lucky ones. Some little towns near me lost twenty-five people, and those twenty-five may have been connected to hundreds of others lives in that town. The ripple effect of all these losses was staggering. So many people here commute to the city for work, so many local people were devastated by losses. We also have firefighters and cops who work in the city as well. The sadness was in the air for so long. I went into the city for the first time a few months later and the shrines in front of firehouses, and down in the subways, and on the streets were still there. Missing persons photos and flyers were still up. I was with a friend from California, and was showing her around, and we both got teary-eyed at times.

This year, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 remembrances took on a different meaning, knowing that so many people are presently suffering. The hearts, minds and charity of many New Yorkers goes out to the displaced, missing and departed ones from the storm. Yet, there are still people grieving for their dead after four years, because the pain of losing loved ones never goes away; even more so in so many deaths that had no closure, no body, and certainly no last goodbye.

New York will never be the same, and really, it shouldn't be.

This is mostly true

My Bloginality is INTP.

You are an INTP

As an INTP, you are Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving.This makes your primary focus on Introverted Thinking with an Extraverted Intution.

This is defined as a NT personality, which is part of Carl Jung's Rational (Knowledge Seeking) type, and more specifically the Architect or Thinker.

As a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren't your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up.

INTP Links:
http://www.typelogic.com/intp.html
http://www.personalitypage.com/INTP.html
http://www.haleonline.com/psych/intp.htm
http://www.personalitytype.com/types/intp.html

Search for more INTP information

Broken Nocturne

In the wee hours of the morning, always a reckoning. The weight of my existence comes down over me like a heavy veil of suffocating shadows. A life wasted, day after day. Or is it? Just trying to do better. Hiding? Trying to make every day count. But I didn't leave the house today. Trying to do better. God, did I live this day as if it were my last? Urgency. Need to do better, do more, be more. Why? Time is short. I don't know what this life would amount to on paper, on a headstone or eulogized. A waste? A near miss? An almost made it? Underachieving and side lined, sick, years upon years of sick. Wasted years of nothing. Trying to get up off the ground with a boot on the back of my neck. The same story. The same day over and over again. A synthetic existence where only the location changes slightly and shifts like a shadow on the wall. It's the same bed, the same dream, the same nightmare. What am I doing with this life? I feel stuck in quicksand. Everything moves so slowly, and my limbs are heavy.

Every dawn comes and I sleep. Every night comes and I'm wide awake moving in an opposite rhythm from the rest of the world. I live at night. It's my default setting, though I try so hard to fight it. It's like my body has a built in mechanism to sequester me from the rest of the world. Asleep while others bustle, awake while others rest. Reality is different here on the other side of the moon. Late at night everything takes on extra weight. Tragedies are more tragic. Sad films are devastating. Serious books become more somber. Regrets more bitter. Losses more grievous. Music has more pathos. My memories, my past and present seem undeniably fraught. My future, so uncertain.

If only I knew how much time I have left, and how to make it count. How can I change things? Not waste my days? I do the dishes. I feed the cat. I clean her litter. I knit. I putter around online. I watch TV. Another day passes where I make no mark on the world, where I don't go downstairs and get my mail, where I don't see another living soul (where I prefer not to in some ways). My friends phone in. My friends email. It's a wonder I have friends at all considering my constitution. I'm a hermit. At least a part-time one. I went to my knitting group last night. It was fun and breezily social as usual. I received many compliments on my new hair style. Much laughter and talking. The air is so much sweeter, until I leave, and the shine dulls.

Then I went to the 24 hour Laundromat. There were televisions mounted into the walls every few feet above the dryers, all on different channels, some in Spanish. Some with the sound on, and some mute with closed captioning. Televisions too high up to reach, or change the channel, to lower or raise the volume, to mute, to un-mute. I was detached from it, yet observing the hell we've created. This is people's idea of ideal. A tower of Babel made of TV screens. All sound and fury signifying nothing. At least there was an ice cream machine. I ate an old fashioned sugar cone, the one with the vanilla ice cream, chocolate coating and nuts, and it reminded me of childhood, when the ice cream man came around the block, and I ran to the street with coins, or the dollar my Mother gave me. I remember the time I thought I snuck a dollar from my Mom's purse, only to find it was a Twenty when I handed it to the ice cream man. He tried to spare my ass by asking me if I was sure I wanted to use this bill, and was it really mine? but there's no saving a young masochist with a guilty conscience, so I went ahead and paid with the Twenty with the lump in my throat; now I'd have to confess, and I knew I'd deserve everything I got afterward.

