Dragon Utterings

The Time Honored New Year's ..oh blah=P

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 05:56:24 GMT

1/8/09

Last night was a blustery night. The wind was howling through the trees, the light mist stinging my cheeks as I walked along. I was a dark wraith in the night. I was dressed in light, loose cargo pants that I had tied up at the bottom to make them flair out even more so that I would be as comfortable as possible. I wore a black Columbia vest that I had zipped up to the very top just because I liked the way the neckline made my sharp jaw line stand out. On top of that I wore my long, black leather duster, and because the wind was so fierce last night, it whipped around behind me like it used to when I walked to the Mississippi river on a fall night just to hear the wolves howl.

I hadn’t felt that good in years. I felt like I was embracing my darkness, allowing it to caress and envelope me like a lover, not smother me the way it usually does, in that “emo” way that so many of the young kids talk about these days in high school. I guess in my own way I’ve always had that flair for the dramatic, but it suits me sometimes. Nights with a howling wind and the electric smell of rain in the air always pull me in this way. There were nights like that in New York too, but I didn’t have the same perspective on those nights. I was usually too busy trying to look tough and confident instead of embracing the night with all of my senses. Feeling the wind rush through my sleeves and ripple at my shoulders was almost as intoxicating to me as staring at a beautiful woman in nothing but a sheer nightgown, the only thing left to my imagination the whisper of her voice in my ear.

I came to today somehow different. It probably helped that I was walking somewhere last night that proved to be my own personal solace in the craziness that has been the holiday season. I found a refuge from the deluge of negativity and depression that seems to emanate from people post Christmas and New Years. The term “new year” has always seemed so loaded to me. It’s just another marker for the passage of time. Nothing more.

Yet like others around me, I cannot help but reflect on the happenings of the year before and wonder at my own frailties and celebrate my own successes. In truth, 2008 was one of my toughest yet. I had to maintain sanity at a workplace that seems to have embraced the idea of chaos and impending doom as the status quo, and yet I had to learn to be more truthful in an environment where nobody ever seems to say what they mean or mean what they say. I cannot pretend that I have succeeded in preserving a positive outlook in lieu of all that mess. Leaders are not leaders at that place. The blind lead the blind, and the ones that can see have their eyes gauged out and their mouths gagged just to make it easier for the ones who get the most out of the madness. It has driven me into a depression of late.

My depression is not helped, of course, by the continued silence from my own family. I obviously hoped for too much two years ago when I wrote that fateful letter to my parents and stirred up a pot of emotion and things from the past that nobody seemed willing to face. But I was in desperate need of an answer to my search for happiness. Instead, all I got were angry phone calls from an inebriated and increasingly isolated mother, sad and pathetic explanations from a father who had long ago given up on his own happiness, and an increasing sense of my own desperation to belong to something beyond my own inner darkness. I’ve long ago learned to accept the serious dysfunction in my own family, but it is still difficult for me not to withdraw from my present day friends and loved ones, not to retreat into my own personal hell. It’s almost sexy to me in some ridiculous way that I can’t even fathom anymore because I’ve gotten so habituated to the whole pattern.

But what does one do when the light of the sun never seems to reach them entirely?

One might start, at least in theory, by walking toward the orange ball of fire that at least, in terms of space, time and the theory of relativity, still existed this morning.

Of course, I don’t know where this walk will take me. There is a great deal about the world and about myself that I simply do not know. I couldn’t even tell you if I’m just beginning this walk or if I’ve been doing it for so long that I’m just plain lost. Some mornings I still wake up wondering why I bother to keep it all going. What is it that I’m so desperate to reconcile in myself? Guilt, shame, rage? Do I love anyone at all if I cannot love myself? What does that even mean, this self love crap? That sounds like something that fell off the Happiness bandwagon back in the nineteen nineties.

How the hell does anyone keep themselves straight in this world? And why do I spend so much of my time feeling so disconnected from people, even when I’m surrounded by them?

Who the hell said this was going to be an easy trip, trying to get to the sun?

Writing and Drumming

Sat, 24 May 2008 23:58:24 GMT

Once again, I make my way back into the fray. I'm still struggling with what it is that makes me happiest in this world. I'm still puzzling over the idea that I have the right to exist on this planet. I'm still seeing a shrink to deal with the rest of me.

Oddly enough, one of the things that has kept me sane over the last few very difficult years has been the discovery of a particular kind of drumming circle over in Southeast Portland. It's at a little store called Cedar Mountain Drums, and the store itself is almost unassuming in appearance. But I had no idea that stepping inside more than two years ago would have led me to the point I am at now with life. The circle is a place where I do more than share my outrageous rhythms on various African style drums. I feel safe and welcome enough to bare my soul at this place. I can't even say that about my own flesh and blood family.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, after a hell of a lot of internal struggling with self doubt and with life's many, many obstacles, I had the guts to share something of my true voice with my friends at the men's drumming circle three weeks ago. I had written a piece just weeks after my very first men's circle at this place almost two years ago, and I had hidden it away for whatever reasons came to my already confused and frightened mind. Still, I think the piece reflects the very struggles I face when dealing with other people and strange situations. I realize now even as I read it again that so much of what I wrote about is universal. I read this piece out loud to all the other men in my circle three weeks ago, and I share it with you all now because, well, I just want to.

Seven men find themselves sitting in a warmly lit house that doubles as a drum store. I’m one of the seven, and I look around at all these men, realizing that they are all strangers to me except for the one who sits two feet to the left of me. We’re all sitting in a circle in the corner of what might be a living room or a work space. I haven’t quite figured out how this house is laid out. I haven’t figured out how this whole thing is supposed to go, this gathering of men. I don’t even know what the fuck brought me to this place.

I suddenly look to the middle of the living room, which is further to my left. I’ve left a large, black bag in the middle of the whole room, and inside the bag is a large ashiko drum. I nod at that moment as though I suddenly recall something of my reason for being here. In truth, I thought I was looking for some place to bang on that drum and have it be heard and accompanied by other drums in some sort of a musical feast for the ears. But now that I’m here I’m sort of panicked at the thought. I’m going to share my drumming, my rhythms with a bunch of strangers. Perhaps it’s old paranoia bubbling up to the surface of my mind, but I find myself compartmentalizing emotion in my own head, locking away my own vulnerability as I’m sort of used to doing when I’m scared shitless. I’m such a guy that way that it makes me laugh. And as I look at some of the scared and yet weirdly defiant pairs of eyes that stare briefly back at mine, I’m sure that some of the other men in the room are doing that weird macho bullfighter dance in their own heads too. I don’t really know whether or not to be comforted by that, but I find myself breathing a sigh of relief all the same.

The room is already oddly quiet, and yet when the familiar man to my left speaks, it’s as though the very room itself waits with baited breath for his words. He’s a friendly looking man really, a jovial face with crow’s feet around the eyes and laugh lines at the sides of his lips. I can’t see the harm in listening to what this guy’s going to try to sell the rest of us macho assholes, and yet I’m surprised by the looks of satisfied recognition on so many of the other faces in the room. I suddenly feel like an outsider again, an interloper who hasn’t yet been let in on the private joke. I hate it. Yet as I listen to the man’s words, I recognize the principles on which he expounds.

Freedom, respect, and play.

Okay. Freedom and respect I recognize, but that play word, isn’t that something that they reserve for Jello Jellatin ads or for those fucking stupid cereal commercials with the “small child inside all of us adults” kind of bullshit blaring out at me after Saturday morning cartoons? Since when does a grown man tell a room full of defensive, macho pricks to sit there and play? Does he mean play with themselves?

Okay, so I’m trying to get past a lifetime of cynicism and a heck of a lot of “anger issues.” It makes me defensive past the point of most people’s endurance. That’s one reason why I don’t think I make friend’s easily. Maybe this play thing isn’t such a bad idea after all. It’s nice to think that when I’m banging out my anger and my anxiety on the head of my drum that I’m actually playing instead of doing a sick pantomime of the beatings I used to get as a child. Perhaps I didn’t get all of my sick rhythms from the frightened beat of my heart whenever my mother would walk into a room. Maybe, it’s as my father used to tell me when we were on speaking terms.

“Angel, it’s about what’s in your blood. Es el ritmo que tienes en tu sangre.”

The African rhythms that are indeed a part of my Puerto Rican heritage have always drawn me. I used to turn buckets and pots and pans upside down and bang on them like I was Desi Arnaz playing Ba-ba-loo in front of hundreds of people at a richly lit Cuban night club. And sometime in the last five or so years I rediscovered my passion for rhythm as I sort of supported my partner through her exploration of some kind of a Pagan Winter Witch Camp in Minnesota. Even though I sang all the songs and did all the rituals within the community, I felt like a fucking alien. But the one thing that kept me connected to everyone was the rhythm of a drum. I played rhythms on an African drum that I thought would make Tito Puente proud.

It would have made my father smile. I know that much.

These are the things that come to mind as I listen to the familiar man’s words and note the ever present smile on his face. I’m so used to fake or forced smiles in my life. I got them all the time in my former line of work. I also got many of them from members of my own family. I’ve given many of my own fake smiles. I suppose that happens to everyone when they start to grow up and question the roles that they have been given by those around them, the roles that they eventually give themselves. What’s a parent really going to say to those kinds of questions from their kids? Am I going to be ready for that kind of shit when my kid gets old enough? Am I even going to have children, and do I really want to?

My heart skips a beat when the familiar man begins to speak about passing around a talking stick. He tells us all that the use of a talking stick is derived from an ancient Native American tradition of communal sharing in sacred space. Sacred space? I’ve heard those words before. I heard them when I went to that Winter Witch Camp with my partner and drummed my fucking heart out. I suppose now that the space where I and a bunch of people drummed our fucking hearts out that week became sacred.

