<$Saturday, August 23, 2008$>
Billy Bob!
 Friday night was the Boxmasters concert at the Ram's Head in Annapolis. Boxmaster's front man, Billy Bob Thornton, overruled all the showroom rules and for one night dancing, smoking, and photography were allowed. I was doing all three when I took the pic above. If you look closely you will notice James May no where in the picture! |
<$Friday, August 22, 2008$>
Billy Bob and the Temple of Desire
| Not much productive to rattle on about today. Is anybody reading this thing? Do I really care? Is the square root of 3 really an important concept? Tonight is the “Billy Bob Thornton & The Boxmasters” concert at the Rams Head in Annapolis. It should be a terrifying experience. To fall into that old style twang and rage music again. Billy Bob’s music usually makes me feel like I’m six years old and lost in a corn field in Arkansas in the broiling summer heat. It reminds me of a part of myself that was dropped beside the road a long while ago. It’s a part that’s caught me up and insists on being heard once in a while. It seems like another lifetime, when I had a father. It was another lifetime and I was my other self. (To mangle Shakespeare.) As “W” and I say, we are to wise to woo quietly. I am too leery to remember easily. The past has to stalk me and overtake me in a song or a remembered book or the signs for barbecue on sides of the road in the Carolinas. Memory lives interleaved in Billy Bob’s music. It wrangles out a sacred temple in the Waffle House’s along the interstate. When my friends travel with me they know that I must stop at the Waffle House and pray my silent prayers as we eat. They don’t ask why, they only know it’s important. That’s why they’re friends. It seems so long ago, that I belonged to a full family. It seems as much a myth as Athena or Boadicea to believe that I was the beloved daughter of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It’s almost like it was never real at all. It’s been a week of loss for Cousin Tuesday. It’s been a week of transition for me. I’ve been working long term on a fiction project. I wonder if James May ever writes fiction for fun? This week two of my old faithful characters went in for divorce. The invincible, kind, and gentle “him” of the couple has been shown to be a womanizer. “She” was almost killed after being thrown off a second story by one of “his” enemies seeking to get “even”. She has suffered brain damage. Their son was killed. Of all the characters moving through the arc, I didn’t expect this out of them. I didn’t expect “him” to be with his mistress when his home was invaded by those out to murder his family. I didn’t expect “her” to get caught without a sidearm. “Her” family has closed ranks around her and she is at her brother’s house. Her brother has previously been the swingle living roué and has now come over all devoted to family. Large sections of “her” memory are gone. “She” has a box of letters sent to her brother while he was in the armed forces to refresh her memory. “Her” father thinks it was the husband trying to avoid a divorce. Arrangements are being made to “hide” her with family out of the country. I imagine I’ll be called to task for turning “Mr. Perfect” into “Mr. Schmuck”. Nobody else can be as surprised as I was. Of the characters I got to move around the board, I liked “him” “He” could be counted on to do-the-right-thing, be-tough-but-fair, and be-true-blue. “His” word, “his” honor, and “his” mystique have all been broken. “She” was always loving, devoted, gormless, and gentle. “She” packed a pistol so “she” always had “his” back. “She” would follow “him” right off a cliff. Now she wants to push him off the cliff, walk down the hillside, and shoot him twice in the head to make sure he’s dead. I think she’s about to become a “loose woman on the rebound”. I have a sneaking suspicion the “he” is about to die. It’s a touch sad to watch them go. But as they move off the page and into their “after lives” new characters can filter in. I’m looking forward to that. Some writers plot out their stories and character arcs. If I know too much about what’s going to happen I get bored and don’t bother to write the story. I’m writing because I have to know too! Maybe all this death and destruction is a function of the way my mood runs like a roller coaster from joy to desperation. Everyone rolls up and down the track. Where I am in life now the peaks and dips are close together. In the span of an hour I can rattle down the slope weightless and smash into the bottom out. Time to pack up my tent, fluff up my hair, and go see if Billy Bob is as scary live as he is on the radio. |
In Memory of Mickey
| I learned this morning that Cousin Tuesday's beloved friend Mickey has passed away. Mickey was just shy of seventeen years old. A good friend, a family member, a confidant, a beloved soul mate as only a dog can be. My condonlences on your loss Cousin Tuesday. Below are some of the words the poet Lord Byron inscribed on the marker for his dog Boatswain: Near this spot Are deposited the Remains of one Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the Memory of BOATSWAIN, a DOG Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, And died at Newstead, Nov 18th, 1808. It's pretty difficult to put a James May/Top Gear reference in here. Mr. May has speculated in one column that dogs could be taught to drive. I know Mickey would have taken Cousin Tuesday to the beach every time out. |
I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. . .
