Paging Deputy Andy

“Cry Havoc! Or let slip the dogs of war!” The Bard nailed it with that phrase. At least that is how this part time Literary Wonder feels today. I am back, once more, after a protracted period of time which, admittedly, might not be a thoroughly pleasant matter. I am of a mood to, in fat, go to war. An old friend calls this my “Pity blog” which, given the content of much of this cyber-cerebral presence, most closely describes what goes on when I post. Studious as I might be, I find this location a fitting domicile for what irks me and you, faithful follower, are haplessly hostage to your own need to display affection for this sorry excuse for the next “Great American Author” by clicking the link and reading the superbly well written drivel that appears before you.

I have been meandering in the realm of the Noble Practitioners of the Hippocratic Arts for the last two months and have not found it exigent to put finger to keyboard for a number of reasons. First, I had surgery in early June that has sapped my strength as well as a large portion of my muse. I gave up the absurd idea that any kind of diet would work to relieve me of the rotundity that I suffer from and allowed a very nice man and well respected surgeon to perform a gastric bypass. I had a similar procedure in 1994 which proved to be, in the long run, ineffective and somewhat dangerous. I had a band in my stomach which no longer worked which was ultimately causing me damage and needed to be surgically removed. The only avenue to accomplish this was a newer more effective method of restricting what I eat and how much I absorb. It has worked well in that I have lost 59.8 pounds and my diabetes has gone away.

The last time I went through this, many things changed in my life. I lost 206 lbs. experienced a transformation that I was not ready for. I went crazy. Given my current thought process and scrutinizing my life in search of any lengthy period of rationality, lucidity, stability, or reason I would resist calling this sojourn into “crazy” a temporary situation. I am older (dammit!), hopefully wiser, and better prepared this time for what is about to occur. The last time I thought it exigent to fall in love and proclaim said affection to the object of my affection. This failed to render the expected results as well as offer me any respite from a life of loneliness that I felt, at the time, would kill me. This, among other realities at the time, brought me to the gift that is Recovery and the Twelve Step miracle I practice on a daily basis. The mental fabrications I suffered from in 1994 are no longer issues from which I currently suffer, thanks to that daily miracle in my life. Hence it is in other avenues I must find my path to crazy.

I was of an opinion that this latest operation would correct or ease the many ailments that I currently suffer from in my senior citizenship. The last time it worked that way. I reached a level of almost good health in 1994, why not now? Well, the truth is that the number of infirmities have increased to the point of calling them legion. I had this operation as a precursor to being able to have one or more other orthopedic surgeries that my size prevented. I have become unable to walk for more than fifty feet at a time, and have had to seriously restrict my personal life to only those activities where a good sturdy, comfortable (emphasis on the sturdy) chair is accessible. I have lost my balance and fell several times in the last several months requiring the aid (given my size) of several of my friends coming over and physically picking me up from the floor. I fell last night and had to take today off so that the swelling in my knee would subside enough for me to walk on it. Hence the despicable diatribe you are currently reading. Despicable in that I am disgusted at what my life has become.

I had yet another doctor’s appointment yesterday where I was diagnosed with a heart ailment that both my parents suffered from. Atrial Fibrillation. It is going to mean more visits to the doctor (well, some doctor) and further medication that I will have to take for life. I had rejoiced after this last surgery about being able to get rid of the dreaded day-of-the-week pill dispenser due to the ailments that were no longer present after the surgery. I was down to one medication and my life looked wonderful. I am now back up to a handful of pills both morning and night. I am now at a point that I will soon have to give up a piece of my independence and get a roommate, hopefully someone with health care credentials.

The Scooter Store has decided to find a way to get me a motorized wheelchair. I very much do not want this contraption in my house. I very much don’t get to have what I want.

I loved the life I have lived and have no regrets. There are things that in retrospect would have been handled differently, but that is looking back at it with the eyes and mentality of the present. I did not know in 1981 what I know now, or I would not have instigated the bar fight that is the reason my hip needs replacing. I would not have done many things if I knew what I know now. But then I would not have learned the things I needed to know to get to this place. Pity blog? Screw that! This is what my life is about. It does not sound wonderful, but wonderful is just a word.

I have been many places and have learned many things. This is just another lesson in life. Perhaps it is a seemingly harsh lesson to learn, but who ever said that things will be easy, or wonderful?

Perhaps the most perplexing matter in this is the possibility of a roommate. I savor my privacy. There are not a handful of people who know where I live and I like it that way. My house is my Fortress of Solitude. Not the icy abomination that Hollywood made it, but the huge door in the wall of an ice mountain that you had to open with a giant key that seemed to be invisible to satellite and radar. The way it was in the Superman comics that I read which started my love of words and brought me to the place where I get to delight in, and bitch about my full and sometimes irritating life.

To give up the solitude of my current reality and invite someone in will be hard, and it might take a few tries before I get it right, but life dictates things without regards to my personal likes or dislikes. It is what makes the world a wonderful place. This time it is not just a word it is, as the dictionary affirms, excellent, great, and marvelous.

I will admit that I have a certain unrealizable desire where it comes to a roommate. There is a television program that I watch about a town of geniuses that work for a large corporation that research outrageous and outlandish science fiction type of things. They have a robot deputy sheriff that would be just perfect. He smiles all the time, and can do a million and one things. His name is Deputy Andy. If my truck needed a jump, I could hook him up and get started. He can cook and clean. He speaks every language on earth. He can probably type a thousand words a minute which means the two books I’ve written and do not have electronic copies of could be digitized in about two hours so that I could submit them. (These books not being ready to submit is surely the main impediment to my winning of the Nobel and Pulitzer) He probably has a multitude of abilities that are too numerous to count which would make my life easier, but the thing he has that would be the most use…an off switch.
Peace

Shillyshallying

In need of getting some things out of my head today I discovered a lack of ability where it comes to the cerebral muck and mire that is my normal state of affairs. I had nothing to say. I absolutely could not find a direction to go or, for that matter, one single matter of importance to bore you with this evening. Help!

I had occasion to speak with my Sweet Deifiúr yesterday having to admit a reality to her. While everyone else was celebrating the miracle of birth as exhibited through their affection for the gynic member of their individual procreative committee, I had emptiness in me that felt, and still feels disquieting. One should celebrate their parentage. I have, if properly accessed, hours upon hours of tales to regale the populace with about my adventures with this most remarkable woman. Her passing still leaves me with an enormous void right where my heart is. Yet, words are not coming. To someone whose main occupation is words, this serves as a major irritant. Not going to fight it anymore and I am just going to put it away where it wants to be…

Disquieting demeanor aside, I am back from the Land With No Words. It is a few weeks after that phone call and I am of a mind to complete this piece. I can hear my Dear Sainted Mother’s words in almost everything I do. I do not hear her when I am afflicting the world with the alternative vocabulary I am a master at. You know the one where I use multi-syllabled words to convey messages about situations that irk me. Okay…okay…when I curse. She never liked most curse words, and used the ones she found acceptable sparingly. I have, of late, attempted to temper the vulgarity I display when vexed. I also avoid such language when I am pleased. Well, most of the time. I believe that my desire to “clean-up” my verbally communicated ideals, expressions, rants, and philological pursuits comes from lessons learned at my màthair’s knee.

Morphologically speaking, it is tedious to me when I see the syntactical difficulties that swearing offers in the face of the confusion over whether this guy is in the least bit literate. I remember being admonished by Sister Mary Robertine from the parochial school I attended, “Cursing is just the desperate attempt of a weak mind trying to express itself!” Cursing has not me served well, and the realization of this is a lesson I damned well should have listened to when my mother told me so. She would also tell me that I need to stop using big words that folks have to keep a dictionary nearby in order to read what I have to say in this blog. I have a new venture at http://tlloydreilly.wordpress.com/ where I will attempt to deliver enlightenment to the world on the necessity to increase one’s vocabulary. In the meantime, I can and will cease and desist from the over usage incommodious of language that is exasperating, irritating, tedious, or downright incommodious. Well, maybe cease and desist is too strong a statement. Perhaps the best I will do is to try. That is what my mother would have told me to do. Try. And keep trying until you succeed.

Well enough of all this shillyshallying about. It is time to do battle with the World Wide Web in order to post this. While I am at it, perhaps I will look up the meaning of the word shillyshallying.
Peace

Bushwhacked Bastard

Thinking today that I really do not want to know anything more about a dead terrorist I came upon a realization. Yesterday was the anniversary of the day I raised my right hand and made myself subservient to the United States of America by way of membership in its armed forces. It was also the day I heard about the death of the fanatic responsible for the incursion in my life of fear and dread from without our borders. I rarely watch the news, and only discovered it because when I exit from my e-mail program, Yahoo News comes on the screen. They were more than happy to give over a majority of their reporting energy over to a dead criminal and monster.

I went on about my business and tried to be satisfied that the danger from that man might be minimized or, hopefully expunged from my psyche. But nooooooo….

I found it everywhere, on the radio on the way to work, on Facebook where I try to enjoy communicating with members of the human race who I have much affection for. It was on every television channel I surfed through on the television. My next door neighbor came over and offered me a beer to celebrate. I went to Wal-Mart and a man told me that it was a good day to be an American. I viewed five cars with the same bumper stickers that denounced the disposition of the body and marveled at the entrepreneurial acumen of whoever delivered that unctuous product in such quantities that five cars out of a city of some 100,000 people could find and purchase them in so short a time.

