Tuesday, May 30, 2006

"whack-a-dack, workin' on my lounge act"

Tonight I stood behind a lectern and taught twenty people about growing up in "Oakapalloka" during the 1970's. Man alive, unless I'm completely deluded, I had 'em going, and I was telling the truth too, wow. It's A.A. but I spent a lot of time mocking college English departments, and describing some of Oakapalloka's leading citizens, such as my drunken pediatrician, whose hobby was to built cannons in his garage. (There were consequences.)

Afterwards during coffee and cake, a few people came up to tell me they had similiar stories, especially about 'grown-ups' in the 60's and 70's being all f_ucked up.

Really, it wasn't part of the program. I was blaming my problems on my day and age and my town. Tried to excuse that, maybe succeeded enough to get by.

But man, what a memorable experience, getting up there and not fainting and not going by any script. My ego is grotesque tonight. Gruesome enough being a blogger sometimes, I think.

Time to sleep. Hopefully the applause I still hear will go away.

dico, sermo, dubito (and why i prefer to write)

I know a girl who can write just exactly like she talks (which is what they seem to want you to do in 'writing' schools. Why, I've never quite understood).

There's an email here and...well, first let me tell you this...In the last few years, in my mostly celibate relationships, I seem to go directly from intitial courtship to when after the lawyers have settled some sort of alimony dispute.

This girl and I, once good friends, now bicker. We irritate one another.

She's called me on the phone twice in the last week, but I've never caught it in time or I've been asleep. So I call back and she answers in a manner that makes me think she's about to ask, "what are you calling me for?

And then she re-iterates news to me that she's totalled her parent's car, she's leaving town with her new borne, Scarlett, (whom I accidently called "Savanah" once, and now misspell, with only one 't'), and then, "listen, I got to go. Talk to you later."

Oh, I should admit that I made her mad last week when I pretended she hadn't already told me about the car accident, and allowed her to tell me about it all over again. (She's a stoner, relapsing regularly, and I wanted to see if I'd get the same story twice. I'm a prick, all right.)

Anyway, this morning I wrote to her, what's up, when I call you back, it's like you never wanted to talk to me in the first place, but you've called twice now and...

It's so odd how I can hear her voice in this reply, which I reprint because it's so funny. (Incidently, she also captures a part of me that I don't like about myself, but she does it so well I have to share.)

Now, shhhhh. This is almost like playing a recording of her voice for you. I mean, I have this illusion you will hear her.

I invite you to admire the writing, anyway.

"Are you fucked up on Codeine ?
I'm just not one to talk on the phone, I hate talking on the phone, so I call to extend my hand and
say Hey what's up. Also, I can't always understand you because you mumble, and it's like you're not confident about what you're saying so you'll talk over yourself sometimes and then breathe in while you're saying something, or just ramble, and it's very hard to follow and doesn't keep my attention; and it seems like you're distracted or something, so that's usually when I say goodbye.
I like to call, make plans, and then hang up.
It's Scarlett with two t's, dammit!
yeah, today is not a good day to do stuff, or tomorrow,
but after that it is fine."


See, now, a playwright couldn't do that so easily, even if he were writing a character based on himself.

I've started a response that begins, "Now see here..."

She writes like she talks. And she's not the only one with memory problems, by the way, because I don't remember wanting to make plans. That would mean having to find her house and picking her up. (I do want to see the baby again though. It's been more than a month.)

I'm wondering what I should advise her about her future. If I were demonic I'd tell her to get a degree in English and go to the Famous Iowa International Writers Workshop; but I don't have anything against her, per se, and certainly nothing against her parents.

The truth is, she's touched the Neurotic Nerve with that description of me on the phone. It's all quite true. I hem, I haw, I hemhaw.

(Contrary to my AA leanings, I want to ask: what part does she play in that?)

Dang kids.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

relaxed, free, with room to grow

Two friends wrote me today about how happy they've been this last week and this holiday weekend.

It's a notable coincidence because both put extra effort into describing their feelings and both momentarily skipped at the whys and wherefores for a second (one briefly wondering if it was a 'mania') but then concluded of the mysteries: they were just so, and worthy of making note, is all. "Remarkable", we say.

"Blissful" said one, "glorious" said the other. Both wished me the same.

New heart-memories! Is what they have, I think. I've been sick, but I will remember this week and holiday with a certain relish also. TV was dull and good, like this Bonanza marathon. I didn't have to pay attention, the plots are comic bookish, in fact it was a lot like going through my old comic books!

I'd glance over at the TV if Little Joe was being told to get out of the barbers chair or get shot. Watch to see whether he'd comply. (He did.)

And my fever dreams weren't like a visit from Ba‘al Zebûb. Not even the one where there were leopards lounging in our back yard, and I got pinned down by two...I didn't frak out. ('Remain calm. Now do I make a loud, sustained noise, or do I play dead? I don't believe these two actually want to eat me, but maybe I should protect my neck...')

There will be a food association to spark the heart-memory of these last few days, too. I've been eating cherry pies that two other friends brought me (goes back to my Seroquel story, I suppose, these little cherry pies).

Also, the puppy racing in and out of here all the time, I'll remember her and her antics. (She's getting big, and tried to jump from the back of the love seat into my lap while I was sitting here in my swivel chair; she nearly belly flopped and changed her mind in mid-air. Recovered with a shrug, no exaggerated dignity.)

Here she is now, growing fast.


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Named Indigo, called Indy, Little Twerp, Little Dog, Don't Bite, Stop Biting Dammit, and a few other names since we are seven or eight people in this dorter. Indigo is K.B.'s dog, he is the leader of the pack, he explains.

I've never known a grown man to need a dog as bad as K.B. did. He'd had his pal "Ari" for almost ten years while he was tramping the country and hopping frieghts. They got seperated when he hit his low point and left Ari with an aquaintence. Ari was old though...Then the aquainance either adopted him out or put him down. K.B. will never know, sadly.

I have so many new people in my life now also, in the last year, (including my pencil-pal, Anonydoc, who still thinks it's been longer than that, probably because I remind her a little bit of work. Haha!) I wrote her a list of leading players yesterday so she can keep track of the women I think I'm in love with. I think I'll need to refer back to the list too, sometimes.

Plus, two friends came back this year, after my getting cornered into Recovery.

The AA friend I mentioned, who wrote about her happiness, spent this day with problematic relatives, visiting and decorating her grandparents' graves. She enjoyed a day she'd learned to dread all these years, and recieved a perplexing compliment from one relative she's admired.

My other friend was deep in study-mode (during a beach vacation with her growing family of high achievers.) She shared what she was reading with them (the subject of her studies being psychology, psychiatry, neurology, human nature, Ripley's Believe it or Not stuff I bet) and it sounds like they all had a lot of laughs.

