Put the cane down. That isn’t a metaphor. I just put it down. Thought experiment…what if this really is the new normal? This constant low grade pain with occasional flares of what-the-fuck? Add this to the year of lessons in mortality. Little deaths. My body is not what it was. It’s degrading. And that’s what happens with age. Old isn’t bad. Yeah. I’m fifty and that is a number and big whoop. …
It’s a cane day. Even before I open my eyes, I know. Human barometer. Looking for patterns: dry days? wet ones? warm? cool? cold? changes to any or all? Afraid to admit it, but maybe I am finally aging. Which is not the same as growing up. Heck no.
It’s hard to see any movement made. One would hope whatever movement there was went in some positive direction (whatever that means). Someone asked what it was like to be a military brat? My answer is that the lesson is that everyone is different. Everyone is the same. So is each moment–each day. One wonders who am I that I was not? Who am I that endures? …
Violent dreams. But it was me wielding the knife, the gun, the implement of destruction… A crazy Mickey Mouse roll call of bad choices. I make you dead to me. Wake up with residual ill feeling. It’s fuzzy and not targeted. Maybe it was mom who said not to take anger out on innocent bystanders. Collateral damage is never a good thing. There is a building pressure of frustration that …
I asked the doctor if the medication may be causing me to be sad and weepy. He said “no”. So it’s just me feeling the way I do in response to the what it is. I am unwilling to accept this as the new normal. “How are you doing?” It depends on what aspect of life…compartmentalizing the bits makes them more manageable. The job is great; as are the students, …
Last Friday I went to the gym. It’d been a forever. Got on the scale and read one hundred forty-frickin’ two. Unacceptable. Poor Cody. I went to the pool to meet him. He was dawdling by the edge screwing up the gumption to face the temperature change. (His body doesn’t do well with such fluctuations). I might have said some greeting. I think it was more like a grunt. I …
Etching is a destructive process. You take the metal plate and protect it. Then you scratch it, scuff it, make it vulnerable. You drop it in acid and the exposed parts get eaten away. The plate is cleaned. Whatever protection it had is dissolved. Ink is rubbed into the grooves, the pits, and scars. The smooth parts don’t hold the ink. The surface is wiped. The rag hits the high …
Video capture of iPhoto’s Faces It’s interesting to see the whole in a line. There are ups and downs. I know what was happening in the interstices. I can see the happy and the thick and the thin(ner). The smile stays the same.
In some ways it’s like back to being in my twenties. I don’t think those in their twenties realize how very young that truly is. Back when I thought I could change the world, back when each step mattered, that this man would be the one for the rest of my life. There is no rest-of-your-life. There is just life in all its meandering painful surprising ebb and flow. There …
Still wondering about those matches.
