Tuesday, August 28, 2012

A Gust of August

Title: In the now…and then 8.9-22/2012: better title perhaps? : August & Anything After




8.9.2012 : A Thousand Churches



AM: “In the now”, good title but somewhat inapplicable as the first impulse I had this morning was to turn on the radio. Something I don’t normally do; I had a rationalization all ready to go per news and my being entirely out of the loop however the tuner wasn’t tuned to that station but to a music station which was playing and tuned to my inner channel of 1989.



Music is like tree rings the where, the when, the who and the feeling. The song originally made me happy because it was so the feeling…and then much later the song felt sad. The music hadn’t changed but my relationship with it had, sometimes a person can - well not be summed up in a song but is associated with? Though that seems rather a dry term.



I didn’t tear up. Didn’t go pure nostalgia. Didn’t get angry - and for a few years I would be in: damn-the-gods mode if ever I heard a bit of that song which I really adored but couldn’t bear hearing anymore.



What was the song?



Cameron’s Crowe’s first film, Mr. “I’m going to be a professional kick boxer” stands in the rain holding a boom box over his head…



Yep.



Oh well.



Also at that same physical station is Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. It was the first book on CD that I listened to that I hadn’t read before an MVA became a TBI at which I forgot every book I ever read. And there’s a whole thing I could write abt media/medium as a tool for TBI recovery and branching potentials based on the widely known media/medium fact that the simple act of reading a movie you‘ve seen or vice versa or CD creates wider neurological branching... I know some facts, bullet points, my own history with it but I don’t much feel like writing that because I screwed something up. Years ago- okay at the crash site there was a thing, then a reoccurring anomaly, then a series of unfortunate incidences all of which added up to a primary directive/goal = potentially lost.



I just couldn’t have that.



So I set up a blogspot. At one time google had an option and I really - I know I chose the unsearchable option. I may have changed that at some point or the company may changed things but I remember being like: no can not have this with…I just figured since it was named after a .com it would appear on very specific radar. Probably’s even a service or app for such things.



The blog comes up in searches. What I told myself was that it wasn’t so bad. Someone would actually have to search it specifically and therefore not a big deal. But I know I set to unsearcachable- I thought I had- I know I did. Did I reverse that for some crap reason?



Took a look the control panel yesterday and the whole thing has me a bit nauseous because its worse than the mail thing. Which at the time I really didn’t think would be any kind of a big deal- turn(s/ed) out I took the privacy oath of the US Postal service much more seriously than the US Postal Service.



But this blog thing is like so much worse. 500 hits on one. 400 hits on the other. Really they could mostly be “next blog” hit, I’m sure lots of people do that - I’ve done that. But the blogs I branched off of those blogs for an alternative behavioral thing with something in which I was familiar before the TBI and used /utilized…



Anyway



Sooo



Sorry - didn’t mean for that to happen and I thought I’d cleared up the possibility of it happening at like 45 or so hits. I thought it was off the radar. But it wasn’t. It’s not. As I sit here at home typing its not.



Ugghhh



I tried importing the content at one point but I had technical problems with that. I didn’t want to lose my content because in part it is a record of me and I tend to remember anything better if- so it couldn’t be erased or else I’d lose everything like I did when my sister - well. Anyway. I just figured he’d nuke it- had every right to and the purpose was simply make sure that he knows.



I did intend to - what ?



Okay:



1) Make sure his narrative = fully informed enough that whatever he told himself where I was concerned in the narrative of his life was made accurate and certainly more informed.



2) Leave an open door. (I’m not proud of it but it’s the truth)



3)Make a place where I can/could neurologically branch off of because. You know I can’t even type it. My hands wind up going to the air like an Italian because it pisses me off. I’m the one that did this. I’m the one who made this batch of conduits but at the same time if I hadn‘t have had them- that’s been true even the last couple of years.



I kept writing him. Never to my knowledge mailed one letter but I wrote the guy for? A few years, then ten, fifteen. I never mailed them- because why. He became like a variant of ‘Dear Diary‘. And there really weren’t that many but in my journals or on loose leaf there’s occasionally a letter I had nowhere to send? Well - why bother. When you love someone who doesn’t love you back there’s no need for a friggin’ envelope - much less a stamp.



Presently though



I’m little confounded.



But I know how this goes. I know how this goes. Goes the same way every single time- every time. I’m surprised a meteor hasn’t landed in the front lawn which turns out not to be a meteor but an alien spaceship…ugh.



Must do yoga now. And lots of it. Must refocus because its not as if anything on the internet is actually even necessarily true- all manner and things can be hijacked, usurped- entire identities. Plus what is the internet but interactive television? I’ve had whole conversations alter/ed via FB- edited- moved elsewhere, etc. I mean what I post is that actually what someone else winds up reading? I’d have to trust google to be all do no evil and regardless of that the Hindus say this all an illusion anyway which means hypothetically I could be dead in a box somewhere and this is purgatory. Or it was always Limbo- whose to say one doesn’t get regularly fugue stated there.



New born. Really? Seems more like newly re-fugue stated with a total paralysis chaser.



What blows about all this - I’d have been in a fugue state if not for- now what “Him”. I mean did he really have anything to do with it? I love/d him that doesn’t have anything to do with him- that’s me I love/d him therefore I get to keep that, its mine. Which is not to say he is mine- the love I have for him that is mine. 1 does not = the other. I can see how really appealing it could be being loved by someone for 20+ years but that appeal wouldn’t and doesn’t have anything to do with me.





Why did there have to be Peter Gabriel this morning- Why?



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I’d have been in a lot of trouble without that batch conduits. Even in the past few years if I hadn’t have had that true north within myself I’d be in a level of trouble someone somewhere is more than happy to dream up for me but because I loved long & for over half my life- that saved me and still does sometimes. And that’s the truth- that is what I know to be true.



PM: Still confounded. Threw in some U2, music is like tree rings because I remember the following: being in total and complete denial per the other person’s narrative was and is when I remember first hearing “advertising in the sky for people like us”.



That cloud - not cloud that strange series of dashes and two circles within a circle that for some reason acted as a prompt on me to run a search one Easter Weekend.



I felt so certain, so sure, so completely confident and filled with belief. I remember how that felt- and how it felt to lose that. Broke my heart like I didn’t know it could be broken and some part of me hasn’t been the same since.



So there it is.



8.20.2012 To/2 b(e) seen or Not To Be Seen To be seen/scene, to be found or not to be found? And finally to 2 b scene of found.



Or there it was.



I’ll probably always be confounded to one degree or another where he’s concerned.



I spend maybe 2-3 hours a week on the internet which I realize probably sounds odd since many people appear to live there. So I tended to that item that is still see- was a searchable term.



Took them both off searchable though I’ll probably do an edit because the truth is I don’t know that the one thing I knew I had to do- communicate after the car crash - I still don’t know if that message got through. It was also one of the things I knew needed being said before the millennium turned- and I let it turn without that happening.



Maybe the truth is that once someone’s gone - any and every opportunity to say anything that wasn’t said is gone with them. Maybe the internet is just a giant customized lie…well I think I know how to set things so that if the message never got through it might, someday- through someone. Maybe.



8.21.2012 Life and other Impossibilities (and/or i m possibilities)



A philosophy professor I had once posed a question: What if you were in a box, had everything you needed but none of it was real?



Argue for and/or against leaving the box.



Outside the box everything will be real-



however outside the box you may not have everything you need…









I argued for leaving the box - because if its not real- it’s not everything you need. I argued we need real.



What are these little glowing boxes and screens? Are they real?



“With technology anything is possible”; some would say that’s fantastic and in some ways it would be but also the potentials run both ways - through the entire range of the spectrum and what in all of that is real?



How we feel. What I felt yesterday as I switched the searchable option was a pain, profound sadness.



“Everybody knows a John Mayo,” I said once- because everybody does. They know at least one - sometimes more than one. Of course its simply not fair to have someone search him and find an old message and/or messages from me-



I truly thought that site had been unsearchable for years now, was shocked to see otherwise. I can flip the equation- but only from this point in time. It is and was important enough to me that the narrative be amended that it simply be out there. And the truth is there may be no amending that takes place - the information may be or have been discarded, entirely his right.



Of course the downside of the equation is that the man did not and does think well of me and can ammunition anyone who comes a knockin‘ - he has. That‘s been confirmed more than once. Nothing I can do about that. That just is. Pretty big downside but so be it as my first name and I are in the process of parting company anyway.



I was asked recently on and from one of these glowing screens “Don’t you have any friends?”



After having lost my memory and gotten it back again I can honestly say I don’t know that I ever had any, when I did they were few and far between. Of course I had so many secrets- and too I was so often unwilling or unable to - well: me, me, me, me.



Good lesson though recently as there is another record that needs leaving. Search me you’ll find a guy named John- be the same for my mother. Search her and anyone, generations from now? Will find who and what another man named John really was. There will be, like my high school newspaper, a great deal between the lines but there always is isn’t there?



In closing this loopy month known as August I had something quite odd happen with and per my computer last night. No wireless available as turned off that switch ages ago. No internet as twenty dollars a month is a lot in my world. But yet a box appeared that Microsoftn’hard had updates for system, that it was time. I clicked yes or what have you because well- good luck with that my computer et all. Files downloaded anyway? Or so a little screen on my screen said.



The only thing is that would be impossible- except there it was.