I don't know what I'm writing about here. I'm feeling grateful by proximity, and hopeful in my own right lately. Makes me think of our living god, and fate, and the perfect ending of every equation in His universe. "Fate" is only in retrospect, after the " = " sign, but there's a degree of assurance when we have faith, and keep doing the right thing, like making our beds and showing up for work each day.

Gee. It's not even the holiday yet. It's late and I'm writing too much, about to get philosophical.

Thanks for visiting!

Saturday, May 27, 2006

I'll need emails...

I got a bug in my lungs, I think was going to kill me. Woke up this morning to a cough that made me wonder at Him. A seven or eight on my pain richter, which means "Mama! Papa!" Last night, pain shot through lines as fine as a thumb print on my world, but this morning it was like a pile of rusted auto parts. Down in there deep, where you don't know pain usually.

Two days ago, I knew the precise second I became host (or some cell divided or what?) I was on the factory floor and suddenly felt the weakness and I swung around to look at everyone. Who just gave me that?

Noticed this, which was rolled up behind me very quiety, out of nowhere, and got out the phone cam.


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But it's not viral. I know a lung infection when I've got one.

Called in sick for the first time ever (in my six months there), told them right away I'd have a doctor's excuse, and then drove to Urgent Care. I had to wait about three minutes. Just love this town when the students are away! In an hour I was home with anti-biotics and cough syrup.

Everyone is gone. It's hot, the air conditioning is on, and I'm in a very pleasent, dark room (my own). I have the TV on, which is almost a first. To have the news on and surf at the same time, I mean. Sounds down, it's captioned.

I'm like this.

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Fever.

Would be out on a picnic with the Kettle kids. Wearing that wild shirt.

Last night, I was here.
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NO, I didn't write that, just noticed it outside a bookstore.

I'm dreaming of this someday.

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unknown photographer

Friday, May 26, 2006

I've seen ghosts

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I know what I like in photography, and why.

When I was five or six years old my grandmother would let me pull all her photo albums out from her bottom dresser drawer, and I would carry them into the living room and sit on the floor in front of the TV and search for my favorites.

My favorites, I understand now, were the ones that frightened me a little, especially the black and white snap shots of departed relatives.

Grandmother would say,

"That's my mother in 1945 just before she passed away...She would have loved you very much. That's the same rocking chair that's in your room now, see? Same one. We've never had to recover it. She is your great-grandmother. Here is your great-grandfather, my father. He died in 1958, when your great uncle Barry was going into the service."

There was one color photo of him.

The next favorite picture was of my grandmother herself, in 1956, wearing a bright red ball gown and pearls, I believe. 1956. Ages ago, in 1967. She looked much younger, and wasn't wearing her glasses. The color of the snap-shot was almost garish. It was old but seemed to be from "my time", only before I was born.

See, with the color snapshots, I had this sensation always that I'd just been asleep, and had missed out, or even been cheated of a lot of years. How many episodes of My Three Sons had I missed? Or, The Wonderful World Of Disney? My older brothers were way out ahead of me, they knew and remembered the original, oldest son in M.T.Sons, who disappeared without explanation, I believe.

The black and whites didn't do that for me. Those people were dead, and I was dead, and there was no hope whatsoever. We had photographs of great, great, ever so greats who were in the Civil War (both sides). Grandmother didn't say anything like, "And they would have loved you." I don't think she believed they'd be fond of her either. Too distant. We both puzzled why no one smiled, not knowing that it was because of the long exposures needed. She might have said it had something to do with dignity. I presumed "Hard Times".

Anyway, I guess my favorite types of photographs are bad snap shots, with color. And particular color from the period (I'm guessing) 1948 to 1961 (I was born, or woke up!) in 1961. I have a trained eye for the brummagem and can usually i.d. old movies by their color type, also. 1948 in unmistakable, for instance. See Hitchcock's "Rope". The colors in "Rope" are out of my grandmother's color photo album, the reds are her party dress. The late 40's color was very rich.

Anyway, now I have discovered how to make a dull photo BAD, with MS Paint, or "Picture It 9". This one of K.B., Chance, and the pup (if you can make her out, in K.B.'s arms) is in my room, around the ten o'clock news hour.

It's grainier, actually more like my dad-gone's polaroids, except those were always too light for me.

BTW, look how we poor people live. Pretty good, eh? Especially considering those hues, eh what? And the media.



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Thursday, May 25, 2006

temps d'escrime

Worked all day, and knew I'd suffer a late afternoon nap.

I told Chance I wouldn't accept any of his excuses if he didn't get me up in time. We planned this daring emprise a week ago and were going to carry it out if it killed him. No one's going to tell me I'm just talk. Although that's exactly why I'm interested in fencing: to rejoin.

I had him take several pictures of me driving. I don't know why. For the following awful slide show, all about me.

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driving

Now, Chance kept saying the pics were no good. All we had were our phone cams, so these are all very small. But I think he was remarking on my profile, in the car.

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turning

"Here it is," he said.
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I pulled in and stopped at this.
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We watched aikido (stick fighting) for awhile, led by a 50-something nun and a 25 year old dood with a wild afro. She walked over and engaged us off and on, encouraging our interest, exclaiming how relaxing this can be. Men were being thrown to the ground and lightly tortured until they slapped their palm on the mat a few times. Then the arrose and bowed.

When it was nearly time for Fencing class I met this fat clown named David, who is a sword collector. He showed me all of his equipment: the eppe, foil, saber, mask, vest, jacket, mask, gloves. He asked how I became interested and I explained.

"Oh, we're an arrogant bunch." he assured me. Keen and cold. Got to have a quick wit. It's fencing, it's chauvinistic.

He began to explain right away the parts of the swords, their purpose, their history. Later in the gym, when the coach was late, three people came over to introduce themselves and each one wanted to teach me some basics, such as the stand, the parry, the four lines, 'disengagement' as attack, etc.

When they matched off and began to fight it was much too fast to follow.


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I was invited to sit closer, I went to sit on the mat in the middle of the gym.

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Then Mrs. Peel and her daughter appeared and I went back over to the seating area to listen to their coach. It was their third lesson.

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One of the men came over then and offered me a light-feeling eppe. He had me twirl the buttoned end several times around his thumb, to show how quickly tiring such small movements can be.


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At the end of the hour everyone was laughing and exhausted and dripping sweat. It's $20 a month (one hour a week), but I'll need a starter kit, which runs around $200, I'm told.

My plan is to take up swimming for a month, to get back in shape. And re-learn how to jump rope. And study some more Cyrano-script.

Thanks for visiting!

Monday, May 22, 2006

Riposte

Eleven day work spree. I didn't learn that until today, and I'm four days in, so, meh.

so meh.

