Questions more than Answers

Growing Older

2012-01-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

Soooo, big fat fail on my last day of chemo being a no biggie. Just thought I could swoop on in there and get in over like it never really mattered to start. Stupid, stupid girl. Here's a catchup, I failed my chemo two weeks ago.... at least that is how I term it. Every week is a test of my endurance, and this particular week, I failed it. My platelets were too low to get my chemo for the week so I was sent away. I had been feeling so terrible that I secretly wondered how they could safely give chemo to me, so I knew before I knew. With a week off, my platelets rebounded, my hemoglobin did not, which has been sinking a point nearly every week. So, by this week I knew I would be at transfusion level, which is where I didn't want to be through this whole endeavor. But, there I was on my supposed last day, where all the nurses are to come and gather round, singing in congratulation style for you. But not this day, I got extra this, and that, more pills and pokes (the original IV didn't take so they had to go for the other arm which they had been avoiding due to phlebitis and it took the dear sweet nurse three attempts, they bring her out for the shitty sticks which everyone agrees I am.) Then, the sick comes. The overwhelming sickness of all the poison inside me. My nurse tells me I look green, puts an ativan under my tongue and we wait. She says sweetly after a while "Its not easy being green, is it?" No, it isn't. This is about five hours in and still no transfusion, but we only have time to hang one bag of blood tonight, so they want me back tomorrow after my last radiation and to prevent the horror of the poke-fest I am to keep the IV in during the night.

Not every second of the day was a wrenching sob or a wince filled face. In fact, aside from all the super-sonic crap I spent most of the day hanging, talking learning and crying with my new chemo buddy Sam. He is only 24, and every time I see his face I feel like crying for the mere chance that any of his possibility could be stolen. We spent our time together, in that place and shared our history, or pain and the smiles that come from sharing. When the chemo gets so strong and the sicko of it is just to much, we were in our separate pods, doing what humans getting chemo do. Groan, cry, try not to puke, wish they could puke, talk to forget, forget what they were saying.

Not my last day of chemo. Not my last day.

How to Dream

2011-12-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

I have very vivid dreams. I also haven't had a dream that wasn't in some way about cancer for some time. For one brief moment I thought that streak had ended the other night when I woke with a start from a dream, and then the remembering began. I was alone, in the middle of a very dark stage standing next to a grand piano. I was wearing a red baby-doll Christmas dress, the fabric was iridescent and very thin, which looked even more thin under the lone spotlight trained on me. I was clothed, yet naked, standing next to an instrument I had no idea how to play, on a stage. The hall was filled with every person I had ever known, and the rest of the seating was taken by strangers. All I could think while standing there with all these eyes on me was "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing."

Truth is, I don't know what I am doing. I don't know how to play this. I don't know how to make it sound better to myself, to anyone else when they want to know how I feel. I don't know how to feel this terrible and act like I don't. Be so scared one second and talk myself out of it the next. I don't know how to do this, yet I feel as if I should. Not be grouchy, not be so sad, just understand it all.... but I don't.

One major side effect of treating cancer is fatigue, which means I sleep more, which leads to dreaming.

I Kinda Blow it in the Wind

2011-12-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

Sooooo, it is Tuesday, and THAT means chemo day. Shit, I hate chemo day. I feel like this whiny ungrateful asshole, after My Mom sits so patiently ALL day right next to me, in what can't be the most comfortable chair after five hours straight. But I really hate chemo day. The anti-nausea drugs that they are doubling up on now, actually make me nauseated. The new drug (which rhymes with Yemen but I can't remember the real name) irritated my vein so now I feel like my whole arm is bruised. The old steroid that they gave to counteract the side effects of the chemo had too many side effects of it's own, so now I have a new steroid and it's side effects. It makes your heart race, which mine does all on its own, and I feel all speedy and yet still tired .... like I have been up for four days straight, which I sure as hell haven't. Seems I can barely stay awake through a conversation anymore. Which, if you had a conversation with me lately can get interesting. Kinda like Phoebe on "Friends." Nearly everything sounds a bit like "You know, the thing with the stuff!!! You know. The THING! With, the STUFF!" I know what I mean, and poor you if you don't.

It is official. I have Desitin Derriere. The radiation has reached the peak where all the good stuff in my gut had been murdered by the sanitation crew in the Radiation Department. They are so intent on sweeping any cancer cells out of the irradiated zone that any good stuff that would work to, you know digest and turn food into nutrients, vitamins and minerals are gone with the wind.....well, the wind is another story. I did that for the first time on the Radiation table and was dying the entire time of worry. Waiting for the techs to come in and detect me and my; 5 hours of chemo, heated blanket, Eva Cassidy on Pandora, squeaky little butt bubble.

I missed the Santa Party on saturday. I know that all my family had fun and I wish for them to have fun but MAN, it hurts to know, and see it go on without me. I love them all, and miss them all so much. My levels are low enough but high enough right now to be above transfusion level, but infection... nu-uh. Todd has a big bad cold so I can't even go to my parents.

Tuesday. Blueday.

One super good thing I know that has made this better is music. During radiation they play a Pandora station of your choosing and I chose the Eva Cassidy station. She is not only a magnificent vocalist she holds a major place in my heart. So, when that music starts, even if it isn't one of her songs, just someone in her vein, I am at ease. I don't count each pulse of radiation, each rotation of the machine. I breath more easily. I hum. The treatments don't take as long and I feel less tense afterwards. There have been only two days where the music was different, one when the Oldies was left on accidentally from the last patient and I was nervous and tense the entire time. The other was when the tech purposefully chose the Adele station, which I liked, but not as much. My Mom has been indulging me (well, when doesn't she?) and letting me play cd's on the way to and from treatment, and that has been not only fun, but part memory lane and a reawakening as well. Music. If I can't eat food, I'll eat song.

a Christmas Wish

2011-12-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

When asked what I was up to, I answered "oh Cancer, Cancer all the time. It is the All Cancer Network here." And it seems to be that, truly. When the phone rings it is someone asking about cancer, or a someone from the Huntsman Cancer Hospital. My fluids, my food, my bathroom trips all revolve around cancer. My sleep, my pills, my level of nausea.... I can't seem to watch a Christmas special without having it somehow reveal something about cancer and what is now omnipresent in my life. The little bitterness's that used to be part of just an every day existence, don't weigh so heavy anymore. Those societal pressures I used to stack on top of the pressures I felt on my own, they simply don't matter anymore. I just want to be well enough to enjoy the holidays with my family. I want to be with my bunnies and give them as much love and joy as they give me. This Christmas isn't going to be about me giving presents, for I haven't done any shopping and I won't be able. I am the one receiving this year. So much love and care I barely know where to put it all. All the wonderful people I meet every day at Huntsman, their kindness and the stories they so freely share with me. My beautiful aunt Ruthie, and her knitting club that knitted hats for me. Strangers that sent love to me, made from their hands. My parents, every day giving so much of themselves I would never in a countless lifetimes be able to repay them. I know I had made a Christmas wish before, to not have chemo and radiation and that it had not come true. It feels so selfish to wish for something like that, when there are so many gifts given to you, and you never had to ask. Sounds strange to hope to find luck, even grace in this cancer. But if it is there, I hope I find it.

Special Risk

2011-12-02T03:21:00.001-07:00

I should be sleeping. I am exhausted. Not only do I have this cancer, that is now in my lymph nodes, I have a raging kidney infection and the beginning of a cold/cough that the Medical Oncologist I met with today is hoping doesn't derail the start of my chemo and radiation next week. One more thing, on top of the one more thing that was supposed to be the one big thing. The chemo and radiation was supposed to be the beginning of a clinical trial that would give me an additional 12 weeks of chemo after the initial course with the hopes of adding additional percentage to my survival rate. After meeting with the Medical Oncologist that ALSO happens to be a hematologist and knew something was up with me and MY blood by looking at my file (he said he could tell I had either been bleeding a lot or had a blood disorder, which I do) now says that this special killer chemo will put me at even higher risk for transfusions and kidney failure than just the regular course of Cisplatin (which will put me at special risk anyway, because that is how I work it, in life and whatnot.) This does not make the clinical trial sound like the best bet for me. The Doc said a "normal" or "average" person going into the trial he wouldn't be so worried about, but me, different story. I don't make things easy. My body doesn't make things easy. Never has. I get embarrassed and hang my head when these realities are traversed. In fact, the doctor used the words Special Risk so often in our conversation that I told him to just write it across my whole file. My Mom just counters with my simply being special. I don't make things difficult as I always put it, I am just special. She's my Mom, that's her job. Her kid is super sick and what is she going to do? She is going to be the most amazing creature; wash and fold my laundry, read cancer literature, drive me hundreds of miles to doctors appointments, cook for me, talk with me, cry with me, laugh with me, give me permission to be as scared as I truly am. I feel special when I am with her. When I am with both my parents, and they are sitting by my side, in the waiting room, waiting for me to feel better.

What are we waiting for?

2011-10-30T23:16:00.000-06:00

I have been thinking a lot about waiting. Specifically, waiting rooms. When you sit in a waiting room, watching your fellow human beings wait alongside you, you not only learn about them but about yourself. The middle aged couple that sits side by side, never talking, never touching, just staring straight ahead. Are they waiting for her? Him? Someone already getting treated? The mother and son, so weary neither sits upright. They just slump over the chairs, eyes black with the tired that can only come from days, possibly weeks of, waiting. The young couple, with three children under the age of five, the father leaving the mother alone with the children so he can go get his radiation treatment. Both parents under the age of thirty. One woman, waits by herself. Another man, waits alone. One woman in a wheelchair after her treatment, tells her son on her cellphone how much she loves him and that she is so lucky to have him in her life. She is effusive, emotional and her gratitude is palpable throughout the room.

I sit, in between my worried and helpful parents, and I wonder about all those people. Are they waiting for answers? Waiting for a cure? Waiting for death? The title of Waiting Room could not be more apt, or more uncomfortable. It is the waiting, the in between, that can make an illness near unbearable. People get stuck in waiting rooms whether it is for health reasons, or life reasons. I wonder about myself. I wonder why I have been waiting so long?