8.22.2012 Implausible physics and other Velcro-able notions



So how long does it take an option like “unsearchable” to become that? Will I have to delete the blog itself to do that? because so far it still comes up.



Also what comes up per my own name on image searches is a sculpture by Voss. I can’t argue against the apropos of it - of course that was true per professor Tucker as well.



Let’s say time loops.

Let’s say those loops overlap like in a Wrinkle in Time and that they layer on top of each other?

Or that fractals have a mirroring quality- or could?



All I know is I heard a media story (T or F) not long ago saying that NASA had been dismantled - a few weeks later and NASA’s on Mars. Could and can time overlap? Are they simply rooms one could and can enter and exit?



I don’t know.



The one thing I know for certain at this juncture of my life is: I don’t know anything for sure. What I do know is when I see and saw the symbol for infinity it remind(s/ed) me of rosette- because that’s how they start: two petals. If you draw it never breaking the line but stacking them like books is there one point in which they all cross and that junct(ion/ure) becomes a singularity? Or is that singularity an encapsulation of an endless staircase and every petal is thus a room. Looking much like the petal to the left or the right or above or below- but not exactly, not precisely the same?



Infinity, a simple- simple idea but there’s just so much in it…and now I must make like a starfish and regrow some limbs.



The worst part about all this: I’ve missed the same person for over twenty years. I don’t expect to ever see him in person again and, the personal challenge for me is, I have to accept his narrative of me and it is not a pleasant narrative.



I have to accept it to some meaningful degree though. I have to find some way to integrate that with my own. A shared narrative? No- but something that’ll keep me as far, far away to non-existent per his realm as possible. I just plain haven’t figured out how to do that yet? Haven’t allowed myself to let it in? I know what that’ll take- the question is whether he might be willing to do it or not.



I’d have to go with not.



The last few months have definitely been educational per timing- just how ‘when’ and the sequencing influences personal perception and the perceived narrative. On the upside where he’s concerned I’ve grown and grow more and more accustomed to it only ever being clouds in my coffee. So maybe I just need to stick with that- enough examples stack up and that should do it.



On the other hand- could just call him- he’ll say something awful to hear, but obviously necessary maybe. I’ll say thank u. And possibly call back when and if I need another dosing. What’s a vaccination and inoculation except a sharp unpleasantness that the body adjusts to, takes in and eventually the disease is the cure.



It is not fair on my part to ask that. Its just not and its not really a realistic treatment plan either. Gonna have to find one though.



Check the self help books? They don’t really have anything that covers this, not really.



You know it doesn’t help that random people show up and say things like “If I were you I’d sell everything and move to Portland”. At such I just kinda’ sit there like “really?- yeah. Ah huh. Glad to know someone- somewhere hasn’t lost their utterly Machiavellian sense of humor”. Actually I’m not glad- I could do with the ringmaster losing that particular quality- permanently.





8.23.2012 This Gander-ing Goose



The geese had left the north for the summer? Naw but why do people say flew south for the winter when in fact the geese flock that calls part of Citadel Mall its habitat have returned following the very few months they head north for cooler temperatures.



I almost drove into five of them recently. They crossed the street in flight while the rest of the flock was waiting and watching within interesting proximity to the bus stop.



Today the geese took a sojourn around the parking lot of Sears; I adore them. They do need some “Caution: Geese Crossing” signs as I personally feel the geese have general right of way and hope SCDNR wont do anything grotesque like relocate them.



The flock’s bigger than last year, might have picked up a pair or two during the summer commute.



The thing about 2-4 hours of yoga a day is it has highlighted how much physical therapy I needed after the crash- as opposed to how much I got. As well as highlighting the myth of insurance generally. My car insurance company did precisely nothing for me and if I were to receive a wild card piece of mail I’d want one for a full MRI, and someone who knows how to read them. Whatever happened to spine got missed, severely or the full picture was too complicated and complex for anyone who didn‘t do so great on their MCATs. The more cognitive function I get back, the more I can see all the physical presentations and just how crappy the medical care I‘ve received has and had been.



There really should be special insurance coverage for those visiting, going to college or living south of the Mason Dixon line- be it full time or otherwise.



There’s a special travelers insurance one can get for traveling to less medically adept countries. Currently it sonly marketed to those who journey to the third world or go way out into the middle of nowhere for extreme adventurer vacations. From what I’ve encountered here that same insurance, the “we will fly you out and get you to serious medical care” insurance should be marketed and made available to anyone living in south of about Maryland and Colorado.



Saw “The Artist” recently, that sound when scene enters the picture- that’s how it was, that is how sound became- that drastic a sensory change.



I mean whoever heard of it being easier to do anything with your eyes closed because the visual information + the task = so challenging that just and simply having your eyes closed for rotations of 2-3 seconds- open eyes and check - close eyes for 2-3 seconds. I mean that makes anything so much easier- wish I’d discovered it years ago…of course would’ve fallen on ass per the dizziness…and the lack of enough P.T..



So I give the geese right of way and am ever pleased as they seem to be learning how to walk and fly among the humans and their smelly loud metal things. I relate to their learning curve a bit as they too are not quite strangers, but not quite residents, in this strange land.



…plus I have soft spot for the geese because they remind me of some fish. Not real fish of course- but the kind of fish that live on the internet. See supposedly there’s a flock of fish, okay a school steelheads hanging out in a bar on the other coast. I see the geese and part of me remembers a line, a quote- a favorite line: If a fish and bird fell in love where would they live Signore?



Inadvisably sent a text today, was a pest somewhere to someone. Actually more than one someone- several.



I wonder just how many times I would have dial the same number to actually remember it?



Frightening.



8.27.2012: The Wagon Wheels



I feel off the wagon?



No, not really as I quit my one cigarette a day habit. You wouldn’t think that would be hard. Is though- easier though I think with just the one.



Weird little icon just showed up. No idea how it got there. Scrolls quicker which is nice. Four arrows and a circle in the middle. Hmm.



Anyway- so I didn ‘t so much fall off a wagon- though I did have parmesan, cheese- cow cheese.



Cullum’s Catching Tales is in the CD player- it’s a time capsule. See that’s not the wagon I fell off of either but the lie I allowed myself to believe? Dangerous. The CD came out in ‘06.



Except that’s not why I fell off the wagon either though I suppose it is; music really is a time capsule.



Two problems 1 which I set up as being a problem, technically back in 1990z. So the 8, infinity turned to a ninety degree angle like a console lever. So that’s just bad - that it’d have wagon issues now was just predictable? Certainly. Would have been nice for me though if I could have resisted the prompt/s.



The other problem: Mayan calendar. I didn’t come up with that. Its like the 1999 thing- end of the world, whats important. Who is or was important. Missed the boat in 99. See I had this personal thing I felt was important- ostensibly the world didn’t end so no biggie. However as I was asleep at the time how would I know whether the world ended or not?



But I’m off point “an innocent guy” Jaime just crooned. Would have preferred the piano on this track- not really one for keyboards…despite all the typing.



I can’t stay in love with this guy and be okay. I have to not love him anymore. I suppose he’s been trying to help me with that all along- see thats what sucks I don’t even love him I love some idea of him that he’s not which means I never really loved him the first place. Except I’m really difficult to convince on that. He’s tried but I do know me- and I know this medium. Everything is an illusion but more so in these little screens.



The problem with loving someone for over half your life is I made him, someone who doesn’t technically exist though that hasn’t protected him from mail, email, texts etc.. This ‘guy who is’ in a way winds up getting all that belongs to a ‘guy who isn’t’ because if the ‘guy who is’ were the ‘guy who isn’t’ then …



Either way, truth or lie, the ‘guy who is’ - the ‘guy who isn’t‘- the innocent guy is part of the fabric of who I am. He’s so much like my godfather its just really unfortunate, which makes him not all that innocent (though I freely admit he more than deserves to never hear from me again).



But the godfather that’s part of how all this happened in the first place. After I came back to Charleston to ditch the house I was attacked by a guy who weighed in 350 and still needed a butcher knife…anyway to godfather John that called for a joke. “Where was the dog?”



Hahaha.



I’d left her/the dog behind because I was going to return to Washington which meant I’d have to get used to being without Sam/the dog as godfather John had lied and she/the dog wasn’t at all welcome.



What kind of a lunatic can’t tell the truth about whether or not they like dogs? Its like lying about your favorite color.!.?.



Just got a voicemail, and two missed calls- apparently my phone doesn’t ring. I miss those big black heavy Ma’ Bell telephones with the rotary dials. Sundance was carrying some vintage models from Europe and I wish… I had ….just couldn’t rationalize $350 dollars on a phone. Now it strikes me as an investment.



Tomorrow I’ll be finding out if I’m going to lose a tooth. If the rich suburb urban naturally straight and perfect teeth lest one cavity look will too be a memory. Tomorrow I find out if my present station in life, in the scheme of this and these machines and systems will be taking that tooth as well.



After the whole attacked with a butcher knife thing a woman said, a woman who was supposedly my friend ? liked me ? ..but I never really ‘got’ that I don’t pick friends - I pick people who will hurt me. Maybe they tend/ed to pick me a bit too. This woman said “You’re lucky he didn’t cut your face- you’re so vain”.



