1/18/2006
I had no idea that the last
post boasted the lapse since it's previous update and this post has no
response... it is so tardy. Mom is now in the memory unit. We moved
her into a studio on the second floor.. one she can't escape from. Feels
cruel and arbitrary. Surprisingly enough she hasn't revolted yet. A
testament to the docile temperament and understanding she has maintained.
I know it is time, Edwin knows it, the other independent residents knew it, the
administrators knew it. It's hard to get my heart to know it. It's
hard to be understood by anyone beyond arm's length of her
care.
So all that stuff that we moved here to fill her two bedroom apartment is now
being packed again for storage. I met Ian, Edwin and Dana at the Gothic
Theatre this evening to catch a solo performer we saw at Burning Man 2004,
http://www.kidbeyond.com Kid Beyond. On the way home I
reflected that every opportunity I relfect upon Elise and I there seems to be
more love. She has sprained her ankle badly. Four to six weeks on
crutches is a heavy price to pay. Everybody please keep your
feet.
1/19/2006
I'm propelled, kept in my own pocket like a
fishing weight, rolled nervously between fingers. I keep my foot against
the throttle, foot to sole to pedal to metal until the windscreen peels away and
there's so much smoke I can't see my own hands on the wheel, all the while
feeling the speed like a bullet feels wind.
"well baby, here's a
kingpin:
i'm gonna be a new man,
i'm gonna start over,
i'm gonna be
better than,
better than I used to be,
back in the seventies,
i can do
it baby,
baby you can count on me,
i'm fallin' off the thought
tho',
harder than i thought,
steppin' on the gas,
fellin' like a has
been,
hoppin on the jump,
speedin up the clip,
baby hold your
breath,
gonna be a long ball,
baby you're ridin' and,
up all
night,
I feel like a blind man,
I can't find my nine, and
open up the
front door,
get out into the open,
bought yerself a lift,
ride into the
swamps again,
baby let me out,
let me in,
i said it once say it
again,
i'm all shaking,
shaking in the shower,
won't you touch me,
i
got superpowers,
up on a cloud now,
no one there can reach me,
top of
the city,
nothing they can teach me,
i put that good high,
high on the
healin',
side of the building,
hide in the ceiling,
naked as a
monk,
feeling like a flunk,
i wanna use you,
like a junkie,
oh, i'm
movin',
feelin' allright now,
baby take me with,
take me with you right
now,
let me be your ship,
i'll be your captain,
hold me
underwater,
show me the map again,
the one that's gonna take us,
take
us to a new place,
i can get a haircut,
i can get some new pants,
baby
go to sleep now,
in cincinnati,
i'll be your baby,
i'll be your
valet,
i'm like a bullet,
stuck inside a dead bird,
sleepin on the
ocean floor,
roaches on the bedroom floor,
baby hold me in your,
little
small hand,
i'll be your fortress,
i'm gonna be a strong
man"
A little http://www.bobschneidermusic.com/ Bob Schneider for everyone
1/23/2006
"In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don't
ever shine, I was shivering the whole night through. I'm going where the
cold wind blows."
I can't escape the feeling of speed
1/30/2006
"The building is on fire, the walls are made of wishes
everybody's burning
everybody's moving
little blue people with eyes that see nothing dance in the pink darkness while the world spins around
he wears a red tie, the color of desire,a black suit he
paid a whole lot of money for
she knocks the drinks right off the table,
sound of their laughter is drowned out by the music
and it's one look one
moment's hesitation...
she looks like a dollar bill fresh from the
dryer
got them big red lips like two fat tires
he's got that house up on
the hillside
and it's 4 am, baby, down by the pool
one touch, a sweet
sensation, one hot kiss, love's ventilation...
turntable turning, whiskey
burning,
the night's a black diamond in a big red eye
bathroom bright,
bedroom yellow, got that skin so soft gonna make a baby cry
hold on tight to
this electric feeling
everything so small cause everyone's so
wide"
02/03/2006
Night sets over downtown. Way up high in
the ceiling the lights go out. The reflections off the handrails, glass
and waxed walkways settle to exit lighting and the glow from inside the
aquarium. No more light for the visitors, just for us in the tank.
So that we may be ignorant of night, of the sea in darkness. It's all
community here in the perpetual day. Brightly colored and timid, we are
shown to children.
A storm slides over outside. Space gets darker and
the stars glow starker with the orange light of the city smothered below the
thick pillow pile of clouds. A summer storm has brewed and inside the
tanks, pupils dilate. The charge of anticipation has conducted from storm
to humidity to air to water and veterans settle closer to the bottom. A
single flash of lightning sends away the day. The day that has lasted
since the tanks were filled and our parents swirled in from their homeseas, into
this cool blue farce. It is black, black and wet. The pumps stop
whirring and it is silent. The blackness is undercut by the warmth of the
water and eyes and fins are revealed by more lightning. A sleeping menace
surfaces in the blackness and moves through the water like an ancient
scent. Fear.