2011-10-27T02:21:00.000-06:00

Stirrup Toes. Tumor Board. Just a couple of funny lines that have turned into inside jokes the last week while going from one doctor visit to the next. Odd, it may seem to some, to be giggling, in a clinical room with people you have just barely met that are now going to be putting their hands, digits, lights, camera and all sorts of action in my nether region. But when you have orange and purple bedazzled toes up high in the stirrups, people notice, then comment and their job is done. Stirrup Toes, break the tension, remind me that I have a cousin that loves me and came over to bedazzle my toes the night before any illusion I ever had to privacy was permanently revoked and gives me something to grin about while an attending asks a resident, an intern and a student "Hey, did you get a look at the tumor? Did you?" All this, as the thin spotlight shines up from in between, my Stirrup Toes.

It is hard to not say tumor without sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger from "Kindergarten Cop." At least for me, and my Mom. So when the radiation specialist said he would be going over my case, as they do every monday on the Tumor Board, I nearly bust out laughing. Of all things to call it, why Tumor Board? I like alliteration, so how about Tumor Table, Tumor Tribunal, or we have Tumor Talk Time.... could be a new show. "This is Your Life" meets "Mystery Diagnosis." - "And today we have a cervical tumor. Adenocarcinoma 1b1. Adeno, how do you feel about your upcoming removal from your host body? Nervous, excited? How long did you live there, before being discovered? Do you consider yourself a squatter or a parasite? Any plans to spread?" Tumor sits there. Like a tumor.

2011-10-24T04:30:00.000-06:00

Interns. Residents. Medical Students. How many pairs of eyes and hands have been on me this past week? They say you can never be too rich or too far down on the table. Well, let me tell you, my wealth is not found in my wallet.

I suppose by now, I should be able to suffer foolish questions as well as the fools that ask them. But when you are sitting in a tiny room on a table with stirrups, inside a grand and beautiful building that has the word CANCER in big bold letters on the sign out front, don't trifle with me. If it just so happens to be the first day of your rotation as a first year med student, and you end up in MY room, bring your A game. Not with the notepad you swiped from the "Olive Garden" waiter that served you last night so you could write down every third word I say as you mutter "ok, ok, ok, ok, ok...." like Leo Getz from "Lethal Weapon" while I say words you either never heard OR forgot immediately. Either go eat the sandwich you were thinking about the entire time you were supposed to be evaluating me OR go take a nap. I suppose I should feel bad that the door didn't close all the way before I said to my Mother in a not at all cryptic way, "Well, HE was a DUD." But I don't.

2011-10-17T19:35:00.000-06:00

I like my cardiologist. He is an amiable guy. He gets most of my jokes. Understands that my visits are full of sarcasm and silliness. So, today when we had my yearly check-in and I told him of my recent diagnosis, he was supportive and just the right amount of silly....until I was leaving. He said, "Ok, so if all goes well I'll see you back here in six months." Huh? If all goes well? Is that the standard goodbye now in the cardiology department and no one alerted me? Should we all be saying this, at the end of phone calls and Sunday dinners? "If all goes well in the bathroom, I'll see you for dessert." If all goes well. Yeah, if all goes well in the car ride home. If all goes well on my brother's plane ride to South Korea. If all goes well when you're eating in your home alone. Anytime, could be the last time we talk to someone, see someone. We say "I'll call you right back" or "see you later" but who knows when that is the time when it all goes wrong? If all goes well, you tell those you love that you love them every time you see them, every time you hear them. My heart doesn't need a doctor to tell me it would break if I lost any more of my loved ones. If all goes well huh?

2011-10-08T15:30:00.000-06:00

I cannot listen to Phil Collins' songs anymore without renaming each one and just giggling out loud that the romance intended really has no meaning, not anymore. I think once you FAX your second wife that you are divorcing her, all credibility goes out the window. I still know most of his classics and can sing them word for word, I just can't get that fact or FAX out of my head every time one of his songs comes on the radio. "Separate Lives" starts and I think "yeah, separate, you have divorced three times buddy with the biggest British celebrity settlement in history, just stay separate." "Easy Lover" you could easily throw in "that's what he said" or "I told all my buddies you were behind your back, now give me the keys to the Maserati." "Throwing it all Away" and that, and that, and don't forget that, yeah that was hers too. "That's All" well, not all, don't forget this 34 million. "Doesn't Anybody Stay Together Anymore" ummm, nope. "Don't Lose my Number" but here is my lawyer's, just in case. With "Groovy Kind of Love" it gets more difficult. He has a love/drug addiction. Dude had to go into rehab/divorce three times. He may never get clean. He is a dealer in romance and we drink it up. Hook, line and syncopation, Beware the dealer disguised as a singer/songwriter. Yes, humming is a symptom.

2011-10-06T14:27:00.002-06:00

I woke up this morning and the first thought to flash across my mind was " I have cancer." Not some song that has wormed its way into my brain and has been repeating itself for two days as usual, not the last remnants of the dream I was having, not even that I had to pee. No, it was that I have cancer. I have been pressing on my abdomen, closing my eyes and trying to sense it. Those not so friendly cells on my cervix boring down and into me. But I can't. I wait for something to move, pinch maybe and then I will know better that what my sweet and sincere doctor told me is right. But even now, even though I cry, and cry, it seems so impossible, and cruel. Not one more thing.

Then again, why not? Why not my underutilized and good for nothing womanhood? Use it or lose it (and we all know I haven't used it in eleven years.) The culmination of events, or lack there of. I don't know how I am going to deal with this yet, too many ifs, too many scare factors and my imagination and ability to ask questions is great. My brother just stated that I am a strong person. Which, frankly startled me. I don't feel particularly strong, not right now for sure. I have no doubt, that I will be weak, needy, a massive boob, make jokes, make more jokes, cry and cry and cry. I may get negative, down and sad, but I know it all comes from the fear of never being able to trust my body. Damn this thing. I suppose, the one thing I can trust it to do is to betray me. At least, it has been consistent on that front.

I once had a friend that blamed negative events in your life on all of the negative thoughts you ever had, all of the negative energy you put into the world, just rebounds back onto you and that explains, it all. Childhood deformities, tsunamis, rapes, genocide, that is deserved and generated upon each individual through their own negative energy. I am so grateful to not have a person like this in my life anymore, and to have the wonderful, loving, understanding and supportive friends and family that I do have. Also, my Mom is the best Mom that has ever been, in all of existence.

I don't know how many more days the first thought across my mind will be that I have cancer. I also don't know if I'll ever get to Paris. My bunnies love to be fed by hand, my hands. I know that.

2011-10-05T18:11:00.000-06:00

Rules for the hospital room if I were to be unconscious/in a coma.

1. No Fox News.

2. No political talk, at all.

3. No racist talk.

4. No arguing or meanness.

5. No REO Speadwaggon.

6. No Air Supply.

Do's

Do tell dirty, dirty jokes.

Do laugh, loudly.

Do sing and hum.

Hold my hand.

2011-09-27T14:18:00.000-06:00

Top Ten Reasons Bunnies are Better than Men

1. A rabbit will never cheat on you.
(If you are a person that considers a rabbit to have committed adultery, then your problems are greater than any blog list, or even a psychiatrist could help.)

2. A rabbit will never lie to you.

3. Bunnies never watch porn on the computer while you sleep.

4. Rabbits never get addicted to alcohol, drugs or any other substances ( OK, hay, really good quality hay.)

5. A bunny would never give you an STD. (see qualifier from number one.)

6. Rabbits never leave you in financial lurches, forcing you into bankruptcy.

7. Bunnies never want the remote control, unless it is to chew it.

8. Bunnies are cleaner.

9. Bunnies are cuter.

10. Bunnies don't leave until they die.

4 Reasons Men are Better than Bunnies

1. They can carry heavy shit for you.

2. They can open jars.

3. They can fix things ( this is of course conditional, some bunnies can actually be more help hooking up the DVR or building a bookcase than certain men.)

4. You can hold onto a man at a Haunted House when you get scared.

2011-09-03T15:18:00.000-06:00

Standing in line at the customer care at Smith's, two very loud, very obnoxious and no chinned people stand behind me. Too close. You know the type. Redneck to the core, the male of the couple starts talking in his version of his baby talk to his paramour and points out the obvious around us "wook at the booberry donuts, wook at the big horsie, wooky a puppy." Yeah, this goes on and on. They crowd, they bump into things. They make me happy I am single and wish for world wide sterilization protocols. All the while this misfortune is occurring, a tiny little man is trying to send $200 to Mexico and the woman trying to help him, that has obviously never done it before, is flustered. He is patient, I am patient, but she needs help. She calls overhead, no help comes. She reads aloud the words on the screen, Spanish words, which is why she is confused. The little man helps her, and here is where the story turns to rednecks with no chins and me with a big mouth. The no chinned redneck opens his yawing trap and says "People that don't speak English in America need to be shot." I jump up, around, yell out "What?! There is a man right there and he is trying to send money to Mexico! Did you really just say that?" He at first gives me a little "hmmmm," you just say something to me and tried to stand up taller, then I turned on him again. "Really? You say that here? In front of this man?" I look at the little man, who is trying his hardest, I mean hardest not to cry. He is small, with gray bushy eyebrows that are now covering the reddest eyes. He is bent and so sad in what is either a janitor's or mechanic's uniform. I turned back to the imbecile who has backed away from me now and is muttering about computers that have Spanish on them, and buttons. I shake my head violently and that is the end of it. I complete my business and when I walk past the little man, I lean forward and tell him I hope he has a wonderful day. He tells me thank you very much. Customer care. I am learning Spanish so I can push numero dos, just for the hell of it.

I was Born to be Forty

2011-04-21T02:15:00.003-06:00

Well, I am forty. Today. Right now. I cannot decide if that makes me middle aged or if I have to wait for fifty to wear that title. But, for fifty to be middle age then the assumed average age of death would be 100 years of age and I don't think that is the average. I had my quarter life crisis at twenty-five, so I suppose I will wait until fifty for the one at midlife. This also means my Mother has a nearly middle aged child. I do consider myself a child for I don't feel much different than I did right out of high school other than I know so much more which is to say I am less certain. I was always an eight year old in an eighty year old body, so that much has not changed.