I nod again as the familiar man continues his speech. Of course it was sacred space! I left the rhythm of my heart in that space, and it was accompanied by the rhythms of other people’s hearts. The “New Age” sound of that concept would have scared me even three years ago. But now, in this space, with this man speaking to the rest of us men as brothers, it feels right.

Ahah! There’s something about what the familiar man said about the word “AHO.” “AHO,” according to this verbose man is a Lakota, Native American word that can be loosely translated to mean “my relations.” Perhaps that’s why I note that he speaks to us men here tonight with such familiarity, as though we are his brothers, his relations. My concept of family is so fucking weird anyway that the word “AHO” seems comical, yet somehow sad. I want to believe that that word, that this guy, that this ritual is for real. I want to believe that he views us other men as his brothers. I want to believe that this man knows what that really means.

And then, as the man nods and holds the talking stick, he begins a new story by stating his name.

“For those of you who are new to our circle tonight, welcome. My name is Patrick.”

It’s a surprisingly practical name for a guy that seems to me to be playing the role of a shaman. It doesn’t surprise me to find out that Patrick is part Native American, and that he might in fact be part Lakota, which might account for his free usage of this “AHO” word.

What also surprises me, other than Patrick’s first name is the frank way in which he begins to share parts of his own life with us. It’s like his familiarity with the rest of us men has now gone up a notch. Did that talking stick do something to this guy’s internal monologue?

Ah bullshit! He isn’t a British secret agent from the sixties being thawed out and put back into comedic action. And this isn’t dinner at my family’s house. This isn’t a Christmas party with my family en mass pretending that they love each other when they secretly feel like they want to cut one another to pieces with words.

I didn’t used to think that words meant anything to me until I discovered that I loved them so much, or until I discovered that the words that come from those you love can quickly hurt or heal you.

And now Patrick has said “AHO,” and we’ve all chorused the word back at him like schoolchildren. He’s passed the stick to the man to his left. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden this means a whole slew of things that I’m not sure I am prepared for. I didn’t wander to this place to listen to the life stories of six other men tonight. Perhaps I’m even less prepared for the possibility that I would have to share MY story.

What? Oh yeah, Patrick said somewhere in his first speech that we were free to share as little or as much as we wanted.

But the pressure’s on isn’t it? Ah shit! What the fuck am I going to say when the man to my right passes that fucking stick to me? Damn! I better make this good. I’d like to say something profound and relevant. But how the hell am I supposed to know what’s relevant to a bunch of strange guys?

Ah hell, maybe I’ll come up with something if I listen really hard.

Alright! Now I cross my legs, put my elbows on my knees and listen to the next guy. And I listen to the portly gentleman with the receding hairline that follows. And I listen to the young guy with the buzz cut and the green cargo shorts after that. Then I listen to the really tall guy with the long brown hair and the glasses that look a lot like mine do. And what strikes me about the stories I hear from each man is that everyone seems to be encountering demons from their pasts, and everyone seems to be trying to reconcile themselves with where they’ve been, and where they are at this very moment. Most are looking for some sense of reassurance that they’re not crazy, that they’re normal men trying to fit into an abnormal world.

But somehow, I find myself thinking the exact opposite of myself. I think I’m an abnormal man who’s been trying, for most of his time on this earth, to function as though he was normal. It’s a thought that cuts through my heart like a jagged shard of ice. Fuck, why did I come here? Is this just going to be some other confirmation that I’m some kind of freak who can’t get his ducks in a row?

By the time the talking stick finds its way to the man directly to my right, my heart feels as though it’s going to jump out of my throat and run pell mell from the room. I force myself to focus on the shape and form of the stick, but to me, right now, it looks like a regular old stick. It might as well be a hot poker for all the desire I have to hold it.

But then the man to my right has finished speaking. His speech was all too short, though somehow illuminating all the same. He’s spoken about taking more time to listen to his own heart and to live in the moment. And now the man is reaching out his hand to me, and in his hand is my life. My moment. My talking stick.

And I have no idea what the hell I’m going to talk about.

Being the last member of a circle full of men to receive the talking stick is in my mind more daunting than being the first to speak. The first to speak among a series of people seems to set the mood, and it’s something I’ve come to know in my own mind as setting an emotional precedent. Every speaker that comes after the first one adds their own story with their own words, but those stories often echo the emotions of the first speaker in ways of which the other storytellers are not always aware. The last person is given the task of completing the chain of thought, the series of stories, and in his or her story will be the echo of all the emotions of the previous stories. It seems to me an immense, and sometimes, unfair responsibility when I’m the one who ends up speaking last in these situations.

And it seems I’ve always felt this way. I felt this way when I was the last to give a book report in front of my entire High school freshman English class. I felt this way again when I was forced to go to those fucking “leadership development” retreats in high school and told that, as a brainiac, it was my job to work in groups with other brainiacs to solve imaginary problems that I didn’t give a shit about. I continued to feel this way when I would talk to my old summer camp friends during New Years Eve parties in Scarsdale, NY, and I would find myself feeling embarrassed to be the last to offer a comment or a suggestion in front of the prettiest girl in the room. And when I went to that Winter Which Camp five years ago and our group members would check in with the group one by one each and every time the group met, I hated being the last one to speak

I felt this way and a hell of a lot worse when I spoke at my great grandmother’s funeral years ago, and it was at that moment when I began to wonder if the problem was me.

But that doesn’t matter now, in this room with these other men, does it? How am I going to speak now, and how do I do it with the slightest bit of originality? Haven’t all the good, relevant points been taken tonight? It’s like being passed an apple core after everyone else has cut of their share of the biggest, juiciest apple in the world and eaten it. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this, you jerks?

“Four score and seven years ago, our forefather’s brought forth to this continent a new nation.”

“We the people of the united states, in order to form a more perfect Union,..”

“I’d like to thank the academy, and all the beautiful people that have supported me this year...”

My mind is now tumbling, lightning speed, through all the speeches I’ve either heard or read over years. What is it that I thought I would find in these old and useless words? Comedy? Inspiration? A chance to make myself look like an idiot?

Shit.

“Hey, all. Uh, my name is Angel. I’m new and I’m nervous.”

And then it all somehow comes tumbling out of my mouth, which has gone slightly dry.

“I’ve not lived in Portland for long. I’ve not got a job at the moment, and I’m nervous as hell about it. I’m young and I don’t know what to do with my life. I feel old though because I’ve been battling demons for much of my short life on this planet. I’m scared of a lot of things right now, and I hope that that feeling doesn’t last too much longer.
I want to play my drum. Aho.”

OK. Actually, it was a much longer and sort of circular speech than that, cause that’s how my mind really works when I’m nervous. Yet bit by bit, I step out of my own shell and I actually share myself with the other six men in the room. Nobody rolls their eyes or says anything negative. A couple of them even laugh sympathetically. This is a friendly group of men after all, and I’ve now added my voice and my story to their voices and their stories.

I finish my speech and I pass the stick over to Patrick, who thanks me and holds the stick for the last time in circle that night. He speaks a little more about the drums and other musical instruments available to us all tonight, and then he winks and nods to everyone in the room, a twinkle coming to his eyes.

“You’re it, men. Let’s play.”

A long road

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:23:15 GMT

These are the times when I hate the fact that I self reflective.

I thought I was going to start this entry by reflecting on the year that I've had, but really all I can think about is the last couple of months and how fucking hard they've been.

I do things lately to distract myself from the pain that keeps ripping my heart apart whenever I think of my family. My grandfather.

My dad is a great help for that too. Just recently, he told me of my grandfather's last days on this planet. He told me of how Gram pa was trying to see everyone in the family before he died. He told me that the one thing I could have done to help was to be there.
It's just too bad that my father didn't keep me in the loop like he promised he would, or, for better or for worse, I would have flown home to say goodbye.

Yes, it times like the holidays that bring out so much of my pain.

But there is joy as well. I've tried so hard to make this the best Christmas I could have.

Something in me snapped, it seemed, when news of my grandfather's death became official. It's like, somehow, I've decided to really put into action all that crap I've been going on about regarding happiness and authenticity. I've spent a lot on gifts and cards and all that stuff, but I think I'm giving it all to the right fucking people. I even bought a pair of sneakers for a complete stranger as part of that giving tree thing they do my job for charity. That's not something I've done before either. It felt good. I've given Christmas cards to friends at work. I'm still thinking I might send one to my parents.

I could be doing all manner of awful things right now as I continue to mourn. But I'm not. I could be shaving my head and sharpening my sword cane. I could be screwing around on Marje or I could always take up smoking and drinking again. But none of those things will help me get through this heart wrenching pain. I hate that. And I hate my grandfather for dying, and I hate that I wasn't there to send him off. I hate my family, yet I love them too. It drives me so fucking crazy, knowing that I still care despite all that's happened.

I don't know where I'm going with this entry. I guess I'm feeling emotional. Emotions are not my enemy anymore, hard as that is for me to admit. I'm not angry anymore either. Not really. Just sad. Crying a lot at random moments, crying at the sappy scenes in movies, crying when it hurts. Like right now.

Facing the unknown

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 08:10:34 GMT

Last night, I did something that I never thought I would do before.

I wrote a letter to "crow." "Crow" isn't a person I know, and it isn't another one of my personalities or anything like that. "Crow" is simply what I choose to believe is a spirit guide of mine.

But I've written to "crow" before. A nameless black corvid with a penchant for adaptive living, "crow" is something of an enigma to me, but I still try to communicate with him/her all the same.

But last night, as I stuffed the letter to crow and an offering of bread into an envelope and left it on my bedroom alter, I thought about the request I had made of crow in the letter, and I had to fight back some of the toughest emotions I've ever known.