A kid in the 8th grade once sang that Carly Simon song to me, accusatorily. Thing is I Never thought I was much to look at- not comparatively. Occasionally someone would look at me like I was and that was nice. I had some technical merit: high cheekbones, decent skin, well proportioned figure but not pretty. A bit unusual looking but not pretty- could never understand where people would get the vain from. I’d look around any room and see and know I wasn’t as good looking as most of the girls- I was at my best in the middle. I knew that. How is it vain to just be in the middle? To like that at least you’re in the middle- that’s vanity? That seems a pretty weird scale.



The tooth and teeth thing is hard but its not vanity concerns. Teeth are like the condition of one’s shoes, the material and cut of one’s clothing. Teeth are how one is sized up, judged, what category they’re put into and in that what options they’re afforded- what rooms they are and are not truly welcome in. What conclusions are drawn as to education and class, etc..I learned about some of the etc. while I was homeless.



A woman’s insurance had lapsed on her car- still had the tags, still drove it but wound up spending a night in jail. Later the judge admonished the officers saying how - their approach per this woman and her battered car looked more like harassment. They picked her out because she was poor. If she’d been driving a relatively new or in good condition Benz or even a Honda would she have spent the night in jail for a tail light that didn’t work (though it may have been failing to signal as she turned into the Piggly Wiggly. Can’t remember which. Thus the discovery of lapsed insurance. But if a nice new Honda or a decent old Benz had a tail light that didn’t work or hadn’t signaled would they have spent the night in jail?



But back to the 8, I’m on the eight while in the Mayan calendar year of an apocalypse- and I fell off a sort of a wagon this month. Coincidences- not that anything ever seems at all coincidental anymore, programmed more like.



So I’m on the 8 in the year of the 12 while the year of the six is in the CD player. My voter registration card has 666 as the final digits. I hate that- creeps me out. It seems that number should be like 13 per elevators- ya’ just don’t do it. I sincerely doubt credit card companies ever issue cards with 666 on them or phone companies assign 666 numbers. I doubt any zip code has that three number sequence in it. Its just mean.



I had a plan. I always have a plan. They never work. Other people have plans, can make them - those plans are allowed to succeed. Not my plans. I just didn’t want to lose any college credit hours- that’s all, that’s the only reason I’m here. The only thing that works so far is anything I come up per self treating and developing systems to deal with the brain injury. That and yoga- that’s all that works. Anything and anyone else just winds up being a labyrinth of rabbit holes and in those rabbit holes there‘s crap like 666 or some form of bullshit.



The thing that everyone gets wrong about hell is that they tell you: you are now in hell. “The world is an illusion”. That’s code for the world is a lie. Who’s the liar? Who rules the realm of lies?



I was born there? Naw- I died. My memory was stripped and I was told this is the world, this place is real- but its not and neither are an apparently high proportion of the people.



“All the world is a stage and we are merely players.” A few years ago I was at World Market and saw a little girl looking at herself in the mirror. She began making faces, producing the look and appearance of an emotion, then another emotion, then another, then another.



Very disturbing.



Its only in the last few years that I’ve come to see and know that is probably what people do 90+ percent of the time. Mimics, puppets pulling their own strings. Pinocchios who figure if they just act as if they care, sound as if they really mean it- why its almost the same as actually giving a shit. A man suggested to me years ago that I just sit back and watch for awhile, don’t interact- just watch. I’ve done that the last few years: it has been informative.



I’ve lived “All At Sea” for several years now. When I first heard that song, “All At Sea” by Jaime Cullum, I thought I was living at sea a bit, but I wasn’t. I had people around me I cared about who I believed felt the affection for me I felt for them. It is the difficult thing about the south, affection is faked so well here. As well as welcome and courtesy. See I always believed it all but the truth is I’m just an illiterate Yankee. I don’t speak the language, I don’t understand them and I never did. Only recently did I realize they do sarcasm down here its just they do it in a non-Yankee and non-Midwestern way. Its very subtle because you really can’t read it in the inflection unless you know a person‘s voice extremely well. Sarcasm done south- you have to stop and replay and then you see it because the scene as a whole must be taken in because they won‘t tell you clearly via inflection. Like last week a man laughed and said “call me anytime” as he hurried to get off the phone.



Its very confusing down here.



Like my bathroom. The rental company said they’d replace the vanity because its rusting and has smelly buckled laminate, rust, warping rotted wood. And then when they came to do the work they replaced the mirror, the vanity mirror. The mirror I had was fine. It worked. Was useful I could hang my blowdryer from it and it closed so they took that mirror away. Replaced the mirror that worked and was in good condition with a cheap mirror that won’t close and doesn’t work. Then they didn’t do the finishing work in the wall, But what they’d said is they were going to replace the vanity. So they didn’t replace the rotten rusting vanity thing but did replace the working fine and in good condition mirror above the vanity.



I hate it here.



And every day I struggle with that now.



I struggle with being so dumb- so fucking naive as to even be here in the first place.



That’s how I fell off the wagon, that’s how I fall off the wagon. Lie or set people up- that is 95% of the world- at least that‘s how it is in the “Holy City“ maybe its not as bad in places who don‘t micro brew that level of bullshit.



I got the math wrong, have had the math wrong until very recently because I didn’t really see the world, the people, the systems. I thought it was mostly good people but its not- truth is when you meet one of those it’s a rarity. And when most of the world meets a good person they’re figuring out how to cut their heart out, how best to destroy them. (I define good as someone who is not looking to play or otherwise utilize you- someone who who deals from the top of the deck and not the bottom- someone who isn’t permanently poker facing you until they get the satisfaction of ripping your heart out or confusing you like a confundus curser and then sitting back and enjoying their handy work. Good people don’t enjoy causing pain, confusion, embarrassment, etc, etc.. Evil people however get a little thrill out of it- makes ‘em feel more powerful than. That right there is pretty much their entire thing.)



I prefer the company of trees now. And moss and the sound of crickets, bird chatter. The spongey bits of grass - I get a truly bizarre and off the scale level of pleasure of that. But of course I can feel it now- and that’s a big deal. Not just that there is a surface there. Fact is I think the spongey grass would have been scary for me before I wouldn’t have felt it (prior post/s). The really spongey ground is my latest thing- the big thrill. I realize would and do find that pathetic. Just as I find it beyond pathetic that the smell of leaves or the feel of spongy grass isn’t a thrill. Dogs and animals generally are much smarter about what exactly the good stuff is. Sam’s vet always found it weird that Sam would spend the entire day outside- where else would she want to be? Around metal, plastic and concrete listening to human chatter?



Once upon a time I was naive, still am but misanthrope-ism is helping to keep the naive in check a bit. Humans are an almost entirely insane and evil species.



This last year at Spoleto a woman who likes using aeronautical and sea charts in her work said two of what I found very odd things:



1) “I was worried about you- afraid you’d go to your car and down a bottle of wine”. She and most of the artists were drinking and though I asked a police officer he had no idea what the open container law was in Marion Square. Probably would remember just fine depending on who was passing around the wine bottle though.



But the quote in this small town was weird because I don’t drink. I suppose that’s the lie everybody kept trading in though “oh no she doesn’t have a brain injury- no she can’t be dizzy and off balance and unable to function - naw that’s her fault. She must be an alcoholic- a drunk- naw she just crazy- naw she drunk”. Etc.



No, I was actually the only person on Spring Break who didn’t drink. Once for a period of six weeks, following the crack head butcher knife attack I drank wine. For six weeks Fri-Sun. I considered this worrisome because my people are addicts. Anything from a donut to cocaine to one cigarette a day and we are addicts. I recently splurged and bought Annie’s Green Goddess Salad Dressing. I’ve now bought 4 bottles this month though I know I should just buy the tahini (comparatively its not a splurge) and make it as best I can. Point is I am presently addicted to Annie’s Green Goddess Salad Dressing on garbanzo beans and rice- I’ve been eating it nearly every meal - every day for a month-



In other words I am presently addicted to a salad dressing



because my people are addicts



knowing this has been fortunate



because I’ve always known I can’t dabble.



My genes are not the genes of dabblers but the genes of addicts. Thus I don’t drink and found it just ten shades of bizarre when this painter said “I was worried about you- afraid you’d go back to your car and down a bottle of wine”. Then she offered me some wine, which I declined.



I had been crying. And who knows my balance comes and goes so I may have appeared unsteady - I guess people who drink can’t conceive of any other reason a person would be wobbly.



But I had been crying.



I’d seen this couple.



I didn’t know them from when I was at the homeless shelter but I knew that’s where they were living at present. They had some clothes, not at all stylish or part of the urban suburban club and maybe it’s a vibe or a smell or knowing when you have to start making that walk so in on time for a bed. He carried a bag, the men do that because they don’t always get a locker and they don’t always get a bed so they have to keep their supplies with them at all times. His bag was the sort of dated company logo-ed wear that one can sometimes procur with a goodwill voucher or by the side of the road, vinyl, 1970s. But it was the bug bites that made me cry. They’d had to sleep out recently, obviously and so their legs were covered in little red welts. I just couldn’t not cry.



The painter came over to say hello and to come have

a sit?

Some wine?

I admire/d her work.



She feels I over value her work- I feel she under values it and doesn’t really see it. They’re abstract and you can spend a lot of time with one her larger pieces- I think it’s the combination of charts as well as her brush strokes which are abstract so your eye movement- the picture/s are extremely different constantly. Spend five or ten minutes and its just - maybe that is just me though as my eye movements are not entirely my own and a bit erratic. So maybe her work is uniquely intense in its changeability to my whacked neurology.