The amazing fact of being born, of my actually making it out alive still shocks me. People theorize of the viability of a fetus and the earliest a mother can give birth, but the fact is until that baby is outside of the mother anything can happen. Even then, who knows? When my mother had me, she didn't get to touch me for days. They flew me to another hospital, gave me a transfusion and had me in an isolet with tubes running out of my head. I can't imagine what that would do to a first time mother, just a child herself. Her first words, when the doctors told her how sick I was and that they were taking me away, were "I want my Mom."

I still want my Mom. For my early birthday party in my giant gift bag from my Mom, was a tiara. See, I am the Princess of the family. When the family dog Bailey was alive her nickname was The Princess, but the joke was that I was the real Princess. But, now that she is gone, I am the only one. So, I wore the tiara while opening all of the gifts, yet,the dollar store tiara was the best one. I wish it wasn't just me that got to reach forty, I wish Stephie did too. If I really do have forty more years, I would love to spend them with all of my family and friends. The crisis would be to not have them.

She's Got the Whole World in Her Heart

2011-04-11T15:27:00.004-06:00

This turning forty is going to be a lot harder than I was thinking, and planning on it to be. I was watching my favorite "Globetrekker" with the trekker in Antarctica, when I just started crying. It was when a whale began following the boat, seemingly showing itself to the crew. Not only was I in awe, I just became so sad, knowing that I will never go whale watching. I will never hug a Redwood Tree. I will never go to Paris. I cried such greedy tears, comparing all that I haven't done to what others have. I know that these things will never happen in my life. It is not being negative, it is a reality. I struggle every month to make sure I have toilet paper and food. Which to some, in comparison, are veritable luxuries.

I was knocked back to this reality when after an hour or so of fidgeting and staring, I watched the documentary "A Walk to Beautiful" about women in Ethiopia with obstetric fistulas. These women, often married off at the ages of 8 and 10, have such complicated pregnancies that labor lasts so long (days, even a week) the child not only dies but the woman is left incontinent of urine and sometimes feces as well. They are pariahs, left to live in tiny huts, shacks, away from society and family. In some of these villages the nearest road is a six hour walk and after that a seventeen hour bus ride to the nearest city. These women are so ostracized, and without aid that the ride on the bus is such a horror. I was ashamed of my greed of wanting after watching this. I have wondered for years, why does it take witnessing the misfortune of others to remind a person to be grateful? Does being grateful mean not wanting? I'm not clear on this. I'm not clear on anything.

Last month when my Mother turned sixty, I asked her what she knows now that she didn't when she was younger and her answer was that she knew less. I think this is such an important and profound distinction between youth and experience. With the more you know, things aren't as clear. With more experience comes more understanding that there is so much more to understand and so many more possibilities that everything you were once so certain of, vanishes. Certainty is no longer so certain. I am not so certain how I am going to handle being forty. But I have said, better than not.

My War of Civility

2011-04-06T23:48:00.002-06:00

Not the smoothest day for me. Stupid computer probs. Updated my MP3 player, which deleted all of my tracks, then my computer wouldn't recognize it. Spent over an hour on the phone with a very patient tech fella. We made a very excellent team, despite the disappointing outcome. So much for an upgrade. Tried to get my Blu-ray hooked up for Netflix, but when the instructions tell you to do something that isn't an option, then what option do you have? I spent so much time on the phone for my other issue my battery was dead, sooooo. (sidebar - what is it about computer problems that make you want to scream? I understand that it is such a luxury to even have these items, but when they go haywire, you just feel lost. I don't get it.) THEN, apartment urchins parked their asses on the stairwell, decided to holler and smoke, then me the Curbitcheon JUST HAD to poke her scaly head out and scare them away. I went out later, in need of consolation and maybe to make some nice so they don't smash out the windows of my car. See, this is a newly no smoking building. There are designated areas for people to smoke, the stairway right next to my front door, NOT being one of them. If a person is caught smoking out of the designated area more than 3 times, they can be kicked out of their apartment. Seriously. So, when I asked the kid "Are you really going to smoke that here?" and his answer was to flick his ash, smirk and say "yup" and when I followed with an eyebrow raised "REALLY?" his friend grabbed his arm and said "let's just go man" that kid knew where to leave it. Which is, on your own stairwell, next to your own door. When I went out later, it was just to alleviate any fears of my letting anyone know he was smoking. I doubt they get it. I doubt a lot. I doubt any kids around here have any idea what the word respect means.

But then, compare that to a day in the life of a Civil War Soldier (150th anniversary on the 12th of this month) any day I have is a peach. I have been watching Ken Burns' documentary on PBS this past week (which is what I was TRYING to watch when the urchin gathering commenced) and the horrors of the still photos from the field hospitals still catch me in quiet moments. Stacks, piles of limbs cut from the wounded. Legs, feet, hands and arms stacked like chords of wood. Yeah, my day was awkward. Ooooooh, my computer and my MP3 player won't do what I want them to do. Yet, none of my limbs are piled in the fields of Vicksburg. My brother isn't bleeding out on the third day of battle in Gettysburg. My mother doesn't have to wring the blood from the bottom of her gown due to the weight, so she can attend to the other wounded soldiers. Any day, yes any day, is a gift.

Blushing DVR

2011-03-24T16:10:00.003-06:00

Soooooo, I am up all night with a sick rabbit. He is having his first major spring shed and last night he could not find one comfortable position to lay or sit. I rubbed his belly gave him a couple syringes of water, but mostly I watch. The only positive thing I can say that comes out of his tummy troubles is that I get to snuggle him. He knows I am helping even if he doesn't really like it. At 5:50 he just popped up his head, sat up straight and ran over to my ankles and licked me. He has felt like himself ever since. I fell asleep on the couch around 7:30 in the a.m. only to have the quarterly pest control come knocking at 9:30. I jumped off of the couch, crazy haired, T.V. still on, bad all night breath, opened the door and let them in. I only allow them to spray behind my fridge because Peanut (and formerly The Bun) runs around so much that I don't want any spray near the bunny, regardless if they say it is non-toxic. The Pest guy immediately sprays my baseboard on the kitchen cabinet even though he says outloud "oh yeah, Bunnygirl!" I holler a commanding NO, and then he remembers that the bunnygirl is the bossygirl and he goes to spray behind the fridge. The building manager comes over to see Peanut, asks about him being sick all night. They both ask about the puppy stage of bunnies and if he will mellow out, to be more like The Bun. My building manager loved The Bun.

Then as they leave, I close the door and turn around and look into the living room. On my television screen, and which must have been playing the whole time I had visitors, was a sex scene in a movie. I wasn't watching that movie, it was just the programming for that channel after what my DVR had recorder earlier. Mortified, I open the door again and yell out how sorry I am, that I didn't know that was on my T.V. I wonder how many times Peanut has listened to sex scenes in the background and wondered what was going on? No wonder the poor pest guy couldn't remember how to spray in my kitchen, there were too many boobs in the living room.

Not the Party Line

2011-03-07T18:14:00.004-07:00

Imagine sitting in a waiting room with only one other person. Imagine that one other person being a teenager kicking her feet, pounding on her phone, clicking the phone cover on and off, sighing, and then sighing louder, grunting, snorting, answering the phone and asking the person that called her "WHAT? What do you want? I DON'T KNOW? She's in a meeting or something" then she plays more on the phone, gets up to lean on the arm of the door to look out, sits back down on the chair on top of her feet with the souls of her shoes on the cushion of the chair, click, click, click, music from the phone and then when I get up to hand my papers to the front desk, she moves over to the seat where I was sitting the entire time this was happening and purposefully sits down in it. When I turn around I ask her "So, are you really going to sit there?" She answered with a grunt and eyes that were double their normal size.

Yes, she sat there. Yes, I fear for the breeding, voting, driving future. Yes, I look around my low rent abode and feel shivers of gratitude. Yes, I wanted to slap the shit out of her.

Thought Bubbles

2011-03-04T20:18:00.002-07:00

So, I go to PetCo to pick up new litter for Peanut cuz he STINKS, and whilst in the litter aisle I ask a helper man about which is best for odor control (fully aware that I have terrible breath from the onion rings that I shared with my mother at lunch) when what pops up a SPIT BUBBLE on my lip! I excuse myself get it under control, when ANOTHER SPIT BUBBLE pops up! This poor man must have thought "jeez lady, your rabbit stinks like piss, you smell like rotten onions and you can't contain your own fluids....be gone. I have more important things to do, such as catch the loose bugs that escaped from the food bay in the reptile section and are now scurrying under the dog beds.

"

All in the Same Boat

2011-02-14T15:37:00.004-07:00

Living next to person with Schizophrenia changes how you see and hear the world. I share a common wall with my neighbor, so I hear her up late at night slamming cupboard doors, sometimes the same one over and over. Talking to herself in the breezeway. Repeating the same stories to me as we get our mail, and sometimes as I drive her to the store. Misty can't drive and some days can't even go outside for fear of the world. Just last night she came to my door asking for help with a stray cat that she couldn't tell was hers or someone else's. Her cat is black and small, so was this. This cat had a collar, so does hers. I checked to make sure her cat was in the apartment, and it was. It still amazes me that she can remember such details about me and Peanut, yet can't remember what she just did a few minutes ago in her certain states. This is the person you see walking around town, because she cannot drive herself, she never will. This is the person that will never be the so called productive aspect of society. This is the person that needs support. That means money. That means resources from the government. This is the person that the GOP and the Tea Party hates. This is the person that apologizes because she is confused about being confused each day and she did nothing, nothing wrong to become that way. This, is a person. In need. In my apartment complex. On the Earth. Sharing the same space. And if the humans that hold the Congress had their way, they would throw her out of the life boat to drown. How confusing is that?

