Journal from the Beach

I pretty much don't write here very much -- Or I haven't lately. But that's okay, cause I don't make nearly as much time to read either. I figure, six of one...

But on Memorial Day 2005, Our Hero was having loads of fun. He spent the long weekend partying with his warrior friends who had come down to christine the summer on the very first weekend. This involved a lot of alcohol, even more dancing, even still more flirting and, almost certainly, some pizza. If you had looked at him, you would never know he was sick. He was sick and getting sicker, and was in denial. He was not dealing with his sickness and he was hiding it from everyone who loved him.

By mid July, a fairly prosaic scrape had become dangerously infected and soaked sepsis into his blood. Our hero had a friend call an ambulance -- knowing he couldn't make the drive, or even the walk up if someone else drove him to the hospital. He signed a paper he never again remembered seeing, and through the pain and fevered haze, he was put into a medical coma for the next week.

It was no sure thing. Our Hero remembers the dreams to this day. They all involved himself in battle, in combat, with various and assorted friends standing by his side, helping him. In one particularly vivid battle, He was flying a broom, Harry-Potter-like, fighting an enemy right on his tail, shooting bolts of power and lightening. In the dream, Dumbledore came to help and save me. I do not know which of my friends was standing by me at that moment -- but many, many had taken their turns. For a while, the nurses of the Critical Care Unit thought it was a death watch. They sat at my bedside, doing their paperwork and holding my hand, wiping my head.

I write this because I must remember where I was then. Today, on Memorial Day Weekend 2007, I am certainly more healthy -- although it often does not feel that way. Half the time I feel like I'm addicted to something and the other half the time like I'm in withdrawl. It is the difference in the numbness of denial and the pain of life. As I have confronted this long-lasting deep-seated sickness, I have become more aware. I know better what hurts my body and what heals it.

I make a lot of jokes. About a lot of things. Especially about my being sick. Many of my friends, almost all of my old warrior pack, are uncomfortable with me and my sickness. I remind them, I suppose, that they too will die someday, and they do not want to face it yet.

"How's it going," asks my neighbor Eddie. "Just hobbling along," I reply, joking. It is the only weapon I have against days like today. Days I forget to forget, and remember more than I'd like.

Days like today. Two fecking years ago, I was dancing and having fun. Today, I hobble to go 10 feet on my one good and one deformed foot. I couldn't walk down to my favorite watering hole if a fortune awaited me there. And I have still not danced. Yet.

Though I have said, "I will dance this summer," and then later, "On New Years," and even, "This spring, at opening." Once again, I am back around to saying, "This Summer." Fifteen weeks to Labor Day, and I will be dancing by then. Or pretty soon.

It's a different world out there, boys and girls. It truly is. And I think I am lost in it. Or I have lost myself in it. I dunno which. And I dunno which would be worse.

But I realized earlier this week that I think all of my external problems are, as always, just reflections of our internal conflicts. I said, jokingly, to a friend earlier this wee that I had been bitten by some viper. That its poison was spreading through my body, taking over. That may be more accurate than I expected. Or as least more metaphoric.

I seem to be living this fevered dream, surreal with no end in sight. Some battle for my soul continues in my consciousness. Hard for me to nail it down. But I set in the sun a while and remembered how the sun is a cure for everything. The salty water it brings -- whether tears, or sweat or the sea -- all are absolutive. And somehow, I feel like I really need absolution.

Do you know, when I was a kid, my mother used to tell me that I could do anything I wanted in life. I was quite brilliant and talented, she said, and I could apply my gifts in any manner I wanted. Who knew then that such words would become a curse.

So, of course, I believed her. Which only left me with one problem. What, of all the many possible things in the world, would be worth doing? To what task sould I set my mind? Still am not sure of that one.

Been thinkin' a lot. About a lot of things. About the past and the present and the future. About words unsaid, deeds undone, life unlived. About missed opportunities and second chances. About sacrifice and redemption. All the little things that come to mind on a Sunday night.

Not been writing a lot. Now here. Not elsewhere. Haven't even been reading much. Not here. Not elsewhere. Don't know what's wrong with me. Haven't been talking much on the phone. Haven't been talk that much online. Maybe more of that. It's easier. And I can just disappear whenever I feel like it. Show my face on cam or change my nick and be someone else. And I am really feeling like being someone else lately.