She was one of two female painters from 2006 I saw six years later this last year. The woman painter I wanted to see of course wasn’t there. Nor either of the two male painters I would have most liked to talk to again but that is how my luck runs.



2) The other strange thing the painter of air and nautical charts said was “That’s your problem..” I can’t remember how she phrased it but my face is effortless to read, what you see is - well whatever I feel is written all over my face. I don’t mask well.



“That’s your problem” she said. I’m visible.



“You’re so transparent,” my sister had said disdainfully on Cannon Street, so easy to read, so easy to play.



“That’s your problem,” I don’t lie well with my face, that’s my problem.



I can see how it would be better, safer certainly to not be so visible. To any degree I had that ability I completely lost it in the crash. I don’t know how to do that with my face. Someone took a picture of me during the homeless time and the cue was for me to smile but I don’t smile on cue well anymore. Was never that good at it really- it bugged some of the school photographers because I didn’t perform well at smiling for the camera.



I suppose I should practice- if nothing else some poker face so everyone can’t see everything. I guess that’s why I’ve so often been sport. Most people one can simply have the near certain knowledge that they’ve emotionally impacted a person in this or that manner but with me there’s the instant gratification of knowing for sure and getting to see ‘it” - whatever that emotion is actually getting to see it. Maybe that’s the new porn: real feelings on display- no acting - the genuine article and in no way a commercial for something else.



My sister hated that about me- truth is maybe everyone always did. Maybe that’s why I was such a favorite mark generally because I presume it is more enjoyable for the horde to see more than that flicker of emotion, that reminder of what it was like to feel. Or what it would be like to feel if those in the horde could.



I never said which wagon I fell off of did I?



The wagon is actually someone else’s narrative of me, who I am- their version of me. I don’t entirely agree with their/his version of me though I can totally see how he’d see me that way. I don’t agree with it but that’s not to say he’s wrong just that I see me through that and those lenses differently because I was standing some place else at the time. Given where he was standing- well see that’s the wagon. That is the defining point of me per this one particular (heck it was kind of a group experience so) let’s just say there’s this wagon. My job on this wagon is to …damn that is going to be a difficult analogy to make work.



Point is: if a computer were coffee and that coffee were in a Carly Simon song I had clouds in my coffee/screens. Doesn’t mean anyone is vain, only that I’m an idiot and as everyone knows- well what was that rhyme from Laura Donovan Elementary School? Maren is a moron.



On the upside: I’ve figured out a physical color coded based system using various standard tools which should enable me to begin the process of executing a vast menagerie of interlinking whilst independent data and functions that I used to be able to do, file, organize, collate and execute almost entirely in my head.



Physical execution was just the busy work - now I must do it physically and color code it and line everything up because I can’t functionally conceptualize any of it anymore- haven’t been able to for ten years.



The thing is there are times its like my brain is in a gear and I know what I can do and do well and not over tax in that gear- too there are gears I haven’t figured out yet. The concentration thing is difficult not being able to have that whenever I need it and fighting so hard for it. There’s a wagon gear too- I must master that one? Find a strategy? I don’t know but it’s a problem/difficulty and every problem has several possibilities/options for addressing and solving said problem. It’s like the mail I just needed the right system.



Once upon a time:



I just had a large stack of papers. I’d pull out what I needed- several inches high and I‘d know about where that sheet of paper was. I’d go through the stack every few months and throw out what I didn’t need anymore. Easy.



I had running checking and cash account in my head- always knew the number within 2-3 dollars.



Now:



I need an actual physical system, highly detailed with widely available low cost non tech. tools color coded and cued with materials containing neural branching friendly materials. AND physical-ization of every



little



step.



Have I goof proofed it? No there aren’t that many colors of construction paper. Well at least it should be less confusion inducing and if I can get back the mechanics- that‘s the thing I‘ve lost actual mechanics of every day tasks. I just have to get them back - in part because stuff need to be tended to and because I never got knocked up I don’t and haven’t qualify for a social worker. If gotten a TBI gone out and gotten knocked up then I’d have qualified for a social worker ten years ago



TBI and tasks of daily living: its like the difference between people who can do math in their heads and people who have to see it on a physical platform like paper or a screen. See that’s the thing about a major neurological incident not only is the body like operating a foreign and very complex piece of equipment that has missing parts, incompatible parts and no manual but how your brain was able to do things - it can‘t anymore. The old system/s don’t work - not at all, worse they confuse the crap out of you. Just the materials because - its like someone gives you a banana and your brain says: stick it in the car ignition. Functionality just disappears. I could still do aesthetics pretty well, worked hard on speech so that wouldn’t show up so regularly and in that way I could appear better than I was for a long time.



The worst part about the brain injury was and is not being able to do really, really simple things. Having simple things become hugely challenging. Its embarrassing and worse - partially because I live somewhere where people don’t comprehend “like” and “as” very well: no one understands. First they assume they do because they passed a standardized test and they are the cream of the crop the crop from the bottom of the barrel after all- they get really mean first and then angry. It becomes apparent to such types that they have no idea or concept as to the material being presented because:

a) was never explicitly covered in class

b) was never on a multiple choice test

c) does not match any existing vocabulary list

d) would require not just parroting material but actual comprehension and therefore mastery.



Now smart people get fascinated at that juncture because they might get to learn something new or develop a higher level of understanding in their field, maybe even make a discovery. Stupid people on the other hand get very, very angry because they were never all that interested in the subject anyway and just got accredited so that they could either get a job or keep a job. They don’t like anyone or anything that doesn’t conform to pre-established norms on a multiple choice test.



I remember a doctor saying repeatedly to me as I would exit our appointments: “Try not to become frustrated”. He kept saying “you’ll be back to normal in six months“. About six years later I was homeless and all the skills never magically returned. Promising this magic return and everything would be fine and no-no- there’s nothing like occupational or other therapies it was just my job to “Try not to become frustrated.” Such physicians should be strapped down on a table, with electrical wires tapped onto their skin and just before they’re jolted with electricity have someone say:



“Now try not to flinch”.



The mail system I invented for myself is going really well- try enough methodologies and eventually one of them will work.



Prior to returning to school - for what I’d hoped was my last return, I took one of those aptitude tests but not the one most people are familiar with but one that actually tests mental prowess and aptitude per certain tasks, learning, etc.. In my top five acumens was system analyst. I could always look at a system and know why it didn’t work, where it was failing- didn’t matter if it was story, a company- a product. I could just find what didn’t work or would work better. So now I build systems- maybe some day I’ll get to apply that and these skills for something better than what I consider to be a complete and total waste of my life.



If I ever really, really recover enough I hope to find a state committed to assisting people with brain injuries by providing services in a manner that doesn’t systemically say to the suddenly cognitively challenged: figure it out yourself you stupid f---ing -----.



I’d like to live somewhere else. A shrink said that is an excellent goal. Which means after everything I’ll still wind up losing college credit hours. I will eventually get that piece of paper if for no other reason than it is and has been seemingly so important to someone or something somewhere that I don’t.



My people are addicts- smoke, drink, binge- but they’re long living. Odds are better than not that I have another 30-40 years which means I still have a TBI to recover from and things to do after I have- and someone to be.



8.28.2012 On Fear and Dickens



I had this quote- well I wrote it so its not really a quote just something I don’t believe I ever included in any writing but very much wanted to keep and utilize because to me at least it spoke of a truth. It wouldn’t necessarily speak to a truth for everyone, at least I hope not.



I wont, and don’t, remember the line exactly, too bad because the words in English had the nicest sounds- all soft and rhythmic- nothing staccato about that single sentence. The sounds together reflected something of the feeling- that’s rare. Beautiful when it happens but like I said I lost that slip of paper somewhere. Now there’s only the leftover idea, a truism of me and what I’ve seen and experienced in the world.



Nope I can’t find the sentence in my brain- not anywhere. However, “Horray for Hollywood”. I say “Horray for Hollywood” because the screenplay writer of Nicholas Nickleby wrote it so well. Far better than Dickens would have- he having been paid by the word and Dickens having many mouthe to feed his scenes were never very concise. The guy was wordy and one giant run on sentence- doesn’t change that he really had some things to say, and did, and did so quite well but back to a most excellent screenplay writer.



End of the 4th act. All is well and will be and Nicholas is sitting next to his lass and she says “Do you know what it is to afraid…a curtain…that behind every good thing there is a trick…?”



I know that , I know wherein she spoke and speaks- that place, those places. The line, my own, which I couldn’t remember was about kindness and how it actually hurts when you’re not accustomed to it, like a long forgotten smell and then there’s a whiff and you are transported only to be jerked away by having felt the pie face smack of so many such tricks.



The idea once made of soft sounds has turned staccato the last six years and that makes me truly sad because it means I lost something and I don‘t know if I can ever get it back again.





















Wednesday, August 8, 2012

To Swim the Distance: Life and recovery per this TBI

Right now I have a wall in which its sole purpose is relearning and reacquiring the skills necessary to deal with any and all forms of mail.




Yep an entire wall.



This activity, a normal everyday thing is complicated by my having regular difficulty coordinating movement between my left and right hand/side which is one of the reasons why swimming as a rehab modality didn’t work. There’s a story - and definitely for another time.