No, Not You Shithead

2011-02-05T13:31:00.004-07:00

My neighbor's sister drives a bright yellow car. When I went out to my own car the other day I had a scratch with yellow paint on my door. No wonder how it got there. It isn't a terribly large scratch, or dent. But on a silver car, it isn't going to go unnoticed. I walked back up the stairs, knocked on the door, twice. When my young neighbor answered she was perturbed, as usual. I told her about the scratch, and the paint. Behind her, sitting on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, anger seeping from every pore of her being was her younger sister. My neighbor announced that they would no longer park next to me. I just looked at her. She then asked if I wanted insurance information, which I immediately said was useless, it is too small, not the point, not what this is about.

What the teenage girl, seething on the couch, bothered that I pointed out that she did damage to someone else's property is missing, is the truth. She knew she hit my car. Yet, she was mad at me for telling her so. She knew she should have told me, yet she didn't. How dare I show her where she falls short? How dare I tell her where she is wrong?

I don't remember being such an asshole when I was that age. I also don't remember it being allowed. It never crossed my mind, and if it had the expectations of how to behave would have cleared it right out but quick. The older I get, the more grateful I become that I get to remember myself and those memories don't resemble some of the shitheads running around loose ...

Well, some of the memories.

See No Evil

2011-02-04T02:57:00.002-07:00

I watched a video of an Egyptian Police van plow at high speed through a group of protesters, throwing some feet into the air and literally smearing a human across the road like roadkill. I can't get it out of my mind. I was warned that I may not want to look. I may need to look away, and I did, I just looked back too soon.

The horrors we as humans are willing to do to each other has been on the tip of my mind. I watched the documentary "Restrepo" a day ago and it hasn't settled with me. I will never understand war. I don't think I want to understand it. I don't think I want to understand anything that celebrates the destruction of civilizations. Do men inside war even really understand it? When they are haunted by their dead, yet seek to end the lives of countless others?

Rwanda. Congo. Darfur. Serbia.

Humans have all of this potential, and yet. And yet.

Respect the Rabbit

2011-02-02T02:06:00.004-07:00

Tomorrow starts the Year of the Rabbit. I have been living the daily rabbit life for over a decade. What does the bunny want to eat, what does the bunny want to chew. Just what does the bunny. It has changed how I view the entire world. Maybe the universe. I went from being a very terribly picky omnivore, to vegetarian, to vegan, back to vegetarian, then ultimately back to vegan. Once I brought The Bun into my home, into my life, nothing about me was ever the same. I loved something like I had never loved anything, or since. He let me love him completely. With that I learned more about me than I had ever before.

I was never a good "meat" eater. I was always aware of what I was eating. I payed attention. I went camping and hunting with my parents, I saw the dead deer, I saw it alive in the field before it was hanging from the tree in the camp. I wanted my burgers burnt. I couldn't chew bacon, I would gag. I never ate steak. At Thanksgiving I would always ask for the white meat, knowing it would have the least amount of grizzle and veins. I drove my dad crazy at McDonalds asking for a special burger, onions and cheese only, making them cook it on the spot and having our car pull over and wait. My dad hates waiting. This is called portent. I was the opposite of the typical kid where vegetables have to be hidden to get them to be eaten, my meat had to be hidden.

As an adult (this is of course subjective, I do not classify myself as an adult, never will) and moving into a home and finally having the opportunity for my own choice of companion animal, The Bun moves in with me and becomes the love of my life. By devoting so much of myself to him and learning so much about what the modern world has and is doing to the rabbit, MY world changed. I could no longer look at him, and separate what we call "meat" and him. Him. My Bun. I could no longer use makeup and cleaning products that were tested on animals, primarily rabbits. I no longer support companies that refuse to stop testing or their satellite companies. It was a revelation and a massive shift in the direction of my life. In family life and public life it has been difficult. I have been ridiculed. Mocked. Even badgered into being someone more socially viable, and at times I was. When I buckled to the pressure, I didn't like my self, and I haven't really respected myself for a while. I think I am back on the track of respect. So, this may just be the best Year of the Rabbit in quite some time.

2011-01-25T09:08:00.003-07:00

There has been this wall, this near to tangible stacked up pile of sadness that has kept me from saying - anything really. Then, I find out from my sweet sweet cousin that what I do say, makes people that love me either cringe, worry or speechless. I think of this blog as a space, a way of releasing all I want to say and I didn't even know I had to say until it came spilling out. What it seems is I am corked. I find my face screwed up into funny contortions and I have no idea how long it has been in that position, and then when I let it down, I don't know how to keep it naturally. If I am tense, I don't know it until too late and then when I do settle down long enough to sleep, I sleep at the wrong times, for too long. My mind won't shut off even when I am asleep. My dreams are more interesting than some of the movies I have watched lately, and a couple have been more terrifying.

These are stupid white people problems, and I honestly know that they don't matter. I just haven't figured out my stratagem. My plan. I need a plan. I need a plan to be part of the plan.

I was sideswiped today by a person from my yesterday. Rather, the mother of my yesterday. See, my yesterday isn't part of my today anymore. Yet, my today bumps up against those yesterday people. Their conversations are heard like the popular girls in the hallway at school. You aren't invited to join, you just pass by.

I don't want to pass through anyone else's conversation, anyone else's life. Tori said, "even the Sun has a price on it." I just need to decide how much I am willing to pay.

2010-11-17T06:00:00.004-07:00

I have not felt like saying anything. Well, to be the most honest, I haven't felt like dealing with what I have been wanting to say and what that might make other people say back to me, so I opted out. I have had to make opting out the primary mode of survival when I go to visit my parents. Immigration? opt out. Medicare? opt out. Marriage Equality? opt out. Anything that happened in the news that day? opt out. The last month, between having a weight on my shoulders and a literal weight on my chest with this cough that will not go away ... I am flattened. I have this image in my mind of what the Puritans did in Salem when they pressed that man to death with the heaviest of stones because he would not give a plea of witchcraft. Having been to Salem, and felt the air surrounding the place, it was heavy. The air I am breathing does not smell sweet, and the judgment is not just mine alone. I don't know if Witches float. But ideas do.

2010-10-12T17:50:00.003-06:00

Can't open the window cuz all that brings in is noise noise noise or smoke. Leave the window closed and the air gets tight, stale. A clamped mouth making my jaw ache. My jaw does ache, every morning from the night of grinding and clenching. Even now, with the door and window closed, smoke creeps in, under and between the cracks...seeping, seeking reminding me of the unwanted outside.

I don't want to live here. I don't really like my neighbors. In fact, most of them are pitiful. I know what that means and what that says about me. It means I am cruel. It means I judge. It also means that I am very like them, and brings about why I belong here.

My neighbors yell. A lot. Slam doors, honk horns, screech tires and cops, fire engines and ambulances show up at least twice a month. Government housing. Poor people. That is where I live. That is me.

I try, at least I like to think, not let it define me, but I am not sure about that anymore. There was a hacky-sack argument scream-fest going on today, right under my front window. No matter how loudly I turned up the television, I could hear it. There was one kid saying that you were born gay and all the others were saying he was wrong and that until he provided them with evidence, proof from the internet, that it just wasn't so. Oh, it also meant he was gay, a fag. He liked ass, no beaver for him. I finally opened my door ( this was all heard through closed door and closed window ) and yelled at the kid giving him the hardest time "did you choose to be straight?" he said he did. "No, you are just choosing to be an asshole." "Why are you jumping into our conversation?" "I don't have much choice do I since it is right outside my window isn't it?" He tried to play cool in front of his friends, then said he didn't have to be quiet since it wasn't ten ( rental rules say no disturbance after ten - bullshit! ) They slowed the game and the yelling, then it shut down completely.

Now, all I hear is the Screaming Mimi. That is the Mom with six kids that yells across the parking lot "GET YOUR F@#CKING ASS OVER HERE OR I'M CALLING YOUR DAD!" She does that at least three times a day. Sometimes more. I don't think the one, two or even three bad apples ruin the barrel. I think low income housing is needed, wanted and necessary. I think people are grateful. I know how grateful I am. I also know how many expectations I have, for myself and for others. I also know how sad I feel right now. How embarrassed that I yelled. How low.

The reality of this location is luck and grace. I feel so lucky and I just wish everyone else did. When I see and hear others mistreat this, this which I know is a hard to take gift, when all you hear is how undeservedly and greedily you grab it.... the swallowing can leave you nauseated in the end. I feel like puking regularly.

I judge them because I judge myself. I judge myself because I know how others judge people in my place. I judge others for judging me.

All I wanted to do was open the window.

2010-10-07T00:46:00.004-06:00

I told my Mom the other day while in the middle of a crying jag, that all hospitals should supply newborns with guides on how to live a life. Sure, some would say the Bible, Quran or Bhagavad Gītā would be the guide. But no. I'm talking about a guide on how to pick a mechanic, a boyfriend, balance your checkbook and survive a crisis like running over a cat with your car ( this is new for I ran over a black and white cat this very night, and I don't have the immediate talents to deal with it. I needed help as I picked up the still warm body from the road with my bare hands. I sobbed and sobbed as kind neighbors stopped, put on their hazards so he wouldn't be run over repeatedly until my parents showed up to remove him from the scene. ) Everyday guidance is the kind I am talking about. Useful. Applicable.

Her reply was that they couldn't. There would be no way to give a guide to everyone that would work, because everyone would need it to be different. No universal guide. She said it so simply, and it was more profound than she knew. Or knows.

In Hitchhiker speak, the answer is 42. The question? No one knows.

2010-09-29T13:47:00.003-06:00

My Grandma used to freeze her trash. I thought it was crazy too, until I considered what trash she was freezing. She was only freezing the trash that would cause a stink until it could be taken by the trash man. Leftover carcasses, scraps of casseroles, bones or any food that would rot and leave any odor would be wrapped in foil and put into the freezer until trash day. This could be seen as over orderly, OCD, desperately neat, any title you feel it deserves to make sense of it. But now, at this age, in this time, I get it. I would freeze my trash. Then. But now, we don't have the need, or the inclination. We have disposals (if you are lucky) we have weekly or biweekly trash removal. Recycling, composting, plastic wrap, plastic storage that could survive in space is how we handle leftover food now.