My Daddy used to say, "Son. Sooner or later you'll have to make up your mind. Either you can live a life of happiness or live a life of meaning. But never both."

For years, I never understood what he meant. Slowly, over the years of learning and yearning, of wanting and waiting and aiming and guessing. Slowly I came to understand that to live a life of happiness, one had to live as much as possible in the moment. Enjoying every instant for what it is. Letting it go, as soon as it is gone. And enjoying the next. It is a life of uniquely disjointed moments drenched in the flowing river of joy and sorrow.

To live a life of meaning, we must always be examining. We must be reliving our past, worrying our present and fretting over our future. Constantly refining ourselves. Never just experiencing our experience, but fitting it into the larger puzzle of greater meaning. Trying to aim our future to apply some power to some effect, like somekind of clockwork lever trying to pushme pullyou the universe.

Hobson's choice, if youi ask me. But then again you didn't.

Why do we go on? Through falling and failing, through dispairs and disapointments. through our pain and our perils, we go on. When we are tired. When we are hungry. When we are sick and sick to death of our situations, we go on. But why do we go on?

Because we are human, and that is human nature. It is human nature to persevere, to fight against adversity, no matter the odds. Out of hope, out of anger, out of frustration, sometimes merely out of pure stubbornness, we fight to go on.

And sometimes it is the fight alone which creates the luck we need.

Wweeeeeeee. Took some pain meds last night. They're giving me the good narcotics folks. It was definitely the good stuff, although not the best stuff. But after they kicked in last night it had a wierd effect. I was playing on my computer, reading email, surfing the web, etc. and I realized that the windows on the screen were no longer two dimensional. I could see depth into the screen and see words and icons moving about beneath. The words were shifting on their own. The words would shift beneath other windows and then slide out. And then the whole sceen had heat-type waves running through it. This morning, the bed is rocking back and forth, surging. Almost like it's breathing.. And the keys on the keyboard aren't square. thehy're shaped like broken up boulders. Not to mention that the curtain between the beds (I've told everyone I'm in the hospital, right?) keeps opening and closing of its own accord.

I am alive and well. Very well, actually. I have been mostly focussing inwards in my health issues lately.Just yesterday, I had the operation on my foot which is the light that shows the end of the tunnel. It should heal from the surgery in 4 weeks or so and at that time I should be up and ambulatory and in regular shoes again. Shoes. That's plural, folks. Haven't had my right foot in a regular shoe m 15 months. Then, I get to start walking again. I can get my ass off of the couch and out the door and lose these 45 pounds I put on since I haven't been hardly able to move.

I am doing good work on several of the local Democratic committees, and that may lead to an actual job in the press secretary field before the election season is over. Or before it has even really begun. Heh.

I have been a little down lately, which is why I haven't been blogging much. Just needing to focus on getting myself through this and raising my own spirits. I have been reading you all even if I have only been occasionally commenting.

By the way, Cyn, I haven't caught up on your travels. Did you find your school ring inj Hawaii? Heh.

So I finally got around to seeing the new Miami Vice on dvd last week. It was very much like the TV show -- the victory of style over substance -- eventhough the style is a little grittier than it was 20 years ago. Here at the start of the 21st century the drugs are meth, crack and a resurgence of smack, rather than the oh-so-recreational powdered cocaine of the 1980s. Not to mention that the early 80s still allowed for some unprotected anonymous sex, in the early days of HIV, that we know today is tantamount to a death sentence.

Highlighted perfectly by the crazy drug lords, scortching gun battles, explosions, throbbing driving scenes, and a remake of the classic Miami Vice climax music -- "In the Air Tonight," written and originally sung by Phil Collins. Jamie Foxx and Colin Ferrel worked great as the team of Tubbs and Crocket, and Micheal Mann, in my opinion, scores big again, or at least in accord with this reviewers nostalgic taste!

I've got it!

I've got it I've got it I've got it. I just wrote my best page and a half in the last six months. I've been trying to figure out how to start writing an essay on America. I've tried a dozen different things, but nothing was working. Nothing put me into the piece in the right place heading in the right direction. I have literally been trying to get this piece started for more than six months.

And I just got it. I'm so happy I could just dance.

Every year, at Christmastime, typically just before, I watch my favorite Christmas movie, It's A Wonderful Life. For years, even as I watched the movie, I disbelieved it. I was certain that none of made so much difference in the world as that movie purports. I always had this point of view: Put your hand in a bucket of water. Then, pull it out really quick. See how long that hole stays in the water? Such is the hole you leave in the world.

