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 The song originally made me happy because it was so the feeling…and then much later the song felt sad.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.
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.