She had a trash compactor for many many years, longer than I was aware of any sort of disposal. I thought it was fun, even a bit exciting to put the tiniest bit of rubbish in the compacter and listen to it crush into near oblivion. The thought of where it was going, who took it there and how long it stayed, was never an issue. Never brought up. The big black plastic bag was just taken out, out into the metal bin and then taken away. Away.

I have been thinking about the freezing. The freezing of what would be offensive, the leftovers, the stink. We have these reminders, scars of what has happened in our lives that we sometimes have no idea what to do with, where to put them. Can we just freeze them, until they are so cold, hard and brittle that we either don't feel them anymore or they are covered up in the back of who we are that we forget? The problem is the thaw and the ultimate stink that will choke up your whole life again. I don't know if there is any away that is away enough to throw these memories and who will hold them? Who is in charge of burning the heap?

2010-09-29T01:22:00.003-06:00

In the left hand turn lane, stopped at the stop light. Waiting. Watching the light truck in the middle of the intersection wait for its chance to turn left. As I tap my thumbs to Fionna Apple's "O' Sailor" I notice a crumple in the lower left side panel on the driver's side door of the truck. I start to wonder what kind of an accident would put such a strange crinkly ripple in that particular spot when the driver has his opportunity to turn....and turn he does. This turn is so sharp I still have no idea how he didn't end up in my lap. I instinctively turned the wheel of my car (although stationary) to the right, so sharply that if I were moving I would have veered off of the road. Make that out of the zip code. I them pronounced him a piece of shit (and then some) while, and then he somehow steered himself and his crime-scene on wheels into the appropriate lane, making sure to give me a glance of shame for my choosing to be in the turning lane to start. Lesson? Don't wonder about strange crumples in pieces of shit vehicles. They are there for a reason.

2010-09-17T06:20:00.003-06:00

Two little girls sitting on the sidewalk, playing in the dirt, decoding which are the bad ants and which are the good. As I walk up to them with Peanut in his carrying cage fresh from a birthday car ride they ask to see my cat. I tell them he isn't a cat, he is a rabbit. "Did you go camping and catch him?" the larger and pushier girl asks. No. "Did you just catch him hopping outside?" asks the other. No. They both press for me to put him down on the side walk to hop hop hop around for them to see, both poking at the front door of the cage with their grubby, filthy hands. A bug flies onto the floor of the cage. I wince. I want him inside my apartment, where there are no bugs, where it is clean, where it is home.

When I come outside an hour later, the girls are still playing. They have more friends with them and as the pushy girl walks over to me I say "You changed your shirt." She answers, "yeah, I changed my name. I'm new now." The younger boy following her asks if I am her mom, wants to know why she says her name is Rose now. "Sorry honey, I don't have any kids. Must be the game she is playing." The boy's nervous wringing hands are covered in warts. He was confused but didn't want to be without this new Rose, no matter. I watch them walk away, and new Rose tells the other kids that her mother "changed her name again too." New Rose is wearing an older woman's tan pumps that look like they have been pulled from a dumpster, a green skirt too short for her age and her mouth is dirty with 2 days of dirt and sweat. As I am leaving they decide to play hide-and-seek in the stairwell. Did they find New Rose?

2010-09-11T00:44:00.003-06:00

I typically do not pick romantic comedies as a movie to watch, in fact I purposely stay away from them. The reasons are many (bad acting, poor plot, predictable plot, emotional manipulation and the same actor and actress repeatedly) but what makes me stay away the most is the torment I put myself under after watching one with all the questions for why I am NOT in a relationship. That makes for neither a romantic nor comedic evening. So, with all of that said, I just watched "He's Just Not that Into You" under the urging of a friend. My critique? Well, shit. I am now stuck with the rest of the night to ransack my brain, and rehash the best and worse of Neil. I am also left to stare down at myself and consider why I would ever want to start the process of a romantic relationship ever again? The saying it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.....I don't know if I subscribe anymore. I did when I was clinging in the middle of a crumble of a love. Now? I do know I am smarter. I do know I am wiser. I do know I am colder. My bitter grinding bite on my reality for the present is less rosy, less possible. I miss her. The her, then. If I hadn't lost what I gave so freely to someone that I had no idea didn't deserve it, I might still be....there. Where I left her.

2010-09-03T19:38:00.002-06:00

So, J. Alfred Prufrock had his coffee spoons, Will Freeman had units. I have days with no pain. Or less pain. Hey, days with a good poop measure up pretty good I'd say. I don't know what it is like to not have pain. Maybe no one does. I measure the success of me, by the amount of pain inside my body. If a monkey on your back is a literary form of measurement, some days I have a howler monkey screaming so loud nothing else can be heard. Maybe I should start a rating system: Capuchin, Spider and everyday Marmosets. Never, ever going to invite the Ape for a stay. He would crush me. I stubbornly push off the help, any assist in fighting the weight of carrying my pain monkey around with me. When I wake, when I sleep, it is there. I stupidly think if I can beat it on my own, I win something ( like what a Pride Trophy sheez ) It always wins. It wakes me up from sleep, or keeps me from it. Keeps me from smiling at the little girl skipping and humming because she could. I try to wrestle it on my own, yet it is now and has always been stronger than me. I don't like it. Never will.

And why should I? Why should anyone? It sucks. Literally, it sucks. It sucks life and energy out of you. Depleting what you were, or what you would have liked to be. Your face contorts into this ugly grimace of dislike and distrust. You distrust the time when pain is absent. Oh, it will be back, just like the neighbors you don't want knocking at 11 p.m. asking for the plunger. ( No, you can keep it. Trust me on that. ) Why should I like that after nearly 40 years ( yeah, ugh you read that right and I didn't like typing it either ) not one doctor has any idea better than my own self why I have this pain? Nothing to be glad about on that. Shrug after shrug after shrug. I am simply hoping for as many good days as possible and to survive the bad ones as well as I am able. Possibly without losing friends and family members with my rage and angst along the way. There have been casualties, might be more. For as J. Alfred said....

"And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."

2010-08-31T15:23:00.005-06:00

Just found out that Dorothy Oyler, the Grandmother of my former friend, passed away at the beginning of July. I had been a part of this family since I was the age of five. When Stacie decided I was no longer friend worthy, I knew that Dorothy would be leaving, and that I would not know when she was near to it, or when it would happen. Now, that it has happened, I don't know how to mourn. Dorothy always liked me. Whenever there was a family function and she was there as well, she would want to sit by me, and hold my hands. She liked to hold my hands. She would always tell me how soft they were, and tell me I was beautiful. Yeah, she thought I was beautiful, while most of the family thought I was fat. She once told me I was the best friend Stacie could ever hope for, and she meant it. I still have the smells in my nose of pies and canning from when I was 8 or 9 visiting the house on the mountain road. Running through the orchard, playing hide and seek with all of the cousins. The soft 50's colors on the walls, the crammed hallways. That will always be Dorothy's house to me, the apples and the orchard, the leaves on the ground. The family I was a part of even if I wasn't born into it.

She could be hard on her family, I knew it, but I listened to her. I think it is easier sometimes to abuse the closeness we have with family, just assuming they will never leave. Dorothy did that, but she loved and treasured everything Sally and Russell did for her. They were the best daughter and son in law a mother could ask for throughout all Dorothy's life. Russell would just show up with groceries cuz if he didn't, who would? Sally would go visit, just to visit. We would all be so lucky to have Sally and Russell to take care of us, to just remember us throughout the day. That is another part of this that stings so horribly, when Stacie threw me away, she threw me away from the entire family as well. I don't get to tell Sally how sorry I am for her, losing another loved one. How proud I am of her for loving the way she does. I miss telling Sally thank you for loving me, and accepting me. Suppose, I don't know the truth of that anymore. I only know how it was. I only know how Dorothy liked to hold my hands.

2010-08-27T12:58:00.002-06:00

Thanks to a FB friend, a wonderful idea has come my way, a daily listing of things that make you grateful. List your gratefuls.....The Grateful Daily. I have often said in conversation that it infuriates me, might even sicken me, that we as humans often need to lose something we love/need/want/cherish to be grateful for what we have. Why do we need to be reminded to be thankful? Why do we need to be reminded by others' misfortune to be grateful for what we already have? I have never, ever understood this. Never will. I know I am not immune to this. I feel the effects when I see floods and earthquakes on television. I feel the effects when I step outside. I had an eye appointment today to see about a swollen gland on my eyelid. I am terrified about needles and scalpels and anything near my eyes. Yet, on the way to the car my neighbor meets me with her 6 month old twins, just on her way home from the hospital. One has been in for severe UTI and the other, is being tested for blindness. Her little boy that cannot talk or walk yet, will never see. Here I am luckier than this boy will ever be with his sight, and I am nervous about a surgery that is 2 weeks away. I am embarrassed in front of her, even if she has no idea.

My Gratefuls.... 1. My Best Mom. 2. Peanut running around the living room, destroying the phone book, kissing me and making me laugh. 3. Coffee. 4. Rye Bread.

2010-08-25T23:00:00.002-06:00

I saw a little girl skipping and humming today. I wasn't glad. I didn't smile. I was jealous. I didn't look into her eyes and glean what I could, I looked down, and heard the shuffle of my own feet. I wondered what age I was when I stopped skipping. Ten? Eight? Six? I still hum, although less and less. Only when I am alone. I used to hum to children, I have no reason for that anymore.

I used to think I could say anything here, but I don't anymore. I was told it was too sad, that I was sad. Yes, I am sad. Yes, I am mad. Yes, I am happy. Where do you put those pieces of yourself if you feel so full up you might burst? I need to prick the blister of me and let it out. Don't like it, don't read. Don't like it then you don't like me. Won't be the first time. Won't be the last.

My heart skips for totally different reasons than joy. Maybe when it turns to stone, I can skip it myself.