I asked crow to find my grandfather and tell him that I'm Ok, that I tried, and that I'm sorry. This is going to sound really lame, but I sent crow to find the soul of a man who had been dead for seventeen days.

I didn't ask crow to bring him back, of course. 'Sides, I couldn't abide my bald, hispanic grandfather showing up at my doorstep in a long dark coat and clown make up.

Ah, the plot thickens.

Yesterday afternoon, my mother called me. You all know by now that this is never a good thing. She called to tell me that my grandfather had died of complications due to the chemotherapy he had been receiving for his lung cancer. "Pneumonia," she said, as I sank to my knees.

I wasn't surprised he was dead of course. What did surprise me, however, was when my mother told me he had died on October 29th of this year.

it took my parents seventeeen days to get around to telling me that he was dead.

And the capper to this story was that my mother then proceeded to tell me that I had broken my grandfather's heart.

Allow me to explain. When I was first given news of my grandfather's diagnosis of lung cancer more than four months ago, my father had asked me to call him. To say what? I have no idea. Of course, being the fine bastions of communication they all are back at home, my father had given me my grandfather's home number and told me that he would be keeping in touch with me to update me on my grandfather's condition.

From my end, having this kind of news sprung on me was hard enough, but it was even harder for me to think of what I could possibly say to a man that I had only ever known as a lonely, cynical, angry person with a death wish - a person that I know now I have been struggling not to become. It took me three weeks to get the courage to call him. But twice I got no answer.

Then, like an idiot, I lost my grandfather's number., Determined to figure this out and say something to the man, I tried to call my parents. Not once, but twice. The first time, my call didn't even seem to go through. The phone rang for ten minutes before I gave it up. The second time.....well, the impression that I got was that my mother answered, pretended not to hear me, and hung up on me. Still unphased, I e-mailed my father and waited for three weeks, checking my e-mail once a day. Nothing.

I gave up on my parents at that moment, unsure how I would get my grandfather's information. I turned my apartment upside down for three days in search of that phone number. I scoured the internet, looked at dozens of "find this person" websites, and even considered hiring a private detective to get the information for me, whatever the cost. And it was all to avoid having to call my parents again just to have my mother play her dramatic little games with me.

And here I was yesterday, sitting in the same spot I am right now, listening to this cold witch of a woman tell me that I had broken my grandfather's heart.

Before I could muster a reply, of course, she had hung up on me. Stunned, I slowly placed my phone back in its cradle and paced. "What the fuck do I do now?" I asked myself.

Minutes passed as I tried to absorb the enormity of the this news. My grandfather was dead, my mother was angry (what else is new?) and my father....

Wait, what happened to my father? Why didn't he call me sooner?

as if in response to my latest internal query, the phone rang again. I picked it up, answered horsely, and waited.

"You destroyed your father too."

Rage such as I'd never known suddenly burst forth.

"BULLSHIT!" I screamed. But it was too late. All i could hear on the other end was the tone of a conversation abruptly ended.

Before I even knew what I was thinking, I scrambled to find a phone card. Without missing a beat, I dialed the 1-800 number, the card number, and then my home phone number and waited. My parents let their answering machine pick up (cowards) and then I spoke.

"OK. I got the news. Now let me make something as clear to you both as possible."

I was surprised at the calm in my voice. And I was even more surprised when I heard my father's voice.

"Yeah," was all he said, but the tone in his voice spoke volumes. It was cold and distant.

"Well I got the news," I pressed on.

"Yep."

I was livid.

"Why the fuck did it take you seventeen days to tell me?"

"Why the fuck didn't you call him?" Dad replied.

"Why don't you ask your wife?" I snarled.

Silence.

"Where is he buried?" I asked, barely able to control my rage.

"New Jersey?"

"Why the fuck is he buried there? What's the significance of that place to him?"

"He didn't want to be buried underground."

"Hmm," was all I could say to that. I now found myself wondering if my grandfather and I shared claustrophobia among other numerous fears. What else didn't I know about him?

"Hey man, why don't I call you later?" Dad suddenly said. The distance in his voice had been replaced by something much worse. Urgent entreaty. It had been something I had only heard once before, and it had been no more of a comfort at that moment.

But as entreaty (and was that panic?) came to my father's voice, a jagged shard of ice burst through my heart. I snorted in utter disgust.

"Yeah right," I said, before hanging up.

I've been replaying this scene in my head ever since. I am, as of now, unable to speak to the hatred I feel, not for my parents themselves, but for what they chose to do in this situation. I waver between pity and heartache for my parents, but what is done is done. I didn't even get the chance to decide whether or not I would be attending my own grandfather's funeral. This has been, without a doubt, the last straw as far as I am concerned.

Heaven help my parents if they try to speak to me again.

Slow melting of ice

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:09:31 GMT

Greetings all. I am alive.

That I am alive comes as much more of a surprise to me than I am sure it does to any of you.

That being said, I will update you all as best I can (since I know you're all interested).

I've managed to find and hold a job for the past year or so. It's a retail job, which means it desperately sucks, but it's something that helps feed and shelter me, so I guess I should be grateful for that much, especially considering that I could not even say I had THAT at this time last year.

I am also writing a book. I've been working on it for the last year. I have no idea why I wrote it at all except that it was a great excuse to write at all. I'm just surprised that it has evolved into what it is. Someday within the next few months, I hope to have the rough draft finished so I can find some people who might want to read it and see what they think.

If anyone had been wondering about my hermitage, my job and my book (at least until recently) were responsible for about half of it. The other half, I'm afraid, is my continuing struggle with depression.

I am now officially non existent according to my mother, and my father, who's always had bigger biceps than cojones, has decided to allow that to mean that he does not get to talk with me either. All this happened just before my grandfather (dad's father) was diagnosed two months ago with lung cancer. Perhaps some of you know how much I had to fight the urge to laugh and say "i told you so!" before I burst into tears right on the spot. According to the news I heard two months ago, my grandfather may have three months left in this world. trying to contact him has been such a fiasco because of my parents that it's taken all of my strength not to fly back over to New York and confront them in person.

Marjorie continues to do well, and she is now an official high school biology teacher for the Beaverton, Oregon school district. She teaches at a school called South Ridge. That, in fact, is where she is at this very minute. She is happy doing what she does, and I am happy for her.

Would that I had that kind of direction in my own life=)

I should go now, i suppose, and think about writing more of my book if i accomplish nothing else today. I'm fighting the urge to scream today, i suppose. It's not been a good day for me emotionally, and quite frankly, I feel like an alien who has been placed among normal people and expected to function as they do. it's not easy, especially lately.

Talk to you all later, perhaps.

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 02:45:21 GMT

More Job search ranting from yours truly. There's a touch of anger in this one. See if you can spot it.

I didn't actually do any serious job hunting today. I needed the break. I'll post more later, for those who are interested.

8/21/05

I woke up feeling sort of low today. I drank my coffee and started playing a random videogame on my computer just because I could. I didn’t think I was going to try to do any job hunting, but something in my brain just wouldn’t let me relax until I tried, so I dragged myself online and tried to expand my job search a bit. I looked into the local "Craig’s List" and didn’t find much there except for one job that had been posted about a month ago. It kind of reminds me of the last two or three jobs that I applied for in this regard. Of course, the job was somehow involved with a hospital, but I didn’t get as many specifics as I wanted except to say that this is a staffing coordinator job. Maybe I’ll call the hospital tomorrow and find out what exactly it is that they are looking for (if the position hasn’t already been filled, of course)

I then decided that if my odds were going to be one in a hundred on that particular website, maybe it was worth my while to expand my search further. I almost subconsciously logged onto a familiar hospital website before I started to look at Oregon State jobs. The job descriptions on the Oregon State website were three pages long, it seemed, and yet the employers seemed to be putting a great deal more emphasis on employee benefits and qualification exams than on anything else. It was hard to get to the point without having to read through overly complicated instructions over and over again. On a whim, I decided to look into the mental health worker positions that the state provided. That was not a pretty picture. The state positions require you to be able to work with long term, criminally insane patients with nowhere else to go. The pay for someone who does what I used to do is very good, but nowhere near enough to make me risk my neck in that fashion. The last kind of person that I want to be dealing with is some sort of a “Hannibal Lecter” wannabe whose number one goal is to try to feed me pieces of my own brain.

Well, scratch that off the list.

Next I looked into more of the office clerk kind of jobs. I found one intriguing position that was sort of a court clerk kind of job. It made me think way too much of those Law and Order shows that are all over the place on TV these days. When I read the description of the actual duties, I flushed when it said that people in this position would be required to “explain the court system to various individuals,” and to “work well with attorneys.” Seeing as I haven’t exactly been a huge fan of the justice system for quite a while, I couldn’t see myself holding back a few well placed, snide comments here and there about general court proceedings.

Again, it was not for me.

I then took a look at state office support kinds of jobs. A “level one” office clerk kind of job requires some fast typing and some management of time skills. That doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. It also requires me to “occasionally deal with irate individuals either over the phone or in person.” I sort of scoffed when I read this. On the one hand, dealing with irate individuals just seemed to be a part of the deal no matter what I did at my last job. On the other hand, I could see myself leaping from behind my cubicle, grabbing said individual, getting them into a half nelson, knocking them face first into the ground and telling them that they better cool it or they would be placed in locked seclusion. The thought did put a smile on my face.

I’ll put that one in the “maybe” category.