But for anyone who themselves or knows someone with challenges per tasks of daily living applicable to either TBIs, strokes and diminished capacity here’s something that has worked and is working for me.



If you’re like me you can and do become confused during routine tasks and something ‘simple’ can take hours or days. ..but back to mail- a task of daily living and strategy and system for when and if you can’t do it. At least not anything like or even remotely resembling how you used to. My hope is, like all things: I can relearn it.



You’ll need a wall- lots of negative space. That’s me, other people may not have the visual components in a state of difficulty but I need an entire wall. Hopefully someday I’ll have relearned mail well enough that I won’t need a wall.



I recommend construction paper because I believe in neuroplasticity and if the person had a childhood that included construction paper that is then best material because there’s tactile memory. One can use a variety of substances to write on the construction paper.



I tried crayon but oil pastel mimics the look of chalk on a black board better so that was my choice because again my brain has memories of blackboards. I don’t recommend just printing the categories for the TBI because part of relearning this stuff is simply the physical execution, over and over and over again and I believe setting the conditions for re-accessing as much old wiring as possible is critical to rebuilding a neural network.



Four primary categories with four subcategories lined up beneath the prime categories.



I chose black paper (for the primary) and brown (for the subcategory (which is actually an action field)). Brown and black paper are both neutrals- obviously white would just be confusing. Should one ask “why would white be confusing? Because most the envelopes are in white color range, add that together with different fonts, ink colors, logos and various differing rules of formatting and you have already confusing. Adding one more level of white just makes it more so. At least for this TBI. So no white.



As for the black and brown, other colors could be used but I found with various cultural associations pertaining to colors (red, green, orange alert, yellow light, etc.) anything other than neutral palette led to quick and greater confusion so I suggest the neutral palette.



So in the upper tier is black construction paper with white lettering reading:

-expected monthly

-expected non-monthly

-unexpected

-wild cards



Other black areas develop/d and are: - No action required: file

- Follow up action required due to sender error



The second tier is in brown construction paper located under each appropriate black header

- follow up action for expected monthly

- follow up action for expected non-monthly

- follow up action for unexpected

- follow up action for sender errors



I don’t have a brown card for follow up action on wild cards because just this stuff is so very, very difficult and I must relearn it.



And if you must relearn it or know someone who is facing similar “challenges” I’ve tried a lot of systems and so far this is the only one that has worked or at least seems to be working. For me its as if every piece of mail is written on clear paper and they all overlap and I can’t see any of it. That’s an analogy and not literally what I see but mail becomes, quickly an overlap of related topics that; become tangled together like a ball of yarn and then I am almost immediately confused.



However in this system if I/one gets overwhelmed or confused there are no materials to put away. That was the failure point of other systems- by the time I’d get the materials assembled I’d be so confused that the venture - well that would be as far as I could get. Tack the materials up on a wall it is simply there waiting for when you can. And to the non ”challenged” that doesn’t mean “when one feels like it” but when one actually can.



When the mail comes in tack it up and place it sequentially in the appropriate black column. Later move that mail item down and tack it up under the follow up action brown sub header… when you’re at that stage. If there’s anything you need to remember about this action set or the various action sets required to execute the steps for completing this particular task, or if its helpful, write down the steps or what materials you will need (checkbook, etc) use post its or hand write notes on the envelope because too you may have to go to one more destinations to fully execute what is required in that envelope and you may need to preplan those supplies.



Okay so that’s a strategy for mail just the opening and execution and having a means for knowing where you are in those many, many action sets of a huge array of categories, some of which overlap, and make up a very minute portion of the tasks of daily living.



I can write you any essay - have progressed with technical instructions and I can even write you a story but if you’re a TBI like me once something is out of your visual range its essentially completely forgotten.



I got rid of an Anderson bed with drawers because after six plus years of not being able to remember what was in the drawers I gave up… unfortunately it did not occur to me to simply label the drawers like in “Away From Her”. Had I, I’d still have drawers instead of see through plastic containers.



That is one reason why this whole no paper thing doesn’t work for me, a screen disappears and I don’t remember what the screen was, I get lost in and on computers and I doubt I’m rare in the world of TBIs that way. Many of us simply will not be able to make the digital conversion. Hertz rotations can not only make me dizzy but can actually physically throw me.



A neighborhood kid who went to college and grew up came back and worked at the building in front of mine: Best Buy for a brief time. He and I did an experiment a few years back. He and I talked about the visual problems I had and still have and one night he took me around the store to sample some screens, computers and televisions .



Hertz rotations we found were critical (the higher the hertz the dizzier I am and may just become nauseous and feel like hurling within a few seconds). Or I may start falling to the ground.



We also found materials seem to influence whatever became of my eye and brain system. There was some ‘new’ type of more environmentally correct screen made from sand and between that, and possibly the hertz rotation, he literally had to catch me because my eyes sat on that screen for maybe a second or two and I got so dizzy he had to physically catch me because of something that will probably be common place in living rooms and public spaces oh so soon. For me the entire ground felt like it suddenly shifted upward…though I guess that may have been due to me falling downward?



I sampled Kindles, or the other one, and I will not anytime soon be able to read on one. The old, original is easier on my eye brain connection and the new one is just beyond that system’s capabilities.



When I write I don’t look at the screen except to check and edit because I can’t, the more I see that screen the less time I can spend doing it and I am always dizzy when I come off a computer. For me they might as well be amusement park rides.



People ever want to show pictures on their phones and again I presume its pixel refreshment and hertz rotations- for me it is small doses of kryptonite. I see people walk and do things on their phones at the same time- I doubt I will ever be able to do that .



But back to mail.



White plain binders and a hole puncher



After your mail is opened and all actions are executed the papers can be filed. I’ve found white binders in every sender category to be extremely helpful. Also helpful: using the actual logo of the mailer instead of writing by hand or printing it: makes it easier to match and not be done under by something as small and insignificant as just translating those two images and registering they really, really are the same thing and match. For some reason my brain glitches on that, and I again I can be in slip quick slide into confusion.



All supplies should be placed in close proximity to the mail wall and in my experience in the same flat visual field.



So ends a possible suggestion for a means, way and manner for TBI’s and other challenged individuals to learn or re-learn how to do: mail.



I needed to relearn how to write for many reasons. One being I desperate because a good deal of the time I can not rely on my verbal communication skills. In a goal or task oriented situation I am in serious trouble. Wandering conversations that I can do but once I encounter anything below board or challenging I have extreme difficulty getting the job done.



So if you’re a TBI or a stroke patient or know someone who is and they’re having difficulty managing their affairs/ mail give the system a try. If nothing else they’ll be less frustrated. And if you’re not a TBI or a stroke victim but know someone who is this is what life is like with one, its hard and from one: we know that.



Within the last two years it took me over six months to remember/learn what was behind four doors in a very small corridor. The brown doors =: the bathroom, the linen closet, the bedroom and the coat closet.



It took me six weeks in the homeless shelter to remember that the locker room was locked until six from about 7 am to six pm- day after day and week after week I’d not have my purse or the coat or something I needed or whatever because I couldn’t get that one daily repeating thing to solidify as memory. Until it’s a story I don’t remember and if I or circumstances don’t convert it into a narrative...think about it: six months to remember what’s behind four doors, day after day. Week after week. Month after month.



That’s the reality of life with and as a TBI, this one at least.





Carrots and the Eastern Holy Trinity




I play with my food.



Problem is - well I’ve not yet had anything that didn’t turn out well. Some better than others certainly but too I play because there’s a) what I have left or on hand and b) what’s on sale (or just plain cheap by the lb. a+b wind up being the ingredients). Problem is over the last year I’ve made some seriously good stuff but I just don’t write any of it down and some rather good recipes keep disappearing that way and this one at least I don’t want to get lost.



The holy trinity in western cooking is : garlic, onion and green pepper all sautéed together and are the base for everything from tacos to western omelets to lasagna and various stews and casseroles.



Recently though I came across the eastern holy trinity: garlic, onion and ginger. Being the end of the month and down to root vegetables I came to the following recipe- and the cayenne pepper was in that wrinkly stage so something had to happen with it and soon.



There are two carrot recipes here: one my mother’s and one my own.



Am I having a cook off versus myself and a dead woman?



Perhaps.



However I never ‘got’ her thing with this carrot recipe. It was supposedly a special holiday thing but I never thought it was all that good- it‘s not bad and people would comment on the carrots probably just because the most exotic thing they‘d seen or had done to carrots at that point was tossing them with peas.



So whose recipe to put on top?



I gotta go with mine simply because I actually like it and don’t want to forget it…that and I never really ‘got’ her carrots.



Eastern Holy Trinity Carrots



Ingredients= fresh on everything (ie: no paste, no powder, no frozen or canned veggies)



Grapeseed oil



2-4 Large Vidalia Onions: chopped (abt. 2 cups)



5 - 6 Large garlic cloves (between an 1/8 c. and below a ¼ c): between chopped - minced (smaller than onion pieces)



¼-1/3c fresh ginger chopped-minced finer than the garlic



1&1/2- 2lbs fresh carrots coarsely shredded (abt. 5- 6 cups)



½ -1 Tablespoon. finely shredded ginger



1/8-1/16 teaspoon finely minced fresh cayenne pepper (warning+ tip: when handling peppers like this one that have heat apply oil to hands so as not to hurt self. Remove seeds. Mince and be aware the heat is on your hands until washed with soapy water)



11/2-3c precooked Garbanzo beans (beans freeze well, are way cheaper if you buy dry and do the soak, boil and freeze + you know there hasn’t been anything in there living with them Garbanzos maintain that nutty flavor better if you make your own. Plus if you’re not poor- but po‘ -it can save a good twenty dollars a month. Which when you‘re po‘ is a big chunk of change.)