2010-08-18T13:47:00.003-06:00

I saw a man with one arm riding a bike today. He had a prosthetic from above the left elbow down, clamped securely to the handle as he rode through the parking lot where I live. I wondered about his being able to signal, or unclasp his arm if he were to fall. I also wondered if he were riding this bike due to being an alcoholic. His life being more than he could handle on his own, so he medicated his self, on his own. Alone. Maybe some of this is true. Maybe none of it is. How much do we pay attention to the people passing by us, daily? The humans two doors down, one door? How are they like us? How are they not? Why do they avert their eyes? Shuffle their feet?

The amount of vitamin D deficiency in Humans is greater the farther north you get and even if you spend an hour outdoors each day, it would not be enough to level the field. Humans stay indoors, watching television, on the computer, away from each other. Deficient of vitamin D and social skills alike. I saw a man with one arm riding a bike today, and I wondered. I wondered about me.

2010-08-06T01:31:00.000-06:00

The world is big. The world is small. Happiness flits about like a lightning bug. Sometimes, I don't want to catch it to jar it up. I would rather it light up the night.

2010-07-23T03:21:00.004-06:00

Just happened into a comment about the last song that Stephie ever heard, on this planet. It was a song I sang to her. The last song. Her last song, and I was the one to sing it to her. This seems to much for me right at this moment. I have been aware of this fact for nearly 5 years, yes 5 years on August 15th. I sang to her and held her hand. Her tiny tiny hand. I sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" I do not know how many times in the last 40 to 60 minutes she was here, preparing to leave her body. This earth. I sang, and sang. I held her hand. I didn't hold on to her, just her tiny hand.

I didn't sing the Judy Garland version, I sang Eva Cassidy's more recent and what I feel is a very emotional and raw version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I now am only able to sing it this way. I am now only to think of it as Stephie's. I am now barely to keep myself from bawling during the song, even when I sing. I am now thinking what will be the last song I hear on this earth? Will it be a song playing over and over in my head like a commercial jingle you can't erase? Will it be playing in the background, something I would never want to hear? Will it be sung to me by someone that loves me? What sound will I take with me to mix in the soil and forever give back the earth what it has given me?

2010-07-22T00:33:00.005-06:00

I can remember the moment I knew I loved The Bun so much more than I had ever loved Neil. Where I was in the room, where he was ( the bottom shelf of my, now HIS bookshelf ) and the color the light in the room held. I also remember telling my friend's husband that I really didn't want to die on the freeway when he was going over 85 miles an hour, tailgating the driver in front of us so closely you could not only smell the paint, you knew what the driver had for lunch. He thought he was consoling me by saying that we would "oh, all just die at once and then be in heaven together." I said he wasn't allowed that. The Bun would be left without me, and I was in no way going to die before him, no one else knew how to love him the best. No one could even come close for just one day, let alone the rest of his life. Well, I made it home alive, and The Bun died before me.

I cried such heavy tears today retelling the story of the day The Bun died to my friend that lost her dog of 15 years, last year when I lost The Bun. She had never known the details, never really dared to ask, not knowing how I would react. I bawled. I snotted all over the place. Mostly, I remembered him. I have tried to forget about remembering him, thinking it unfair to Peanut. How will I ever get to really love Peanut if I keep The Bun so forward in my heart? How will I let myself say all of the sweet goobery words that naturally spill from my mouth when I just love that he his here, and not betray either of them?

The Bun is the Love of my life. I know this. There are things I will do for Peanut and things I will be with Peanut that The Bun deserved. I wasted time not loving myself. The shame of it all is that it took The Bun's death to teach me that. He gave me the most it turns out.

I keep waiting for The Bun to visit me in my dreams, but I haven't had one SchnuggleBun dream. Yet. I have hope. I have peace in knowing that he is returned to the earth and that one day so will I.

2010-07-20T01:53:00.002-06:00

The only really big item I have owned, on my own, was my car. An unlicensed driver with three bullet holes in his chest, no insurance, cocaine, marijuana, a gun and three underage passengers drove into my parking lot at 50 miles an hour, plowed through three cars then landed in the fence nearly missing my apartment building itself last March. My car was one of the two cars totaled that night. I am lucky to have parents that co-signed with me to get another vehicle, but the sticky part is, I live on disability. I live markedly below the poverty line. I cannot afford car payments. Some months I can barely buy food. I pay the insurance on this car while my Mother pays the monthly lease. News on my Mother's financial front has not been too hot as of late, and this car may be taken away too. I don't have options to get one on my own. I feel this sudden urge to drive to Idaho for the day. Maybe Colorado. Take Peanut and go to Montana before I don't have the option. Oddest part of this whole thing is, I have had this wonderful new feeling lately...hope. It is exciting. I changed something that I was doing in my diet every day, it was simple. The effect was not. I am excited about each day. The chance to not be in as much pain, the chance to go, to do. Now, once again, all because of money, I am aware. It ends. Joy ends.

The awareness of having freedom with that vehicle is tainted by the awareness of the resentment in the political climate. I am defined as a leech. A socialist good for nothing piece of shit sucking at the tit of democracy. Don't worry, I have heard just as much or worse from people inside my own family. I am aware I am greedy. I am aware I am lucky.

The Japanese word Aware ( ah wah ray ) is the sensitivity to the sadness of impermanence.

I am Aware.

2010-07-14T15:43:00.003-06:00

I have concluded that my talents, my humor, my cleverness is being....well, wasted on my family. I used the very same line about the amount of sawdust in my fridge (which the workermen said would be minimal) and my retort was "uh yeah, compared to what, Mount Saint Helens?" My Boy JD gave me a whole hearted chuckle, maybe a guffaw. My Mom? meh This happens nearly daily. I say to her, "THAT WAS FUNNY!" she answers with, "well, I laughed." Her laugh, is barely even a breath. A smirk of a grunt. My mother will never read this unless I take my own computer when she is here, go to my own blog, pick this entry and then say "here, read this." She will muse and then begrudgingly agree. If by chance she does happen to read this on her own it will only be that she went into a fugue state and landed on the computer only not to remember later. Have I raised the bar of funny that my Mom no longer finds much funny? Impossible. Am I becoming less amusing in the preferable sort of amusing? VERY possible. Wrong target? Again, very possible.

I keep thinking about what Janeane Garofolo once said in a stand up about this generation continuously creating content. This blog, my conversations with my Mom. It is all content. Thinking in the shower, musing as I lie before I fall asleep...all content. Does this make me content? Am I content with THIS content? Will I ever? If I was content, would I be asking these questions?

2010-07-13T20:46:00.003-06:00

I am having the first period (menses) I have had in over eleven, yes count that, eleven years. I do not like it. Yes, it is gross. Yes, it is a bother in that my abdomen is distended and my inside feels as if it wants to be outside. This is not why I do not like it. It is the reminding. The reminding that I have an organ that is the strict definition of being a female and it will never be utilized. My empty candy dish. This refuse it is dispelling is just that, refuse. And now I am feeling a bit like rubbish. The oddest bit is how at this age, I am not as run down. Suppose it is the eleven year hiatus. A uterine hiatus. Do breasts make you a female? Is it the vagina? In the transgendered community those can be acquired along with the requisite hormones which my already lackluster ovaries provide. So, we have left the uterus. Relates to both the words Utopia and Hysteria. Can I be hysterical in my utopia? With or without a worthwhile uterus? The ticker I banished when The Bun left tries so hard to creep its way back in, but I refuse to let it. I am more stubborn than it. I am more stubborn.

My Peanut is lying on the floor, feet spread out behind him as if he were flying across the carpet to get to me. Little bits of Utopia, here and there. Then, when Stan Getz just asked from his song "What are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" I laughed.

2010-06-27T06:57:00.003-06:00

I'm Mad. I'm mad that I'm mad. I have probably been mad for quite some time. But, right now, I cannot stop thinking about how mad I am. My anger has invaded my dreams. My dreams aren't dreamy, they are murderous. Yes, I have been murdering in my dreams. People. Humans. People that were once in my life, tangentially. Now, I slice their throats in my sleep. Waking from these dreams is not at all restful and makes me even more mad. I get mad at myself for being a person that would subconsciously murder someone, no matter the psychological subtext. Then after being awake and realizing how not rested I am even after all that sleep...yawn...I am mad about existing. Yes, I am mad about being alive. Mad about being a chicken shit wimp of a human stuck in a piece of shit body that fails me. Repeatedly. No matter.

I am mad that I am avoiding a person I love, because I feel further and further away from her with each passing day. I am mad that as times passes so does the past. So do my memories of how I remembered my future. I am mad that Stacie lingers in the back of mind. When children laugh, when I pick up the phone, when I am awake. Or not. I am mad that I judged myself by how she judged me. I am mad that she judged me.

I am mad that The Bun died. Alone. Without me. I will never forgive myself for that. I made a promise to myself after he died, from the guilt of all the wasted days I said to my self, to that hollow in my head "I don't want to be me, I don't want to be me" to never say it again. I am mad I ever wasted time when he was here. He deserved better.

I am mad I am crying. I am mad I have no money and no real future of more. I am mad that I care about money. I am mad my neighbors are assholes. I am mad I have no plan.

Maybe I should plan on being mad for a while.

2010-05-23T21:59:00.002-06:00

I keep waiting to miss him less, yet I don't. I miss him more, and then some more. I don't bother "people" with it anymore. He wasn't just a rabbit...not a cat, nor a dog, or even a child or an ex, as some have told me. He was mine. He loved me and I let myself just love him. I'm told to let it go. He was only an animal. I am only an animal. I loved this only animal more than I ever loved the man I shared a bed with and I know this rabbit loved me more than any human has ever loved me or ever will. I have a hole and it cannot ever be filled. It---the love I gave him----can be twisted and tortured into loneliness, fear of abandonment, rejection...pick the emotional baggage du jour.....I was good at it. Different isn't always better. Different can be just different. I can't say the best anymore. I say good.

2010-03-19T04:22:00.002-06:00

I haven't written anything for quite some time. Doesn't mean I wasn't thinking. The fabric of my mind has been scribbled on for many many years. Written over, erased. The MRI shows my brain is shrinking, less room to scratch my late night silent rants when the lights are out and I am anything but. Less room to store my feebleness. Less room to store my self.

