More J. MacD; all apropos 'n stuff

“Illness is an ego trip, especially after you have started to feel a little better. You turn inward. How do I feel right now compared to five minutes ago, an hour ago, yesterday? Is this pain in my hip connected to the infection? Is it something new? Why can’t they come when I ring? All intensely personal. Petulant. To each one of us the self is the most enchanting object in all creation. Sickness intensifies the preoccupation with the self. And, of course, the true bore, the classic bore, is the person who is as totally preoccupied with himself all the time as the rest of us are when we are unwell.”
John D. MacDonald

It is risen

I got me a fresh sheet of virtual paper and I roll it into the carriage...

I think I’ve been sick of typing. I’ve even found it difficult to effectively do e-mail, and that is one of the few ways to reliably get ahold of me. The FaceBook, 2-3 sentences and I’m out, has been de rigeur around here.

It was a really harsh winter around La cerise de chateau, maison du fumeur de detente. So right now forsythia is like the breath of the atman made manifest on earth.

I had a really, tremendously, bad bout of infection that started just before Thanksgiving. For the most part I missed all the holidays. On Thanksgiving itself I was too sick to even walk next door. About a week of 104 fevers. Since then it’s been a long, slow, road back.

I popped into UBU’s one of the very first good days, that was a good thing, getting out, into town, having lunch. Now I have have to pop back and give him back the books I bought as well as a few additional. I find myself in the market to get rid of, in some cases sell, books. That is something I’ve never been good at at all. It feels pretty free to be in a place where I can let a book go deliberately as opposed to losing it.

I’m ready to let more things go.
I have started sorting out anything I don’t have a pretty legitimate claim on to be sent back. I’m watching the hoarders and I don’t want to be there or leave that for someone else to deal with. Keep the precious and let the chaff blow away. That’s the new mantra. There will be a porch sale this year.

Chemical Castration

I’ve been having a bit of a “flat affect.” You may not have noticed.

So “we” are trying some new things. Massive doses of vitamin D3 is one. Three weeks after taking 5000 IU’s a day my levels are up into the bottom ranges of normal. Therefore I assume, that there was in fact, a previous deficit. Even though it’s one of the least expensive supplements I’ve ever gotten I am glad to say I can now drop on down to 3000 IU’s. Every little bit it helps.

Also it would appear that somewhere a hypo-thyroid thing appeared. I am being told that this nifty new pill will put some zippy in my pip. Am I pzipy yet? You tell me.

Then there’s the perennial favourite, which is that it is no longer February and early March in Michigan. This winter was a straight out bitch. What a long drawn out drag.

And there is the slow burn, subtle furious-ness at government and their insistence and propaganda that as a fat smoker I am THE embodiment of THE problem. Slow burn hatred is never good for my productivity. But again, I’m sure noone noticed.

And there you have it, the word castration is coming from the Greek word kaezein.
And that’s a cheesy movie reference, if you don’t get it it really can’t be helped.

Freaking Brilliant 1st post of the year (koff koff)

My end of the year festivus feat of strength was reading 21 Travis McGee novels by John MacDonald in 19 days. I may never have been more cynical and bitter. I have been more angry. But that was in youth when it was an un-formulated, nonspecific, anger. A sort of devil-may-care, lash out at anyone and get in drunken fist fights with my best friends sort of anger. This one is pretty specific.
But now I pay the horrordays price, because I’m sick. Real sick. So just leave me alone. No, wait coddle me. No, no, just fuck off. But wait, can you bring me some juice and the thermometer first? Oh, and the TV guide?

No promises, and knock on simulated wood veneer...

But, maybe, I’m back.

It is still rough, ruff, ruffe, but I feel a little less paralyzed in all lobes of my monkey mind.

Sorry for the freakout/bailout but that’s what happens when your blogger has “issues”. One of which is literally overwhelming anxiety from it being an election season. Man, do I have a hard time processing all that shite. It’s as if it has the properties of a big, sticky wad of suffocating, smeary, putrid, plasticene. And then it’s as if it was shot straight into my mainline just clogging up all my functions and trying to beak apart my heart. Why does it always have to be in fall when I am already struggling through a major seasonal affective shift? As well as why are people such little bitches about it all?

888th post

So this is it, the confluence I was mentioning before. I am posting this in time for my 8888th visitor. Also in a few days is the anniversary or birth date of the blog. It’s July 4, which is oddly, also the birth date of Nigel Patel’s blog. Only his is a year older than mine. Which if I’m not mistaken makes his coming up on 4 and mine coming up on 3, years old.