Feeling somewhat amused if nothing else, I followed a well placed comment from M and decided to look into county jobs as well. I got roughly the same results for two different counties. “Office clerk 1” jobs all require you to take some sort of fast as hell typing test. They rate you on how many words you can type as well as how many mistakes you make in about a minute. How amusing. Seeing as I am typing all these things out right now, maybe this is practice for my test. Then again, doesn’t it all depend on the kinds of things they ask you to type? What if they ask me to type up something that rings of technical jargon? Like some sort of a medical memorandum on the function of type two diabetes in the locomotion of Sprig Dawley rats all trapped in a Skinnerian box with electrified walls and a slit where the occasional food pellet pops out? Or what if they make me type up something like the pledge of allegiance? I could see myself really messing that one up. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the assholes in government for which nobody would really go to fight and die in a foreign land unless these said assholes would lie to us and then accuse our youth of not being patriotic enough because they don’t want to die to keep Georgie Porgie’s fucking inheritance intact. Yeah ok…bad idea.

I’m just saying I might do a bad job on that particular task.

Job Hunting is Harsh

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:30:11 GMT

Hey all. I'm new to the Portland, Oregon area and I've been on the job hunt for what feels like forever. I've only actually been hunting from within Portland for the last week or two. The truth of the matter is, I seriously hate job searches. The last few that I did left me wondering if I was a failure as a human being.

I've decided, for some reason, to record and to share my impressions of this current job search. I'm not even going to pretend that these are words of wisdom and encouragement for others who may be in the same situation. If anything, this commentary on my experience will probably serve as bad comedy. For those of you who know me, this will read as one of the longest rants I've ever written. For those of you who don't know me, this will read as one of the longest rants that anyone has ever written.

8/20/05

OK! So I don't want a job in my field anymore and I'm not too thrilled about that. Big fucking deal!

Ah, OK. Le tme back up a little bit just to take stock of the situation. I don't quite know what to make of this new attitude, and I'm not sure I should even consider it a new catalyst for change just yet. But it's there and it has been growing more persistent in my mind, so I guess I'd better take a good long look at it, huh?

So Marjorie (M for short) and I pick up our cats, throw them in a moving truck, drag all of our sorry asses across the country and settle down in Portland, Oregon. M and I are tired and sore. We've also been sick the entire trip. Luckily, our cats don't want to scratch our eyes out as soon as we put them down on the floor of our brand new place. Luckily, our neighbors are not very nosey 'cause I'm not feeling entirely social at this point. Fortunately, shopping soon appears to be easy and convenient, and walking around and getting to know our new neighborhood can wait until I have the energy to give a shit.

My mind, of course, is not entirely dead to reality. It never is. During our recovery period, my mind slowly goes through the possibilities of the kinds of jobs I can find out here. At least at this time, I'm thinking that I might need to get another hospital job similar to the one I just left back in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are so many hospitals in Portland, it almost appears certain that I can find something out here to peak my interest.

Besides, we can't keep shopping for things like food if neither of us has a job.

About two weeks after we've settled into our newer (and thankfully better) apartment, I finally start to feel like I am recovering from the move. I start to give a shit where I am and what I need to do to get back in the swing of things. I begin to reformulate work out routines, for I have not given up my goal of looking good naked, I endeavor to try to really live as a day person, but it isn't nearly as easy as I want it to be. Three years of having worked nights back in a Minnesota Hospital appears to have taken its toll on my body. M and I have already discussed the facility of my changing back to a day schedule. I've told her I think it will take me avery long time to get used to being a day person again. She told me that it shouldn't be that difficult for me because no human being was ever meant to be nocturnal anyway. Preferring M's viewpoint to mine regarding this matter, I decided to believe that changing my waking hours should be a walk in the park. As it turns out, we were both right or we were both wrong depending on what part of the metaphorical cup you focus on. It has taken me a month, but I think I can finally fall asleep before two o'clock in the morning. This walk in the park is startling to look more like a hike through the Forbidden Forest, but I think I can deal.

About three weeks into our new living situation, something clunks into place in my mind. It happens as I am sitting there reading a Harry Potter book aloud to M one afternoon. I get a little nervous and I start to flub some of my sentences, but M either doesn't notice or she has the decency not to comment at the time. The part of my mind that has been groggily minding the reality of my current employment situation suddenly takes one of those giant cartoon mallets and smacks me right upside the head with it.

"Damn it, man. You're not sick anymore. I think it's time for you to start searching for work!"

"Oh yeah. Right! Shit!

And so it begins.

M and I both need to find jobs at this point, but M and I have always done these kinds of things slightly differently. She likes to go and talk to potential employers first, bringing copies of her resume and various cover letters along just in case something comes of the conversations. I, on the other hand, don't leap into the job-hunting scene with such courage. It just doesn't seem logical to me to visit some hospital and walk up to someone in some Human Resources Department and try to get information out of them while I try to sell myself to them at the same time. I can just see them raising their eyebrows and looking at me like I'm some sort of self-deluded mental patient. Yet this time, I'm somehow determined to do things a little differently. I convince myself that all I need is new clothes, a back bone, and a chance to start poking around and asking people all types of questions regarding my marketability as a hospital worker.

The day I actually begin stage one of this seemingly impossible mission, I've already got new clothes hanging up in my closet. I've also got a working computer (not without a sharp dip my savings). And, I've got energy. Whoohoo! So it sit in front of my computer, get onto the World Wide Web, and continue my job search from where i left off before the move.

"Google, point and click, 'Portland Orgeon hospitals,' point and click."

Bingo! A website I've become very familiar with withing the last six months suddenly pops onto my computer screen. It lists all sorts of hospitals in and around Portland. I've already been able to narrow my actual job search down to three different major hospitals. Now it's time to go thorugh the "help wanted" ads.

About an hour into the search, I seem to have struck gold. Legacy Hospital in Portland is looking for "therapists."

"Therapists?" I ask myself. "I cant be a therapists with less than a master's degree, can I?"

But sure enough, these aren't your typical "lets-sit-down-and-talk-about-your-feelings" kinds of therapists. These positions call for someone who can "redirect, reorient, and set clear limits for adult mental health patients."

Cha ching!

"You must have clear knowledge of certain psychotropic medications and their possible side effects."

Duh!

"You must have an understanding of the mental health issues associated with the aging process."

Are you kidding me?

With a bachelor's degree in psych and over three years worth of experience in hospital psych units, I'm definitely a likely choice for these positions.

My excitement builds, and I immediately print off the positions to save in my ever expanding work-search file. I don't wait for another mallet to hit me in the head, and I quickly apply online for the day and evening positions. This is too good to be true! I can't believe I wouldn't get at least a part time position with my qualifications.

Just to cement my interest, I decide (not without a great deal of trepidation) to make a phone call to the Legacy Human Resources department. I've had a rather nasty experience before with this kind of job in Minneapolis. For instance, It was not made clear to me before I took that job that I would be a floating employee. I eventually got used to the unpredictability of never being given the same assignment more than three times in a row. Despite that, I never got used to the fact that I always seemed to have to deal with the most difficult mental patients in the hospital. There were violent,anti-social patients, borderlines, drama queens and kings, and other patients that I know have haunted my nightmares ever since I had to lay eyes and hands on them.

And yet, right before the end of my illustrious career Minneapolis, I managed to secrure a permanent position on a mental health unit at the same hospital. This time, I was working with staff that i actually got along with well and vice versa. This time, I was working with higher functioning mental health patients. I never made the mistake of taking the higher intelligence quotients of these particular patients for granted, for that point in my life, i knew that higher IQ's might simply mean more danger for everyone involved.

My phone call to Legacy Human Resources, much to my chagrin, turns into three different phonecalls during the course of the week. I make the first phone call on a Tuesday, and I am told that i need to try to speak with a certain employee recruiter in a couple of days because she is out ill. That thursday, M leaves for the afternoon and I am alone, pondering the second phone call to Legacy Hospital's Human Resources department. I finally swallow hard and dial the number at 1:45 pm. It apparently isn't easy to get in touch with this employee recruiter, and I end up having to leave a message with a request for a return phone call. I wait by my computer and I wait by my television. I wait some more. Finally, 4:30 pm rolls around, and I am getting fidgety. I pick up the phone and dial again. This time, the recruiter answers the phone. I am startled by how light and almost simpering her voice is, but she sounds amiable enough, so we talk. I attempt to ask her questions regarding Legacy Hospital, but I get nervous and I begin to ramble. Finally, by some miracle, we get around to the job description. She pulls up my online application on her computer, and we begin to talk about the positions for which I applied. I tell her of my floating experience back in Minneapolis, and her enthusiasm increases. "good going, man. Hang in there," I tell myself.

"I've worked with all kinds of mental health patients and I've probably seen and dealt with all kinds of things"

"That's very good," she says. "It says here that you've been trained in verbal de-escalation."

"That's right. I've had to talk all sorts of adults out of doing some very odd things. As you probably know better than most, it doesn't always work."

"Well, of the positions that you've applied for, most of the full time positions will probably be taken by now as we're down to all our final candidates. All of these positions have been open for at least a month."

"Oh really?"

"Well, many of Legacy's Hospitals have had to close, and as a result, we've had an increase in the need for certain positions."

"Yes? What kind of positions?"

"Well, we need more and mre therapists to go and to verbally de-escalate mental health patients in the ER so that we can go an perform emegency medical treatments on them. Many of these patients will undoubtedly be agressive, and many of them will be drug addicts, homeless, or gang members as well. Do you feel comfortable doing this?"

Immediately I get that lurch at the bottom of my stomach as though I've accidentally tripped and narrowly missed hitting the ground with my teeth. I hesitate before I speak.

"I don't understand," I say to myself more than to the recruiter at this point. My heart, I suddenly realize, is busy sinking like a heavy brick in a bog.

The recruiter repeats almost verbatim what she has said. It sounds like a set of Radio instructions of how to walk the plank.