::::

P.S. Don't watch "The House of Sand and Fog" after 4am if you're an insomniac empath. I cried my eyes out. Saddest movie I've seen in a long time. It's probably responsible for part of my mood above.

Requiem for the Discarded

It's 5am in New York, it's far too late to write a coherent entry, but I need to say something -- to begin.

I think in the beginning I hid. I left the news off. I refused to click on the links. Then I finally did, and I knew all too well why I'd been avoiding it. The overwhelming enormity of the tragedy. The senseless suffering after the natural disaster had passed, when it became a hell crafted with human hands. Babies being raped. Children being raped. People of all ages being shot. Bodies lying where they died, stripped of even their final human dignity. Total darkness. Lack of food and water. Savagery without limit ruling over frail decency. All of this and far more, I had tried to forestall absorbing. I had to face it though. The tremors were already rattling in my spirit anyway. I felt the shockwaves of human agony reach me long before I turned on the TV.

Who will speak for us? Who will tell our stories? Did we die in vain? Justice, Lord, we want Justice! I didn't die in the waters Lord, I died because no one came to save me...I died because they had guns and rage and I had my baby on my lap, and nothing to eat and it was so dark...Oh Lord, the smell of death...all around...the crying and howling in the night...and in the darkest days...the angel of death came and I was ready to leave...so weary...so thirsty...I just wanted to lay down in peace somewhere...I just wanted You to carry me Home...

"I'm just a boy with a new haircut & that's a pretty nice haircut"

I heat up slowly, simmering for long stretches of time, and then suddenly: I boil! I'll think about doing something forever, but then, in one impulsive moment, in one fell swoop, I suddenly do something drastic and radical!

I have had long hair down to my waist for years (and lately, it was getting even lower). I have been thinking about cutting it for years. I have not been able to go near a hairdresser because they always mess my hair up, which may be part of why I've been so afraid to get it cut, and avoid hairstylists like the plague.

However, lately, my hair has been getting to me, and I've been getting more motivated to cut it. It's heavy, thick, curly and wavy. My scalp hurts when I put it in a bun cos there's too much hair. My head hurts when I have a ponytail in too long. It gets tangled. I would look like a bogus whitey rastafarian after a few days if I don't attend to the knots and how my hair wants to twist up and weave itself into dreads of it's own volition. Not to mention how damn hot my hair has been all summer long. I really should have gotten it cut at the first sign of summer. But I balked.

So, lately, to try to ease myself into the hairdressers chair, I've been trimming my hair. I got rid of some scraggly ends last week, and then tonight, I decided to do another trim. But something happened.

I kept cutting...& cutting...& cutting...

My hair is A LOT shorter now. I wish I had known I was going to lop off so much, I would have been able to give to locks of love, which I really wanted to do. I cut it too gradually though. This was like the snowball version of the haircut. It gathered steam and kept going once it started! My hair is very subtly layered, and curly now, and falls to the middle of my back. I cut about a foot of hair off!

I do have to say one thing, I looked in the mirror afterwards and I said to my reflection: "You're a genius!"

Yes, I know, it may seem hyperbolic, but I kid you not, I'm freaking foxy right now. I mean, really, I'm so damn cute! This is Ms. Low Self-Esteem talking, so, really, it's a miracle. w00t!

I keep running my hands through it because it feels like silk, and flipping my hair back and forth, because it's so light now.