Now, I am approximately ten years older than my sisters oldest girl, Kelley. When she was about 5 or 6, our whole family was over visiting my grandmother one Sunday afternoon. Kelley asked me to take her on a little trip around the block, bored as she was with adults sitting and yacking. I was pretty bored by that too.

We went out of my Grandmother's fenced yard and turned right — all of the yards were fenced in postage stamps in that community in Baltimore County. I was walking, and Kelley was riding her big wheel. So off we went, down the block taking up the sidewalk.

About halfway down the street, my grandmothers street became a gentle hill. The way we were travelling, we were going down hill. As we approached the hill, Kelley took her feet off of her pedals, and with no resistance to gravity, the big wheel began to pick up speed. As it sped up, she became afraid and panicky. She was screaming but wouldn't put her sandaled feet onto the ground or try to get them back on the rapidly spinning pedals.

I took off at a run, and about halfway down the hill caught up to her, pulled her off the big wheel, and we fell into the nearby yard, one of the few with no fence in front of it. She screamed again, more startled than hurt — I had managed to fall underneath her, pulling her on top. With no weight to steady it, the big wheel turned off the sidewalk and ran into the fence of another yard, a little further down the hill.

But a few seconds later, 5 or 10 — I do not know how many, a car sped up the cross street at the bottom of the hill. That would be the street that Kelley and her big wheel would have darted out into had I not been with her, had I not pulled her off. Now, I cannot be sure of the timing. But it sure felt like she would have gotten right about into the middle of the street when the card sped past. I do not much like to think of what might have happened.

Neither Kelley nor I ever told anyone what had happened, and I forgot the event without thought for more than a decade.

But one night, years later, at Christmastime, while watching my favorite movie, at the part near the end where angel Clarence tells George that he wasn't around to save his brother Harry from drowning so Harry couldn't shoot down the kamakaze planes that were heading for a troop ship (remember, this happened right after WWII), so all the men onboard those ships died, right at that part I remembered pulling Kelley off of the big wheel that was speeding down the street years before.

Now my 35-year-old niece Kelley has four children, and I wonder. I wonder what would have really happened had I been lazy and stayed in that summer's day, or slow to realize what was happening and couldn't catch her. I wonder if I must bear some of the responsibility for whatever these four young humans do — whether good or ill.

I wonder.

Okay, so I tried this several times to what it generated, and I found that each time I liked the new one as much as the first ones. They all seem oddly appropos, so I post them all. Definitely good for a laugh.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Reverend Lord Thebet the Strange of Old Yarkhillshire
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Viscount Thebet the Introspective of New Porton Wells
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

I think I haven't been doing enough light reading lately. I've been reading a lot of nonfiction. A lot of history and politics. A lot of biography and philosophy. Nothing wrong with reading about those things, but I just think I need to add a little light fiction. To that end, I think I'll start up reading the mystery novels that my favorite fantasy writer, Stephen R. Donaldson, wrote under a pseudonym in the early 1980s.

Goddammit! I just saw that the second book of the final series in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, my favorite fantasy series, by Stephan R. Donaldson, won't be available until October 2007. And as I've been collecting all the books in paperback, it'll pro'ly be another 9-12 months after that before the paperback version.

Dammit.

Vincent
By Don McClean

Starry starry night, paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for you sanity How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how, perhaps they'll listen now

Starry starry night, flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Chorus:
For they could not love you, but still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight, on that starry starry night
You took your life as lovers often do,
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you

Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the stranger that you've met, the ragged man in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for you sanity How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will.

Name it and claim it: The movie and character who gave us this quote from the Big Eighties:

Go figure. Turns out that I am a Renaissance Man. Unfortunately, the Renaissance ended roughly 500 years ago.

*sigh*

Looks like if I plan to live until 55 — much less 85 — I'd better start treating my body like it's 45. Which, of course, it is. And one with diabetes, at that.

In the hospital, two weeks ago, I tipped the scales at my highest level yet. Yesterday, at the doctor's office, I was about 5 pounds lighter. A good start, but I need to keep it going. And it looks like I have a whole team to help me now. I have an internist, a nephrologist, a podiatrist, a urologist, an infection specialist (germologist?), and with a stress test coming up, soon a cardiologist. Oh, and probably a visit to an endrochrinologist is in my near future, although there seems to be only two of them in this half of the state.