Like some of the psalms should end with that. Shrug, that's how it is. He says I AM, what more should He say.

so meh.

Then this week I am going to visit a Fencing class, and bring Chance along, and probably take that "step" off the "cliff" and commit myself and my dough to sign up.

I'm already memorizing famous lines from Cyrano.

Falsehood! There! There! Prejudice! Compromise! Cowardice! What's that? Surrender? No! Never! Never!

Ah, you too, Vanity? I knew you would overthrow me in the end. No! I fight on! I fight on! I fight on!

Prince, pray God that is Lord of all, Pardon your soul, for your time has come, Beat, pass!

I fling you aslant, asprawl, Then as I end the refrain, thrust home!


I'm not going to learn to fence until I know how to actually affront. That's backwards, I ought to know how to fence first, but hopefully my rudeness will put my opponet off balance...like, for good, if I'm good as Cyrano.

Jibe, jeer, scoff, taunt. I lack those skills, so I have to resort to recitation.

Meanwhile, I want to write that the week is going well. IT'S MONDAY, for pete's sake.

And my internet doc is in Florida again! Which for some reason puts me out. Maybe it's Fark's Florida tag. ...

thanks for visiting.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Me and Marry

"Hey. You figured it out," Tubby said, when I successfully restarted the GMA2500, something-something the blue machine which is like a locamotive without wheels.

Yes, I think I finally have. There she goes, I said, cork-screwing my yellow spongey ear plugs back into my ears.

"Some people, it takes a day. Some people, a few weeks..." he told me, as a bit of trivia.

Prelude. All prelude.

Yes, I said. The willy wonka whistles actually seem to come together for a tune, at times. Some people , a few weeks. I've been here six months. Yeppers, I said a lot louder. And some six months. Still pleased.

Hey, I'm a part-timer and an avoidant. Sometimes I'm in the wrong place at the right time. This might actually have been my...3rd attempt. Go f yourself.

look, if i'm not interested, i forget. That's why I don't know the names of the stars and constellations, why i don't know my biology, and lots of peoples' names

Speaking of which, they misspelled my co-worker Mary's name in our intercompany newsletter. (I work for a newspaper, see, so you're supposed to find that mildly, smilingly amusing.) Really, they did. And I don't mean they couldn't spell Brendzlinghoffer. I mean they mispelled "Mary". As in, 'Marry'. Yess...

She pointed to her name (it was a list of people who'd won this month's safety prizes, she got a gallon cooler) and said, "look, there I am. At the bottom of the list."

I looked at her. I looked at the spelling again. I looked at her. She is an Iowan. We Iowans notice ourselves when we're at the bottom of a list but still: This is what you find remarkable?

Everyone teased her a bit, for the typo, asking if she was raised by bohemian parents, or if that was a "family name", 'Marry'. Then an hour later I got a call into see the boss, Tomm, whose office is sound-proof but not vibe proof from the press and the big blue machines.

Deanne, the obligatory factory beauty, was just stepping out and didn't make eye contact with me. So, I knew it was bad. Usually she stops and talks, and stands so close she's actually sometimes,,, and I'm all sometimes,,,

Very cute girl. nice overbite. husband. She's eh, I've described her before. Off limits.

This isn't about that.

So, Tomm asks me to have a seat. "Do you know Mary Brendlingerrer, John?"

"Mary? Oh heck yes, I was just now having a little laugh with her about..."

"She's in charge of Returns and is leaving in two weeks. I was wondering if you'd be interested in taking over..." He looked over my shoulder and waved 'come in' and the door opened. "Hi, Mary. Have a seat. You know John."

"Yes. We're both from Iowa," she smiled. (Mary became a grandmother five weeks ago. She's about, ehhhhh, couple years older than me, if not younger. Cute as a button. Husband is a major in the Air Force.)

He turned back to me. "You'll still have 28 hours max a week, I'm afraid, but I'll give you weekends off from now on. You'll still do some assembly work when we need you."

"Gosh Mary, I'm sorry to hear you're leaving."

"It's my ears."

"Huh?"

Tomm continued. He's a nice guy, almost a cutey himself, so fat and mean looking, but when he smiles and laughs, you know... Cute.

Everybody's cute today!! did i take an extra pill? sometimes i'll forget if i took one and just have to take another because i'd rather be caught out in a happy sappy world than one that shifts under my feet

"How does that sound? Mary can start training you today after lunch. And since you're already offline, you can go ahead and take an early one, be back around 12:30. How's that all sound, John?"

"Swell! Thanks for thinking of me, glad to!"

"Onwards and upwards, eh??" he grinned and reached out across the desk to shake my hand.

I'm glad he said that. No raise, probably, but I wanted to be sure it wasn't a demotion I'd just been rewarded.

So, today was almost something to write home about. And this afternoon I wasn't at the GMA2500, which was broke down at press-time, but outside enjoying for the first time what actually happens outside when the GMA2500 breaks down.

Cars line up. They end up backed up so far they block the post office next door.

I should have had my camera.

I will next time.

Everyone gets out of their cars to complain that the paper isn't magically coming out of the hole in the brick wall, onto the steel conveyer belt for them to load up for their routes.

I got to hang with the supes, who are always as helpless as anyone (they're not machinists) when thinks go sploink. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Anyway, after the initial grumbling, it becomes a bit like a family reunion. All the carriers seem to know one another well. Perhaps they are cunning enemies all plotting to expand their routes but that's business and this is just half-time.

It was a beautiful day for the first day in two weeks, also. Cheerfulness busting out.

This probably means I didn't get the programmer job across the street. But I was kind of dreading that anyway. I'm not ready for it. Let me learn some office work now first. It makes sense, in a way. God's will and coincidently, mine too.

thanks for visiting! Your friend,
in charge of Returns,

Johhn

Thursday, May 18, 2006

interlude

Finally you simply chose between life and drink. It's gradual, unnatural, so it isn't easy. You do it one day at at time, but eventually when presented with a bottle or life's splendid menu, you actually close the menu and choose the bottle.

In my case, I had a hangover just once, and then drank for 25 years. Staying way out ahead of that hangover. It was a choice against life.

I could easily be in jail for manslaugher or something, for driving drunk. Or in an asylum, for mixing alcohol and pills. Or in a coma.

I could still be drinking, a hermit, waking each morning and groaning at the ceiling fan, remembering that I was cornered, 'backed up against the fence'. Quick inventory of liquor and smokes. Slide out of bed to the computer chair, turn on the news. Day after day after day.

The first sip of warm beer restored me, to be sure, but that was it. Not life. One long, long indistinguishable day, week, month, year after another. You don't wonder that I'm grateful to be sober now. And it's a miracle, because once you are that far gone, you don't have the judgement to re-open life's menu. Or, the menu has changed and there is a very long introductory passage. Remedial instructions are demoralizing.

