11.30.09 What were the odds of two men who each in their own way had huge impacts on my life I'd known being pictured at the same time in hazmat suits? One in particular because - does it erally make sense to have your FB picture as a hazmat guy?... in both cases maybe so.
It could just be the bronchitis talking but I was thinking I might be getting to where I'll be done with this site, this identifier. But then again- I may have developed a small, twisted and anonymous following- maybe an audience of one. Feel free to stop by Rev. Anti- Choice.
Part of what got me about 2006 and though I couldn't write about it- I probably could now. Any way what got me was that there's no making up source material that rich and unlikely. I was, and may again some day be an odd addition to the homeless crowd and maybe Ramon is right, maybe Michelle is as well and maybe I will book it someday but for now. Maybe considering the where and how that became this blog- maybe this is still part of that. I've told my biggest secret. So why not? Of course I'll leave it up- another failsafe mechanism, a place to direct some energy should need be or maybe a place to get where I never could get with a guy I met half a lifetime ago.
As I've procrastinated this long, I'm waiting until after the holidays for KY Adult Services. The holidays are hard enough, Kari may wind up getting a call and as she decided to go into a field with the highest yield of suicides. I'd hate to see what her odds look/ed like having already been doubled.
Now to home, after 15 months of homelessness, 351 days in a homeless shelter - I have one Oh look I buried my lead. What a surprise . And that's why over these years I've needed to process so much John rage see it's the Johns in my life that - well same lies, each one of them. Family is the first crack in the system I feel through; it's a phrase that gets spoken to me, of me regularly: "you feel through every crack in the system". Now that I've finally had access to those who actually know what brain injury is- see they've actually teared up because this sort of thing isn't supposed to happen.
My crash date was June 13, 2001 - amazing the size of the SOS I had to put out; I actually had to do it twice so the state would mandate me to accept help I'd been asking for and denied for 7 years. I hadn't applied for SSDI or SSI because it seemed an irrational notion: If on the state level my file didn't qualify me for assistance - well the idea that I'd qualify on a federal level - that didn't make sense to me- but that's the nice thing about brain injury- everything seems so simple: because you are that simple. It's the crappy thing about brain injury and not having a patient advocate . When I made those calls family were as family's always been.
I finally got the help I needed after two bosses failed to observe my limitations and I went into neurological freefall, not that hadn't happened once already when life required cognitive skills over time periods that I'm simply not capable of maintaining. I have window, once I reach that window I'm either allowed to cocoon with ample silence or white noise- OR, well the or isn't fun for anyone most especially me.
The moment a camera flash goes off unexpectedly and/or turning on a sealedcar's engine and the full sound shock of music set loud, for open windows and speed. That moment can go on for hours, days, weeks.
I'd always been a type A, I pushed myself- whatever it was I pushed and I wound up with something that essentially forbids that or at the very least I start bumping into things, the syllables of words -spoken or typed coming out in the wrong order. Sequence has been my constant nemesis, still is.
Some of the assistance I'd been applying for for years, 7 to be exact but there wasn't enough or the right things in my file. But if you fall hard enough AND publically enough so that there can't be anymore debate as to whether or not you qualify for help, and programs- that you have an actual medical condition. It never did occur to me to ask why HASCI had rejected me as a client, a neighbor years later had said that it didn't make sense. The reason I was rejected, I later found out, was they wanted more medical documentation: mobile PET scans, interactive MRI's. A nice little aspect of american healthcare-less system: though there are services avaliable unless you are already on public assistance or have kickass health insurance- the very system that is there to assist you can't and won't because you're not already in the system. Sounds circular doesn't it?
It took a little over 8 years from the TBI forward for me to get actual help, input, insight from anyone in the field of brain injury, a very limited pool in this state.
Though I haven't logged 10,000 hours- we'll see if I can write this thing.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Shack
“Have you read The Shack?” I know I’ve been asked that on a half a dozen occasions over the last year.
While waiting for reference to arrive for their shift I browsed the rolling shelf, skimming the titles and noticed The Shack was in without a reserve. I picked it up read till about page six.
Donna never doesn’t jump a bit at the sight of my face, she hasn’t grown used to it, Maura Tierney’s face at her desk. I smile and she purses her face at no one but herself these days for still looking at me and seeing a television screen instead, a face that doesn’t belong in her physical reality yet
“I think I’m going to have to start paying for parking,” she says.
I’ve never gotten how a walk in that part of downtown Charleston can be anything other than baseline enjoyable. That’d just be one more thing to add to my very long and large: I don’t get it list. It’s ever expanding
That night I tucked myself into bed with The Shack , reading past the prologue I found myself in the Gorge. Bothered, I laid my index finger between the pages,She was fifteen minutes late for her shift “I’ve been driving around for almost an hour looking for a spot”.
“Parking’s free at the Battery,” I volunteer.