Fresh Basil chopped into fine strands (optional because if you don’t grow your own it can be pricey but it really gives a nice end note. Basil’s the easiest weed to grow and I can‘t figure out why everyone doesn‘t)





Note to self: try with side of anise infused jasmine rice. T coconut milk and some diced banana (dessert and protein rounder all in one)





There is some prep work and if you have cuisinart: rejoice! If not - even those people will need most of the following:



Equipment:

Large cutting board

Sharp Knife

Large bowl (for stowing all that shredded carrot)

Wooden flat base spoon

Large Skillet

Standing shredder device (or cuisinart)



Heat oil in skillet at abt. Med High- High. Add garlic - do not at any point allow anything to brown. (1 minute- stirring about) Add chopped ginger reserving finely shredded ginger. (1 minute- stirring about) Add onion and tsp. salt. Reduce heat OR remove entirely cover and use slow cook method while shredding carrots. Stir routinely - return to heat as necessary and when onions are very opaque and no crunch add carrots. Stir and cook over medium- medium high heat until the shredded carrot begins brightening. Add Garbanzo beans, finely shredded ginger and finely minced cayenne pepper. Allow the Garbanzos to be fully warmed through during the stir and tossing over the current flame. (OR Can cook low - medium covered and just leave for a bit.) Add more salt if desired. Put in bowl and then sprinkle with fresh basil threads.



It’s fantastic.+ The recipe keeps for a good three to four days.





Martha’s Holiday Carrots…which I never ‘got’



Hmmm. Not in the book. It was easy: carrots cut in the round cooked in butter and Tablespoon of dried peppermint with honey. The carrots are stewed in the butter, honey peppermint mixture? I think they were steamed before hand- yeah and then added to a low heat mixture of butter, honey and dried peppermint leaves probably with a touch of salt…though Martha used hydrogenated Blue Bonnet for better baked goods. Also perhaps because she had her first binge at about 3 or so: a lb of butter in one sitting. So she never cooked with butter. A fact to which I may owe my life…or at least a few extra days of school.



Texture and Pressure

2.22.2012




Texture’s pressure



What is the exact level of pressure, and perhaps the precise test for…



- but then again does anyone even test or check or find any relevance- is it entirely irrelevant: the ability to feel texture? Not just to see it what your eyes but to be able to feel it with your hands?



Its not as if I didn’t say the words, I even elaborated and repeated a phrase: It feels like I’m operating my hands from very far away…I can’t feel texture anymore.



Said it over and over again.



Said it over and over again?



Okay at least a few times- but how reliably? Did I emphasize what I had just said? Did I check to make sure the doctor understood precisely what I was saying and describing?



I doubt it; I had enough trouble remembering what I had just said or you had just said or anything that when a friend from the theatre dept saw “Finding Nemo” she said “Dora- that’s you!”. We both laughed; it was true and sometimes you just plain better laugh or you’ll never stop crying.



So, did I effectively communicate with my physicians about not being able to feel physically anymore things like texture? Or the delayed reactions to heat?



No, no way as that was beyond my capacity.



A little over ago I saw a neurologist, he put a needle to foot and I remembered that may have happened before. Problem is there’s a big difference between feeling a non distinct pressure and what it is you’re feeling.



Scratchy like wool? Smooth like silk? Or smooth like cotton weave?



Mostly I just felt pressure.

I m not writing this right now and this wasn;t the direction I want/ed to take in the first place.

OPENING:

There’s a curious thing that happened- maybe its true for everyone- I genuinely don’t know.



Close your eyes.



Maybe you don’t have to but it really is easier for me to move my body with my eyes closed otherwise whatever portion or portions of my brain that are trying to manage the visual data stream is generally so taxed that - well anything is easier and less stressful with my eyes closed. I’m constantly sneaking peaks but with my eyes closed overall I’m way more relaxed and able to move my body better (ie: in a more kinetically sound /Feldenkreis-ian manner) It is as if I can’t feel and see at the same time. Actually until the pain and discomfort get my attention- no I can’t do those two things a the same time.



So maybe unlike me you can do this with your eyes open- me I gotta have ‘em closed and discovered this when and as I’ve instituted voluntary blindness.



Hand laying down and resting on a surface. The surface can be your own leg, a desk, the arm of a chair, a person, the coverlet on your bed. Raise your hand. Just hand concentrating on just raising the hand, then maybe or maybe not the entire arm but concentrating on just raising the hand.



This little exercise was truly enlightening for me.



Hand and arm in same laying down supported in rest mode: now lift your arm.



for you the same muscle groups may engage- but not for me a( and I Seriously doubt this kinetic screw up is limited to me or TBIs generally)



After the car crash I began doing everything from the shoulder.



“It feels as if I’m trying to opperate my hands from far, far away,” like I was buried inside a machine- reminded of the scene in Aliens 2, the same type of machine + human units featured in the fourth act of both Avatar and Aliens except the arms on mine were so long, way longer than they should be.



Between that and not being able feel texture for a good five years I feel confident I had nerve damage- actually Dr. E.L, yeah I had it its just nobody seems to think nerve damage is any big deal.



-FYI pressure and texture are not the same thing.



Did I always move my hand through my shoulder first? Was there a time when to move my hand my core would automatically engage first (only body logical).

Everyone Likes Aspargus & I hate it when switching programs results in my losing the formatting, margins, etc.

July 25, 2012: If you think you don’t like Asparagus- guess again.




“Anyone who says they don’t like a vegetable never had it cooked properly,” M. Martha Olson/M. Martha Alford.



True.



She was a fantastic cook- though she never played pure jazz in the kitchen but would find a recipe and that would be the end of it.

That and she loses points per the whole Munchausen’s by proxy thing.



Despite that I developed quite the appetite for vegetables even before I became a vegetarian.



BUT



fear not any non vegetarians there is meat involved in the asparagus recipe!



The last meat products I could deal with were from the deli section where I could play: let’s-pretend-its not -an-animal-like-me. I remember those recipes fondly and one involves asparagus, the other kale and pepperoni and

I adored Boar’s Head port marinated Roast Beef or was it London Broil? Hopefully someday I’ll be able to experiment with port in vegetarian recipes.



If you still eat meat: the port marinated plus arugula with either a) havarti b) horse radish cheddar (or a horseradish mayo)- on a very neutral white bread (no sour dough and if French it should be softened in the oven with a little apple at the crust)…also makes a nice arugula salad.



To any vegans: the asparagus recipe does involve dairy.

Personally I tend to see substitutions as code for: make up a new recipe and thus I would strongly advise against using soy or rice milk- but if you try it let me know how it worked (I suspect not well).



The Greatest Asparagus Recipe of All Time

or asparagus for people who say they hate asparagus

the tricks to Asparagus are 1)NOT overcooking it

2) the accompanying flavors

INGREDIENTS :





31/2 -4lbs Asparagus

(the recipe keeps for three days. If you go to three days I’d recommend reheating. (Of course the proportions can be altered but this was how I cooked it for three people and lots of leftovers.))

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1 package Knorr Béarnaise mix (you will also need MILK for this sauce)

If you decide to do it all from scratch : my hats off to you.

What amounts to half the Knorr recipe was leftover and used for- toast, a dipper or you may choose to have the recipe swimming in Béarnaise or pre-limiting the quantity and storing the package’s other half in a Ziploc.

+



¼ lb. thinly sliced Deli Canadian Ham (The best you can kind find.)

DO NOT go for the music tune of “I am an ” or any of its poorly cured and water weighed down counter parts -if you do you will be cheating yourself out of the best asparagus you ever dared to eat. I’ve had people who “hate asparagus” devour this recipe.

+





Optional Ingredients: The above cooked (and yes I will provide instructions) stands alone and can. BUT its also a nice take on Eggs Benedict. Best I ever had was served at Baker’s Café, King Street, Charleston, South Carolina. Everything was from scratch & if you have the moxie and talent to make your own Béarnaise from scratch…this recipe would be just… beyond .

(The Ice House in the Market however I must mention because their biscuits were probably the best anywhere ever during the 1980’s…and they made their own preserves)



OPTIONAL INGREDIENTS for the Best Asparagus you’ve ever had with an Eggs Benedict chaser.



Eggs: sunny side up (is a perfectly acceptable alternative to poaching…which is a skill set I never acquired and do not feel at all badly about...and thus I say is a perfectly acceptable alternative because if poached eggs aren‘t perfect -

They

are gnarly.)





+



English Muffins (cut in half, toasted on at least one side)- bread generally can be used but if you’re going for the eggs benedict chaser and you can afford and English muffins- go for it.)





EQUIPTMENT:



Large Skillet or Wok

Sauce pan

Wooden spoon (flat edged)

Large cutting board (if all you have is small one have a container set aside because its a lot of asparagus)

Optional: warming plate & toaster

Good cutting knife









STEPS: (The Béarnaise Sauce should be cooked first unless you are adept at asparagus. The sauce directions are either Knorr’s or someone else’s department.)