Only a power greater than yourself can be of any help. For myself, this has never been a matter of will-power. I'm very fortunate that after my initial detoxification, I was put into the middle of the boat, as they say, and set off, without choice. It was months and months before I could have money and freedom and zero compulsion to drink. I'm also fortunate that my sobriety has been relativly uneventful, so far.

My god seems to be a god of learning. My lessons are in order, it seems: I mean often in uncanny ways, they are in order. Maybe I'm engaged in a logical fallacy, thinking so; it would be illogical in the sense that one is hardly able to learn Chapter 2 without knowing Chapter 1 well. But I am speaking of fast events, just in the nik of time lessons which, even when they seem hurtful at first, invariably are liberating and important.

Sorry for no particulars today. This post is like an empty envelope. I've just finished my prayers after a difficult day yesterday, and was thinking about all of this, is all. Thanks for visiting.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

"Look, Mary, I'm a killer", Dangerfield said.

I should have known she has cats. This morning, a picture in the email of the long hair on his own pillow, on her bed ("he let's you know it's his pillow").

Then she writes about cats plural, and jokes that they've had a "meeting" this morning, and, as at your typical recovery meeting, they kept getting up to get a drink of water (like we get up to get more coffee, see).

I've adopted cats, on occasion, or allowed them as house guests when they appear to be homeless. I usually name them "Rhuebella", "Mumps", "Measles", "Diphtheria", "Miasma" or some such. ("Time for din-din, Some Such!") I owe amends to them all. And to the women, most of these cats had.

Cats are fun sometimes. I like to poke my head around the corner, make eye contact, and then quickly withdraw. A second later, I look back and they're usually hyper-alert: the predator, I mean. Again I disappear, and then look again and the cat is ten feet closer. It's a short game. I poke my head out one more time and I'm pounced upon or swiped at.

I lived with a cat once that could hold a grudge for days. I'd have thrown it off the kitchen counter, or set it unexpectedly in flight with my foot (not a kick, I'd get my shoe under her belly when she was lying in my path, and lift and lob into the corner ferns).

It used to be I'd walk into her house and stop a moment, wondering if I was in trouble or not. Because if I was I could expect her to surprise me. She would leap as high as possible and swipe at me. It was always at an unexpected moment of course. (She didn't hide in the fridge like Kato, but would have.) And then it was over. She wasn't mad any more, and would come sit in my lap. Or try to. Get away, dammit, you got me on the neck that time you know! Toss her toward the TV.

In that situation, she'd just turn on me. The fight was back on. I'd go to my room, or get out of it somehow. Then, as I say, the grudge remained. Come to think of it, I don't know if I ever entered that house and really had to think, whether we were all right today.

My email life and real life have intersected now. I waited three months to ask this woman to coffee, (she's new to Recovery, came in on her own!), then asked for her email address instead, once I had an excuse. I don't know what I was thinking, but I was thinking it backwards.

Really, I want to get to know her in person. Letters are nice but even sober I tend to become an E-Lothario. So in my first email (accompanied with a picture of the puppy of course) I mentioned that we ought to go around the corner after the Friday meeting to a coffee house. Then I sort of went on, and on, like I do here.

She wrote back that she likes letters and she is so tired of getting forwarded jokes. Now we've got this odd dance going, switching from in person to online to in person. That's great, except I've got a sickness where I keep track of who owes whom an email. And in my week of Saturdays, just passed, I was in the internet abyss (you know? like when you end up googling your ex-girlfriends, ex-wife, etc.) and she was about two minutes late replying to me. I wanted instant gratification of course. Just an LOL, and then a little more autobiography.

So. She has cats. I'm allergic but it's not the sneezing and wheezing that bothers me so much as having an itchy nose all the time. And of course, if I get on the cat's wrong side.

Women should have dogs, not cats. Big labs. Or whatever Mimi has. Big happy dogs that can make a loud WOOF to warn a burglar away.
___
Gawd. I've been asking this for twenty years and feel like a broken record. But why aren't there more contract killings on women's cats? Or rather, there must be, you know, how do the culprits get away with it? I'm not asking because I would do such a thing! I just know felinicide must be under-reported.

Wait.

Wait again.


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He says I've already done it in my heart.

It would be so wrong.

But anyway here's what you do. (It's really so obvious, I mean I've even seen it done before, and by the owners themselves.) You overfeed and underexcercize them. Pamper them with love, displaying to all your friends what a hopeless sentimental cat-lover you are. Ask God to bless them, too, since they're your enemies, these cats, and he'll pour hot coals on their heads, so to speak, to try and make them change their ways.

Then suddenly switch, and start playing with them a lot, especially the "surprise!" games, because you are a cat lover and very concerned that they need get lean and mean again.

It's slow, I imagine. Kind of like killing a plant with poison from an eye-dropper (ha! The Ginger Man did that for some reason. Just plain malice. It was the landlord's plant.)

I am getting so far ahead of myself it's scary.

Let me pray about this a moment.

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Before the Supreme Court, no less).

The problem solves itself. If I fall in love with this woman, I obviously will hold no malice towards her cats. Thanks for visiting.

Monday, May 15, 2006

I'm in charge now

The brothers decided in our weekly meeting last night to set up a myspace account.

Now I've finished the "about me" section, chosen the url, deleted photos I don't like, etc. Changed the password. They're all there, with mugshots included. Sheesh.

(I'm all pissed because they voted against me when someone proposed we switch phone companies to Vonage. I say, what about 911? They're notorious for not being able to connect with local emergency numbers. F_sticks all mockin' me. But it's almost satisfying being the only guy in the room who is correct. Hell, even our two heart patients voted for Vonage.)

Anyway, like the true alcoholic I am, (not finished with the 12 steps yet, either!) I've taken it over. Visit and leave me congratulations if you like. I wouldn't blame you.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Local Man In Dispute

Before the bell !!!11oneone!

Zig responds to his hagiography in the comments section:


This bio of me thats about you is incomplete without some other stories...

1. the time you threw a water balloon at a couple of thugs in a monte carlo and we lived to tell the tale only because of my dukes of hazard driving skills.



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He's right. Mudhead had his two-tones to the floor and we were doing 80 mph curves, keeping these overly sensative brutes behind us.

He made several sharp, sudden turns--- into their neighborhood, I thought, not our own. A mistake!

But suddenly we were in Suburban Sprawl, so I knew Mudhead had done right, in that respect at least. (I was naturally skeptical, as I am towards everyone.)

We pulled onto this freshly paved, four lane highway unopen to traffic. Perhaps Mr. Mud theorized that these hoodlums wouldn't break the law but they did and continued in roaring pursuit.