“But then I’d have to walk and that would be exercise,”
“Yeah,” I said smiling and not at all catching her meaning “free parking and a walk”
What seemed a double positive to me was and is not to her. Different strokes, she’d have to alter her shoe choices, throw off the outfit and “I hate exercise”. a human book mark.
There’d been something familiar about the prologue. I’d read this sort of thing before. Something to do with San Francisco- yes that farcical offering from Tan, which was more than appropriate given the piece. I wondered if Young had applied the same technique but I hoped not because from what I’d read on the jacket, to me you don’t play with an audience about death and God. Unless of course you’re writing comedy.
Flipping to the back of the book, there was and is a rather thick section for fiction where type changes, no footnotes but paragraph after paragraph in smaller print like an adendum to contract or a child not so confident in themselves, trying to disappear a bit.
I read what the reader is intended to read once they’ve read it all and suspended their disbelief, only to find their disbelief founded. I wonder where it started, this trend? Introducing a character as the life force behind the tale, borrowing the dead or shy as the trustworthy writer arrives on scene and tells you what this otherwise extraordinary individual can‘t or couldn‘t. The author is not the author merely assisting and reporting, with perhaps some artistic license, but delivering true story -except not.
The reader in a way becomes a character as well, a dupe too, assuming a part and playing a roll in the fiction themselves by converting fiction to non-fiction, playing pretend with the author. I don’t understand the practice really, truth is so much stranger, richer and unlikely that any fiction writer could or can ever conceive.
So into the shack, Kate’s obvious aftereffect of wondering what if the she hadn’t tipped the boat, certainly the antisocial explanation. Into the shack where Nan and Mack are stronger for it and I wonder if Young interviewed couples who had suffered, endured and kept going and keep going everyday, every birthday, every marking point that their child is gone. I hope he interviewed them; there are lots of them, too many and I hope he heard their stories, asked the questions and was surprised and informed before usurped their stories. I hope their losses weren't treated as mere props like a chair or a lamp.
While waiting for reference to arrive for their shift I browsed the rolling shelf, skimming the titles and noticed The Shack was in without a reserve. I picked it up read till about page six.
Donna never doesn’t jump a bit at the sight of my face, she hasn’t grown used to it, Maura Tierney’s face at her desk. I smile and she purses her face at no one but herself these days for still looking at me and seeing a television screen instead, a face that doesn’t belong in her physical reality yet
“I think I’m going to have to start paying for parking,” she says.
I’ve never gotten how a walk in that part of downtown Charleston can be anything other than baseline enjoyable. That’d just be one more thing to add to my very long and large: I don’t get it list. It’s ever expanding
That night I tucked myself into bed with The Shack , reading past the prologue I found myself in the Gorge. Bothered, I laid my index finger between the pages,She was fifteen minutes late for her shift “I’ve been driving around for almost an hour looking for a spot”.
“Parking’s free at the Battery,” I volunteer.
“But then I’d have to walk and that would be exercise,”
“Yeah,” I said smiling and not at all catching her meaning “free parking and a walk”
What seemed a double positive to me was and is not to her. Different strokes, she’d have to alter her shoe choices, throw off the outfit and “I hate exercise”. a human book mark.
There’d been something familiar about the prologue. I’d read this sort of thing before. Something to do with San Francisco- yes that farcical offering from Tan, which was more than appropriate given the piece. I wondered if Young had applied the same technique but I hoped not because from what I’d read on the jacket, to me you don’t play with an audience about death and God. Unless of course you’re writing comedy.
Flipping to the back of the book, there was and is a rather thick section for fiction where type changes, no footnotes but paragraph after paragraph in smaller print like an adendum to contract or a child not so confident in themselves, trying to disappear a bit.
I read what the reader is intended to read once they’ve read it all and suspended their disbelief, only to find their disbelief founded. I wonder where it started, this trend? Introducing a character as the life force behind the tale, borrowing the dead or shy as the trustworthy writer arrives on scene and tells you what this otherwise extraordinary individual can‘t or couldn‘t. The author is not the author merely assisting and reporting, with perhaps some artistic license, but delivering true story -except not.
The reader in a way becomes a character as well, a dupe too, assuming a part and playing a roll in the fiction themselves by converting fiction to non-fiction, playing pretend with the author. I don’t understand the practice really, truth is so much stranger, richer and unlikely that any fiction writer could or can ever conceive.
So into the shack, Kate’s obvious aftereffect of wondering what if the she hadn’t tipped the boat, certainly the antisocial explanation. Into the shack where Nan and Mack are stronger for it and I wonder if Young interviewed couples who had suffered, endured and kept going and keep going everyday, every birthday, every marking point that their child is gone. I hope he interviewed them; there are lots of them, too many and I hope he heard their stories, asked the questions and was surprised and informed before usurped their stories. I hope their losses weren't treated as mere props like a chair or a lamp.
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