"Sure I can do it," I finally hear myself say, though I am sure that that wasn't my real voice. For the second time during this conversation, I feel that uncomfortable lurching sensation in my stomach. I have to bite my lip to keep from adding the words "but do i really want to?"

We finally wrap up our conversation and I hang up the phone. I wonder right after I hang up the phone if I detected subtle disappointment in her voice, and this thought makes me wonder if I just blew my chances of getting a job very quickly in the job hunt. I admit, the prospect of job hunting is not very high on my "things to do in Portland when I'm bored and running out of money" list, but what the hell was I thinking? Of course i can do the job! Images now come to me of violent patients whose names Ican recall almost as vividly as their tempers. Along with these memories come other recollections of how close I've come to breaking the Hospital rules and punching some of the more troublesome male patients right in the throat and ending everyone's pain. In the three and a half years that I have worked in hospital mental health, I have had to learn how to mask my feelings of rage, fear, and contempt in front of most people. I have learned that the only person that I can control in situations of confrontation is me. I have also taught myself that I am definitely one example of "strength under control," as my friends often reminded me at my last job when I would become privately frustrated.

"I am a warrior of peace," I tell myself. "I am a steward of the earth. I am a champion of humanity, dignity and worth. I am a healer of this world"

And what the hell was I thinking? Of course I can do this! Did I really hesitate both times she asked me that question? How stupid!

In a panic, I call the recruiter back. She doesn't answer, and I leave another message, mastering the panic in my voice before I do so, and I let her know, in no uncertain terms, that "I am definitely comfortable" doing this and that, and, of course, "something clunked into place only after we hung up on one another and I'm sorry." Even as I leave the message, it feels a bit like hammering a nail into my own coffin, but I try to ignore that. Damn it all to hell! This is a fucking job! How dare I take that shit for granted?! How dare I second guess myself just when I am on the brink of completing the fastest job hunt in history?!

Immediately after I hang up the phone for the third time that Thursday, I go and do a rather quick weight lifting work out. During the work out, I cannot help but wonder if I just did something incredibly stupid, but I can't figure out what it is. After all, I almost nailed that phone conversation until I found out what the positions really were. I almost had this gig in the bag until I was reminded of how strange, scary and damned right frustrating it was to have to babysit large, angry, apparently unreachable patients practically every other night of my life for three years. I was about to take a shortcut to the the end of a long, confusing labyrinth, and then I realized that the shortcut was probably a trip down a path that I have been down before. I know exactly where this path begins, and I know exactly where that path ends.

It's not where I want to be anymore.

As I end my work out and drag myself into the shower, I shake my head in frustration. "This is stupid!" I scream at myself. "Would I really be in the same situation that I was in back in Minnesota?" Would it really be so bad to go back to something that I know how to do? After all, it's already going to be a part time job, isn't it? Maybe if I just took full advantage of my time off from work, I could get over the notion that my existence at my job was completely devoid of satisfaction.

My father's done that for seventeeen years of his life. Why can't I do it for a year or so?

Yeah and, um, is your dad the pinnacle of health and happiness that you want to emulate for the rest of your life?

Well, he's made a few mistakes along the way. His biggest mistake was that he had two children too early, and he trapped himself in a job that he really didn't like that much because he felt that he had to in order to support his new family.

Precisely, asshole! You don't even have children yet, and you don't even know that you and M ever will. Your partner is out there trying to get her own fucking job even as you stand in this shower washing your thinning hair and pretending that you're about to finish a job hunt that's barely even started.

So what's wrong with that? So I end the pain and the suffering of a grueling job hunt that could go on for months and months longer than I want it to, all the while sapping me of my dignity and my self confidence.

And in ending this so called pain and suffering, you mask your true feelings and put yourself through something that you swore to yourself that you would never go through again.

I would do that to make sure that we are financially secure.

You would do that because you're a coward who is taking the easy way out. What are you so afraid of?

I just stated what I'm afraid of.

Did you? Look, it shouldn't bother you so much that you've worked for more than three years in a very tough job. It shouldn't bother you in the least that you don't ever want to do it again.

It doesn't bother me. None of that bothers me.

So what's really eating you?

I don't know.

Yes you do. You've lived a lie for the last three and half years. You were too stone cold stubborn to realize that you were not supposed to stay at a job that caused you so much pain.

My girlfriend got sick. What was I supposed to do?

Oh I get it. You were being noble.

No, I was being responsible.

No, you were being a prat. Even when your girlfriend got better and she was able to work more and more steadily as she progressed, you continued to sink lower and lower into despair because you didn't want to go out and get what you really wanted.

What I wanted at the time was inconsequential. I was doing what had to be done.

My goodness, will you listen to yourself? Is that how your parents have taught you to think? You sound like this is your fucking destiny or something! You're living off of outdated ideals, my friend. Whatever your mother and father told you about what you do and what you don't do in this world, you've got to realize that they are among the most rigid and miserable people on this planet because neither of them had the guts to go for the gold.

Oh great. So my parents are cowards?

No! They stick to their guns when it comes to the affairs of their children. They have sacrificed more than most people their age could ever realize. Your parents are loving, patient, and quite determined to see the success of their children. But don't you believe for a minute that they are going to be the ones who hold you accountable for your emotional well being. They can't anymore. That's not their job.

I can't help it. They were the only half-way decent examples of adulthood that I was used to. I turned out alright didn't I?

Of course you did. What what's "alright" compaired to wonderful?

I don't understand.

Yes you do. It's the reason you hesitated when the nice recruiter lady tried to describe the job to you in no uncertain terms. It's the reason you're standing here with a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, unsure that you even want that fucking job at Legacy Hospital anymore. The job's not a good fit for you at this point in your life and you just realized it. Moreover, you hate yourself for having realized this because it goes against your stupid, macho ideal that you have to make that kind of sacrifice to contribute in a positive way to your relationship with M. You wouldn't be more of a man for taking this job.

What would I be, then?

Foolish.

Isn't it just as foolish to put your loved ones at financial peril because you don't rise up to the occasions where you are most needed? Isn't it just as moronic not to go and do the things that you know you are capable of doing if it means that you can create a better life for yourself in the immediate future? What about self preservation? What about the notion that the economy in Portland, Oregon may not be any better than that of Saint Paul, Minnesota? What about the rising unemployment in this city, and in other cities? What about those fucking street urchins that keep coming to our fucking garbage dumspter to find that undiscovered treasure that means the extension of their pathetic lives?

Do you really think that M is going to think less of you because you've decided that you need a break from angry, mentally ill people for a while? Do you really think that anyone else in this world is going to give a flying fuck why you decided that this Legacy Hospital job might be too stressful to suit your needs at this time? If you take this job, you're still going to act the hero, but at a terrible price to yourself. You're not acknowledging your own wants and needs, here. This is how you've spent most of the last three years of your life. You were so busy trying to figure out a way that you could, that you didn't stop to think if you should!

Thanks, that was very Ian Malcolm of you.

You're welcome! And um, the street urchins are not your problem.

How do you figure?

What do those fucking street urchins have to do with you? Are you about to go broke because you don't have a job? Look, you and M. were both smart enough to bring some of your own savings with you to Portland. Smarter still, M. accepted an offer of help that her father extended to both of you. He did that just to make sure that both of you got your punk asses out here in the first damned place. Do you think he would refuse to do that again if you guys were truly desperate?

I guess not. He's already said he would. But I don't like to depend on that kind of thing.

Spoken like a true martyr. OK, let me ask you this. Was it worth it?

The last three years at my old job?

Bingo.

I guess in terms of character building and learning about my own strengths and weaknesses, yes it was worth it.

But?

I was done with character building at that point in my life about a year into the job. A lot happened. Yeah, M. did get sick, and I thought I had no choice but to stay on and fight the good fight. But even when she got better, I guess i got used to fighting. It didn't even occurr to me that I had other options.

But now you're here in Portland, Oregon. You're brand new with no job, no mental health patients, and no pressure on you to calm some angry motherfucker down long enough so that doctor do-little can help him.

OK, so what?

Rethink your priorities, you stubborn asshole! It's time for you to face the undeniable truth that you are in a better position now than you think you are. Get off the Solid Snake mentality and start taking advantage of your resources. You've attained furniture from M.'s family. You're OK at the moment for food. Your apartment is clean, healthy, spacious, and clearly exactly what you both wanted and needed. You've got the time to get this right for yourself.

You think so?

Ok. Let me restate that. You've got the right to make this really work for yourself.

Debate rant

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 14:16:43 GMT

I watch a horse-faced man with unbelievably thick hair take the ten gallon hat off a cowboy's head and then proceed to knock him into next thursday.

I listen to the inane babble of news personalities pretending to be objective about this event. It doesn't matter. Someone had to win and someone had to lose. Done deal.

Are there really going to be two more of these ridiculous events? Are they even going to be useful , when it is well known that the country is already extremely polarized, and probably has been since the aftermath of 9/11?

I watched that happen. I was there, just on the threshold of hell, watching it from my living-room window. A building comes down like a giant house of cards, and I'm starkly aware of the screams, though it would be impossible to hear them from my apartment in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan.

People died. The smoke wafted into my neighborhood. I smelled the charred remains. I gagged, and then I went numb.

And I watched as our president grieved for those who were lost, and then proceeded to wage a War on Terror. But what was a war on Terror supposed to be? Did that mean that there was going to be a war on the fear that kept New Yorkers from coming outside for months after that horrific event? Did it mean that there would be some campaign waged against the media for playing up the stereotypes of overzealous, enraged dark-skinned desert people too angry to know the kisses of their loved ones? Was this "War on Terror" supposed to be an epic struggle against the nightmares that my father had after he had to count body parts at Ground Zero, or against the insanely overused images of those planes hitting the side of a building-the images that still to this day knock the wind from my stomach and send me to my knees?