Thankfully, I heard nothing at work, and enjoyed the lesson and the kids. Thanked God for my job, and the kids I teach.

During my tenure in the Armed Forces of this great and noble country it was not necessary for me to take another human beings life. I am grateful for that. I am opposed to killing in any fashion except for defense of your, or your loved ones life. I came to this opposition as a direct result of the action taken at the behest of the recently deceased lunatic. I began to wonder after watching the buildings crumble to the ground, just when it became okay to kill. This quandary gave muse to one of the unpublished manuscripts collecting electronic dust on my hard drive. I took much soul searching to come to a place where I feel comfortable keeping God’s Sixth Commandment. I am also comfortable with the reality that my belief in this matter is not subject for discussion. I will not engage in a debate on this subject…with anyone.

I take exception to the ideas, given my belief about killing, that we should rejoice the death of this man. I have watched the videos, read the words, and truly believe that if his minions had ever kicked the door down in my house and shot me in the head that he would rejoice. Why in the bloody hell we call a world would I want to be just like him?!

As to whether he deserved it or not is a truly moot point. I might not believe that anyone should be killed, but I comprehend a reality about this situation. Any country that found themselves with the task of exacting justice on this person most certainly have found him guilty, probably based on his own unrepentant confession, and executed him. Not, however, without the obligatory media circus which would probably be much more penetrating and garish then what is currently being offered. With the inevitability of his death, it might as well happened right away, and conducted by someone who knew what he was doing.

As reported earlier, I did not have to personally cause the demise of any human being while in the Army, or since discharge. I did, however get to witness it in a most personal manner. One night, in 1973, while on guard duty, my supervising sergeant ordered me to give him the keys to the room we were keeping our firearms. We were on alert at the time due to threats from terrorists (Terrorism has been around for a while, it did not just show up on 911) in the area I was stationed and were keeping our weapons in a room in the barracks so as to offer us easy access in case of trouble.

I watched him walk to the room and enter. I started to go to the restroom and just as I turned to enter the latrine, I heard three gunshots. I went to the room and was told by the guys standing around the door that it was my duty to go in and see what had happened. I retrieved my weapon from the holster at my side(there had been shots fired) and opened the door. Lying on the floor was the Sargent with an M-16 lying on his chest pointing to what had been his face. Except…there was no face. Neither were there ears, or hair, or anything that resembled the top portion of a human body.

I shut the door, locked it, and called headquarters. I was relieved from my post after a while and I went to my room to go to sleep. Except…I did not sleep. I have remembered that sight every day for the last thirty eight years.

I think about the guy that pulled the trigger in that house in Pakistan and pray that he is alright. I pray that the image of what he saw combined with what he had to do does not stay with him as hard as what I saw has stayed with me. I am not anywhere close to being in the same place as that brave man, in fact, I am light years from knowing what that Navy Seal has to deal with as a result of having to take a madman’s life. I just found someone. He had to kill someone. He has to remember that he killed someone.

Okay, here’s where the armchair heroes and generals will stand up, righteously indignant and scream that I am unpatriotic or even, a traitor. I do not care. I care about that young man who had to kill someone to protect me and the yapping little dogs sitting on the laps of those who wave a flag around as if they had the first clue about what it takes to eradicate another human being in the service of their country. Those who live in a world where death comes at them through an electronic medium and wish to rejoice the death of another human being can kiss my ass!

We need to honor the commitment to justice that those guys jumping out of helicopters in Pakistan have and maintain in their hearts. We do not need to give that murdering son of a bitch one more second of time in the media. We do not need to allow him to have any more power in our lives because THAT IS WHAT HE WOULD HAVE WANTED!!!!!

I will close with a quote:

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell

God Bless those rough men that are out there trying to see that we have some…

Peace

Wondrous Wistfulness or Woeful Wretchedness

Not really knowing what the words are supposed to say this evening - 4/10/2011 12:01 AM. My eyes tell me that it is to slumber I must travel. My hip screams for a comfortable chair. My attitude tells me that I have to sit and type for a while. My overall mood is one of melancholy. While worshipping at the temple ruled by a remote control, I surfed myself into a cinematic land I am familiar with. It is a film starring two aging actress who, during my misspent youth, held my attention from a libidinous point of view. Both have weathered time rather well, and there is still some licentious yearning in my loins for these fine ass thespians. It is a comedy dealing with the reunion of a pair of former rock and roll groupies. One, still groupying it, and the other a soccer mom of a decidedly less vociferous demeanor.

One scene details one speaking of the other and how she used to dance with wild abandon (the less vociferous on). The children of Mrs. Mother could not believe their strait laced pantheon of prudence would ever “Let go” in such a manner. The one regaling them with the fable about their matriarch simply replied…”She used to not care what other people thought.”

I listened to this scene and instantly entered the Wayback Machine to a place where everything was music and happiness and reckless abandon. I thought of concerts I have attended, women I have loved (or thought I loved), friends that would stick by you through thick and thin. A friend recently posted a picture of Penn Station in New York and I sent him a message to eat a cheesedog from Nathan’s like we did when we would go to a concert upstairs in Madison Square Garden. He lamented on the fact that his aged stomach probably could not take the abuse...a condition in which I have a commiserate belief.

I think of The Who, and the Concert for Bangladesh, and Yes, and Jethro Tull, and Led Zeppelin, and the Electric Light Orchestra, and many more in that arena and others around Fun City that I had the honor and pleasure to attend. I ask myself when it all left me.

I guess the answer is that it left me the night I took up residence under the Robert Moses Causeway Bridge. Paying more attention to the music then the realities of life brought this about. This occurred several years after the Summer of Love, and sometime prior to Reaganomics. I hold no ideal that any loss I encountered was a result of the music, or the women, or even the lifestyle. I am not of a desire to write a diatribe on the duties of adults, or the irresponsibility of my actions. I remember the music for the melodious message given. I do truly believe that I really loved the women I claimed to. I would not wish to change a thing.

My melancholy is more about the realities of modern day life and how it has grown cumbersome. Well, perhaps not cumbersome as much as dreary when compared to covering up from the rain at Woodstock. It certainly does not compare to the night I almost asked Darlene Pacelli(She had no idea who I was at the time, let alone that I thought I loved her) to marry me. I would have if I had not got sick to my stomach from drinking to many shots of Peppermint Schnapps. There are no nights where I get to watch the sunrise on the Atlantic Ocean while lying on a blanket with that girl from West Babylon whose name escapes me, but whose eyes still shine and twinkle for me when I close mine and think hard.

I sat down with the muse from the film about wild women from ‘60’s and 70’s, with the idea that I should try using my new computer for something other than an avenue for my current addiction…a stupid $6.99 computer game where I can probably break 10,000,000 tonight before I go to sleep. Amazing how life works. My hip stopped hurting (and I did not even have to take any medicine). My eyes are still heavy, but in a good way. My demeanor has gladdened through the miracle of wistfulness. I do not long for better times. I have them with me everywhere I go. I think I will go to sleep listening to music. I think I will dream of a pair of amazing eyes and attempt to put a name to the pretty face.

Peace

Pusillanimous Pomposity

There is a bug that is up my posterior end. It is the day before St. Patrick’s Day and I am trying to find words to write to regale the masses with the wonder that is being of noble Irish lineage. I have tried to read wise words from famous Irish men and women with little good fortune. The best thing I could really find that might sum up my feelings on being Irish wasn’t even said by an Irishman:

"This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."
- Sigmund Freud

I am obsessed with ancient Irish stories and myths. I know that I have an ancestor who fought and died next to the great Ard Ri (Irish High King) Brian Boru. I have read book upon book about the struggles Ireland has suffered at the hands of the Empire under whom the sun never sets. I have an equaled obsession with the Troubles and the ultimate victory of the thousand year war waged with the English. The atrocities and the belligerent attitude the English have held toward the Irish has fueled a racial bigotry in me to the point that if I were to travel to Europe, said trip would definitely exclude a stop at Heathrow International airport, or any other bloody ‘fookin port of embarkation or disembarkation the rotten Brit bastards might have in my way.

I have an ancestor who escaped the battle at the GPO in Dublin in 1916, and was a close associate of both Michael Collins and Patrick Pearse. I have several ancestors who were kings and princes of the Emerald Isle. I also have progenitors who were brigands, pirates and, in more modern times, gangsters.

My most recent family tree is of a more common nature. Truck and bus drivers, tug boat captains, and bartenders. My own checkered past has mirrored my most recent antecedents in the areas of professional cargo driver and tender of the jar. I missed the tug boat thing, but I believe I received my love of words from My Uncle Buddy who read voraciously and was the most intelligent person I have ever met. I also took delivery of his affinity for “the drink” as my sweet Deifiúr commonly refers to our (his and mine) obsessive predilection with spirits of the grain.

I write with an Irish accent in my head. My fiction is heavily laced with Irish flavored wit and Gaelic words that probably do not accurately embody in context, what I wish them to signify. I am believer in a unified Ireland, even though that sentiment is not necessarily the prevailing desire of the residents of Northern Ireland.