 >Ten of cups keeps calling, calling, calling. This version of the card is from "The Victorian Tarot". Their website is here. I can hear you calling. Where are you? |
<$Thursday, August 21, 2008$>
As wicked as it seems . . . .
| Tom Petty's XM Radio show has upped the ante from Toots and the Maytals to Keith Richards' "As Wicked As It Seems". Reminds me of the line “Cruel and sweet, sweet and cruel as home made sin.” Yeah, there’s somebody fits that line in my mind. But it’s not nice to say. When I rambled up to the desk this morning I wanted a cigarette and a beer. That’s no kind of way to feel at 10 a.m. I had the urge to drop the pc out the window and enjoy the view and a nice cinnamon roll and wait until at least noon before I went to the liquor store. My employer would have taken a dim view of that behavior so instead I sat down and turned on the performance monitors. I browsed the system telemetry from yesterday and wished I’d picked something else to do for a living. I dutifully chomped down on my angst and wrote a "no lies" bloggie entry to move the plot along. Now it’s the end of the day and I want something wicked and wonderful. This looks like a nice mixture of both.  You're right, this isn't a James May reference.  >This week I had to sever a seventeen year friendship. I'd like to say it was a sad thing, but it was a relief. It fell in line with the overall decluttering. Trite as it sounds, it was getting rid of something that drained instead of enriched my life. There's still forty five minutes left in the day. The monitors are running flat out. I've been through the performance data from this morning. If I have to look at one more DB2 manual I'm going to scream. I'm exhausted, cranky, and hungry. I'd like to go home and get drunk and get laid. Guess which one first? Instead I'll go to the bookstore for a new novel and I'll go out to dinner by myself. Patient or impatient I'll just have to use my ingenuity and let the future unfold. So "S" tells me. I hope she's still patient and smiling whent hey call her to pry me off the ceiling when I'm up there hanging from the fan and barking. :) |
Let's See Communion Wine, Holy Wafers, An Aston Martin. . .
| What the hell am I doing? A blog is a mighty public place to have an existential psycho therapy session. Or is it? Seriously. A blog is as inconspicuous as a conversation on the Washington Metro at rush hour. The people closest by will eavesdrop and then they will forget. It’s anonymity by hiding in plain sight. Very few read this crazy thing. It’s one more URL in a sea of electronic commuters. My closest friends that do read already know that I’m paddling a stormy sea with a Qtip on a saltine cracker raft. We all are. We’re just living in an age where our “quiet desperation” gets to let out miniscule shrieks on the digital frontier. Since I’ve always been one to think a good scream helps the soul, I’m howling away. I’m having my spiritual rebirth with colour pictures and flash animation, thank you. In Flash the basic techniques of animation apply. You mark “key points” where the action turns and let the computer do all the messy mapping bits in between. I like to think of my latest growth spurt more in terms of “key points” then as a birthing process. I’d like to skip that whole birth analogy with the bleeding, pain, grunting, and screaming. Don’t even start with that “it’s good pain” crap either. Pain is painful, that’s why they call it pain. Humor me, women approaching menopause look forward to having clothes and linens that don’t get ruined with blood. There are some sacred sisters who get into the bleeding symbolism. I can’t seem to find the spirituality in having to bail out of bed in the morning and spot scrub all the linens before I go to work. Jack Kornfield wrote “After Ecstasy, The Laundry”. If the right kind of ecstasy finds its way back into my life, I am going to buy extra sheets so I can have a kip afterwards instead of battling the Kenmore. There it is again, did you see it? Another neon sign on the pathway just lit up. I hadn’t thought of “After Ecstasy, The Laundry” in years. The mention of a spray-n-wash morning popped the title back into my mind. To make sure I spelled the author’s name right, I looked the book up on Amazon and had a peek inside. Of course the page Amazon flipped me to was the one where Kornfield talks about the doorways to the journey. He fails to mention watching “Top Gear”. But I get the idea. Spirit calls us each with a voice we can hear. For me it was the sound of a Porsche, A Lamborghini, and an Aston Martin barreling through a tunnel in Italy. It was the sound of James May ranting at the camera, “I wonder how much more of this I have to endure before I can say I’m miserable and I want to go home?” I’ve asked that question of God many times. “There’s more for you to do.” Is the answer I receive. Kornfield begins his book with a quote from Rumi: “The moment I heard my first story I started looking for you . . . “ By the second page, Kornfield speaks of going into the darkness to find answers amongst the fear. No wonder “S” smiles at me with that gleam in her eye. She’s been here too. She knows I am like every other timid bunny hopping around in the yard after dark looking for clover. Is that the initiate’s secret? Finding the door to the path at all? Forgetting what we’ve been taught and remembering what we know? Knowing God is waiting in the dark woods. Hearing him call me in the sweet rumble of an exhaust note. |
Into the darkness . . . .