Nigel and I have many strange confluence's ourselves, then we will discover some (usually point of ideology) where we could not be more divergent. But he never rolls his eyes at me like the former roommate when this arises. Nor does he seem to take offense when I laugh WITH his interesting perspectives, never at.

But it is odd to think that when I started this blog that I hadn’t started school yet, and that few of my readers knew me before I was such a whiney cripple. I used to be much more vibrant you know.
The moral, of course being, don’t expect greatness from doctors especially surgeons who for the most part are overpriced plumbers.
As well as that good art and bad art are completely and irrevocably subjective and can never be proved definitively at all. That as long as someone made it, it’s art. And that, my friends, is the ONLY thing that counts.

Fessin’

I haven’t been doing much of anything. Except trying to stay out of the hospital. So I am taking advantage of the fever-less am to try to be coherent and get a thing or two done. Mornings are ok but by afternoons I’m a mess. And oh, my aching booty. Four bigass (is that a pun?) shots in two days. Still preferable from three rounds of IV over 24 hours in the “big house”.

I’m hoping I can muster the energy to finish this pot of soup before I descend again. They actually had ox tails for the first time like, ever, at the market. So I have a pot of beautiful stock to be made into onion soup if only I can get up and do. I really want soup. And ice-cream. I have been having just a little double bourbon vanilla for the last couple days. Oh, what creamiliciousness, for my fevered brow.

For those in the know

We’re experiencing another rash of Uncle Bunny setbacks. So send vibes, thoughts, whatevs you gots his direction. I wouldn’t mind if you sent some to my family as well, as that situation deteriorated as well.

I blame bi-pedalism

This cold thing has hung on for way too long. I am simply not accustomed to this level of sneezy snottiness. There may be a lot of other things I deal with, but on the rhino-V front, I’m used to 10 to 24 hours of discomfort and bitchiness and I’m done for the year.

I remember seeing some show or reading some article which showed how our sinus cavities hadn’t really evolved with us when we finally stood up. It implied that that is potentially the cause of much of our misery in the schnoz dept. in this life.

Would I crawl around the house for a day if I thought it would help? Probably yes.

Cider-phobic

About ten years ago I bought me some nice fall cider. I drank it and almost died. I came this close to going to ER. Anyone who knows me, knows my feelings about ER, so that is a really good indicator of how sick I was. I have to be pretty much dying or being threatened with death to get me anywhere near ER. It was in those halcyon days before mandatory pasteurization of juices but even now I won’t drink any cold cider, only hot and mulled.

It’s been interesting. Last night did not turn out as planned. Can’t tell if it was stress, a sudden onslaught of being completely convinced of how huge an asshole I am, or evil, bad, boughten, Kroger punkin’ pie, but I came even closer to the portals of that devil’s lair in the basement of the hospital (both the ER and the morgue) than the cider event.

I’m pretty sure I brought up a couple toenails. I scared the crap out of Oliver by eventually asking him to not leave the room again as I did not want to be found dead, aspirated and asphyxiated on my own vomit. I mean, that club has some great members, but I’m just not a joiner.

So as to not shoot the horse or anything, I’m climbing back on this very moment. I felt so very bad that he had to throw out, close to his whole pie, I am baking Oliver two of ‘em as we speak.

And I’m gonna eat some too dammit. I really, really, really, don’t want to become punkin’ pie-o-phobic.

Creepin’ Crud

OK, which one of you devil humans gave me this crap? This is what I get for leaving the fortress of solitude and going out amongst you. Repeatedly.
Never again.

I am taking the echinacea, the Emergen-C™, the Robitussin™, the Hawaiian noni, the cough drops, the vitamins and drinking tons of water. Edy’s Lime fruit bars w/out HFCS are very soothing as well.

But feh for the lot of you dangerous, germy, folk. I’ll never kiss again.

Lists

Apparently I have switched my focus from writing to reading. However I’ve got to get back in the saddle as I have three major writing projects on the summer burner. I have really enjoyed the several weeks of reading a novel a day though. Nothing like being sick for an excuse to just lay around munching down the mind candy. Lot’s of John MacDonald and children’s books, but I never finished The Prince which is a day overdue now.

I’m back to thinking about Blake, Tolstoy and Swedenborg, their manias and visions and am hoping to squooze in some more research on TLE now that I’m thinking about it again. But my list of summer tasks grows each day and I’m not making much counter strikes on the scratching the finished ones off as of yet.