There were trenches along side the road instead of ditches and by this time I thought perhaps we were in actual trouble. And our bodies would be buried in those trenches.

So I told him to cut it out, stop playin' around.

"STF UP, MAN! These guys want to mess us up! You don't get it man, you don't get it!!"

"What? I threw a water balloon at their tire. So what?"

Now it was a drag race and a test of engines rather than driving skills. I climbed in back, I recall, to drink the last of the beer. There were huge concrete lane dividers ahead, but like on another planet, large wedge stones randomly placed, God's work abandoned for the weekend.

Our pursuers were pulling along side us and the passenger was ready to throw a beer bottle at us. (Well, at Mudhead, I mean.) I thought that was not cricket at all. He was half way out the window, just about to crack some skull. (Mudhead's skull, I suppose.)

So, Mudhead threw on the brakes and they shot ahead at about a hundred as we came to a total, suburban style stop, turned around, and proceeded, Sunday drive like, away, to forget all about it, I thought.

I remember that part. Telling him to forget about it. No harm done. Boy those guys were mad, weren't they.

He parked at a K-mart, had me get out, and roughed me up a little.

To business

2. the time you called the cops to report a babbling vagrant, then assumed the role of the babbling vagrant and then opined about the abuse of babbling vagrants at the city jail.

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It seems like it was my day off. (Where was lil marster in his superman suit. And the baby. And their mother, she wouldn't have let me do any of that.)

So, I was Muckraker Journalist. I went without identification, was arrested and thrown naked into a rubber room for 18 hours. Freezing to death and having no facilities. The floor slopped. They put my clothes outside on the floor, at the crack at the bottom of the cell door, so if I'd have relieved myself I'd have been in piss stained clothes in court. (Charged with "public trespassing".)

Finally they let me out to get dressed and wash up, etc. and then it was the longest time, sitting in a holding cell with these poor men who had only stolen some bread to feed their families. We were all chained together, and a deputy asked the guy next to me, a guy from New York named Karl Marx, if he was one of the "lost tribes".

Then I got home and Mudhead shot me with Casey's dart gun. He let me make a sandwich, and I slept for a day until Frae' got home, from where ever she was. I denied everything but she didn't believe me. Then I told the truth and she was of course certain I was lying, then.



Knock out!

3. the time you scavenged 30 spent cases of whip cream cans from my gararge to siphon the dregs and then yet again called the cops to report a flourescent light bulb weilding lunatic on a nitrous binge.

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Actually, the garage needed straightening, was all. Plus I had a new apartment and I don't remember Mudhead objecting to my taking some party favors along. Maybe there would be pie. It was like stocking my own bar. But after the party, there was a week's worth left of this ...what they call "laughing gas".

This was the time of the MOVE incident, where Mayor Goode dropped a bomb (literally) on a Philidelphia neighborhood. As a 21 year old Anarchist, this settled it for me. Cops were bad. Also, in the next town over from here, the previous day, some drunk black man had come out of his house shouting "DO YOUR JOB, COPS!" ---and they did. They all three shot him to death. I don't think he was waving an asagi or anything, maybe a broken bottle. BLAM BLAM BLAM.

The week before, some beautiful young black woman had been shot to death by the cops just blocks away from my house. She'd taken her friend's car without permission, and sadly her friend reported her.

I was taking all this news personally, because I was car-ar-ar-rAZY.

I was manic. Hadn't slept in like ten days, man. My first and only manic episode, twenty years ago. It was also set off when someone from the Kansas City Star called me on the phone and asked if I'd like one of my crank letters to the editor to be published as an article.

That night of my waving the long flourescent light "blub" (as J-Jm called it), I was calmly searched for drugs, put in the back of a cruiser, taken to the mental hospital, dropped off, and I walked home. White privelege, that was.

Took another week to get myself committed. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to convince people you're crazy. They just wave you off and say "You're crazy!"

I muckraked the third floor and got a shot of something that put me straight. I slept three days and woke up surrrounded by flowers, which had been delivered to a woman who'd died the day before...they needed to be kept somewhere.

I thought, some sense of humor someone's got here.

Anyway, memory speaks and that's the way I heeerd it!

Friday, May 12, 2006

I wan, I wax, I don't work since I got my raise

Still no work. I'm starting to get cheerful about it.

Which sounds, zounds! ---human. Even if it does rain everyday and is a bit chilly.

Mornings, I open my eyes and if there's light I'm up, to go sit in the kitchen and say a little prayer and have a holy smoke while the coffee filters.

The Prior will come down to lead us in a remedial N.A. reading. He's rich lately, after landing a roofing job in this still hail damaged, small city. Still behind on rent but he's got gadgets I've never seen before, like a video phone. Now he'll interview me on camera and I have about 10 seconds. What do you think of Vanna, John?

I mumble. Retake. Speak up , you have a strange way of speaking in the morning, Mr. Jackson.

"What do you think of Vanna, John?"

"Oh, Pruf? Ah, she is truly wonderful, Sir. I would put her on a pedestal to have a look up her skirt but I ..." *Beep* Was going to add that of course I would not.

HAW! Good one, John. That's a keeper. I'll send it to her now. She's upstairs you know, just got off work.

"Can I see that?"

"No, "Bob", you can't. You'll make an 18 and 1/2 minute gap or something, if I know my history."

If the sun comes out over the verdant back fourty we shout. It's so rare. Murf comes in from work at 7.

K.B. and the puppy, who is now adopting his characteristics, shuffle in around then, without greetings, or acknowlegment of anyone, to call and register his existence at his probation officer's office.

If his number doesn't come up over the recording, signalling that he needn't come downtown for a U. analysis, he brightens a little. Two fists out, flexed waist high, no thumbs up: sign of it's awright but it's still what it is. We understand.

Moise disappeared for a week. She was back in bed, skipping work, refusing calls. But now she is out of her spiral. The Prior calls her up and puts her on the speaker phone, asking her the most vulgar questions imaginable ('can i have some pussy i know you got some on ya') and she laughs til she complains about her bladder.

"Come on over," the Prior says, "it's time for the meeting."

To our surprise we hear a door open down the hall and then there she is. OH. She and Murf patched it up in time for his birthday, that's good.


The morning readings are quick, and then the Prior is making such an ass of himself I'm considering a phone call to the abbot. ("heyyyy ABBOT!")

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I make coffee-house rounds in the afternoon. Still surprised how I don't know anyone usually. Met a new Character named Josie, who is one of only two people I've witnessed getting sober without starting at "Go". ("Go", that's the third floor.) ("The third floor", that's the psychiatric 72 hours where you suffer a little, and can drink sanka if you can get the tap water hot enough.)

She's a talker, and wears me out. Comedian, though.