That's a war on Terror, folks. Hey Mr. President, give me some weapon to help me fight the racial profiling going on in my state thanks to your homeland security measures. Give me a squad of troops so we can liberate women held hostage by white Christian males who stand over them at abortion clinics, pretending that they know what it is to create and destroy a life that dwells within themselves. Why not fund a Minnesota core to help fight these white supremacist assholes who seek to create terrorists in our own AMERICAN children? Hell, lend me an army simply because I want to be a part of a community, and people who have to fight and die with and for each other often form the best communities, by God.

Or build me an army worthy of Mordor......

Oh yes. I watched that debate. I played with my girlfriend's hair. I thought about my life in the last two years, and then I cried.

Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:56:14 GMT

9/24/04

I'm sitting in a room in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A female is snoring audibly nearby. She lies within the shell of blue seizure pads, a giant pillow, and a bedpost beneath her feet. Next door, a young man loudly admonishes Harvey the Rabbit for "talking too fucking loud" and "keeping people up too late." The female in this room continues to snore, aware of nothing except what the sandman whispers into her ear. The air is thick and still. It is humid, and I almost pretend that a thick fog rolls in and hides the walls and windows outside this room. Perhaps when I leave this room I will have to walk along a lighted path to some emergency exit miles away.

Suddenly, an unseen woman speaks, and her voice shatters the stillness and lifts the fog. She must be talking to Harvey the Rabbit's friend. She asks him if he can tell her what the voices are saying. She also asks him if he is in pain. Somehow, the young man manages to tell the woman that he is having a toothache. The woman makes a phone call and a decision. I hear the man trudge back to his room next door. It is unclear if he got what it is that he needed, but I can only sit here and hope for the best.

I look up briefly. My female companion is still asleep. That gives me ample time to look around at all the poetry and the paintings she has placed all over her room. Some of this artwork covers the front of her bedroom door. More of the artwork covers a section of a nearby bedroom wall. Still more paintings and writings cover her bedroom window, and these are arranged like badly utilized Tetris pieces. I've read the poetry before. Some of the poetry makes sense, but more of it reads like little more than loquacious gibberish. The pictures appear to be handmade. They are all intensely colored with reds, greens, blues, oranges, purples, and browns for background, and jet black images in the foreground. The black images are stylized ravens. Many of the ravens are in profile, perching on a single tree branch. There are ravens that fly toward mountains, and more that fly away from them. After having read the poetry, I wonder if the images are derived from the poetry or if the poetry is derived from the images. After all, the poetry often speaks of ravens flying through storms, or ravens carrying messages of impending doom.

Impending doom.

This woman now snores, unaware that I am absorbing her images and her words. I sit here in this room in Minneapolis Minnesota, perfectly content not to know which is derived from which.

Only at my job

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 11:07:54 GMT

I just got finished talking to a female patient at my job. Now i say talking, but i really mean listening..listening very hard, for this person had a trach ring and no voice box, so she was essentially the loudest mute i've ever listened to. For someone with no voice, she can talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk...and then she'll talk some more. And just when i think i can move and get past her or walk away from her to do something else, she'll tap me on the shoulde ..and keep on talking as though I've nothing better to do with my time than to listen to her barely audible but obvious delusions. So according to her, I'm in love with an demon but I've got to conver this demon to an Angel or some such thing.

man...only at my job could i get a headache listening to someone with no fucking voice.

WHHHARRGH!

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 06:37:55 GMT

I'm still here.

--- richspirit <phoenixdrum@charter.net> wrote:
> Angel:
> I will be glad to answer any questions that
> you mat have. I will send a photo over the net when
> I finish the Poplar drum. Whats your attraction to
> poplar? and what all are you doing this summer as I
> am building my web links page.
> sincerely richspirit
>
> Visionary drums for global resonance
> Rich Spirit Borthwick
> 888-622-3786
> mind.net/spirit

Hey Richspirit,

Thanks for your patience with my questions, and thanks in advance for the drum photo.

To be honest, my attraction to poplar is kind of odd. It started when my girlfriend began to examine her spiritual beliefs, and slowly discovered that she is a Pagan Witch. As part of her practice, she uses a form of spiritual "divination" that involves Runes. As far as I can tell, these runes, partly from Islandic and Norse origin, are a special means by which my girlfriend has taught herself to reorganize and to reexamine herself and her life goals and motivations. I am actually studying runes myself, but I admit that she is much more skilled with them at this point than I am.

This past February, as a symbol of support and of my curiosity about my girl's Pagan Magical working, I went with my girlfriend to a "Winter Witch Camp" right outside Rochester, Minnesota. It was there that I participated in an ecstatic drum circle. In was in that circle, playing on an ashiko drum, that things started to make sense to me..where I started to connect with the earth. Suddenly, my girlfriend's beliefs weren't alien to me. I knew something was definitely up.

The reason Poplar became my obsession is that my girlfriend participated in this same Winter Witch camp the year before. When students were split into groups last year, each group was assigned a different "Rune" as a means of identification. Several of these Runes are tree runes, and the one my girlfriend chose at random was the rune for "Poplar."

At the time that my girlfriend was at camp last year, she had fallen extremely ill with a rare immune system disorder known as Wegener's Granulomatosis. I'll spare you the details of the disorder, but it was at this camp where she was exposed to a community of people who were all able to help her begin to understand herself as a strong and determined spirit. It was at this camp that my girlfriend began to come to terms with how much she would have to overcome physically and emotionally throughout the course of her illness. It has been a long and TOUGH road, and she still wears that Poplar rune around her neck. It may sound crazy, but something about that kind of energy and adaptiveness is also inherent some species of poplar trees as well (As far as I know). They can grow in cold climates and they can reproduce in more than one way. Like my sweetheart, they're tough as nails, they're beautiful, and they seem to have the will to live and grow tall and strong. I guess to me, it seemed appropriate to get a drum with that spirit of strength and adaptability attached to its wood? one that can resonate and be appreciated in many different ways at my next jam fest.

Ish.

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 14:06:26 GMT

Bustrike is frying my brain.

Lack of sleep bringing me down.

Frustrations of past week... mounting.

Urge to kill...rising.

blah

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 09:06:14 GMT

This is definitely one of those times when i feel just blah.
Too tired to be happy
Too frustrated to be angry.

i hate feeling like that.

spell check

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 08:57:38 GMT

dang..spell check doesn't always work. For instance, why would it have thought to change the word "day" to "say" considering that day isn't a fucking verb?

ah, the hell with it. Either you all know what i mean or you don't, and you can always comment if you want.

update

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 06:44:32 GMT

oh yeah...i forgot a theme to the president's State of the Union distress....

6) Damn, war is good, and screw all y'all who don't agree.

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 06:32:20 GMT

ok..state of the union address.

let me summarize what I believe to be the themes of our president's speech.

1)"I'm the trigger -happy cowboy dumbass who led us into a war against the wrong dudes without evidence AND without the support of anyone else in the world save the British. Rather than try to make amends and apologize to the rest of the world for my ego, which, much like my bank account is the size of Texas, I would rather say, screw all y'all that didn't help me, I don't need a permission slip to blow stuff up. I do it all the time on my Gamecube in the oval office...HAH!!

2) "I'm a homophobic, token-Christian swaggering redneck who doesn't like the idea of gay marriage, so all ya'll gay people can just do without equal protection under our constitution, because ahma fix it so you caint get married." (by the way, I aint getting' any. so why should you?)

3)"War is good cause I say so." (By the way, never you mind that we aint focused no more on no Osama Bin laden)...

(Calypso voice) Come Mr. Taliban, gimme me Bin Laden, wartime come and you goin' go home.

4) "Tax breaks are also good, specially mine 'cause all my friends think I'm cool again when I bring it up in my speech. Whoohoo! Ne'ermahnd that them breaks don't actually do anything against the explosive rising costs of college tuition and healthcare."

5) Y'all Demo crafts can kiss mah ass!!

The worst part of all this came when Bush spoke of his stance on marriage, and I remembered that my partner's outpatient insurance ran out today. We're fast running out of options, and we were seriously considering getting married JUST so that we could get her covered under my hospital employee insurance. Oh sure, there are other ways to get covered. I could get a sex change operation and become a woman or Marjorie can become a man. The plan covers gay "domestic partners" and married hetero couples ONLY. They figure that since Marjorie and I have the option of getting married, then we should get it together and follow our "Christian Brethren" into the state of holy matrimony. Marriage is a joke in this nation as it is, and now Bush wants to codify it as though it is his right to determine what we should believe.

On the other hand, WG is a potentially fatal disease.

Just five minutes with Mr. Bush and a rubber hose...that's all I need.

?

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:50:45 GMT

hmm

Canth in The Uncool Way to Stab

In this fully-fledged travesty, canth (John Travolta) is an ex-marine with a mission. He has to eliminate gunn (Helen Hunt) before his former partner, seiryu_16 (Jennifer Aniston), reaches her. Wasting no time, he charges into Seiryu_16's lair. Official movie of the 2004 Olympic Games.

Produced by ianiceboy

the new year.

Fri, 02 Jan 2004 09:08:12 GMT

The new year is barely a day old.

I myself, noticed no real transition from the old one to the new one. But maybe that's just me. I think the novelty of watchin Dick Clark comment on the ball dropping in Time's Square, New York wore off for me when I was about 15.

but i do miss the years when I was able to go to my friend's house in Scarsdale NY and watch the twilight zone with old friends from summer camp. that was always fun.

anyways, happy new year everyone. May it not be nearly as difficult as this last one was. Yeah.

p.s. Beth_stanley. We should speak tomorrow.