I am back on the blood sugar efforts as well as having got myself down to one black tea bag a day and no chocolate for a couple weeks now. I’ve also gotten the smokes back down to 18 per day. Having trouble getting beyond that yet. Been sounding very Sylvia Simon lately.

First order of business is triune: Get the hole in my stomach healed, get ready for a big garage sale beginning of June and get the Elder program up to par.
In between all of that I have to try to get going on finding some money for school next year as well as get admitted somewhere. Those are the big ticket items.
The rest is the perpetual house chores and I’m hoping to garden.
Now that I don’t have to do crap like writing 12 page papers, I hope to get more of this sort of writing done as well as I’ve set myself a goal of 20 new songs over the summer. I have 2 half written so far.

All right, that’s a start. I'll get back to you with something profound when I get it put together. I’d say I’m getting stronger everyday but I see where that gets me.....

“Things fall apart-

The center does not hold”

Weasy

Temporarily disabled by;
Too much reading of deadly LAWNET officers poetry, temporary haiku bereftness, sick headaches, watching Johnny Depp bio’s, the counseling against the swirling pain and legal issues like a maelstrom I’m in the eye of. Laziness that is never temporary enough to my taste. Prayerfully temporary freezingness that makes me crippled with the rheumatiz and inertia. Going from stick to stick and task to task only as absolutely necessary and unavoidable. This is avoidable, mores the pity, so therefore undone.

Scrofulous Humours

Well-
Uncle Bunny is back in the hospital
Little ghee ended up at the vet with fever
I’m in bed waiting for gross things to come spewing out of my stomach

I get just tired of labs and offices and waiting rooms.
Pills and doses and needles.
I’m tired of bed
sick of tired
Waiting waiting waiting

So this is how it’s just gonna be...

So tired, the store job kicks my ass. When I first started it kicked my ass also. Then I started getting stronger and stronger. I got some decent shoes. I started getting some muscles and stamina. I did better and better as the years went by. Then I had a couple surgeries the first of of which went kinda wrong, the next of which went really wrong. The horribly expensive shoes wore out. Now if I do a four hour shift I have to sleep 3 hours.

On Mondays, cuz I’m a homework slacker, I get off work then play drums until I’m really, really tired and usually quite frustrated. Then go to drum class. Then I can crash for awhile. While I tell myself its for just a quick, rejuvenating nap it invariably turns into a long stupefying nap, then I spend the rest of the day being a schlub.

This last month adds to the stultifying mix, extreme tension in my home life. The result is the house is dirty, the energy levels are all fucked up, and it doesn’t seem worth it to get up and do a damn thing. However something has to change the energy, I can no longer sit and stew. (I am so good at stewing, I meant what I said about grudge holding.)

So while I didn’t go about solving the problem the super high road way, I also didn’t take the lowliest low road. I, at least, addressed an individual face to face for the 15 seconds requisite and decided to skip the “preserve the friendship” part. I got some support for that approach from a few people who said if I didn’t want the friendship to just go ahead and remove the pain source.
Done.
Its not like I had zero interest in the friendship, but when alcoholism is the factor, what’s the point?
This is something like the 10th friendship of some significance that has terminated in the last 10 years or so, where I trace the real source of the problem to addiction. Not mine, someone else's. If we went back farther in time, the numbers would grow exponentially.

It’s just getting so very old. But when there is little or no return for your energy, so little actual dialogue, just boozy, stale monologues repeated over and over while someone breathes alcohol in your face what's left anyway? It won’t change until it changes and that's nothing you can control at all, so rather be done.

This whole giving your whole life to a THING is freaking me out. You just hand over everything you are, could be and will do, to an inanimate object. What the hell is that? I’m not saying I haven’t had my skirmishes with such slavery, but I seem to have a finely tuned sense of personal freedom. When a stupid thing starts requiring my very core self and values, I turn and run. I don’t care how much fun it’s promising. I don’t care if its a substance or a job or a relationship.

The other part that's bugging me, is the age of these people. I can see how in your twenties you haven’t figured it out yet, but the people involved are in their thirties, forties and fifties. One of them had already done over 20 years in prison as payment and just took another twenty to pay for just a couple months of getting high. Yet it’s his primary relationship and he’ll apparently never, ever, put anyone or anything ahead of it. It, an inanimate object, a thing.

I can’t think of a goofy, cheery, twist to end this on, everything about this is so annoying. I suppose the the best I can do is mention that at least I’m mostly over the furious and into the sad.