1) Prep FRESH asparagus:

A) First start with good asparagus. If store bought good= not even the slightest hint of slimy at or in tip/pointy part nor should tip be dried out. There should be no wrinkling. Before cooking you will be rinsing the asparagus or soaking it in some cool water briefly.



B) Rinse off asparagus when home and recheck heads for slimmies which can be rinsed out. You don’t have to toss the entire stalk if you find a few hiding just thoroughly get them out of there.



C) Remove ends.

Okay now there’s some debate on the ends- not the spiky part but the other end. “A natural breaking point” exists wherein one can bend the asparagus and you throw out the rest if either a) you have the money for that b) have a dog who will eat asparagus or c) compost If on the other hand throwing away food is not an option and your resources are scarce and you’re splurging to even fix this recipe DO NOT use anything vaguely white or pale. That stuff is super thready and you don’t want it - at least not in this recipe.



D) Remove/cut off ends, not spiky portions because that‘s the best/luxury section.



E) cut in the round (as in NOT up along the middle, NOT juilienned, NOT angled but what you cut will have a round shape anything from ¼ inch to an 11/2inches. Pick a length and try to be consistent.



F) Set asparagus aside as you will be needing your cutting board for slicing the next bit of prep: ham.





2) Prep ham: Cut to about half the length of the asparagus and in extremely thin strips.



3) In large pan/skillet or wok heat olive oil and butter at medium to low heat until butter has melted.



(The amount of oil and butter= the amount to keep anything from sticking and will coat the asparagus fully )



4) Add ham. Allow to cook for the purpose of diffusing the ham flavor through the oil- so nice and low, take your time DO NOT let the ham to get crispy, stir during this process.



5) Add asparagus. Stir and toss while asparagus cooks…which will mean standing at the stove. And do not over cook asparagus.



6) Asparagus you still want almost crispy - the memory of crisp at the center on the inside. You DO NOT want a major color change.

If you see a darkening you’re overcooking it. The green should brighten- if your asparagus starts to look dark you‘re in real danger of overcooking your asparagus.

When asparagus is cooked-



7) Toss in Béarnaise gradually, just enough to lightly coat and voila you are



8 ) ready to serve



It really is fantastic all by itself or on top of heated, and slightly toasted, English muffins with sunny side up egg/s face down.



For meat eaters this asparagus recipe pairs really, really well with grilled red meat or sautéed Dijon marinated chicken.



I’m tired.



Being on a computer is difficult for me but I wanted to post something…that and my sister Jan (ie: Brady Bunch The Movie) seems to have removed all content which was entirely her right though it’s all getting re-posted pas de nom.



So there is the best recipe for asparagus - ever. Anyone waiting for Rutabagas, which admittedly I didn’t like until I made up a good recipe for rutabegas- but I like Caraway Seeds so hence it works but not everyone likes caraway seed. I’ll post it and a good Kale recipe as both are coming into season shortly.



Now for an abrupt topic change or given perhaps a possible particular reader perhaps not so much a change of topic but a veering.



“Families that eat dinner together are less likely to experience divorce,” so researchers found in a study years and years ago.



My family always ate at the same table and it was, whether at or not at the table, high degrees of awful- but hey the marriage lasted for 25 years



Once upon a time during agrarian culture “Man work outside- woman work inside”. We(females) have active mammary glands so in terms of just efficiency and sense (feeding the offspring) that arrangement worked and was due to conditions.



Everyone worked for the same goal and that was: not starving, staying alive and well. It worked BUT the goals were simply keeping everyone alive, fed and preparing the offspring for having offspring and doing the same. Mother’s did not do all the cooking, or all the gathering, etc. etc.. Everyone made sure, everyone could and did eat- that was a large portion of the communal work. Families were teams, some still are- some never could or can be. The more isolated, the more prescribed roles became - the less team there is/was.



I suspect the families that can and do cook together stay together even better than families that just eat together because they do team regularly and with an actual and regular outcome.



Maybe somebody should do a study about the families that cook together and their staying and working together prowess because I think they‘d kick the just eating together crowd‘s ass.



So if you have kids (or don’t) have a spouse (or are thinking about one) maybe everyone should just hit the slow cook movement, meet in the kitchen and see what happens. See how a team activity with an actual and real world end result goes. How‘d the process go? Is sitting at the table a pleasure or is there discomfort with whatever went and goes on during meal prep?



Then again, I know a shrink who knew a shrink who had his family all sit down with a barrel of Lincoln Logs, set up a video camera and build something so as to see how and what dynamics were and are really, really playing out.



So for some families maybe Lincoln Logs are best as there are no sharp objects involved. Maybe that’s what we should all do- maybe that’s what all first dates should be.



Me. I had quite the thing for a guy with whom I built a Lincoln Log farm in nursery school. We were both totally proud and wanted our farm and house to remain a permanent fixture…and then, some time later a blonde I suppose far cuter than I - or he found cuter or funner or just different maybe- came to our pre-K school and we never played Lincoln Logs again.



Get in that kitchen and cook



together



maybe



even asparagus



…if not there’s always

Rutabaga,

Kale

Brussels Sprouts,

Broccoli and Cauliflower

Oh my!



And peas…the most gorgeous thing you can do with salmon or peas is put them together.



It’s easy:



1) several sprigs of fresh rosemary springs and a few cloves of garlic in oil, cook to infuse oil.

2) Remove sprigs and cloves from oil

3)boiling water + frozen peas: cook briefly don’t stew them you just want them heated through.

4) pour peas and water through strainer.

5) either with emulsion blender or food processor blend the oil and peas till smooth.

6) Serve with (preferably plain poached) salmon

7) Put the salmon on the pea mixture.



The pink and the green look great together-especially on a black plate. The subtlety of flavor really requires King as opposed to Sockeye… but maybe the sockeye’s less fishy out west.



Sincerely,



Little Miss Fix It







The Many Faces of Dizzy

For TBIs, Stroke Victims and anyone who will themselves find it helpful or have a loved one for whom it might helpful.






July 14, 2012



There are two schools of thought on neurological injuries:



School 1 Your system is fried and damaged- all those synapses that have gone unused are useless- plus you just lost more. This school of thought believes in neurological death.



School 2 Your system has been fried and damaged - however it can be re-routed and even files and synapses that have laid dormant can still be re-activitated and utilized to form a new neural network.



The second school of thought is the one I subscribe to and my belief in it has over the course of many years and literally thousands of hours of work has meant I can write this. Writing was the skill I felt I most needed back because it would give me means to communicate and remember.



I have been attempting to recover and form a recovery plans, protocols and systems for the last ten years..with a brain injury “Welcome to South Carolina”. Per being a brain injury trying to construct such systems- and rememebr them and maintain them and being able execute them it has been hit or miss.



I write/say this because should this find an individual or a family in a similar situation choose the school of thought #2 believe you can recover - make that your life’s work. Its still mine and my hope is what it was ten years ago and still is today: I can and will recover from this.



I am told that is unrealistic which is quite possibly true however what is there to lose in trying? That and the other hope that some of what I’ve learned may help someone/s if I pass it on.



Dizziness



Dizziness is broad term applied…broadly and manifests differently- I have at least 3 separate dizzy ness experience that aren‘t listed here.



Dizziness 1 I know for me my dizziness varies- it’s not always the same but it is in part rooted in what’s called “atypical”s, for me there‘s been a whole host of atypicals which means either a) there isn‘t a vocabulary word for it b) there is a vocabulary word for it but I can‘t describe it in a manner for which the medical practitioner can recognize it or c) it has a term but the practitioner isn‘t aware of it.



I’m sorry the writings so all over the place below but if you have an atypical visual problem try polarized lenses as well as those given to diabetics and people with night vision issues. Go to a Doc with a wide array and see what your eye-brain connection responds to.



For me polarized gradually helped me to stop seeing everything in flashing, rotating triplicates. They can and still do help because they flatten out an image, make it less complex, easier for the brain to decode.



In conjunction with that approach I use/d a non polarized lens in a similar shade - in my case it was yellow. Kodak lenses makes an entire range of colors and I recommend them highly. They are pricey, I’m fortunate because at the time I had the money to invest in the goal that “Someday I Will Not See in everything flashing and rotating on top of each other”.



I’m also fortunate because I believed- I had decided, like I do every day that I will heal from this…but of course that was one manifestation of my atypical visual problem and in that one kind of dizziness.



Dizzyness 2 Your eyes are not under your own control but flit out. I can’t say I’ve found a solution to this but after 2 years of yoga my balance has gotten good enough that I can close my eyes. Voluntary blindness I call it and it works for times when my eyes are essentially doing their own thing. If you have the balance for it AND definitely walls, counters or furniture close at hand try voluntary blindness.



Dizzyness 3



There are times when I have to do things- because there is no one else- and that means no matter how dizzy I am I have to walk. I have to make my body do it. Any one who has been there or is there beware of the muscle tense - because it’s like the “light-as-a-feather-stiff-as-a-board” thing from slumber parties: if you tense everything up somehow you can stay and be upright. Problem is it causes problems so beware of that particular physical coping technique.



But like I said sometimes I have to make my body do things it can’t really do, a practice I am trying to avoid as much I can in accordance with a good bit of medical advice of lowering my tipping point. Good advice I received about 6 months ago and it has had benefits- but that’s my magic carpet story and I’d really like to be able to write it well- though may just wind up in my annuls of “try this”.