But what does this mean to my free-wheeling, live like a teenager lifestyle? Yeah. Adios. But hopefully they will help me to rebuild myself -- better, stronger, faster. Heh.

I can't imagine why the whole rest of the world hates us. Except for two stories in today's Baltimore Sun newspaper.

The first story, a small one-column story on the right hand side of the front page, where in the second paragraph it mentions that on Thanksgiving Day more than 200 civilians were killed in Bahgdad. The second storys was below the three-column-wide four-inch high full-color picture showing four people outside of a Wal-Mart who had managed to each procure themselves a 20-inch HD Plasma Television by 5:10 am on Friday morning. Thank god we gots us our TV.

This one goes out to all those parents out there who started this by standing in line to buy their kids the toys (shoes, whatever) that they just had to have on Christmas morning: Fuck you.

Washington, DC -- Congress seems intent this session in finally passing a law that will help many of our young children who are having difficulty in school. The law will mandate that public schools finally offer an option for separate education for students. Many young girls and boys benefit from this separation that will, at last, be an option for everyone, even in public schools.

With support ranging as widely from female Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to frmale Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, schools will soon finally be able to segregate their classes on the basis of race. Under this proposed law, public schools would be required to provide single-race classes for any subject if enough students or parents requested one,

"Studies show that many white children excel in reading when not mixed with blacks," Hutchison said. "And most black childrem excel at physical education when they do not have to show off for the white kids."

She went on to say, "We haven't decided whether to segregate our children for part of their school experience. We don't think they'll be behind in their socialization if they spend some of their time just with whites."

Oh, did I say "race, whites and blacks?" I meant "gender, boys and girls." Apparently "separate but equal" is still okay where sex is concerned. Thurgood is spinning so fast in his grave he could fucking generate electricity. Jesus.

I cry too much, nowadays. Everytime I hear some sad fact or sad song, everytime someone I've only barely heard of dies, I cry. I never knew Ed Bradley or, today, Robert Altman. But their deaths brings tears to my eyes. Hearing of the strife and war in the middle east. Hearing of a Palestinian politician assassinated -- once more reducing the chance we have for peace on this earth. When I think of eulogizing my Dad as I must some day do. Or as I did with my Mom. Any slightest illness in my friends, or cause for worry in my family, I spend an hour (or an evening) in tears.

I guess I am just a big bag of sap, sometimes. Time to nap for a while.

Was given pause today to think. To think in ways and about things I usually try to not let bother me. I mean, if you let these things get to you, they can paralyze you.

It hit me today, that I am at least half way home. It would be a great run, 90 years, and even at that I'm half way there. A sobering thought. I always thought I would have made my mark and change the world by the time I was 25. Well, at 25 I went into a 4-year depression and figured I'd never live until the age of 40. I figured I'd do something stupid or silly and hit the road early.

But I grew up a little more, and learned how to not kill myself. So here I am, waiting for what's next. Looking to find my way to what's next. Yeah, there are definitely some things I've missed that I think about. I do not have children. I can't live to see my own flesh and blood become successful in their chosen lives. I can't regret that specifically given all of my circumstances, but I do regret it generally — meaning, I don't know how I could have worked it in properly, but I wish I could have.

I usually try not to think of these kinds of things. A friend asked me today, "When do you think we start thinking like adults? When do you think we start thinking like that?"

"I don't know," I said. Maybe it's experience related. Maybe it's tied in somehow to when we first experience deep loss and great grief. I do not know. But sometimes I can't not think of these things.

Maybe I'm just tired.

“Vampyros Lesbos”

I tripped across this German-language sexploitation flick from 1970 on, of all places, The Sundance Channel last night while flipping around. As you might guess, there were few men in this film. There were some very fetching women, most of whom became vampires, with nice small 1970 breasts — before every woman who walked in front of a camers had double-D silicone bags propped up over their ribcage. All in all, the movie was a hoot (if not a hooter), but I still am not sure of what the plot was.

"Ginourmous"

A lot of people are using that word now-a-days. I've seen it in commercials and on television programs. Even in a few movies. Pretty soon, I guess, it will get put into the dictionary. I wonder how it got out.

For a while, when I heard this word in the past year or two, I remembered being the first person I know to coin that word. But I was mistaken. As I thought harder on it, I realized I snagged that word from someone else. I first heard this word about 10-12 years ago. I was married at the time, and my then-wife, Laura, said it.