Growing up, March the seventeenth was the one day all year that Uncle Buddy did not drink. We never really asked him the reason for this, we were mostly happy to have him sober. I conjectured that he failed to see the point of announcing for the world that which he knew without having to prove. I, in the latter years of my life before recovery, ceased imbibing also. My reasoning was from a decidedly more academic stance. Prior to my sweet Deifiúr and me, no one in our family had ever attended college. We took our studies seriously and still approach life from a more or less intellectual/academic point of view.

I, still curious as to my uncle’s liquid fast every year at this time, researched St Patrick only to find much confusion and irritation. HE WAS NOT EVEN IRISH!!!!! Best accounts, or rather the only factual thing historians can agree on is that he was a young boy living in a Roman family in either England or France who was kidnapped and forced into slavery by Irish brigands. (Perhaps, one of my ancestors???)

He did not drive the snakes from Ireland because there were not, nor has there ever been, snakes in Ireland.

Being a Catholic saint, and probably a Catholic priest or bishop, he would have never been in favor of a celebration of his life that included droves of people worldwide getting completely legless and befuddled with drink while acting foolish on the feast of his sainthood. They turn the river green in Chicago for the day for God’s sake! As if any northern river running through an industrialized town or city needs to have anything of a foreign nature dumped into it.

I could go on but seem to have come to a wall in the middle of the road. I began this piece with a much different intent. I many time choose my topics from the Word of the Day I receive from Dictionary.com. I am also an alliteration fanatic …an extremist that is pugnacious when confronted with complaints about “big words that sound the same.” I then attempt to guide my topic from the alliterative title I come up with.

Writing is an art and discipline. It is a practice that craves and requires both exercise, and nurture. The title of this piece reads to me as “Fearful Belligerence” Something tells me that when writing on the Irish in me I must respect that which I fear, and act belligerently in order to defeat the tragedy that is ultimately at the heart of all true Irish literature and history. Humor is the tool to combat misfortune. I write what I see, and I see that being Irish is central to what I am. The humor I see is the myth of St. Patrick, and the hordes of drunks that are celebrating the feast of an ENGLISHMAN!

I leave you with this Irish prayer…

"May those who love us, love us; and those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping."

Peace

The Evanescence of My Actuality

Sitting down on the seventy-seventh day since last I regaled to multiverse with the wisdom and effervescence that is this blog, I find the need to apologize. For what I need to apologize is escaping me right at this moment but, knowing me as I do, I must have pissed someone off by being absent, or stupid, or venal while neglecting the Cyberverse. So, here it goes…I am sorry.

Self-regarding as I have been, I will report that there have been matters which required my full attention. I have an unusual schedule for a schoolteacher this year. At times, the hooligans in my charge have to attend school when others are on academic break. When that occurs, I am the teacher who must fill in and teach them all subjects as well as those assigned me. I am teaching Sociology this semester and have had to learn it ahead of the little scamps for which I must provide grades. Last semester was Psychology, and just saying it still gives me gastrointestinal hindrances. I have found that in my now advanced age, I am a one trick pony. I can teach, or I can write. Spring break is this coming week and I was able to plan ahead for this event. I have a little time to write and it is feeling better with each word.

Another restraint in my pursuit of all that is literary has been the infirmities that I endure which are called legion. An old friend has called this a pity blog (Thanks JD!) because I seem to talk about everything wrong in my life. Well, I am reminded of an old Twilight Zone episode where a painter was having difficulty selling his paintings due to the nature of his subject matter. He drew horrendous creature with large claws and razor like teeth. When asked why his drawing were always so gruesome, his answer was that he simply drew what he saw. The last scene of the show was in his apartment and the closet door in his bedroom opening to reveal the creatures from his paintings walking into the room as if arriving from some different dimension or reality. Right now my infirmities are those creatures from another world.


I am facing two and possibly several more surgeries in the next year rife with physical realities (physical therapy, etc.) that are of a most uncomfortable nature. I am in negotiation with a surgeon in a city 100 miles away to perform a gastric bypass to alleviate the issues I have with being super obese. I have learned that my advanced rotundity has, thanks to the wonder of science and research, always been something that I truly had no control over. There used to be a term used with fat people, “Oh they have problems with their glands, which is why they are so big.” Well, apparently there is a hormone secreted in the stomach that dictates the body’s response to hunger, and I am one of those who have an excess level of secretion of this crap. The gland thing was true and nobody knew it. The doctor told me that I have a disease that is only curable through surgery. I had a form of this procedure in 1994 and the weight has come back plus some.

I took this news and did what I am used to doing. I became enraged. I think back of all the kids that made fun of me, and the jobs I couldn’t get, and the annoying habit that people have of speaking a little louder and slower to me because they think that due to my size, I am not quite as bright as they are. I think of the looks I have received when people discover that in most conversations the dim one is the fool I am talking to. I can think of a thousand more things that I could enlighten the world with where it comes to obesity. Do not worry, I am finished bitching about it…with no apologies to the obtuse masses of the world.

I need a hip replacement, probably two. I, even in the midst of constant unremitting pain, do not have too much of a psychological, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, conceptual or perceptual predicament with this ailment. I know that I am to blame for this distress. One night back in my misspent youth I apprised several gentlemen in a House of Spirits that they were, in fact, one of the obtuse masses I spoke of earlier. Being the imperceptive inebriants I was wont to associate with at the time, they proceeded to escort me…physically…to the parking lot behind said establishment of spirits and clarify for me that it was not polite to tell people in front of their girlfriends that they were, in fact, obtuse. We reap what we sow.

So where does this fall in the timeline of my life and the sloth I have exhibited with the gift of transcribing the wisdom of the ages to those both the obtuse and astute. Who knows? I needed to write and I needed to let somebody know what is happening in my life and you chose to hit the link in the email I sent you. Thank you.
Peace

Eschew Obfuscation

Only Captain Domesticado would use words that would inspire me to write. I have been absent from the World Wide Web, to my most earnest chagrin, for fifty-four days. This, one might say, is not an acceptable state of affairs for the next Great American Author. While that may be said, the certainty is that if there is nothing being written, then there must be a level of acceptance within this scribe which sanctions such indolence.

Be that as it may, I am, in my own defense, having an inordinate measure of difficulty from the wretched collection of ones and zeroes which resides on my desk. It is somewhere between five and six years old which is nine hundred and sixty eight in computer years, and sorely wishes retirement from the daunting task of servicing this wannabe next Great American Author. I neglected to put the desire for a new writing instrument on my letter to Santa this year, opting instead for the latest tome from Ken Follett. This was not an all-together faulty choice given the impoverished state of my personal economic circumstances, and my love of the written word...especially this certain author’s methods of writing words. Additionally, there is also the fact that my personal Santa’s elf (My Sweet Deifiúr) would not know what to buy me, or find the money to purchase said instrument of enlightenment.

But I digress…well, all right…obfuscate.

I embarked this past weekend on my annual pilgrimage to the homestead of my Sweet Deifiúr and Captain Domesticado for the delightful purpose of welcoming the Lord Savior into our lives once more by celebrating the anniversary of His birth. Long trips in a motor vehicle have become somewhat of a chore for me due to my many infirmities. This year it is my hip, which is in need of surgical replacement. I have to stop several times to rest and remonstrate along the way, which makes for a long journey. Upon arrival, I am greeted by a bumper sticker on Captain Domesticado’s Volkswagen Rabbit stating the phrase which is the title of this piece. I chuckle as I read it and know that I am once more in the warm embrace of the kind, loving, intelligent bosom of my family.

The inspiration for writing came from that part of me which is illiterate. I suffer from a malady where it comes to reading that I believe all writers encounter in some form or another. There are just too many words in the English language to know or remember. I stared at the bumper sticker, thought about it, and realized that my understanding was not secure in what the message truly was. I know that I have used both the words “eschew,” and “obfuscation” in my writings. Actuality I believe I might have used those same words as a title for another piece my faithful readers have trudged through while attempting to make sense of the obfuscation that is much of my writing. Unfortunately, the decrepitude of this reluctant senior citizen has made my memory suspect more times than I am disposed to admit.

I successfully resisted the urge to get the notebook computer out of the back of my truck and correct the situation. I told my folks that there would be something written provoked by the bumper sticker. Then I shut up because I was too embarrassed to admit that I did not know what it meant. This is not an entirely comfortable state of mind for a former middle and high school English teacher.

Having the luxury of time and distance from that disturbing incident, I am prepared to move out of the ignorance and into the light. Where that light is and what color the bulb is escapes me. I am ill prepared to grasp the depth of my deceit. I know that I should stop the melodious meanderings through the thesaurus and speak plainly. I realize that there is a level of boredom in my writing, and I resist the change. I am, at heart, a writer of fiction and publish these mental meanderings as a tool to keep my mind and fingers sharp. I appreciate the love and respect that my readers, those few brave souls, offer me. I appreciate that while I did not readily know the meaning of the bumper sticker, it was not so much a problem as a solution. How do I arrive at this simple solution? Get off my lazy ass and write.