2009-12-01T07:39:00.005-07:00

Wasting, wasting, wasting time. Not spending, not giving. I haven't the possession of myself that could, or would produce the deed to an instant of time. I've never owned me. Never wanted the task. I thought it was how it was meant to be. For me. It is what it is because I am what I am. I was born. Then I will die. My trouble is now. Between. I can close my eyes and dream/imagine I am everything. In a dream I am more real, more possible and closer to everything .....everything. I can imagine. I will imagine. The time it is taking to dream a life is more. Between everything and the spent is a waste. I'll give. I'll try. For something.

2009-10-31T07:20:00.002-06:00

Driving into the sunset, the angle just so the world drops. I could change my name to Thelma if there was some one to hold my hand. Wings on the water, devils and angels on the radio. Me, drained and ready to take the back road. I get stuck. The view is ruined. While enjoying the ride, I forgot to drive. I don't like this road, it's too fast. Everyone else is on it. I can't see the sun set anymore. Hurry, hurry. I get off of that road. I mosey. I dawdle. I take notice. On one corner I see a Father and his daughter wait for the light to change, she laughs as he playfully yanks her arm, her backpack pushing her hair forward. Next corner I see a young man in a wheelchair ready himself for the bus, his expression is not one of joy. I imagine for the next few blocks how his days will be in the winter months coming soon. I see teenagers cuddling on benches, elder dog walkers and many kids walking home from school. So much more happened. So much more. I get to keep those sights, sounds and smells. They are mine now. I took a drive.

2009-10-04T04:10:00.004-06:00

I don't care what sins I have committed, how negative I have become. I just want him back. I want him. I am so cold. I don't know what to do with my hands. They have no place, no pleasing. I have never been good at pleasing people but I could always please him. I am not pleased. I am not warm. I don't see colors like I think I should, the way I remember. I remember sweet breath and brown sugar. Now, it is open air, no where to be and no hurry, no hurry. I feel such shame for having ever wished away a moment of a day, a week, of my life. That wishing was wasted time that could have been better spent with him. He never knew. I know. I could have loved better with him. He loved best with me. I live best when I love. I still want to love him. I still want.

2009-09-28T03:17:00.002-06:00

I have been thinking about knowing. We only know what we know and stick by it because, well it is what we know. We, here drive on the right side of the road, our vehicle's have the steering on the left. Is it better? Is it correct? It is what we know. Recently the entire territory of Samoa switched to driving on the right side of their roads to the left. In mid-morning, traffic stopped, every car, truck and van changed sides as a group and life continued. Now, they know something new. Different. How to possibly know what we don't know? How can we know if we are empty, hollow? We never ask the questions because we never understood how much we never understood. We stay mute. Dumb. Driving on the same side of the road because it is all we have ever known. Is it the brave, the bumblers that happen down the other side? Crash their example but blare the once, the once in this one and only lifetime that they took. I have been thinking about steering. I've been thinking I need some directions......

2009-09-15T04:08:00.003-06:00

I am incomplete. The reason I ever wanted to come back home, open the door...has gone from this planet. My Bun, The Bun is dead. He died not in my arms, but alone, in a veterinarians cage. Poked by needles that did him no good. Bruises. Holes. Scars that will never heal. So limp he was a half life, while I held him and kissed his dry lips and whispered in his flopped ear "I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most" for the last time. My body doesn't know how to feel, I've left something behind. The gas is on, the water is running....no, no, no. My reason, my tangible soul is nowhere. I may never dream again.

2009-09-09T03:40:00.002-06:00

I have Morrisey's "The More You Ignore Me" playing over and over in my head. So what am I ignoring? I know for sure it was my laundry. Getting to it. I need to clean out my top desk drawer. Mop the floor. Transfer hard drive, balance checkbook, get in balance, find a doctor, find someone that cares, care a little less. Will it scream out my name, in the dark, in the night, and when I sit up in bed all alone like so many other nights, will it be there? Close, closer. I should drive. I should drive until I don't know where I am and the opportunity for distraction is stolen by fear. Then I couldn't ignore anything. Not even myself.

2009-08-05T23:13:00.002-06:00

Lying on the floor with a piece of shit arm, wondering what is the purpose of a blog that never gets read? The ol' tree in the forest and one hand scenario on my laptop or just my fragility needing? Needing validity. Waiting for epiphanies to pour in as comments as well as posts. Plug up the slow leak in my soul as I feel it ooze in conversations when I am able to say less and less. I expect to find parts of me in the shower, washed away, clogging the drain. All I see are tangles of hair. I am tangled. This net is a dumping ground for the naked body and the stripped searched mind. I just never thought thoughts were waste.

2009-06-01T03:54:00.002-06:00

I am tired of being told. Slip the snide and let the rule of you be known for ruling is the prize and your must. Must I be so stupid? Must I be so me? Being right at the cost of being wrong is no bother if you know everything. Bothered by being human my wisdom allows that stretch to know I know nothing, and I yawn into a space of gray. Swathed in my stellar dim I can let other wrongs be right. I have plucked grays from my head, tweezed strands and watched them float.....my matter is full of gray.

2009-05-23T04:33:00.002-06:00

There is no ease in the living nor ease in the speak. Grunt and sigh is code for alive. Waiting for the notice, the comment to peace it back in place. Talking to self will have to do. Winnowing, winnowing each misery. Each lonely. If not spoonfuls, D.V.R. space. The killing of time is so shameful, no penalty to measure the crime. That life is the crime. No ease in the execution.

2009-05-19T04:19:00.002-06:00

Trashed it. Put the trash of me in the pile of my scraps and suddenly my past sprung back. No dawn was needed. Or wanted. Puzzling ceased then dung was flung out the door that slammed to breeze the window open....where I crawled through a forgotten Universe. Now, I sit, dangling my feet off Orion's Belt as pulsars pulse and quarks quicken me. I am eased. I hold the breeze from the window in my lashes and it passes through......I am through with it. I have the view.

2009-05-05T23:05:00.002-06:00

Where do I sit? Where do I sit? Some of you people I don't know. Some I don't want to know. Some I don't remember and I know for sure you will not remember me. But where will I sit? I have dreams of a few. Few will have ever dreamt of me. There are those that know me well, and wish to know me longer. Yet some I have known for near my whole life, and I no longer wish to know of them. Sitting is the question..where, to do it, where to fit myself. Will I? Am I? To fit. Crammed in my head is the strip of time, slap of existence with intent to form the proof...of me. My chemical burned, overexposed chance at the trip leaves dust on my fingertips as I hold it out to map my way. I stand over all of you. As you sit.

2009-04-21T05:24:00.002-06:00

All the galaxies we ponder are no more. The pulsars have shifted into new matter and the white hot dwarfs have formed clouds of the future. We will never see it. When we look out, the light is going away so we know we see the past. The past is reaching us, in our now. Our now is barely touching. When our sun dies, we won't see it, we will never know the type of life to extend beyond Earth. Can a thought carry on? Energy quiver, ripple through the dust and riddle of space..the actual space between spaces? Will it hold worth? Will it know of its intelligence? I can wriggle my toes in the green grass, hear the ducks chase and quack over my head, but I don't see the future when I look. Everything has happened before. I am now. When will I shift with the red and happen to be?

2009-04-13T05:31:00.008-06:00

The average man who does not know what to do with his life, wants
another one which will last forever.
-- Anatole France

Suppose an infinity of insecurity, indecisiveness and surety of no
destination. The destination is to never have a destination.  To never
end.  Why hope for this?  Why do we ponder away this whole life, that
we know is here, now?  I will freeze with the joy I have, so full,
brimmed with this life only too aware that it will all end.  I stop.
I barely breathe in the middle of a gust of glee while the knowing
and the ease smash into each other, showing me how uncompr-
omising reality....is.  It rolls on my tongue.  The most delicate of
flavors.  I want everyone to have a bite.

2009-04-11T02:53:00.002-06:00

How do you show what you are made of, what the sum of time composed? The width of your ass, the amount in your wallet? What to show? Make a list, crack the code you couldn't break in elementary during tag, during recess, after school. Pour out your spleen to every one you brush against and listen to yourself cram for the exam of being a person, being somebody, that matters. How can you show the work when you don't know the answer? Who grades it anyway? I never looked at anyone else's paper. Why need to show mine?

2009-03-22T05:05:00.002-06:00

I fling it out
I pull it in
wrestle and tussle the worry
I yield and master
easy for each
of my loves.
Me, mine
the matter of my
worth is not a worry
'till the break
in my voice
as my care shows,
pointed out,
shoved into the sun
to melt away.
Saving sticky
drops
of
intent.

2009-03-15T06:35:00.002-06:00

Oh, the relief of not being a man. For if I were, I would have to know rage. I have never known it. There is a stopping, a stopper built into me. My makeup. Is it my feminine? Is it my sex? I can say the word hate, but I don't know it. Hate is the heaviest word I know. The weight to carry with it, will bend you beyond the measure intended by uttering, conceiving. I have tried to hate before. It is not worth it. The hated never gets the benefit of your pain, your desired wrangling of despair. Men project the rage of anger/hatred outward by use of fists/guns/tanks/bombs. I have lived a life surrounded by guns. I could hate them. I could. I am relieved to not have one in my hands. I am bare armed and fearing the machines of war being built up all around me. And then I wonder who I am when I suddenly want to punch?

2009-03-08T01:14:00.002-07:00

When a four year old asks "Who finds me if I'm kidnapped, if strangers take me," how can you possibly answer in any way that he could understand without scaring and scarring him? Not you. The police, sure. The FBI, they are the police for special bigger badder scarier crimes. He can't conceive of why he is asking. Why he could be taken. He knows of strangers. He has said hello to them. He knows never to go with them. He knows to scream and kick and fight and hit and scream and scream. But still he wants to know. But still he wants to know what they would do to you once they have you. But still he wants to know why they would want to take him, why him? Why is he still asking? But still he knows there is danger. But still your voice quivers as you try to answer in a way that might calm you both. It doesn't.