More schtuff

Sat, 20 Dec 2003 06:54:35 GMT

hey all

nothing much brewing here. Still enjoying the new kitties. Marjorie took them to the Vet this morning. Convenient that we have a vet about a block away from our duplex. it turns out they've got stuff to take care of and there is much medicine to give them for the next ten days. We had to do that tonite before I went to work. The little scamps knew what was coming and they both decided to hide under the chrismas tree when the time came. Lucky we didn't get one of those really pokie trees.

other than that, marjorie's recent doctor's visit didn't reveal anything of worth except that doctors love to argue about rare disorders.

Anyways, take care all.

hey all

Sat, 29 Nov 2003 12:02:04 GMT

Hope you all had a wonderful triptophan day..with or without the triptophan buzz that so many of us truly enjoy, especially when talking to our overly-excited and emotionally stunted future mother's in law.

Wed, 19 Nov 2003 03:21:23 GMT

Hey all. I haven't been updating very much these days. There has been quite a lot happening these days, and I've been sort of keeping score so to speak. It's mostly about Marjorie, but I felt compelled to share.

11/6/03

Marjorie calls from a neighborhood in Rochester Minnesota that I have never seen before. She is calling from a hotel that is right next to the apparently world famous Mayo Clinic. The name of the hotel is the "Executive Inn" or some such thing. The quality of her stay, she says, is about average. Our phone conversation is typical and somewhat mundane until Marjorie tells me how her meeting went with the mysterious Dr. Ulrich Spechs. It appears that Ulrich has sacrificed all of his interpersonal skills for his incredible expertise in pulmanology. Other than making a vague suggestion to Marjorie that there is no reason to believe that her illness is indeed Wegener's Granulomatosis, Ulrich apparently says little else. A man named Dr. Bauer plays interference at that point, suggesting to Marjorie that Ulrich is being "careful," and that Mayo is missing some critical information regarding Marjorie's symptoms (-AKA- Cat Scans taken of Marjorie pre lobectomy!) This is, in marjorie's words, "damned frustrating." Meanwhile, the floor has suddenly disappeared from beneath my feet, and I have to plop myself in a chair before I fall through the floor and down a cliff with Whiley Coyote. Just weeks ago, Marjorie had an official diagnosis. True, it was fucking Wegener's Granulomatosis (WG for short) and neither of us wanted that to be the case, but at least we had a direction in which to focus our increasingly manic energy regarding her illness. So what if it dragged on our heels for the rest of our lives like heavy luggage? At least this luggage came complete with a legible destination tag and small, somewhat rickety wheels. But wait a minute! Now some Ulrich guy - yet another incredibly brilliant and aloof medical doctor- suddenly comes along and yanks the fucking tag off our luggage! He runs away muttering medical jargon under his breath, and Marjorie and I are left wondering where the hell we're supposed to go now. Thank you very much, Ulrich! Thank you for leaving us our wheels anyway.

Now Marjorie and I are talking about what to do with Ulrich's vague statement. Marjorie tells me that Doctor Bauer has given her his card. Dr Bauer is Ulrich Spechs' assistant, and he has apparently promised to call Marjorie when Ulrich has made his decision. Steam is now squealing from my ears, and smoke rings are beginning to billow out from my nostrils. Ulrich Spechs obviously has no idea what he has done. The man has unwittingly introduced the slightest sliver of sunshine into an otherwise overcast horizon. A tiny part of Marjorie is now entertaining the notion that we may not have to live with WG after all. Just for a brief moment, we BOTH want to believe that her illness could be some random fluke of misfortune that can be beaten away from us for good. Perhaps there would not have to be a dark, ominous cloud hanging over our heads for the rest of our life together threatening the rain of her illness's recurrence. We might not have to do more tense waiting in clinical waiting rooms. It is possible that we would no longer need to fight the Minnesota Healthcare System for the basic coverage of completely outrageous medical costs. And would it be too much to ask not to have to visit the subject of Marjorie's mortality every other time we discuss our future together?

Would it be too much to ask for the light at the end of a long and exhausting tunnel?

The moment I ask myself that question, something inside me shatters. I know then that my scabs are bleeding again, but this time it's because a man named Ulrich Spechs has come into my life to pick at them for me. I am no longer willing to entertain the possibility that WG isn't a newly chronic and permanent part of Marjorie's life. WG appeared to start off as an unwanted guest, and it has now become a permanent focus of Marjorie's life energy. Her every thought is bent upon WG, and her every action now appears to be colored by WG's presence. It sickens me slightly that I have been forced to watch this happen, unable to come up with a justification for this new and unwanted living arrangement in Marjorie's body. I want Marjorie's illness to be like the ring of power in Lord of the Rings. I want it to be something that we can take to Mount Doom and cast into the fires "from whence it came," never to return. Yet I have long since learned to accept that WG doesn't work that way, and I have just started to come to terms with that. It leaves me with a sense of peace in an otherwise turbulent situation. I am now blazingly angry at Ulrich for shaking up that newfound peace of acceptance in my life. Fuck Ulrich Spechs for questioning Marjorie's official diagnosis. Fuck him for suggesting that I may have to come to terms with something completely new and probably even more difficult to pronounce than Wegener's Granulomatosis. Fuck him for breaking my partner's newfound momentum in her life.

Marjorie and I continue to discuss Ulrich in increasingly heated and frustrated tones. I wonder if Marjorie has had a chance to ask Ulrich any of our thousand and one questions regarding her long term prognosis in regard to WG. Now that Marjorie has been slapped in the face with Ulrich's frankly bewildering statement of disbelief, she tells me that she has no conceivable way of asking any of those questions to either Dr. Bauer or Dr. Ulrich Spechs without sounding stupidly paranoid. My temptation to visit Mayo Clinic and severely pummel Dr. Spechs is growing with each new sentence of this phone conversation. Marjorie can feel my fire heating her ear piece, and she deftly changes the subject to the next day's activities. She's going to see an eye doctor tomorrow, and neither of us believes that this will yield anything of interest to anyone involved. She wants to go eat a piece of chocolate from the hotel vending machine. I want to encourage her to just do it. She's earned that piece of chocolate somehow for having wasted her time and her money going to the world famous Mayo Clinic just to be given a shrug of the shoulders. I know better than to encourage her to eat the chocolate though. Her newfound obsession with physical health would only be exacerbated by the guilt she would feel for having strayed from her new nutritional approach to her eating. I am no longer feeling the patience today to deal with that guilt, so I give her no true direction in regard to her sweet tooth. This is a tactic I've used with her thousands of times when she asks me questions that try my patience. She recognizes it right away and I can see her making that scolded golden retriever face on the other side of the phone. I sigh and sip from a glass of water. This isn't the time to feel angry. She needs me to encourage her somehow with my own energy. I remind her (and myself) that the real point of her going to Mayo Clinic was to get her hands on Methotrexate, for this is the next form of treatment for her illness. She seems to brighten up considerably, and we both agree that this is a blessing despite Ulrich's aloof inconclusiveness.

I eventually let Marjorie off the phone so she can get ready for bed. She'll need the rest for the next round of Doctor's visits. I silently get ready for work. The rest of the night is a blur and all that I seem to retain from it are random Radiohead lyrics and a steady throbbing in my left eye socket.

11/7/03

Marjorie gets back from Mayo Clinic this Friday evening. I wake up from a fitful sleep to find her sitting on the couch and quietly doing her own thing. I remember that she was supposed to have seen an eye doctor at Mayo earlier today, and I take her calmness as a good sign that nothing life changing has occurred since we last spoke on the telephone.

I stumble into the kitchen and look around slowly at nothing in particular. It bothers me that my body has told me to be awake but has forgotten to deliver a telegram informing my brain of that fact. It also bothers me that my very first waking activity has changed to wandering into the kitchen in order to stare around the room aimlessly. I don't know why I do this as a waking activity, as it often leaves me confused and upset regarding what I am going to eat for "breakfast." What bothers me the most, however, is that I know that none of this would bother me at all if I could just manage to get some restful sleep during the day.

There are times when I really hate working nights. This is one of those times.

It takes me a long time to come out of the haze. I manage to do this with an extra strong, extra large, and extra sweet cup of Guatemalan Dark Roast. The throbbing in my right eye socket will eventually go away, but I will curse at it under my breath until it does. Eventually, I gain the strength and the awareness to begin a semi-coherent conversation with my life partner. I ask Marjorie about her eye doctor's impressions of her illness. At first, nothing startles me about the way that Marjorie responds to my inquiry. She tells me that her eye doctor could see nothing wrong with her eyes "at this time." Well, duh, doc! The Prednisone, aside from turning my lover and best friend into a rheumatic old woman IS actually keeping her inflammation on hiatus for the moment. Marjorie goes on to tell me that her eye doctor sees no reason not to suspect that what Marjorie has is indeed Wegener's Granulomatosis. Again, DUH!

Marjorie probably hears my eyeballs rolling around in their sockets (I am not looking at her as I sip my coffee and listen) and she switches her tone of voice. Excitedly, she tells me that her new eye doctor has figured that Ulrich Spechs' reticence to classify the illness as WG is probably a symptom of Ulrich's extremely "careful" nature. I gather from Marjorie's description of this particular statement that her new eye doctor probably isn't overly thrilled with Ulrich's careful nature. Now I roll my eyes in Marjorie's general direction. Ok great. Ulrich is still picking my scabs, but now he wants to put flimsy band aids on them, wait fifteen minutes and then yank them off again. A sudden urge to call Ulrich and demand an answer to this madness begins to rise in my throat. Marjorie reminds me that Dr. Bauer has promised to call her as soon as a decision has been made about her "case." This does very little to mollify my rising temper, but I beat my temper down with shaky laughter and a sardonic grin. My gut tells me that even if Mayo manages to get around to calling Marjorie in the first place, the phone call is going to be of very little value. I mention this to Marjorie, and I secretly hope that she just sees the comment as a side effect of my having just woken up from a fitful sleep. My temper has risen again and come out like a jet of flame shooting through my teeth. This is not good. I don't want to think about waiting for a doctor's phone call right now.