Peace

Participation and Duty

It is a dark and gloomy day with precipitation randomly interrupting the gloom and doom that is November 2, 2010. I am at home from work due to my infirmities, which are legion. I am truly of a desire to go back to bed and wake up tomorrow. I have not written for the sake of anything in forty-one days. I have been engaged in a number of activities that I have utilized as pretext for my lack of inspiration and sloth. I have no true reason for not writing other then the aforementioned indolence and a healthy dose of self-pity or, for lack of a better nomenclature, apathy. This must change and today is a good day to realize that change. John F. Kennedy spoke of being the change you wish to see and I most assuredly fancy the sight of some transformation.

Charging ones creative battery is the task and the topic, which I believe will accomplish, or motivate said achievement, is the election being held this day of murky motivation and sinister indifference. We are about to embark on either the continuance of the aspirations set forth this day in 2008, or the further obliteration of life as we know it. I take umbrage with those who have spent the past two years disparaging the current regime, and I equally find difficulty totally disagreeing with those selfsame naysayers. We, as a country, are a mess.

The entire election process has become a feat of finance as opposed to an exercise in governance. I remember a time when I believed that the ideals of our founding fathers meant something to me on a deep level. When I entered the United States Army, it was perfectly acceptable for me to lose my life in defense of those ideals, but could not exercise the rights of US citizens to practicing the civil liberties I was defending by voting for the candidate of my choice. That was in the early 1970’s and the law changed while I was a soldier. I have voted in every election since. I will vote today, even though my health is poor today. It only happens once a year and I will just have to submit to a bit more discomfort and drive a few blocks to the polling place. It is not a right to me anymore…it is a duty.

Having established my patriotism, I believe it might be appropriate to express my disenchantment. Much has changed in the last two years and not all of it for the better. We are still at war and it is my opinion that we will encounter the same reality that the Russians did in Afghanistan. The same resolution awaits us that did when I was a soldier. We are probably not going to win this war. In Vietnam, we engaged an enemy that had been fighting for over twenty years on their own terrain. The Afghans have been is some kind of dispute for somewhere around four thousand years…on their own terrain.

The history of this country has always had someone trying to gain control or fight off enemies who were trying to open trade routes from the east to the west. There it sat, right in the way of progress. The society is medieval with warlords, tribes, and many rocks. There is no real commercial value to the region, other than the poppy trade and I would not tout the largest supply of heroin in the world as a negotiating point in any diplomatic conversation. Yet still we find ourselves engaged in a war where American soldiers are dying. Ideals are definitely not, what they used to be. They cannot even figure out who should be in command for God’s sake. Is it the brilliant professional soldiers, or arm chair hugging politicians who get there information from Rolling Stone magazine.

We have a health care law for the first time in history and still people are being denied coverage for necessary care, and while they are being denied coverage, the Republicans are trying to find a way to repeal that law. So much for groundbreaking legislation.

Economic woes are lessening, but there are still jobs being lost and much opposition from the right about investing in job producing infrastructure projects unless it will get them re-elected. We still have a system that will elect a congressional representative, and maintain a system where that elected official, as soon as they take office, must INCREASE the amount of time spent in raising money for re-election and REDUCE the time they spend governing.

We still have a vast amount of our population living in fear of discrimination due to age, race, or sexual orientation. We demonize illegal immigrants and pass laws that will eradicate due process for those who are not card-carrying members of the John Birch Society (‘member them?), the NRA, or the ever loving Republican Party.
The democrats are not much different even if they are whom I am voting for today. With the control they now enjoy, why haven’t we found Osama Bin Laden? Why do we still depend on foreign oil when it has been conclusively proven that there are enough fossil fuels inside the boundaries of the United States to sustain us for as long, if not longer, then Middle Eastern crude?

So why vote? Because it is my duty. I live in a country that guarantees me the right to voice my opinion and for that right, I have responsibilities. I have the duty to vote, and the further obligation to let those I vote for know when I am dissatisfied. Peace.

Cerebral Bulimia

“Freedom is not having to do what you want to do. Spiritual and true freedom is wanting to do what you have to do.” This tidbit of information greeted me in my e-mail this morning from the Fr. Richard Rohr, a gentle man whose words are currently the chief path to spiritual inspiration for this oft-dimwitted scribe. Therein lays the rub. I have encountered a situation that is giving me pause on a philosophical as well as personal level where it comes to what I want and what I have to do. I am about to embark on a course of instruction the topic of which is the theory of self-actualization as hypothesized by Abraham Maslow. This is most certainly a Brobdingnagian feat of staggering hypocrisy.

I am currently teaching a section of Psychology to the young men in my educational care and have happened upon the time in the course when the topic of personal needs must be addressed. Well, anyone who has been to any kind of post secondary school will tell you that the guru, no, sage of defining the needs of human beings is Abraham Maslow. Maslow was one of the driving forces in the development of “humanistic psychology” which Wikipedia defines as a holistic approach to human existence through investigations of meaning, values, freedom, tragedy, personal responsibility, human potential, spirituality, and…wait for it… self-actualization.
I take umbrage with my soon-to-be act of duplicitous insincerity. Two-facedness does not sit easy on my brow. I like not the direction my professional life has taken here of late, and I must report this to the world. In simple terms, I must tell on myself.

In earlier times, I had the great privilege to receive an education from two state operated institutions of higher learning. I reentered the academic universe on the back end of a bridge that I had found it necessary to call my residence. While under that bridge I came to a realization that my career opportunities were limited (hence the bridge) and that it would be impractical, at best, to pursue gainful employment in any city that had been more than happy to let me sleep under a bridge rather than allow me an extension for my unemployment benefits which I had exhausted. Life, at that point in my life, was everyone else’s fault.

My ruminations included an inventory of my marketable skills. These skills amounted to one profession where I had any reasonable amount of expertise. Truck Driving had afforded me a living for a major of my adult life and it was also the main cause (in my most ill educated mind) the cause of my dire straits. I experienced an epiphany under that bridge. I asked the God that I did not understand at that time, to guide me to some revelation on the meaning of life. (It is amazing what cheap beer and wine will do to a mind) The answer I received came in the form of a desire to learn a new trade. This meant dragging my rather rotund posterior end out from under that viaduct and go back to school. Therein lays the beginning of this rant.

With the aid of my Dear Sainted Mother who gave me shelter and food (of course – see my posts on “It’s Mommy’s Fault), and a few pairs of clean clothes I found a scholarship to return to school. It was a Job Training Partnership Act) JTPA scholarship for which I must thank (much to my radical left wing regret) Ronald Reagan’s Republican Government. Once there I figured that, given the poor quality of my academic skills in high school, I would not last very long. The person who signed the papers authorizing my attendance told me that I had a guaranteed three months worth of room and board. This, to a recently homeless person, sounded like Heaven. I made it past the three months and many more in the pursuit of college degrees

Not wishing to experience any more night under the stars, I enrolled in a course of study that the school counselor reported would pay me more than any other program, at the time, for a newly graduated student. Greed aside, I pitched in, studied hard, and came upon the Sage of Humanistic Psychology in my first college class. I also found him in my second class, and seventy-three of the one hundred and thirteen junior college and university classes that I have attended since. Somewhere around the fortieth of fiftieth class, I turned it off and refused to listen any more. I vowed that if I was ever to leave school (count the classes and divide by three…I was a freaking professional student!) Abraham Maslow would never again infringe on my life…forever. There were much more colorful words used at the time, and they too, as ‘Ol Abraham has, stayed out of my vocabulary (well, at least in the order I used them that time) until about six weeks ago when I realized that his teachings were required fair for a high school psychology class.

I thought I might escape it when I woke up this morning and had to take a sick day due to one of my many infirmities. I was talking to my substitute on the phone and it became evident that she was not game for taking my place if she had to talk about Mr. Maslow. We agreed that a film and a written essay would suffice. I will have to commit this egregious act of hypocrisy when I return to work. Something tells me that Karma is trying to invade my life. Or rather, perform a particularly uncomfortable sexual act on me.

I will take my task seriously when I return, and do so with diligence. I will remember the lesson I learned which, realistically, I should have learned many years ago. Never let your mouth overload any part of your body, which is not designed for the load. Peace.

Splendorous Sibling

“THE PACK OF BASTARD’S!!!” This statement greeted me one day when I answered the phone. My Sweet Deifiúr was informing me that someone had elicited her wrath. The dimwitted fool raising her ire proved to be someone who I had complained about the day before on this blog. It is an old saying my Dear Sainted Mother would use when anyone said or did something wrong or about to one of her kids. This little bit of my mother is something that we have kept and use to soften each other when we are upset. Softening me in my battle with reality is something my Deifiúr does extremely well. It is part of the reason for this post. The chief purpose of my putting finger to key is as follows:

It is once more that time of year when I am obliged to engage in a ritual that has always been rather banal and uninteresting to me. My Sweet Deifiúr is celebrating her entrance into this world. The ritual I refer to is one where I go to the store, most probably my mercantile of choice owned and operated by the family of the Sage from Bentonville. I peruse the greeting card aisle and choose something that seems to say what I feel about this wonderful woman. I then go and attempt to locate a stamp and usually encounter someone who wishes to sell me thirty or forty stamps, even though all I require is one. I only send one piece of mail a year that requires postage. All other correspondence and business I perform on-line or in person The US Postal Service has been in financial trouble of late, and there is no way to tell if the stamps I buy today will be sufficient next year when I am in need of another. That is not to say that the price of the stamp, or the card for that matter, is the major concern. The interruption of my walkabout through this great and grand existence we call life is neither irritating nor infuriating. It is her birthday and I wholeheartedly wish to celebrate the massive gift the God of my understanding gave the world on September 3, 1948.