She would perinnially make up new words by accident. I think maybe her brain moved faster than her mouth. But she often made up these new words by slamming two others together. This one, I stole. I do wonder how it got out into the public at large. Maybe, over the past 10 years, she has said it to someone who wrote it down. Maybe I have repeated it often enough to someone who is listened to. I dunno.

But I do find it amusing.

What obsolete skill are you?

You are 'programming in QBASIC'. This programming language (of which the acronym stands for 'Quick Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code'), which is so primitive that it cannot easily be used for any purpose involving the Internet nor even sound, was current more than a decade ago.You are independent, in a good way. When something which you need cannot be found, you make it yourself. In writing and in talking with people, you value clarity and precision; your friends may not realize how important that is. When necessary, you are prepared to be a mediator in conflicts between your friends. You are very rational, and you think of things in terms of logic and common sense. Unfortunately, your emotionally unstable friends may be put off by your devotion to logic; they may even accuse you of pedantry and insensitivity. Your problem is that programming in QBASIC has been obsolete for a long time.
Take this quiz!

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Stolen from dear

kittyrevealed.

The first five people to respond to this post, will get some form of art, created by me, specifically for/about them.

It will likely be digital or possibly some sort of story or possibly some sort of photography. It may even be something that I've rendered.

The catch is that if you sign up, you have to put this in your own journal as well and create 5 pieces of art for people.

Don't be too scared to respond. Art is subjective. If it's a creative endeavor, it counts in my book.I've rendered.

The catch is that if you sign up, you have to put this in your own journal as well and create 5 pieces of art for people.

Don't be too scared to respond. Art is subjective. If it's a creative endeavor, it counts in my book.

Politics is the art of persuading diverse groups of people to agree on a course of action.

I guess I must be serious about this political shit. I got my shaggy summer hair cut this week into serious, respectible, fall hair. Jesus.

Sorry. Haven't much felt like posting much lately. Been keeping busy. Blah, blah, blah. Everything's okay. Going to bed now. I'll be more normal soon. It's all okay. Nighty-night all.

Went to my first official 'rubber chicken' dinner last weekend. As I've gotten more involved in the political scene, I've been making more appearances as a supporter of the guy I'm working for. It was held at the "Bridgeville Fire Hall" upstairs in the community room. And if you think that description gives you some clues as to what it was like, you are dead right.

A lot of leading Democrats and Dem candidates that I knew, and a ton of blue/grey haired old ladies and men. Most of the folks paying their $20 a head to sit at one ot the 16 spots at each of the 12 tables were old folk. I guess most of the people interested in politics are older. I know I didn't care much about politics when I was 20.

But the dinner was good, home cooking and the politicians were speechifying their asses off. There were auctions and door prizes of which I won none. But I do not hold that against them.

This is the first of what will probably be a long line of rubber chickens over the next couple of years. I'm working for the State Treasurer of Delaware, Jack Markell, who is running for reelection to his third term. But the worst kept secret in Delaware politics is that Jack is the undeclared frontrunner for the '08 Governor's race. The current Lt. Governor declared that he was running last year!

So this election is mostly a prep for the next one. The Republicans have put up a truly weak opponent to run against him, so we are raising a lot of money and not spending all that much. Who knows. In two years I may be working in the Governor's office. That might be fun.

If there is one or more people on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Writers write. That's what they do. Whether they get accepted or published or not. They write. Sometimes I get discouraged and forget that. Gotta get back to work now. Play time will come later, so I really have to get some work done.

Good God. I give up now. There can be no such thing as satire any longer. When a sex offender and accused shild murderer, and his family, hire a Hollywood agent before hiring a defense attorney, well, there can be nothing in fiction that that can surpass the surreality of that fact. Woe betide, the end of literature.

I haven't been to Burger King for a while. So I was a little surprise this afternoon, when I just HAD to have one of those Guy Burgers — The BK Stacker. And with it I got some fries. It seems that they've changed the shape of their french fry container.

The medium fries still comes in a cardboard container, not the old paper baggies, but it has been made narrower (left to right), deeper (front to back) and taller (I bet you can guess this one). In fact, it's shaped much like their paper cups. They call them "Frypods" and they're designed to fit into cup holders, so that you can gobble your fries right away, sitting in the cup holder of your car.

Amazing. That is all I can say.