I went out after I was done with my hair to buy some milk for my morning coffee tomorrow, and to pick up something to eat at a drive-thru, and the proof is in the pudding -- I got called "Miss"! Fucking A! I always hate it when they call me "M'aam" and I think my hair must have made me look older, despite that people I meet always guess my age to be ten years younger. It's the shopkeepers and such with the "M'aam" stuff that was killing me, so, yea, I must have some vanity because I was pysched to go back to "Miss". I drove away while doing the arm pump thing with a fist in the air saying: "YES!" out loud to no one in my car by myself. Yep, I'm a dork.

My exterior is the least of it, this isn't just an outer transformation; I feel like I broke with the past tonight. I am ready to start a new chapter. The title is "Lightening Up". I cleaned up and dealt with clutter in my apartment today (it's not done but progress was made) then I cut my hair, and the thing I want to try tackling next is losing weight. I feel like something is propelling me forward. A sense of urgency. No time to waste. It may be the state of the world, but it's moreso the state of my life, which needs to move on to a higher level. It's time for me to dump any excess baggage so I can sail forth into my future unencumbered. I've been carrying so much, in so many senses, and it's just time to lighten my load, and get rid of the burdens that cause me so much pain, and limit me in so many ways. I don't feel like I just cut my hair, I feel like I am declaring a statement to myself that says: "New days are here, new times are coming, new experiences, new phases, new levels, new chapters, and you are no longer the same person you were, the time has come to become who you were always meant to be, and in order to do so, you've gotta shed some skin".

Wave Hello, Say Goodbye

Bedbugs & Ballyhoo

So, I switched back to the old computer, because I was starting to feel cut off from the world. That's a sad commentary on my current state of connectedness, but such is my life. I haven't been outside for two days because I've been sick. An odd kind of sick. Not something dramatic, and focused, but rather a crushing weight that's spread out over my entire self. It feels like the first days of when I had mono, or the first time I had a full blown episode of Epstein-Barr virus when my titers were really high. I'd call this another thing I've had before: chronic fatigue immunodeficiancy syndrome, but I hate that, because it's too long. OK, the abbreviation is CFIDS. How can they expect tired people to type out the whole name anyway, really now.

Anyway, I'm just really fatigued and low energy, and my body aches a lot all over. I guess this could be a particularly bad bout of my Fibromyalgia as well. Could be. Whatever it is, it sucks. I don't have the strength to take out the garbage, or lug my laundry to the Laundromat. I have dishes piled up in the sink, because I can only wash a few at a time. On top of which, I have spent the last few days fighting the war of me vs. the fleas. So far, it looks like I'm winning. However, I can't afford to get cocky and lay down on the job, cos them bloodsuckers are tenacious.

I have watched "American Splendor" over 5 times in the last two weeks. If you haven't seen it, I recommend you watch it once, for starters. Harvey Pekar is my new anti-hero. I love an underdog. The movie also whet my appetite for more blues and some obscure scratchy moody jazz.

Thematically speaking, it also got me thinking...how will I make my mark? This was one of Mr. Pekar's worries -- that his whole life would be eaten up by penny ante shit, and that as a working class stiff, he'd never even leave a mark behind. I've come up one side of the hill, and I'm standing on top looking down. I can look back at where I came from, and figure out how many wrong ways I went, how many detours I took, how many cul-du-sacs and dead ends I ended up in, and the few right roads I took to get me up the hill. I look down the other side, and I wonder what I'm going to do from here on in. Depending on my mood, state of mind, and health each day the perceptions of what might be change. One day I'm expansive and the possibilities seem limitless; I wonder just how I will choose from the vast options before me, after all, I can do anything! Another day, I wonder how I'm going to survive, and not end up on the street. It's a coin toss. Harvey understands.

But as I fall asleep, my soul cries "thank you God," and tears welled up at the corners of my eyes. I remember that even if I have nothing else in this life, I have The Truth and A Promise. This is more than what millions of people rushing headlong to nowhere have. No matter what happens, I'm safe. I have something priceless that didn't cost me a dime, and when I think of it, I am transported to a state of awe, and I rest there, in suspension. I wouldn't be surprised if I opened my eyes, and found myself floating above my bed, except that the air around me is thick with angels, and I lie heavy with lead of the Holy Spirit on my chest and the weight of His goodness.