She says she can read faces and tell if people are real alcoholics or just faking it.

I was in the middle of the story of my last arrest, a short story, when she started talking to a guy three tables down. She called out "Oh, I'm sorry, I was staring at you , I know, I'm sorry."

Later, she turned back to me and said, "What was I talking about?"

"You can read faces, you say."

"Oh yeah!"

Unfortunately I'd already agreed to go to a meeting with her in two hours and I was stuck.

But usually things go well. I'll read in a coffee house and sometimes talk to a barrista (you know, coffee grinder/grad student) about art and literature. I'm flipping over a Denis Johnson short story in one of the Paris Review anthologies (the anthology is titled "People With Problems").

Johnson first got my attention with "Jesus' Son", a very short book of connected, very short stories, told by the same addict, out of time and sync (the stories and the addict).

You can write that way if you can write like this story he has in the anthology, which is a thoroughly researched, beautifully written, long detailed account of a man in the 1890's clearing forest for the railroad in the Northwest. My god it's beautiful and instructive. About human nature, and about history. He's my new favorite literary artist, this Johnson. I've put away Wodehouse for awhile.

Josie kept trying to find a movie to talk about with me. I hadn't seen a one. I told her before hand, I don't get to the movies (or have them mailed to me DVD).

I remembered some advice from Mudhead. When you have a babbler, just let them run the show, you don't have to say anything. And here he was right. The time passed rather quickly, actually.

Some rough spots, when I'm idle, but I'm realizing this happens to everyone. Grim moods, I mean. There was an hour this week when I got caught in a spiral myself, thinking what do I want? there's nothing I want. In other words, I'd spiraled down to a spiritual void.

Then I think I want attention. But I'm learning that what I need to do is pay attention to someone else. Josie is good for that, actually. Eventually she was sharing some secrets about magic tricks.

I still say, all in all the good life. Grateful to be sober, so grateful...

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Local Man Remembered

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I've variously called him Mudhead, Zigzag, Zigfield, "Pa Kettle". He's the father of eleventeen kids, most of them still under the age of ten, and he's raised them on a farmstead with donkeys and goats. He works like the devil, and is locally famous for leading a couple of specialty bands over the last twenty years.

Had a radio show for a number of years, playing obscure blues, blue hillbilly music, Ukelele Ike-type discoveries.

Goes to school now, finds he can do chinese algebra or something like that, but plans to open a resturarant someday (maybe to put the kids to work?)

See, I moved down here to write his biography.

Instead I got drunk and he had to lead me around for almost a year.

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Ah, that was embarasking. I oughta explain about me someday. Find some venue, hmmm...

We met the day I got fed up with my high school debate team partners, and walked over to our high school's Freak corner. He wouldn't score me any drugs but was amused that I asked, and asked what was I up to anyway, over here.

I was going to skip classes too. Walk down to the mall and buy some music tapes at the Licorice Pudding. In the middle of the school day!

Maybe some Grateful Dead, I said.

"Oh man you can do better than that."

So we walked and he kept asking me about life on the debate team and laughing while I was being unintentionally funny, complaining. He probably supposed I'd be back on the straight and narrow soon, and this was a rare opportunity to interview a nerd. But then I let on more and more about my politics (anarchist) and my interest in scoring some pot, lsd, 'shrooms. I'd been crazy about Sgt. Pepper since I was ten, and now I was what, 17, so it was time for me to take a "trip", don't you know.

On the way back, he'd decided he was the boss of me. I was way wrong about just about everything, but I was wrong in a way that he thought was laugh-out-loud. I remember looking at him and thinking he'd better be respectful.

Just in those couple of hours, this lifelong relation was established. I'd warn him not to insult me, tell him to fuck off; he'd say chill out, or something like that, I forget 1979 slang.

He got me in with the freaks, sort of. I didn't fit, but it didn't matter, they liked him. And we weren't so sure about them for good reason.

He was great on guitar already, and had a well-researched, committed to memory repertoire. Knew more than R.Crumb, I think, while Crumb was still writing that book about the forgotten blues men. But I'd make him sing Neil Young. Also I ignored all his specialty albums to listen to Dylan's "Street Legal", and "The Basement Tapes".

I think our project was to find me a girlfriend. Still is.

Also, to just fuckin' relax, man. What good is this school. So you didn't attend gym class for three years, you won't graduate, hahaha, that's funny if you think about it.

So get a GED, go to community college half a year, and you'll be at the University before your debate team pals.

We hung out at school though, for some reason. The sport. They hired the first professional hall monitors during our years there, and learned to lock the doors when there was a Pep Rally (Nuremberg-like, to us). We'd always get out somehow. Walk through the cafeteria, into the kitchen, jump off the loading dock...

I kept getting kicked out for smoking on campus.

Zigfield and I were on the bus concourse one day, after I'd been at home after a three day suspension. I absently lit up a ciggie.

A substitute teacher came along and said come with me to the office. I said no, I couldn't.

Zigfield stepped back two steps and waited.

The substitute teacher said what do you mean you can't?

I began to negotiate. I told her I'd just been kicked out for smoking and it was too early for me to be kicked out again.

She was stubborn. Then he finally lost his patience and said, look man, either run away or go with her, awright??

So, I decided on the latter, but I wanted to apologize to her first and explain why I wasn't going to come along. Mudhead started doing 180s, looking back, doing 360's, getting exasperated. "Man! One or the other, good god awmighty. GO!"

I decided he was right, and started walking away. And then I kind of picked it up to a jog or a trot, as that seemed more apropos. I don't know. But that incident settled something in his mind about me, I think. I don't know what, because I have never really understood myself.

Then he turned 18, and his family was traditional/sensible and promptly showed him the door. (Shocked the hell out of me. My folks were spoilers.) I remember he slept in my dad's boat for awhile. Maybe just a night. Dad didn't care. They were friends.

I'm not a very good biographer, this does all seem to be about me doesn't it.

We went to the Post Office one day to protest the new law requiring we register for Selective Service. Hooked up with the Catholic Worker anarchists then, and at the same time the State Fair ("Our state fair is a great state fair")was on. He got a little employment watching over the Methodist Church's tent after midnight, and making apple pies.

He and our new friends, including this fellow, my second best friend
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Jerry, the poet, and I would sit outside the tent while he played guitar. Someone was probably passing a joint around.

Then Zigzag moved into one of the CW houses and became a staff member. I went to the University. The CW gave Zig an opportunity to run a homeless shelter here where we are now. That's when he started having kids. And did I like that. I was like Wow.

I moved down here my first time just to marvel at that. A baby (first of the Kettle Kids, born in 1984). I worked a little at the CW, but eventually resigned or was given the boot, to become "Jeeves" at the newly-weds house.