Marjorie and I spend the rest of the evening in sort of an uneasy quiet. At this point, we've been going through this business of doctor's visits and confounded medical experts for the past ten months. Neither of us wants to continue in that manner, but we are forced to content ourselves with more waiting. I consider going out and getting a new and violent video game for us to use when we both get frustrated. The gaming solution begins to feel more and more plausible to me as I get ready for work tonight. I don't really want to go to work and deal with mentally ill people and their fucking issues. I find it harder to deal with their problems when I am sleep deprived and upset about something. I realize that it is unprofessional to bring these sorts of issues to work, but without sleep, I find it difficult to stifle my emotions long enough to help borderline patients who believe they are the center of the universe, or "mentally ill" children who present more like people who needed stricter discipline earlier in their fucked up lives. Tonight, I find myself disgusted with Minnesota Healthcare, and I need only go to my place of employment to confirm my decision to remain unsatisfied with the system.

11/16/03

Is it right for me to find myself incredibly tempted to take a couple of long bus-rides to Mayo Clinic, make my way to a doctor's office, look a man that I have never met before straight in the face, punch this man squarely in the nose and tell him to go fuck himself until his testicles come out through his nostrils? My logic says that at this time, this is indeed not the right course of action. However anyone who at this point attempts to find the logic in my head should be prepared to leave a message after the beep. Chances are, my logic skipped town with a strange and annoying little man named jack who looks a lot like the asshole who lives across the street from me. You all get three guesses as to what Jack left in my head, the sick little bastard! Did you at least use some TP you little jerk?

When Marjorie got back from all her appointments at Mayo Clinic, I thought she was supposed to be starting her Methotrexate treatment the following week. Despite the fact the Ulrich Spechs had not decided what exactly Marjorie's illness is, she and I were both thankful that she would at least get to begin a treatment that could ultimately improve her quality of life in ways that her current treatment has not. We've both taken note of methotrexate's side effects because we've both taken note of any and all information we can get our hands on regarding Marjorie's illness. Methotrexate is a form of chemotherapy that I assume Marjorie will be ingesting in pill format. All Marjorie and I can hope for is that this that Methotrexate helps her to move on with her life.

Because Marjorie and I were anxious to get her hands on some Meth (sorry, I'm tired of typing out methotrexate. I have enough trouble with Wegener's Granulomatosis, thank you very much), we were both anxiously expecting phone calls from Dr. Bauer and from Doctor Frieberg. The fact that doctor Frieberg, Marjorie's regular pulmanologist has to write Marjorie's prescription for Meth on behalf of Doctor Spechs has always been odd to me. However, it appears that this is the only way that Marjorie's insurance would have agreed to allow her to seek the help of Ulrich Spechs and his band of merry men. I still want to call Governor Tim Pawlenty and give the shitbasket a piece of my mind, but again, this is not the wisest course of action right now. I'm tired, I'm currently on a one to one with a sleeping, "mentally ill child" at my job, and I'm becoming loopy and resentful. I am especially resentful of the fact that neither Dr. Frieberg nor Dr. Bauer has called with any useful information or instructions. Dr Bauer called once, only to tell Marjorie that Ulrich has essentially been unable to make up his mind. There will be another phone call In the future. This is as surprising to me as a drunken Macalester College Football player knocking over bollard lights and kicking holes in windows. Dr. Frieberg (more like his office assistant) hasn't called Marjorie at all since her return home, and this bothers me.

Waiting on a phone call from someone with whom you wish to speak is, in my opinion, the most aggravating form of self torture that cannot damage you permanently or result in slow, painful death. When someone promises to call me or Marjorie on a certain day, I start to get antsy. This is not because Marjorie or I do not wish to speak to these people. I get antsy because, in fact, we both desperately want to speak to the people who promise us a phone call, and the only thing we can do while waiting for a phone call short of breathing and going to a bathroom is to wait by the phone and wonder. Forget about both of us being able to go outside for a breath of fresh air. Forget about starting a workout, watching a movie, making love, or working on an important project or errand. As far as I can tell, the probability that an ear splitting ring will interrupt any of the said activities either as soon as one begins them or as soon as one begins to enjoy them is astronomically and annoyingly high. The anticipated ringing of a phone can force people to waste time in the most slow and painful of ways, because people would rather wait and get the phone conversation over with than risk having their favorite time-passing activities interrupted by a potentially emotional and depressing conversation. In my personal experience, doctor's offices appear to get off on the idea of having people waste entire weeks in this manner. This is why I believe Americans generally dislike doctor's visits and follow-up phone calls.

I take the above information about anticipating phone calls from doctors and combine it with what little information Marjorie has given me about Dr. Ulrich Spechs' personality. As soon as I perform this mental exercise, I regret it. The exercise tells me not to expect a phone call from Mayo Clinic to yield anything useful to Marjorie or to me for a very long time. Damnit all to hell, fuck! Despite that, I try further mental exercises regarding Marjorie and her experiences with doctors this year. My experiences with Dr. Frieberg have led me to conclude that he is usually right on point with the things that he tries to do. He has always tried to call Marjorie right away with any news that he feels is pertinent to her continued progress with this illness. He is quick to suggest treatment options and their alternatives with Marjorie and myself. He is willing to treat Marjorie as an equal in terms of her understanding of scientific and medical terminology and techniques. There is, in fact, nothing truly bad that I can say about Dr. Frieberg. So the fact that nobody from his office has called Marjorie thus far makes me wonder what, in fact, is going on at Mayo Clinic. Some part of me believes that Dr. Ulrich Spechs and Dr. Bauer are in some alleyway duking it out over Marjorie's illness, and neither of them has had the presence of mind to let Dr. Frieberg know that he needs to prescribe Marjorie some Meth. I believe this is true because I do not believe that Dr, Frieberg would sit on this information this long without acting in a prompt, professional and appropriate way. I also believe that this is true because it's six in the morning, I've been sitting on my own ass watching a person sleep all night long, and, for want of something to keep me awake, my mind is wandering to all sorts of conspiracy theories regarding Minnesota Healthcare.

muhahahahahahah!!!!!

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:10:49 GMT

Devestation
What's Your Anime Weapon?

At last, people recognize my awesome destructive power!

Happy Halloween, all.

Happy Samhain (sp?) to some.

Things are more or less mellow for the time being. I think Marjorie's mom has a tendency to be a bit too emotional, and that seems to have led to some grouchiness for Marjorie. I want so badly to tell Marjorie to make up excuses not to talk to her mom when she calls. She can say things like "Me and Angel are about to hit a late night movie." or "Angel and I are about to (fill in the blank) for a couple of hours. (Evil Grin) Kindly call back later, mommykins!" But no. What happens is usually a long, drawn out, phone conversation where Marjorie's mom ends up saying something incredibly daft and inconsiderate about Marjorie's illness, and Marjorie ends up being grouchy about it for like three days afterwards. That's not fun, especially since i've slept so badly lately that I've been completely off the mark in the "emotional support"department when things get like that. But other than that, we're just chillin'. We got to make a bunch of decadent Halloween cookies. OooOOooo..COOoOOOOkiEEE =) Decorating them was fun, especially since i was so tired that day that my designs were actually pretty scary in their own right. I think I have one act that looks like I spilled Pepto all over it, and another cat that looks like something out of Evil Dead Two, green blood and all=)

We got pumkins too, but we had neither the time or the energy to really carve them.
I guess I get to try one on my own this evening=)

anyways, I am happy to know that people are alive and kicking and doing their own thing. I've not heard much about lyght, though I hope she continues to improve. anyone got an update?

I expect that this halloween will comprise of me watching a movie or two, carving up a pumpkin and kind of taking it easy. Anyone who wants to call or drop in for a little bit is welcome. Just call after 7, cause I needs my sleep=)

Stuff

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 05:58:04 GMT

It is official...Marjorie has been diagnosed with something known as Limited Wegner's Granulomatosis. I'd explain, but I think you all already know the drill. She'll have to see an expert at Mayo Clinic sometime next week in order to figure out what's next. Neither of us was taken aback by the information, and we were, in fact, relieved somewhat to have a diagnosis and a definitive "next step" to take. "Cat scans" reveal a relatively clear set of lungs, but other side effects of the prednisone are starting to cause problems for Marjorie, including joint and muscle pain, sleepiness, and just genral blahness.

In other news, I got to go with Marjorie to a reading of one Beth_stanley's play last night. It is very good!=) of course, the dinner at Green Mill afterwards was also very good. It was good to hear more of Beth_stanley's work read aloud.

"I will throw this shoe..."

finally, these fucktards at work have essentially banned the use of personal e-mail. it makes little actual difference to me considering I got access from home a long time ago, but just the same, it's bullshit for oh so many reasons.

life is as normal as possible. I am glad to hear that Lyght continues to improve slowly but surely. Stay well, everyone.

And Utility Geek, we'll speak later.

!!!!!

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 09:32:32 GMT

Alright...i just read some posts...somebody tell me...what happened???

the night

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 10:04:42 GMT

Tonight has not been much better than last night was.
I get to work with the same crazy woman i worked with last night.
she has JUST now fallen asleep.

i am tired, hurt, and I really want a cigarette, but not bad enough to start that habit again cause that's ALL i fuckin' need....a revisit to the reason for my constant sinus problems.

you all take care and let me know if i am needed.