02/13/2206
What the hell? I spend a lot of entries here being emotional. Here's a new
tack: topically angry. Cheney shoots a hunting buddy? Syria converted all
its international finance transactions to euros. Another notch on the
handle for the euro. It's gotta deflate the dollar some more and that
defense budget will have to be increased. Jesus gets beat up all the
time. You might see some red faces and more resolve on the deep right but
no one riots. This is about respect, and not in a cartoon. I guess
abortion doctors have been shot or blown up. I don't think America sees
it's own fanatical extremism in the mirror, or it does and is driven to
eliminate the competition. Anyway I was inspired today to do a portrait
coffee table book called "Last Gasp" about people and their cars. I won't
do it and I am aware of my own indiscrections with owning vehicles. I
really don't want to be a doomsayer but I do feel like we live on the cusp, the
end of an era and the engine for the new one hasn't been recognized yet.
Biofuels, genetically engineered bacteria, the sun, tides and waves, donkeys..
who knows? Maybe Mars has oil.
Syria switches to euro amid confrontation with US....
Who's
next?
02/15/2006
Just a quick
note. I am inbetween having taken Mom out of Parkplace after she fell on
and bruised her knee and then going to a dinner meeting. I've been a
wikipedia addict today. Domestic violence, rape, cognitive distortions,
rational emotive behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy were all topics I read
about today. I feel like now that Elise is done with court dates for the
domestic violence charge and that I am being compelled to go see the Vagina
Monologues ths weekend, I should be primed. I can heavily recommend the
cognitive distortion search result as it's brief. The "Purpose" paragraph
about rape was also a winner. Anyway, some crazy shit going on out there
between the rest of our global neighbors. I feel very well-adjusted after
exposing myself to all this stuff. I also marvelled at what there is to
learn and what I've already forgotten.
02/27/2006
I am not sure why but I was reading wikipedia
entries on faith. I came upon this sentence and had to read it several
times a few hours apart before I put it together in my head the way the author
would have spoke it:
"Here then is relief of our human infirmities: a
hope for the salvation of mankind, achievable only by those who discover their
purpose, here presented ultimately, not as faith in, but love of God - that God
which is revealed as each according to their purpose, work together for
good."
Maybe it will snap into meaning easier for you but
the sentence structure threw me at first. I had been strugglng to express
my understanding of my faith, my God, even to myself. I had found the word
God, my anchor, my rock, a long time ago and my faith has delivered me a long
way so far. It was easy for me to believe rationally and see that "in the
beginning was the word and the word was God" being the birth of consciousness,
of symbolic meaning, of language, of art, of self-awareness, of our divinity, of
that link that seperates and binds life to death, human to inhuman, us to
ourselves (fallen, damned, good and evil, glorious, or foolish) and also us to
that which is greater. It is our knife with which to judge, our conscience
and flawed superiority, our task to master wisdom. But then God, the word,
the love and salvation, in whose image we are cast, could be so simple as the
"good"? That external chorus on our shoulder, angel or devil in third person,
divining our path, the superego managing the lower and stronger brute, the
id. Not for our eyes to see or our minds to know, but the "God which is
revealed" by our work, could be the manifestation of inner truth, of a soul's
cultivation of goodness? Every step a prayer, every work an offering, every life
a God, each of themselves?
03/01/2006
Due to clerical error, I have lost the content of
March's journal. The cleric has been canned and the content may not be
retrieved.
UPDATE 02/25/2007
Now, due to no skill of my own I have recovered it almost a year later. I can't say it's anything special but here is what I thought I had lost:
03/18/2006
I had a hell of a dream. Elise was there with
me and we were at an
ancient european stone monastery or church at night
to
interview an old priest about a mystery. It
was all creepy and
deserted with few candles. I began
to walk around looking for our old
man. We were
ascending a tight wooden spiral and were admiring
a
slow moving spider, black and orange, good sized on
the stairs. It
started up my pant leg and just as I
was about to brush it off, a stunning
black and red huge spider came down the stairs.
It was thick with even
glossy fur, like a tarantula, but glistening black with hot red abdomen and leg
sections that alternated red and black. It lept to the knee of my trousers
and lowered itself
to snatch the smaller spider like lightning and
then
with the smaller arachnid enclutched, shot silk over
my head and was
pulling itself towards me when we
batted it away. It scuttered up the
wall into the
darkness.
We found the old man in a room with a white
iron
bed, the windows open and curtains and candles
flickering in the wind.
He was dead, poisoned, as if
the black and red spider had been coming from
him. He
lay on is back and as we approached his eyes seemed to
be
open and closed at the same time, his thin grey skin
parched and
taught. His mouth moved as if he were
trying to speak and the wind
picked up, swirling in
the room. Like moths wings, his eyelids and
lips
fluttered mechanically as we heard him admonishing us
for being too
late. He warned us not to pursue the black and red
spider nor its
master. A candle blew out and he
became still but the white iron bed,
decorated with
ornate greek crosses, began to melt like wax,
crosses
first, dripping and running to the floor and
evaoprating like
mist.
But the candles in the room gathered the
mist,
condensing in reverse, regaining their tall full
cylindrical shape until they
looked like they had been
lit the moment before and the mattresses and body
hit
the floor. I woke up thinking of the movie, "V for
Vendetta",
and its masked inconnu: a stranger.