The true issue is the effort to deliver eight or ten words on a card that may or may not get to its destination on time, is horribly insufficient. It seems trite and, well, almost insulting for me to express the love and affection I have for my sister in so few words or actions. I am talking about a monumentally exceptional person and giant of a woman who goes about the business of being a true superhero in the quietest way, with dignity, compassion, and love. How are you going to say that in a two or three dollar card? I have always believed that I am not and have never been the brother she deserved. I have always been a true and regular pain in the ass. Unfortunately, it does not seem that I am liable to change that anytime soon.

Talking on the phone yesterday, I was assailing the healthcare system and the efficiency of the doctors I currently employ to see to my health. I am an old fart and it is no secret that I have a definite faculty to be a grouchy old fart. This does not seem to bother her. I told her that I was going to stop fussing at her because she did not do anything to deserve it. Her reply was simple… “I love you, you’re my brother.”

On those seldom times that I go visit her and Captain Domesticado, she turns her entire life over to me, and whatever schedule I wish. While there, we eat what I want, and if she does not get to bake me the apple pie I dearly love, she apologizes and makes sure there is something just as good for dessert.

My infirmities have gotten the best of me recently and I asked her to find a motel for me to stay in because the extra bed she has is not comfortable for me. She did not find a motel…she made herself and her other half sleep on the extra bed so that I could be comfortable. In her own house!

Growing up she took care of me as if I were her child and not her pain in the ass brother. She is responsible for naming me.

She is the foremost and certainly the #1 fan of T. Lloyd Reilly. She called me in a frenzy to tell me how wonderful it was that she had been able to go to a bookstore and buy a book that included a story I had contributed. She makes a point of telling all who will sit still and listen that her brother is a published author. If I had even a few fans that are just half as passionate about my search to be a full time writer, I would have publishing contracts galore. The first book with my work in it she made me sign…just as if I was some famous big shot writer. While signing it I heard her say, “This will be worth money someday.”

She is the only person in the world who does not freak out when I cry. I resist the need to shed tears in public, but not with her. She understands my hurt. She understands my frustration, and has no problem watching her brother cry. I am sure she thinks it is her job to comfort me when I am in distress. With the possible exception of my Dear Sainted Mother, she is better at it than anyone I have ever known.

I could not buy another predictable and mundane birthday card this year. I am struggling with life right now and the only one who really understands it is my sister. She has accepted the often times tedious chore of being a big sister with grace and kindness.

She reads every word I write and I hope she reads this and it gives her cause to smile. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAULA. I LOVE YOU.
Peace

Unadulterated Astuteness

Meandering through my morning ritual of coffee, flatulence, and email, I happened upon an interesting ideal. The heart is actually the principal appendage by which we direct our lives. I found this in a spiritual newsletter I receive from a Franciscan priest of some note. Fr. Rohr wrote that he once encountered a surgeon that informed him of the following:

“There are 30,000 neurons surrounding the heart, and the electrical field of the head brain is only one tenth the size of the heart’s electric field. This makes the heart area the biggest “oscillator” and the biggest oscillator in any system always excites and determines the energy of all the other oscillations in the body.”

I have just finished a unit on the central nervous system in class and wondered about this claim. I did the proper research and found myself lost in the worlds of Wiki Answers, and academia. Ask.com failed me terribly. None of the locations visited could offer any comprehensible evidence as to the veracity of the above-mentioned statement. I am but a part time scientist and not truly cultivated of all within the environs of the discipline. I know that much of science seems to be diametrically opposed to the more commonplace answers to questions of a spiritual nature. I know that most spirituality revels in the very art of sublime uncertainty, and the negation of scientific principles.

I speak of the heart quite often when I write. I am Irish and, as such, find myself driven by my emotions. This should come as no revelation to those who follow this blog on a regular basis. I thought about the statement and chose to believe it rather than giving credence to the conflicting reports of the easily confused and perpetually confounded members of the scientific community who have been studying the mind/body conundrum for decades. I like the idea of letting my heart drive my behavior.

I also like that the smile of a small child makes my heart warm. I like that I have found myself, at the tender age of fifty-seven, once more in love. (No, I will not tell anyone who it is until I tell her) I like that my heart has changed my taste in films and that same discernment has softened from gangster movies to chick flicks. I like that my heart still likes the idea that Sylvester Stallone can make a #1 hit movie. (Hurray for the old guys) I like that I can read and glean wisdom from a simple message given by a simple priest.

I like that it is my heart that hurts for my students who have graduated and are currently residing in the Mid-East and carrying firearms in order to receive remuneration for their services. I like that my heart is what makes me enraged at the evil and cruelty in the world. I like that it is my heart that makes me rejoice in the diversity of a world where it is acceptable to be alive regardless of age, race, creed, religion, or sexual identity. Well, the jury is still out on the sexual identity, but hope springs eternal…

I hear many times in my personal life that the longest journey one must take is the eighteen inches from the head to the heart. A standard axiom in twelve step programs, this tells me that I am in conflict unless I take action. The idea of neurons around the heart and the strength those oscillators exert on my being takes that conflict and makes it a moot point.

I have had a brawl going on in my head over the state of affairs in the world as it relates to the Moslem community. Someone wants to place a Mosque near the site of the 911 tragedy. Many of my friends are livid over this. These are people who I hold dear and love, and they are total incensed with the idea and have actually turned to suggesting violence be done to proponents of the project. American friends who proudly support the country and do not realize that the very country that we love guarantees that there can be a Mosque anywhere in the country. Adversely, what kind of simpleton would want to put themselves at risk by even thinking and giving voice to this kind of desire?

Why is it so hard to act reasonably? Why do we have to hate each other? Why can’t we take the energy that it takes the heart to fire thousands of neurons every minute in order to pump blood and apply it to a reasonable application of intelligent thought. It makes little sense to me that loving and caring people in my life wish to do harm to 1/3 of the population of the world.

Of course, there is plenty of motivation given the propensity of Islamic countries have where it comes to human rights. There are beautiful parts of the Islamic religion and we never here of them. What we hear is how religious police beat women for showing their ankles. We hear about honor killings and Jihad, and everything ugly, but none of the beauty.

Why? The heart and the brain are connected. Why the only thing the brain can think, are things that must the break the heart?

The religion that gave me comfort growing up has a long history of genocide, torture, and horrific immorality. Why do we not teach that to children in school the same way we tell them about Islamic atrocities?

Why can there not be equity between the heart and the brain? Answer that, and I can stop the journey and start the healing that my heart and mind desperately need. The same healing everyone else in the world seems to need…also desperately. Peace.

Spiritual Warfare

Sitting around the house on a Saturday morning and wondering what I have to do for the day, I realized that I am a lucky man. I get to decide what I can do on a day off, or any day for that matter. I have a predicament before me. I am back at school for the year and it has been a mixed blessing. As to be expected, I found that my freedom being off during the summer extremely constructive. I wrote and wrote and wrote to my heart’s content. Thousands upon thousands of words appeared in several pieces currently in the process of transformation from quirky imaginings of a questionably sensible mind into consummate examples of phantasmagorical prose. I read, and watched old movies with gusto. I went to the movie theater and watched a guy climb into a suit of armor and blast evildoers with futuristic weaponry. I re-watched “Marley and Me” only to discover that I am a slobbering, weeping mess where it comes to chick movies. I discovered the Shangri La of my lifelong dreams.

Unfortunately, the lovely interlude that I reveled in proved to be somewhat less of a productive exercise then desired. Yes, I lived and loved the life of a financially secure writer of note. I did not even think about the real world until it came time to work a summer school session. Now, to tell you the truth the time off proved more of a reductive activity then constructive. It degraded my delight for teaching and put me further in love with sitting at the silicon-based life form on my desk whilst I engender the next Great American Novel.

The crux of the situation is that teaching pays the bills. Writing prose feeds my soul. It does not buy the medicine my senior citizen ass needs. It does not make my truck payment. It does not provide for the necessities of the real world. Yet.

I can happily detail that the some of the joy of teaching has returned with the presence of my pupils. I love the kids and will always. Especially the special kids I get to teach. I found myself at odds with the educational system at the end of the last school year, and thought that it was time for a change. For a time going to work became more of a chore then I would like to engage in. My misspent youth was chock-full of times when I walked into the bosses office and informed that the employer du jour that they were, in fact, shorthanded. I yearned to do this at my current place of employment, and do it with gusto.

Until, that is a kid, one who I had clashed with before coming to love, stalked into my classroom with fear in his eyes and announced that he was going home that day. My kids are all participants in the Child Protective System. They come and go in no particularly sensible manner, lie in the middle (well, near the end of) of a school year. The idea of returning home is not necessarily a desired activity. He stood before me shaking and looking as if he was lost. With a tear in his eye, he asked me how he was going to graduate without me.