For a few years that's all I did, except for some school and a bookstore job that lasted one summer.

Now he worked all the time, usually as a cook (a great cook) and I drank and read and wrote in spiral notebooks. His first wife (Frae' I call her) and I took long drives, listening to Mozart. We put crystals in the windows so there were rainbows in the living room. (She is still one of my best friends too, neccesarily a little strict with me since, well, she knows me.)

It wasn't right.

They moved to California for awhile and I went back to school again, to write a f'ing novella about our lives here, and about my few months running the shelter house. And my first committment, and just generally, ME.

I couldn't stand that they were gone. When they returned to Ioway, a little girl was expected! Once again, I became Jeeves, and he worked at a downtown Hotel as a Chef. This is when he finally started to lead a band and making money, too. Something like "The Comatose Blues Band".

My drinking started catching up with me again, though. I think he kicked me out. He otter have, if he didn't. But he didn't without feeding me first.

Then I moved to Nashville for four years.
Made infrequent visits while more and more babies came into the world, and the first ones were learning to read, and skate-board, and jump rope.

Lost years, and it was pre-email. We wrote infrequently and talked every couple months while my dad was sick. He moved the clan to a farm house. There was a new band, something crawfish.

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unknown photographer



That's Ma Kettle, who tricked me and got me committed last summer and saved my life.

He and the first-born (21 years old now!) came and saved all my things from being put on the street. For months, everything I owned was stored at his and Renee's house. Nothing was asked of me for this.

So, I'm thinking of my original project. Because this is not his bio, and no eulogy (he's just asleep, in fact. Renee wrote me.) Just a sketch, this unemployed weekday.
I think we're meeting at a coffee house this afternoon maybe. Catch up.

Anyway, I just like to boast about having such cool friends, you know...

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

A week of Saturdays

It was John Updike who wrote a novel, "A Month Of Sundays", which sat on my parents' shelves for years. And was I ever going to pick up a book with a title like that?

I don't know about you, but I always found the seventh day to be depressing, vexatious, and mostly cloudy.

Also it reached. It could spoil a late Saturday night, it anticipated dreadful school Monday. Dad-gone was in charge of the light evening meal: Hotdogs cooked on a coat hanger in the fireplace, and a vanilla malt. Well meaning, but then I was always a little green just as Mutual Of Omaha's Wild Kingdom was starting.

Then Walt Disney Presents ought to have always been good, but look, it was Sunday night and you were going to have to get up for school the next day. I must have hated school more than anyone. I hated Sundays well into my 40's.

Anyway, I wouldn't pick up "A Month Of Sundays", even though I knew it was about a minister struggling over an adulterous affair. That was too bad, because years later I thoroughly enjoyed Updike's Rabbit series. The Great Writer wasn't so bad after all.

A week of Saturdays: I mean that I am not working this week, except for two afternoons. The signs of instability may mirror a work spree. Too much hate then, now maybe too much love. Honking at man in wheelchair : ...neh, I can't think of the flipside for that. Except, I wrote a love letter to the woman I never mention here, whose comb I stole.

Work : Surf. About sums it up. And more meetings.

We have a new puppy. He belongs to K.B., who feeds and waters her, but Wendy-O visits us all whenever she's got a second. She races down the hall and scratches at doors. (It's funny, you just know who it is.) Open up and she jumps in your lap and wants to french. Strumpet.

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Sunday, May 07, 2006

The Approaching Crisis

This morning, President Prior was in the basement kitchenette with his camera. I'd just rolled out of bed, stepping in here for my first cup of joe.

He said, "Stand still, H.R. 'Bob'."

Naturally I looked around for a sign to put around my neck. I am the president's chief of staff, and like to make sure I get things right.

"No, 'Bob', just as you are, please. But one question first, and I want you to answer without taking a moment to think. I mean answer as quickly as this shutter opens and closes."

"Ha, ha!" I laughed. "Ha! Hee!"

(He knows and he's gone around the bend!)

"Are you ready?"

"Yes Sir."

More like ready or not.

This is going to be about his friend whom I call "Pruf", the cute little Woman of Law Enforcement he sees, whom I'm determined to put up on a pedestal if nothing more.


"Ok, Bob." He readied the camera. "Bob, did you eat the last banana?" (Instataneous *click*)


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With the trapped up air either swallowed or escaping my lungs I said, "They are my bananas, sir."

"I'm aware of that, Bob. I was wondering if there were any more and if I could have one.

I said help yourself, big guy. Up on top the fridge.

The President said, "By the way, I hear that you buy them just to create an impression at the grocery store. Is that right? You want the women to see you buying something healthy and you use the bananas to cover up the Jimmy Dean and Mac and Cheese and frozen pizzas."

I allowed that this was true. Sometimes I think it's sexier to fill a clear plastic sack with oranges, but there is a better chance I might actually eat a banana because I hate peeling oranges.

"Bully for you! Bully. Bully...Sit down and have some joe with me, why don't you. We need to discuss some things before tomorrow's meeting..."

"I have to go to work, Mr. President. I can tell you the men aren't going to approve of a two hundred dollar gas powered weed eater for the house. Not as of last night..."

"Work? You're going to...Who are you working for, 'Bob'?"

His hands were free now and he crooked his fingers around "Bob", as usual.
___________
Anyway, it seemed like a close call, although I'm not really guilty of anything yet except for a dozen flattering emails to this future stewardess of high finance (Pruf is studying International Business).

It's not a part of the program, I know. But you have no idea what this woman does for me. I could almost say I'm powerless and that my life is unmanagable.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Some May Days Pay

I'll put it to you gently: it was a placid payday of untroubled tranquility. Up in the still noon-blue skies, a cloud in a shape like this: $

You could just make it out. I walked around downtown eating from a small sack of marshmallows, and I was wearing my shades. I'd forgotten all about the little spongey capsules in my ears, from the factory, which had gently expanded to the shape of my ear canals.

I could hear myself and my only thoughts were now and then that I wasn't thinking about much. And then the thought of how these things stick out of my ears a bit and make me look like I'm owned, or like I'm an android prototype. I took 'em out, that was all right then too.

Car was nice and warm. I glided into the telephone wire streets to go pick up the cash (the 'flow' if you will) and afterwards decided to stop at the Salvation Army. I was alone, and usually prefer to have a friend with me there, but they were all still at work in their offices, factories, etc. Oh well. *shrug*

I had my camera, I forgot and then remembered (credit J-JM for that Gertrude Steinish phrase, long ago.)

Is this not a sad, dull picture?
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A child would brighten up, approaching. Maybe.
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Again, maybe.
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I asked to take pictures inside, and told the British clerk that I'd be sure not to take pictures of any people.

He asked for what purpose?

I said, for myself. A hobby.