2009-02-25T05:46:00.003-07:00

Some people wear scents. Some wear them as a shield, a warning of their approach, a lesson to take notice of them sooner. This is not a scense of their self, this is a cloak, a covering. They don't want you to know who they are, they want you to think of them in this particular way ; musky, fruity, clean, freshly picked from a garden or manlier than any other man. My mother wore a scent all through out my youth. It wasn't garish or over powerful, it was how she smelled. I have associated her with that fragrance nearly my whole life. She could take a shower, be clean from soap and still have it under her skin. I would lie on her chest while she talked on the phone, then taking her scent with me. It was in her hair, her closet, her purse and the car. It became part of her makeup. I could lie in bed and be nearly asleep only to wake up by her smell as she passed by in the hall. When I was 10 years old, she was taken hostage in a bank robbery. While I was waiting for her to be released from the vault, I was waiting for her with my hands pressed up against the glass door of the neighboring drugstore, my eyes shut. I wasn't looking for her, I was smelling for her. My memory is in my nose.

2009-02-23T18:06:00.002-07:00

I am weepy, this bending Willow, weighted by circumstance and the chance of place. Placement. Where to be, where to put the feel of my self and the lack? I am bending ever downward so far the sky will only be seen again if I were to be on my back. If religion is nothing but geography and genetics is your destiny then the place mat on my kitchen table will hold my dish waiting to be filled, but my stomach cannot stomach anything I have to offer it. With a dry mouth and eyes that won't stop leaking all their secrets I long for a time when time was the promise and green was. Green was. For now I Weep. For now I am bent, and the shade I give my self will not last.

2009-02-14T04:32:00.002-07:00

I heard a poet today talk about the trust of a bicycle. The tragedy and cycle of a life ridden with the efficacy and abandonment of simply being human, turning the wheels over our everyday reality. Being alive is a fine idea. To live a just life could lead to a just world. Wanting safety in such an unreliable world is setting myself up for disappointment. I trust myself, how to trust others? I'm prepared to fall off the bike. I know no one is holding it anymore. What if I'm shoved? I collide with another rider? I trust. I do. I have trusted too much. Bikes don't have "oh shit" handles. I want a basket for my bicycle. And streamers.

2009-02-08T21:58:00.002-07:00

Where does the green of envy start its creep? The insecurity of place rocks us loose in our relation to all relationships and forces us to shake our fists at the sky when things crumble, as they do. Is all security illusion? Is chaos the rule? Is the secret that there is no secret? Wishing for the wish all vanity and ego, the gulp and grab of humanity. Who said happiness was attainable? Just a right. Right is just and written down, inked, penned and read aloud. So how is it gotten? Is it gotten? It is a flash while driving alone at night, the cold breeze forgets your death, all that ends. The frozen second of the long note. A strawberry. Laughter in a movie theater. Then silence, and waiting, craning to view any scene. Launching, perched to pounce on the slightest glimmer of gladness. Did you bring some for everyone? Is there enough happy to share?

2009-01-31T02:57:00.002-07:00

I just woke, from the deadest of sleep. Dead of sleep? I woke to myself whining, shaking and sobbing while my chest was pounding so hard, it is still pounding. My heart has not slowed down, it never has. I'm holding my chest as if to prevent anything from escaping. I have these words streaming through my mind...I'm not broken, I'm not whole, you're not open but you're not closed...I'm still breathless. I have been told, I would most likely die, in my sleep, to my heart rupturing, bursting. My throat hurts both from it being squeezed with the arc of my sobbing and the pressure of my heart. I was being tortured, in my sleep. My dream was myself being tortured...thrown, beaten, stood on till I couldn't breathe, running to grab any identity I had left of myself.....I never got it; the proof of who I am/was or my breath. I was hiding from any Royalty, that might know I'm told my life is over...the actual, physical pain I am feeling was all a part of the dream....the fear it would never end, only by my death. I have always a racing heart....too fast for myself or others to even try and keep its pace. Now, how can I sleep...even with this oppressive weariness? How can my heart run this race of life, and make it to any desirable finish...with me? Is it better to have it beat, pound so it is incapable of ignoring, or so slight and feathery that you never know it is there? There is no bird of paradise encased in these my rib cages, but a Dragon waiting to snuff out my light, with the last puff of smoke.

2009-01-29T08:01:00.002-07:00

I feel small. Cosmically, yes, I am aware of how tiny a dent, the pinprick on eternity I will be. But here, today, in my own apartment, I feel so small. Who is to measure the size of a life? Friends, family, society? Is the purpose to have purpose? Small enough to be let go, flung. Small enough to miss days, weeks of daylight and have no one wonder where you've gone. How to be big? Big enough to burst open doorways, shine to a squint and keep the revolving molten core out, out never to be doused? How big is enough?

2009-01-27T01:05:00.005-07:00

Welcome to now. The now. How to be in my now without allowing the past to tug? The tug and reminders of truth, blacking out a future. Distractions taste grand. What to do when time is only filled, not felt with any true delight or hope for the hope of tomorrow, any tomorrow? Everywhere, worldwide, the lack of a future weighs as a tombstone, waiting for engraving. Corners in the U.S. are full of payday lending, seeking and lurking over the shoulders of citizens barely able to survive. Families live three or four generations in a home, jobs are gone and college is a dream so far removed from reality. Fixed incomes increase only 2% a year when food costs increase by at least 6%, never minding health care costs. There will be no room for saving, no room for improvement, no room for a chance in this, the supposed wealthiest of nations. The space race, the cold war all won. The race to die with any dignity, any sight of the younger generations having better, or knowing better, is taken over by corporations; buying jets, redoing bathrooms, quit claiming 13 million dollar homes. Welcome to the now of our collective now. This now is a result of years of not caring who was hurt, who was thrown away or what was trampled in the race to the top. It is always time to be your brother/sister's keeper. It is always time to listen and know the responsibility of any government is to work. Why did it take so long? How can people decide to hate for so long? What does it take to know that if you give up your values you have given up what and who you are? Now we have a chance to get back. Now I see it. I feel the world, I feel my world. I feel it now.

2009-01-20T01:34:00.002-07:00

It is late night, early morning in between Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the inauguration of our 44th president and I keep thinking about the ideas some people have expressed about the ability to control your environment. In effect, affect it to any outcome you wish. You wish for wealth, you focus on wealth, you will have it. You wish for health, you focus on health, then health you will have. If this is so true, then the reverse would apply and each negative, or seemingly unasked for encounter would in actuality be desired. The blind seek blindness, the deaf seek not to hear and then the argument takes the turn to where I can no longer bend my reason to see. How did a public turn so ego-centric as to assume that they can and will control the entire Universe as they will? They influenced all forces to induce tsunamis by uncontrollable negative emotions and therefore deserved to be swept out to sea with the village of their birth? Women seeking firewood to cook there sole meal asked for, stood up and requested by their negative impact of being on the planet, to be raped by 13 armed rebels on a pile of corpses from the devastated village? This is reason? This is cosmic, worldly, godly justice for being a human? If only those black Sudanese women had felt higher and better things, thought better, they would not have been tortured. If you produced higher vibrations the universe would place in your hands all that you desire, if only, if only. No matter how high you vibrate or how positive the words you speak float from your lips and touch that strand of energy between us all; death will come, bodies breakdown, atrocities will happen and ones you love will disappoint no matter the investment.

Being human is being imperfect. Being alive is not knowing what is going to happen next. Thinking you want what the Mountain holds gives you no right to remove its top regardless of the surroundings. We no doubt affect each other and can affect our own lives, but to think you are the center went away with Copernicus and the discovery of the earth revolving around the Sun, not the Earth being the center of the Universe as people chose to believe. There is a whole world, a whole Universe swirling around us. If you refuse to notice it, no wonder you think you are the whole. All that is left with that philosophy? A big empty.

2009-01-16T02:03:00.002-07:00

Is a Rothko art to my Brother that coos like a baby when he holds a Rock River rifle in his hands, marveling at its craftsmanship? Is a fragrance art? What about two people maneuvering through downtown traffic on their banana seat bikes, heavy woven caps and unrelenting smiles breaking and beaming brighter than the winter sun? Is that art? Loving, no holds barred ...... the dance of all you are, a grace. How to classify which medium to measure your art? Is art the pleasure or the sharing? Both?

2009-01-13T19:50:00.003-07:00

What to do when your past isn't past but lurking, waiting to club you? How do you duck from your self and a life lived till the now? Do you stand tall for the punch and know bruises fade, over time.......another life time? Peeking around corners and hoping for the clouds to break cannot be daily rituals, they will wear me down to a nub, erase any chance of a forward life. Then why is this past huddled and whispering in plain sight, taunting and dancing carefree......no marks, no scars, no responsibilities? Throw pieces of myself to the wind or bury them so deep the earth will recover them with my body? I can't know that now.

2009-01-03T02:26:00.003-07:00

Once again, I'm not sleeping and the hurt is spilling over into the front of my mind and blurring my focus. The holiday has come and gone. It was wonderful to be with the people I love and I know value me for how I am and who I am. Bursts of understanding, these flairs of truth just spark me into this ultra reality and oddly calm the underlying dread of never being able to untie the knot I have tied to a person, for nearly my entire life. Now finding how they were wriggling and manipulating the knot to choke any chance of understanding how little, how small I was no matter how much I gave. For give is all they wanted to see from me. If I wasn't giving, the math was wrong. No wonder I add to subtract. I add. I add. This has only subtracted from me? That can't be. I must have more because I gave more. Pardon myself by pardoning others. I deserve more than leavings and scraps. I deserve more.

2008-12-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to sleep for days, well weeks maybe at that. Something was amiss in my life, I knew it, I knew part of it. Now it is four-thirty in the morning, I'm drinking hot soy chocolate and trying to blog full this hole I have that I didn't have a few days before. I had filled it with the love I had for others. It was stuck tight with devotion and loyalty I gave, freely, and enjoyed giving it more than I knew then. Why is the hole empty? It was a lie, not to me, but to whom it was given. It was taken with such greed, the value was never noticed. My value was never noticed. Good thing I did. Just took me most of my life.