I am not the greatest schoolteacher in the world. I have a lot to learn. I have friends that are great educators. There is a man that works at my schools who, when he worked at another school was informed the he could no longer work there, watched as his students walked out, and refused to go back to class. Another friend, the real Mr. Science, has been teacher of the year. I encounter people all the time who, upon discovering where I work will tell me; “That’s where Coach Smith works, he’s the best! I would have never graduated if it were not for him. Tell him I said hello!” My principal, well, the sweet woman that I call my principal, had kids come into her office all the time just to give her a picture and get a hug while telling her about this good grade or that frustration.

These people are exceptional educators. I am just someone trying to get to the end of the day and not distribute any ignorance. The kid in front of me telling me that I was necessary for him to graduate broke my heart given my craving to tell my boss to kiss my ass. All I could do was give him a hug and tell him to remember the things I taught him and to call the school if he needed to. The other kids had the chance to see me cry that day. It was not that bad. They just got quiet and did their work. Kindness comes in many forms.

I do not know how long I am going to be a teacher, but I had to write this today to remind me that there are kids that think they need me. The truth is that I need them much more then they could ever need me. I pray that I can be what they need.
Peace

The reason for it all

It is summer school and I sit here with no real curriculum. I have fifteen kids and it is only a half-day. I enjoy it because it gives me time to write in the afternoon when I get home. I attempt to mix things by giving them something to do that will keep them busy. I tell them to read a book. This is activity I have hold sacred and have for all my life. Starting with the comic books my cousin Johnny used to let me use when I was but a wee lad and escalating as I grew to the point that, today, the longer the book, the more enjoyable.

I charge through books as easily as I inhale Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. Sojourns to my mercantile of choice (the realm of the sage from Bentonville) are never complete until I peruse the book aisle. Show me a bargain bin and I will show you true contentment. I will purchase books far beyond the constraints of my financial situation. I will go without, of all things given my girth, food, and drink in order to read.

Perhaps that is why I post this blog and strongly desire to be a full time writer. I have received so much contentment, delight, elation, and downright ecstasy from the written word that it must be…most assuredly…a calling for me to give back some of what I have been given. I have the ability to turn a phrase, and the muse within me to please.

When I encounter difficult times, it is often the action of writing that gets me through it, or allows me to heal from whatever difficulty currently assailing me. In those rare times when I am able to convince myself that the use of some mind-altering mood-hanging substance would be acceptable, I take pen to paper and remain clean and sober. When I suffered the loss of my Dear Sainted Mother, the only action that would bring the tears under control were the words I put on paper about Herself. There is power in the pen.

When the hobgoblins surface and my thoughts become chaotic with varying and opposing forces, putting words on a page allows me to get those adversaries out of my head. By removing the dastardly evildoers from my mind, I create space for new and, hopefully, benign attitudes to enter and become positive forces for good.

Like the superheroes of my youth, words gathered in the right structure protect me from the big bad world and allocate values and principles to my confusion and turmoil. Anarchy has no room when I read the likes of Mark Twain, Ken Follet, Stephen King, Jidda Krishnamurti, or, if all else fails…T. Lloyd Reilly.

Arrogant vanity aside, I revel in the ability to read and the gift of intellectual capacity. Celebrate the complexities of the message is what the person that told me to write taught me. He was an English teacher of my Sweet Deifiúr’s. Fred Schneider was his name. He told me that when I was probably ten or eleven years old. I had no idea what he was talking about. He saw me looking at books in his classroom one night when I had to go with my mother and sister to the school for some sort of teacher/student thing. He came up to me and told me this stuff and I am still trying to decipher his meaning some forty-five or six years later.

Socrates told us that we must look at ourselves if we are to find worth. I find worth in the written word. I find meaning, and joy, and irritation, and, well, reality. Reality tells me that I have to go further along this road to enlightenment that will bring me to the point of being a self-supporting scribe. In that light I am going to begin a new blog on another site. This new endeavor will focus on the subject of the business of writing. I have started to enjoy some success at the commercial side of the literary cosmos, and need to expand my horizon.

I will still be posting on this page for those who enjoy those most peculiar meanderings of my psyche. The new site will offer a change from the inane and mundane to the marketing and promotion of those words I write in hopes of remuneration. Any of my readers on this site who wish to be privy to that address can leave a comment on this page or email me their thoughts. I am also in need of an appropriate name for the new blog, so any assistance that comes my way is more then welcome.

So what is the point of today’s ramblings? Probably just more of the same as it applies to what I write here. I am not necessarily in conflict as to my purpose for any of what I write. I found it today, you see. I needed to find the first name of one of the authors mentioned earlier. I will leave you with his words today.

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.” Jidda Krishnamurti

Peace

Snuffalaughagooose

“Where are you staying tonight man?”

Sitting there watching my friend pacing back and forth I wondered how it had come to this. He stalked the room in front of me in a fury. He held a blank envelope and made notes as we spoke. He had just stood from sitting next to me and asking me about life. He wore the same clothes he had been wearing the last two weeks. I could smell his body in a way that told me he probably hadn’t bathed in just as long as he had been wearing the clothes on his back. His entire body shook and his hands trembled. I could not tell if it due to him coming in from outside where it was raining, or from fear.

The conversation mirrored most of the exchanges that had gone on between us. He had come to me several months later in need of a advice about how he could cease being homeless. His choosing me was more from a need to relate to someone then the actual logistics of maintaining a residence. I had shared several times of the experience being homeless. For me, it had much more to do with pride then with a lack of funds or employment. I find it difficult to write about this, and only share it due to the feeling I had leaving the room that night. I remember the conflict within me that came from first, desperation of not knowing how to ask for any real help, and then the shame of having failed at life so miserably. I looked in my friends eyes and saw myself, and it frightened me near to death.

I am about as far from that last bridge I lived under as any one could be. I make a pretty fair living as a teacher, and I have learned to embrace that most human of attributes that is humility. I have no fear in that I have taken on the responsibility to take care of myself, with all that entails. One of the items on the list of measures necessary for me to maintain a residence is that I must pass on the knowledge I have gained in seeking and attaining my address. I relate to homeless people on a level that others in the helping professions can only guess at.

I learned how to live inside from an old friend of mine who found me the first time I slept on the streets, after must cajoling and threatening, moved me into the attic room at his parent’s house. Another time (homelessness was a repeat offense for me) another friend of mine literally tried to run me over with her car and threatened to finish the job if I did not get in. She too put me up at her parent’s house (this time in the basement). The last time I came off the streets occurred as a result of asking God what to do. His answer proved quite simple. No one had to force me in any car through persuasive methods such as, sweet-talk, bribery, or menacing words. I woke up and somehow intrinsically knew that I had to call my Dear Sainted Mother, and go back to school.

Twenty four years later, I am still fearful of being without a home. It is not the physical fear of living out in the elements. It is not the reality of having to duck and dodge the police who have little patience with people scrounging in dumpsters, or standing on a corner harassing people with cardboard signs to give the “Food for work.” It is not the fear of being cold, or hot, or getting sick or beaten by others trying to steal what meager possessions you might accrue. It is the look in my eyes that I see when I look in the bus station mirror. It is the feeling that all I am, and all I will ever be, is nothing. It is the fear that I am insane and always be insane. It is the fear that there will be no one to come and rescue me. Finally, it is the fear that that I will disappear into that…thing I will become when I am homeless.

Looking at my friend, I see that thing, you know, the one that wages war with society. The same being that has no regard for common sense, or central air and heat. The same creature give’s various landlord’s seizures, when they discover you in their empty house or apartment, and cannot get the police there in time to arrest you.

I once more attempt to reason with my friend and see if I cannot persuade him to come and sleep on my floor tonight to get out of the rain. Little good are the friends and colleagues I have developed relationships with who provide services for the homeless. He has worked his way through all the available places that would allow him off the street, and does not trust that I can get him into a place simply by calling. He has that battle to instigate where he attacks the rest of the world. The same battle which would not occur if he would just take his medicine.

Therein lays the rub. It is his considered opinion that he does not suffer from a mental illness that requires him to take medicine. Those times when I have had the opportunity to have a conversation with him when he is taking his prescribed medicine, it has always been an amazing experience. He is articulate, caring, intelligent, and amusing. He has common sense in things that I have never been able to deal with. He is a good friend, and valued part of my life.

He is still a valued part of my life when he is not taking his medicine, and always will. Unfortunately, at these times he spoke of things that only he migh find important. He believes that the world is out to get him, and he refuses to trust me, or anyone else. That night we spoke, his focus appeared to be fixated on the people who were outside the back door to the building. There were people there earlier, but had long left when we started talking. He neurotically took notes on each and every word I said, and refused to accept one single idea. Everything I said elicited a comment of mistrust, while telling me that he believed every word spoken.

I drove off that night greatly disturbed. Actually I drove off in tears. From that point I went (surprise, surprise) straight to anger. While it is directly a result of his refusal to take the medicine necessary to function, it is not entirely his fault. We have compartmentalized my friend and others like him into a neat societal class which carries with it a stigma. I believe this is a tragedy of historic significance. At some point in the future, historians will look back on our society, and shake their heads. Like the empires of the past, Rome, Macedonia, China, British, and many others, the historians will assign cause and effect to the decline and destruction of our society. I feel that the manner in which we treat each other is a harbinger of the destruction of the greatest social order the world has ever know. Forget about the physical realities of global warming, wars, pestilence, it is the way we treat other human beings that will destroy us.