Anyway- if you are hyper dizzy but you have to walk essentially you want



a) to walk slowly- do not rely on momentum to compensate because if you’re like me - well let’s hope you’re not



b) play/make a visual version of Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs.



Find a single spot/item- something that won’t move or be moved (passersby can cause an interruption and if you’re having to employ this strategy just be aware of that and try to pick things that have the lowest probability of that visual interruption occurring.- If it does: stop and wait until you’ve re-steadied.



When you can pick out what the next visual breadcrumb (stationary object) will be switch to that and the next and the next. I find when I’m dizzy, especially when I’m in a public space, this really, really helps and helps me avoid locking my muscles.



The Hansel and Gretel visual breadcrumb thing may sound obvious to you the reader but what I know is in ten years no medical practitioner ever told me about it… I say that but in the early years I couldn’t remember much of anything so I have to acknowledge that as well.



How cognitively dizzy was I? I remember at a little over year three I was thrilled by a particular bit of progress: I no longer had to pull out my checkbook when asked for my address, I could finally remember it all on my own. I know then- though fortunately I didn‘t know then- plenty of people find, and found, that extremely funny/amusing/ delightful/entertaining.



I could say more about dizziness but won’t at the moment just that those tricks have helped. Also beware not only of tensing like a board so as to stay erect but also of leaning and using your wrist joints to steady you- the damage that has been to my wrists via that is just frightening. Also if you have to utilize that joint for balance: NOTE THE ANGLE. How extreme is it? Etc.



Oh- and don’t lock your knees? Or try to notice if you are- I do that a lot because again it keeps me upright.



Not Entirely Kosher Eggless Egg Salad

June 2012




This.



This is why writers write.



“Because they have to”- so says the quote but so say-eth me: Writing is how one measures, how one traces, how one can both see and follow your own self. And track- and put pieces together.



A year later I read salami and milk and am - not nostalgic but it is like looking at an old slide of myself, as if I took a swab rubbed it across a wee bit of glass, labeled it, stored it, stowed it and now - right now this minute I am both the microscope and the slide I’m looking at.



I’ll be brief: I took to vegetarianism and veganism quite easily.- (though I still I get tripped up at “grow the hell up” and “who the hell do we think we are!” (GOTO (or wait 4/for) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I don’t think I would have eaten meat had I grown up on a farm. I’m not sure how I would have felt about the sheep and the goats but I can’t even do fish or shellfish.



Recently I saw a lobster in a tank - more than one. In my getting greater and greater physical sensation back ... I saw this one lobster that I really wanted to

a) bring the lobster home

b) have the money to get a saltwater tank so as to

c) rehab him back into the ocean -(where s/he may never have even been)



Lobsters can live to be over a hundred years old- they’re like sea turtles.



It just seems to me that as

a) we have poisoned their environment

b) hunted and eaten near everything to the point of extinction

c) enslaved many in food prisons/animal jails

d) the least we can do, given all that, is to stop eating them-

e)humans have made the world a torture for nearly every living thing, including ourselves.



Anyway, so I saw this one lobster- stronger than the rest - trying to get out like s/he knew some asshole was going to boil him… but more over like some part of him/her knew there was sand and an ocean out there somewhere.



S/he wasn’t for going quietly into the pot or sitting idly by in the tank ,s/he - and only s/he still moved - all the rest were alive but dead- just nothing. The one with the blue rubber bands though- s/he was very much still a lobster, not some future food but a genuine living crustacean.



Anyway- I saw this lobster who has probably lived his or her entire existence on a completely flat surface- that doesn’t give or move, is not sand or mud or variable and in that torturous. The surface they’re on =pain = repetitive pressure points without the natural variance of random . Plus I think the lobsters have gone blind- they’re not supposed to be in high light environments? Though it could be the hertz rotations… which I utterly relate to



Let’s say s/he was wild caught. Wild caught and rarely saw and see their own kind.



Anyway- I wanted to spring this one lobster- the one who could see the edge of the tank and was trying to get out. And if I had the money to blow- hey you-

you who may have some money to blow

and a tank



consider having a pet lobster with the ultimate goal being:

freedom.



Again: they live to be over a hundred years old (like parrots) so plan for your lobster ‘s future. As water creature companions they’re way better than fish and wouldn’t that be great to rescue a lobster?



In the world of me- yes, yes it would.



I know- people aren’t like that. But I am.



I don’t really even believe in pets anymore. Mostly I just see captive slaves who no longer know how to hunt being treated poorly by very inconsiderate uprights who happen to have digits.



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I find meat to be what it is: murder.





!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Eggs? who the f*** do we think we are!



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Milk? grow the heck up.



We have thumbs and machinery which means we’re not allowed to act as if we aren’t choosing. Because it is not as though without meat, eggs, milk and fish one will starve in the suburbs or the city. Ya’ won’t.



I feel very badly for all the factory animals. Though I am glad people are keeping chickens and I just wish they could run around everywhere- same thing with the goats, sheep and cows. And beefalo hunters should be shot on sight.



I remember my parents and one branch of cousins were really frightening when they ate. It wasn’t just that they were shovel-ers ( my parents) but that the cousins were also ravenous. Ravenous carnivores (I suspect there’s rather an association- I know I’ve never heard of a serial killer who is a vegetarian- but back to my ravenous omnivore- in carnivore mode cousins)



I remember a platter full of hamburgers on Kaiser rolls at a dinner table in Greenwich Connecticut.





I remember being genuinely afraid and frightened that one of my cousins might grab my arm by mistake.



They grabbed and ate so fast that having one‘s hand too close to a plate - being bitten by mistake seemed a genuine risk and time hasn‘t made it seem less so. (5 kids. Girls=nearly six feet Boys=almost seven feet tall (honest to God (they’re giants)))



But I guess that’s how you grow giants?



Anyway- Martha, my mother, always said I was “sensitive” I cried when an animal was killed on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. She said “Sensitive”sa in “too” but I say I was probably always intended to a be a double V, vegetarianism and veganism, a vv. A Vv or vv - not be confused with a w because just because two things look nearly alike doesn’t make them anywhere near the same thing.



Truth is- for anyone who thinks they’re a good cook and may actually be one- going V or double V is scary. There are some things that texturally you’ll miss for awhile and there are some tricks for that- and that is the thing: going V and double Vv is the is the ultimate iron chef home challenge because-



Picture this scene:



It is summer (2011) and I am craving egg salad.



I am craving egg salad because for me egg salad on pumpernickel or rye is part of summer.



As I am/was craving egg salad I am simultaneously not okay with how the factory chickens are living and I do not care what the label says because u food industry are not credible.





I hear there are some local chickens- well I would have to personally know the chicken and even with that given how all species but ourselves are nearly gone. The chicken in question sitting on some should be able to be outside pecking at bugs, running around on dirt and grasses and seeing sky. Feeling wind. Rain. Life.



The factory chicken life is utterly unacceptable.



All of that doesn’t change that summer for me is and/or was egg salad season.



I was craving egg salad which I didn’t and wouldn’t buy or prepare because of first/1 conscience and 2 animal products seem increasingly grosser and grosser and meaner and meaner all the time. But despite all that me and or the combination of me and my body was really jones-ing for some egg salad.



What I missed, what I was craving was the textural experience of my summer memories of egg salad.



Should you ever find yourself in such a fix: craving the textural experience of egg salad while attempting to go vegan + vegetarian=vv but it is spring/summer, the season of deviled eggs and egg salad here‘s what helped me through (?):



NOT ENTIRELY KOSHER EGGLESS EGG SALAD



Great northern beans (cooked very soft)

Guldens mustard (there is no substitute)

Mayo (I know, I know I know- it is my biggest remaining weakness/challenge/etc) - of course the Mayo can b and was (b4 or after) substituted with a low-no flavor coconut oil.

Rice cakes (Stick with me- I swear this is good- yes I used the White Cheddar variety but vv, like most and such things are done best progressively- as in progressing toward )

Diced Avocado (the textural thing = the rice cake + the avocado)

Salt if thoroughly desired and needed

and tomato if you were into that.



Equipment: food processor or emulsion blender for beans + mustard + Mayo/oil (I use/d a low flavor coconut). Spread onto rice cake. Sprinkle on diced avocado.



Texturally and taste wise your palette will be oh so close to fooled your brain will believe its having what it said it wanted: egg salad.



Anyway, worked for me…and yes I do realize that it is/was not completely kosher as in if kosher were vegan it wasn’t . And yes I realize contributory to this meal were ill treated cows and chickens housed in horrible conditions who probably never saw the outdoors and if they did were on high doses of antibiotics because they were caged together like slaves on a ship or Jews on a train to Au-



-oh now I know I have to have offended someone.



I’m sorry but that is where I’m at…and actually no I am not sorry. Human history has been what we will do and how we will perceive and do to a human we have also designated as less than or meat or, etc. .So if you are offended or find my view xtreme I am not only not sorry but really just plain don’t care.





Now on the with show -a time capsule (and yes I know I need to jpg or PDF but I am both severely technically and financially challenged- so I’ll get to it when I get to it.) I’ll repost the recipes - especially the frozen strawberry squares because it was always a hit and some people have Ballard High School prom memories of it.



As for total veg-ness- I am not there yet but I believe/d it would be a process.



Most everything is.