He said he'd have to call the office. He dialed the phone and as it was ringing, handed it to me. I looked at him, trying to convey something like "I've never seen one of these, am I supposed to talk into it?"

There was no answer and I handed it back to him. "Thanks, anyway".

I began to 'shop' but the place is almost vacant of goods these days.

He came back with the President of Salvation Army on the line. Maybe in New York City, I don't know. A woman I was tempted to address as "sister". She asked me why I wanted to take pictures and again I said, simply for myself, as a hobby. I told her that I'd be sure not to take pictures of any people.

She said, "Ok, but please don't take pictures of any people. That may make them uncomfortable."

"Thank you ma'am."

"You're welcome!"

"Shall I hand you back over to the clerk,then?" I asked, suddenly and involuntarily adopting a London Eastside accent.

"Oh. Yes, please."

Then I found these!


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These are from the series of history books I poured over from third grade to whenever I started using their inside covers to clean out stems and seeds. Ahhh, father in heaven! Three of my books! 50 cents a piece!

They were published in 1962. For crying out loud, Grandmother Bess bought them when I was a year old. I guess maybe they were my brother David's then, but I was the one who looked at them all day for years. (And I was the one who lost them in a basement storage fiasco slo mo.)

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I don't know. I doubt donations are down but it can look like it in some corners. Last year an Eclipse staff member, myself, and seven housemates made a midnight delivery of goods (sacks of donated clothes) because we knew in the daytime they'd turn us away.

A shortage of picture frames, then.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Prosperity Secured

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Brother Chance had his first day at work today, and then came home with this much larger television, to play his (really cool, i got to say) video-games. The boxing match has a narration and at first I really thought he had a prize fight playing on ESPN or something. (Well, but there's no crowd, it's like they're fighting in the gym!)

Today I was standing looking through the huge windows into the press room, wondering what had gone wrong, that they had stopped running the afternoon paper, and had been down an hour.

Chance came out and saw me there. Walked up, wiping his hands on his now rainbow colored towel.

"We were changing this ink roller and some little pin got lost. No one could find it. We searched for the longest time and it turned out to have gone down this grill into the floor. But it was like, around the corner and over a 15 foot tall machine, too, so it was like a million dollar shot, no one could believe it ended up down there.

"While they were searching for it they asked me if I'd put it in my pocket and I was like, NOOO. And I checked my pocket just in case and thank god...It wasn't there."

I thought they'd stopped the press because of an earthquake near Fiji. Around noon today there was some question whether New Zealand was going to get hit by a tidal wave.

So, a new TV! I worried for a second, is he going to watch the History Channel with the sound at ear splitting levels? But he uses the captions, thank goodness.

Once we're better pals I'm going to start bugging his good looking seester (who looks like Tracey Nelson) to bug him to get those hearing aids.

All in all, such a nice day. Thanks to you all who have written emails and left comments.

Just to clear things up, we turn to the Times!

A New York Times article reports about Oxford Houses:



"There are at least 40 sober houses in Connecticut (an exact count is impossible because many exist in obscurity). Some are sponsored by religious institutions, some are independent, but more than half are affiliated with Oxford House Inc., a national organization that promotes recovery through mutual support among residents of sober houses and abstention from the temptations that got them in trouble in the first place, hence the preference for single family houses outside of urban areas.

Each unsupervised house is democratically run and self-supporting, with residents paying rent and doing all maintenance on their homes. "


I've included the link in my sidebar. There is also a link to Oxfordhouse.org I've somehow neglected to include in all this time, since I converted "Often And Then Again" into a Recovery site... (yikes, you shoulda seen it before!)

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

And in this corner...

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I don't know much about Chance yet, except he's very easy going, sometimes talkative in a happy/sharing way like kids have at camp and, unfortunately, he's quite deaf, to the point of reading lips. Hearing aids will help, when he cares to get some. Hopefully that will be soon, since he isn't able to follow us in our weekly house meetings.

Chance likes history (reads my old 1940's Life magazines), and then the rest of the stuff normal guys do, like cars and video games. He was a simple beer-hound like myself, I believe.

He must be ten years younger than me at least since he knows video games. He says this is an X-box (?). He bought it today, and has to play it on my little tv. Says, "Hey, this isn't so bad, you get used to it." He's used to big screens.

Chance was at Daybreak during my last three weeks while I was under house arrest, carrying on with Dora (my stalker now), stoned on Seroquil, etc. I had a list of misdeamors a mile long, plus one day I was accused of trying to bribe a staff member (a slow girl who couldn't recognize an absurd, off hand joke).

Anyway, he remembers me, especially when they locked me out on that snowy day in December. It scared him, he says. He figured he'd better watch his step, as he watched me standing in the yard waiting for my things. (They wouldn't give me my things though, except for my sack full of pharmacueticals and two envelopes of cash, I'd had in their safe. I had to call the cops to get them to give me my clothes. Crazy institutional crazies...)

He told me the other day I looked so calm, out there. But see, I already had my spot here at Oxford. I would have already moved, but Daybreak officially kicked me out the week before, and I'd appealled the decision to some state agency (a fax forbidding them to put me out arrived at 5 p.m. Friday, in the nick of time). So I'd stayed, I explained to Chance now, just to be a prick, I guess. Plus, Oxford was a little scary to think about, and Daybreak was "co-ed" and comfortably entertaining. Especially after I'd foiled them. Heh.

My teenage months of sobriety. Before I got a sponsor even. Talking to Chance I get the idea that I was infamous for a few weeks. Perhaps....mmmmmm....a legend. For a few weeks.

OH, another thing. Chance has just started at my place of work, as a machine operator. He'll be in the press room, while I'm in the bindery. This is all a happy coincidence.

The sound effects and the narratives of this X-box, though. Can he hear them? They're going to bug me once my curiosity passes. Hm. Well, my patience needs some practice I think, since it's so rarely needed. (really---not many small irritations in my life)
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In other news, today for some reason I was about to call in sick, but the brethren and Moise all started mocking and shouting and I went what the hell all right, I'd just feel guilty sitting here all day anyway. So I went, and it turned out to be the day of my six month review, and I got a pretty nice hourly raise.

Still waiting on word from the paper's I.T. department. ...

Thanks for visiting! Have a good day and a pleasent tomorrow.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Mayday ---to celebrate

May and June are my favorite months. Mayday is possibly my favorite holiday. To me it's a happier Valentines Day: all about delivering dixie cups (with pipe-cleaner handles) full of candy and little hand-picked violets to your grade school sweethearts.

And it's just the kick off of my game, you know? To this day.

No time to scribe tonight. I did take some pictures downtown today and posted them with some snarky commentary here, if you like. It was fun, but a tad political, as Mayday is liable to be sometimes.

Thanks for dropping by.