We, as human beings, have an amazing machine which is our bodies. The unfortunate part of existing within this wondrous machine is that it can be injured or broken. If one falls and lands in a certain way, bones can be shattered, and the wonders of modern medicine can either repair or replace said injured appendage. If the flu or some other internal disease makes its way to my door, I can take panaceas developed that will wage battle with the germs or bacteria within until I regain health. If I get burned and disfigured, plastic and reconstructive surgery can, possibly, restore me to my former handsomeness.

If my brain is injured or broken, I get called crazy, given medicine that restricts my ability for lucid thought, and I am shunned from the rest of society.

Cancer victims have people who raise funds, run races, and man (or woman) telephones on telethons. Homeless people get forcefully removed from areas of cities when their presence would create a negative sound byte during the Olympics or elections. Funny, I’ve never seen any politicians crawling under a bridge to solicit votes from those living in cardboard boxes. Currently the 66% of homeless people in America suffer from mental illness or substance abuse which, as I can personally attest to from personal experience, is yet another malady of the brain.

Medicine for the flu is given out everywhere, mostly for free. No one has a problem with that reality. What of the medicine that treats mental illness? If you take Prozac, there is usually some comment or look made when this is revealed unless, of course, you are rich or famous. Then it is acceptable. Let a homeless person try to get medicine without an address and see what happens.

Where are the spiritual principles envisaged by the Golden Rule? Every major form of spirituality in the world has some form of the Golden Rule as a part of its dogma. Why does it not get practiced where it comes to the mentally ill? Why do crazy people have to suffer from discrimination on a societal level? What would Jesus do?

We come from a predominantly Christian country, yet no one seems to remember that Jesus Christ was homeless. What if he was out there now? The radical words he chose to preach, got him murdered horribly for being what today would be considered mentally ill. Think about that. Then help me figure out how to help my friend without looking down on him. Peace.

And Yet Again…It’s Mommy’s Fault

I sit at the keyboard with a yearning to speak of the things that cause issue in my life, and I find that there are distressingly few items of true concern. Not to say, that is, that impediments to serenity no longer exist. I take umbrage at a number of things, and rightfully so. This week it is in the realm of rotundity. The last post on this page spoke of rituals and fixated nature that is my, or could be if I allow it, Armageddon. Corpulence is my reality and my curse. The solution to that curse is not readily available. At least not in the timely manner I desire.

I take exception to the bureaucratic requirements of my health insurance and the propensity I have towards unreasonableness and irritation. Having said that, it has come to my attention that, I projected the moral value that many people of lesser girth indeed suffer from the stigma of illegitimacy, or of possessing female parentage of questionable deportment. Well, with the exception of those near and dear to me, I believe my characterizations have not been made in err. The anger I encounter is an old and warm friend that I have had much difficulty putting in the grave where it belongs. I also suffer from a diminished capacity to express regret for that which I write that offends.

The point I make today is that I have found a method of blaming my Dear Sainted Mother, once more, for the more negative parts of my personality. Loving and greatly missed, she is probably waiting for me to show up in the Great Beyond so that she can wallop me with the old broken wooden spoon she possessed in my childhood. The same spoon that gives me fits when I am in the Land of Nod.

This particular gripe comes straight out of my inability to control that aspect of my life where it comes to eating. After the episode with my insurance company, I became (wow isn’t this a stretch) upset. I ranted and raved both on the web, as my readers can attest, but also to my dear companions on the journey that is recovery. Said grievances held little relief in that I enjoy being irritated, and that selfsame irritation accomplished nothing towards the resolution of the underlying problem of my weight. I thought about this and made a decision. A resolve to action the likes of which my friends have told me is monumental and earth shaking.

I quit drinking milk.

Now this is not in and of itself such a momentous feat to the normal person on the street, but in my life it is paramount to the mountain actually and physically going to Mohamed. I imbibe milk in the same manner that I formerly obsessively and compulsively used mind altering, mood changing substances. Additionally I have also taken ice cream and sweets away. This is comparable to taking a fish out of water, or a soldier being relieved of his weapon in the middle of a battle. I drink, on average, a gallon of milk a day. A half gallon carton of ice cream is a two serving portion. Sweets are a necessity prior to retiring for the night. Cool Whip is a staple food in my household.

And I have abandoned all of these old friends.

I would like to say that it is in the noble quest for a reduction in my girth. I would like to say that it is for the greater good. I would like to say many things that would sound good and noble, and make you think that I have finally taken charge of my life in a positive manner. Unfortunately, the certainty is that I have done this to spite those who suffer from the stigma of illegitimacy, or of possessing female parentage of questionable deportment.

When I was earlier in recovery, I had an argument with a person in my life whose only method of winning the disagreement included a statement that my point did not really matter in that I was destined to die as a result of using some drug or drink. He accused me of insincerity in the pursuit of recovery, and told me that I was a loser.

This is much the same thinking that many have where it comes to obesity. We are losers.

I shall not detail those areas of my life that would prove or disprove any image of me, either positive or negative. I will not engage in a battle of wits with unarmed opponents. I will continue to avoid the dairy section of my Mercantile of Choice. I will eat more vegetables and I will do so because I think it is the right thing to do.

That is not to say that this plan is going to work. I realized after I made this decision that I had remaining in my refrigerator a slice of apple pie and some sugar free cool whip. It has got to be some kind of cosmic mortal sin not to drink milk with apple pie. Some things are just incontrovertible. I could not throw this ambrosia away. There are children in China starving.

I come from that generation that grew up with the now famous Red Scare. In that time, the propaganda was that the communists in China were withholding food and nourishment from everyone that disagreed with their ideology. Including children. When I was given something by Herself that I did not want, she would remind me of the famished children living along the Yangtze River, or in Outer Mongolia. There was no argument with the Dear Sainted One where it came to food. You ate what was there, and you ate it all.

It has just occurred to me that when I was a child there were about six hundred million Chinese and today that number is more then doubled. Where are all these hungry rug rats? Not struggling to move or get around like I am. Did Herself lie to me? I think not. I think I heard what she said and complied because I knew that if I did, then I would get apple pie and Cool Whip. (With sugar in it)
The injustice of my decision to remove certain things from my diet came in the propaganda of the past, and my irritation at my situation. I believe that I will continue to ruminate on the issue of my weight until I do, in fact, come to a healthy paradigm. But not today.

What did I do about the pie? I bought a quart of milk instead of a gallon, and I ate the damn pie. I am committed, not perfect. Why did I fall short of my goal? Perhaps there were no scrawny persons of questionable parentage I was particularly irritated at that day. Or maybe it was Mommy’s fault. Peace

Creature of Habit

I really want to exist on that plane where the big picture exists. Unfortunately the mundane is where I reside today. The absolute bleakness that is my medical condition has driven me to the point of banana-splithood. Coming out of the arthritis doctor and calling about having a weight loss surgery made me alternately angry and fearful. Many would say that one begets the other, but I am much more comfortable with separating the two states of being in that I have reactions to both that manifest both separately and in concert. Having the disease of addiction has let me know, through the gift of recovery, the path I will usually take in a given situation. Chief amongst the blemish’s exhibited though and by my psyche is obsession followed closely by compulsion. Each a bothersome symptom of a greater malady while at the same time being, in and of themselves, devastating. Medicine can not give respite, and the patient direction I might seek from others on the road to recovery proves at its best irksome, and at its worst a major pain in the ass.

Going back to the desire to think great thoughts, I realized the events of the day made me strongly yearn for relief in the most unhealthy of manners. The first visit with the doctor treating my arthritis elicited a decision to go under the knife and receive bariatric assistance for the ever expanding universe that is my girth, and corpulence. I phoned my health care insurer who informed me that I would have to perform like a circus seal if I wish to have this drastic procedure. Weight loss programs, treatment from a psychologist, and several correspondences for various purveyors of the Hippocratic arts were among the actions that I must accomplish before they would pay the eighty percent payment which I have contractually engaged them to provide. The last smidgen of information they would require is an affidavit that I have ceased the annoying habit of increasing in size. I am perplexed with this last requirement. The entire purpose of having surgery of this sort is to cease the annoying habit of increasing my size. When am I supposed to be able to provide such enlightenment? Before or after my morbid obesity puts me in front of St Peter at the Pearly Gates?

Now before the naysayers begin, I will speak plainly to those who read this. I am not feeling sorry for myself. Any one who has followed this blog for a while has read the other posts where I have reported on the difficulties of my size. Some reading this will probably stop reading and not open this page any more when notified. The hindrances of my immensity come in more then one area. First, there are the physical realities of not being able to perform functions the more svelte of the population can execute with ease. Then there is the attitude of many of those selfsame svelte sons of bitches who will not want to listen to the whining of a fat man.

This is my problem; I am not the jolly old fat man, nor am I a shrinking violet where it comes to being told that I lack self control. I have a condition that can be treated, except the treatment is mired in bureaucracy and fiscal posturing on the part of a company that is denying me services that I pay them to provide. I am tired of living in a world where the color of my skin is protected by the constitution that I served to protect when I was a soldier, and the size of my body is not. It is not politically correct to allow fat people protection under the law. Not when the First Lady of the country has demonized being obese, and the rest of the drones who are fascinated by her follow suit.

Do not get me wrong. I am extremely impressed by the First lady for her intelligence and caring manner. I openly voiced my support for her husband and continue to, even when he screws up like he did when he fired the commanding general in Afghanistan for exercising his supposed right to free speech. (Although, I do recognize that a serving soldier gives up his constitutional right to speak his opinion freely when he takes his entrance oath)

What I really take exception to, is my own reaction to the events of this day. I discovered the difficulty with having this weight reducing procedure, and instantly went in search of the biggest banana split I could find. Not the healthiest thing to do would be the first protest coming from the sylphlike inhabitants of the world who believe that the fat man should shut up and go on a diet. Then again, I do not give a good rat’s ass what the skinny bastards think. I got hit with obsession right in the face, and I had to take action before the action turned into a compulsion. Thank God for my phone and my home group. (Those who don’t know what a home group is, can Google it) I did not get the banana split and I did not overeat at all as a result of my anger and frustration. I got mad. Yet another issue in my life that can do as much harm as the fifty pound banana split I desired can.

What is the answer? It was suggested to me that I write about my feelings. There is power in the pen (Keyboard?) my brothers and sisters in recovery tell me. A friend told me that I might find the answer. Did I? Well for the love of Jesus, Mary, and holy St. Joseph, I do not know. If that piece of information was readily handy, then I wouldn’t be sitting at my keyboard at midnight cussing people out. Protesting the inequity I face as a person of girth (That sounds pretty sexy…Person of Girth…hmmm…perhaps I will start another blog) is what the muse in me has produced today. As much as I am a recovering person, I am, and shall always be, a writer. That is the purpose of this blog. To let the universe, and any other interested parties know that I am a wordsmith. I would like to do nothing else and regardless of whether I find fame and fortune as a scribe, or even make a living at it. I am a writer and this is what I wrote today. Peace

Irritation

Looking for something to write today, I came upon a juicy topic. Well, I don’t know as it is juicy as much as it just pisses me off. As many of you know, I am easily irked. Most of the time, I would rather be angry then happy. I find voice and muse in fury, and have made little excuse for it. Well, perhaps I am somewhat remorseful when my irritation leads to discomfiture or I succeed in acting like the south end of a northbound equine method of transportation.

Regardless, fuming is the call of the day, and I will lead the charge with fervor and attention to all that is just. The focus of this days annoyance is the government of the State of Arizona, and the horrible example of governance it displayed by passing the immigration debacle they call a bill.

The governor is incensed over the fact that the two top officials in the federal government have made statements against a law that is both prejudicial and most likely unconstitutional. Scheduled to take effect sometime this August, it has been the focal point of many news items and comments from a myriad of people for whom this law will never affect their personal life. (Unless it means that their groundskeeper or maid will get deported) The commentary, both fore and against this issue is at its best speculation, and that speculation has an ugly tilt to it. There seems to be those who feel that illegal immigration has become the very definition of evil in this country, and should be eradicated. The other side of the coin speaks to the discrimination and injustice that they believe will occur as a result of the enforcement of same decree. What makes me livid is the idea that with all the things we have to fret over, this issue has been demonized and blown way out of proportion.

We have real problems that deserve more of our attention. We are currently fighting TWO wars with no end in sight. I just experienced one of my former students being deployed to Iraq, and have seen pictures of another, in full combat gear, smiling as he gets ready to go out on patrol in Afghanistan. They have no issue with illegal immigration. They both know that we are a nation of immigrants and they are happy to serve the cause of ensuring that we remain a country of immigrants.

There is an oil spill that can be seen from space which is threatening the wildlife and livelihood of states that have already experienced massive catastrophes that they are still not recovered from. Who is going to clean it up? Well, a friend of mine went to the corner on the north side of my town to pick up a crew of Hispanic illegal aliens last week. Why you ask? Why to go and clean up the mess for an average of fifty dollars a day and room and board. I know people, good card carrying Americans, who are looking to make a bundle overcharging for their services just like they did when Katrina and Rita hit the same area. They are embarking on this grand adventure in their brand new pickups that they paid for in cash made from previous disasters.

We have children who are attempting to enroll in college who can not read. I have friend who is a professor at the largest community college in America who tells me that he has to write his course syllabuses on a sixth grade level so that everyone can understand the requirements of his class. I remember a professor of mine when I was a graduate student showing me a paper written by a fellow graduate student that wouldn’t pass in my eighth grade English class, and it was turned in for a senior level college course. He wanted me to work with the guy so that he could pass the class. That same student is now a PhD level administrator at a community college. I had a conversation with that administrator recently and listened while he complained about the immigration problem and how it will create a class of second class students in our educational system.

We live in a world where tens of thousands of children die every day from diseases we cured fifty years ago, and who can’t get treatment because it is not cost effective for pharmaceutical to give the medicine necessary out at an affordable rate. We live in a country that kills a half a million people every year with cigarettes, yet won’t allow terminal patients to legally end their lives in a dignified, merciful manner.

We refuse to accept a person’s right to live and love who they choose because it is a biblical abomination. At the same time we seem totally okay with ignoring the words of the chief biblical character who teaches that we should love each other, and that compassion is more important then governance.

We are screaming at the entire world to stay out of our country, while the rest of the world is desperately seeking to come to this country. Why? Is it because it is a land where a person can advance their station in life with hard work and determination, or is it because they think we are cool because we can bitch at the top of our lungs over how we can stop the influx of people into the country and not get arrested, beaten, or shot?

Arizona wants to stop, or seriously curtail people from coming to a country that used to belong to their ancestors that had been stolen by our ancestors. They want to use the same tactics that were used by countries we went to war with because they used those selfsame tactics. Went to war and lost American lives for the specific reason to stop the same type of behavior that Arizona wants to exhibit.
I say we put the people that wrote and passed this law into the same jail cells that they would send their enemies. Or better yet, deport them to the land of their ancestry.

Peace.

Misconstrued Approximation

What is counting but looking for the end? Searching for a topic for today’s ponderings discernment is the whim that has struck my fancy at this moment in time. It is a curious word. The thesaurus in Microsoft Word which is the short form, for me, of looking up a word says that it is judgment, acumen, discrimination, perspicacity, taste, shrewdness, and sensitivity. Curious in the range of words used as synonyms, and the thought that one must engage in order to glean the manner in which each of these words fit the description of the word. Certainly judgment is not a stretch in that it implies a choice, or decision as to quality.

Real dictionary has discernment as – “The act or process of exhibiting keen insight and good judgment.” Insight is a talent and natural in its application, regardless of any thought to the contrary. Insight is not a learned behavior, but a capacity for comprehension. It is an aptitude or ability to envisage that which others seek and search, and occurs naturally in those who possess it. But to what end? Do I want to be able to see the future? I am not capable of prestidigitation where it comes to my feelings, and a measure of ability to willfully separate the truth from fiction is something I have been alternately blessed or cursed with. I have had time when the obvious result of a situation appears disastrous and is, in fact thus. Other times I find myself quite merry over the discovery that my discernment of a situation is erroneous.

Acumen elicits an entire page in itself given the cacophony of seemingly differing synonyms that pop up when I hit Shift F7. For my purposes it means expertise. Again a conflict in that insight, the main symptom of discernment, is not a quantifiable quality. It just is. Acumen might also elicit thoughts of ability, and therein offers justification for the synonymonic response. Synonymonic being a word I just made up that I will be submitting for inclusion to Webster’s…as soon as I figure out what it means as opposed to how cool it sounded in that sentence.
On a side note, I have submitted a number of items for publication this last week that have yet to come to fruition and I am in need of said publishing if just to ease my trepidation as to my future as the next Great American Author. Ego is not necessarily synonymous conceit, in this case it covers a variety of sins; low self esteem, depression, or delusionary psychosis
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I am writing this piece as a part of the daily writing I engage in and it’s original purpose, or title sentence is a function of what I seek in my daily writing which is seven hundred and fifty words. The style sheet for my daily writing taught that one should start every day by writing three pages in order to get the creative juices flowing. There were no instructions as to what that writing should be as long as it is written. Well, my handwriting is, as my father once declared (accurately I might add), “chicken scratch.” When I do hand write anything more then two or three lines I myself can not read the lexis of my efforts. As a teacher I know that a handwritten page, if properly spaced, contains approximately two hundred and fifty words.

Hence, when I sit at the keyboard and type that translates into one single spaced typewritten page. Each typewritten page contains forty lines. When I have no true inspiration I have a tendency to type random words until I reach a topic. Sometimes that works and other time it is an exercise in futility. When I do find myself in that horrid dwelling that holds no reasonable thought, I count lines. I spent the better part of an afternoon researching this quantity and discovering how that might be displayed on the screen before me. This is another example of the uselessness that is counting. Here I sit, or did sit trying to see something that would allow me to count lines and it was already a default setting on the software readily visible to me if I had but looked, with discernment, at the screen before me and not put my self into the trap that counting will place one in the literary arts. What cause can there be to count the words and lines of a truly inspired work of prose? Today, it was to the make it the end of the page. Hmmm…seven hundred and seventy two words. The end.