| In the darkness, in the darkness, in the darkness. That’s where the answers lie. Not in the sun drenched meadows and the playful romps. Not in the street cafes or the sweet wine. Not in the eiderdown. Not in the eternal rolling of the asphalt from the east to the west. Not in the smoky pink of the sunset, but just beyond. Just beyond the candle’s edge. Where the mummers stop. Where the gleaming beads stop clicking. Where the dance goes without the music. In the space beneath the piano. In the room beyond the closed door. In the attic behind the chimney. In the ocean of night beyond the last channel buoy. This is where, smiling, I do not want to go. Bound up in bandages pretending to be ribbons, I am afraid that in the darkness all will become undone. My brokenness will show. Brokenness will complete itself. I will fall to dust. I fear the dust will not answer the shamans call as spirit sings over my bones. I fear I will not rise again a new and completed animal. A camel from the desert. A wolf from the woodlands. I fear what will spin from the dust will gibber and be mindless. It will be helpless in the world. With no hope of any life to come save nothingness. I cling to the edge of the light, the edge of the illusion that all is well. But if I forget what I’ve been taught and remember what I know, I’ll go into the darkness and find my home. |
<$Wednesday, August 20, 2008$>
That's the way I've always heard it should be . . .
| Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. That’s what the Pussycat Dolls are singing about this morning in their catchy little stripper dance song. While it would be totally inappropriate for me to throw a leg around one the office’s support columns and begin writhing like an eel, I am doing the “chair bop”. I will also mention that I am an excellent air drummer. I have a full set of imaginary Zildjians. They are shiny bright, crisp, and clear. I am at my most joyful when I’m submerged headphones deep in a warm aural shimmer. “Whiter Shade of Pale” builds a wall of zillie happiness behind those lyrics. The highlight of my summer was watching the drummer for the Kentucky Headhunters do his ten minute drum solo. He played with a simple 4 drum kit and a minimal cymbal set up which he powered down on with sticks, brushes, and bare hands. I’m a drummer at heart and I’ve got those glitchy mad drummer personality traits. Today I am not ready for my solo though. Currently I have jammed the online performance detector for over two minutes. I feel like a total spanner. Thick as a brick but not as useful, that’s me on this job. I came in on this project last October as a newbie. I had some basic experience doing these tasks. Since then I’ve either been overloaded with work to the point I’m dazed or I’ve had everything taken away. Either way I’m dazed and confused and stone cold sober to boot. Now I’ve just jammed the monitor on the other subsystem. I think SMS has migrated the critical datasets off to tape and I‘m waiting for a remigrate to DASD. That means I haven’t had to start the collectors in over two weeks. I’ve forgotten everything again. My notes don’t make any sense. I’m just having myself a happy little panic attack. I feel so f**king useless. I hate feeling useless. The radio has changed over to Carly Simon’s “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be”. Somewhere along the line I became too broken to think of marriage and children as being a possibility in my life. I don’t know whether I consciously chose or wandered into “spinsterhood”. Looking back it seems the culmination of countless little choices and a few inappropriate boyfriend selections. When I dive into this state of unmitigated maudlin, I go thru each of those decisions. I examine each link in the logic tree to see if there is one decision I would have made differently. When I push the nostalgia aside, I always wind up exactly where I am. Anything I counted as a regret when I started my ruminations ends up stacked in a neat pile labeled “collateral damage”. There is no life without compromise. To have kept those regrets at bay I would have had to make a choice that denied my true nature. Esoteric as it sounds, the only way to have repaired those regrets was to have turned into someone else at the time. That would have led to more sorrow. This places me squarely in midlife without a partner. Partner being the new word for long term boyfriend, manfriend, or whatever you’re supposed to call your main squeeze when he’s over forty. It would be easy to say I'm lonely. But lonely isn't the feeling. I have friends, belong to groups, and have a social life. It would be easy to say I want a husband. But I don't, not really, not just for the sake of saying I have a husband. My longing is for an Anam Cara. Isn't that what we're born wanting before all the fairy tales and foolishness set in? When we splinter off into the illusion of life, into the illusion that we are separate from God, how can we feel anything but longing? On the level of being in this life, in this body, I want a companion, a mate, a lover. Like most daft people, I want this person to be my anam cara as well. It's a lot to ask. The older I get, the more I fear that an anam cara may not come for me. My friend "S" laughs at me in her gentle way. She keeps reminding me that what has happened in the past has nothing to do with what happens in the future. Just because I have been wandering in search does not mean my search will not find. "S" also laughs at how "wierded out" I was when I found the "fly boy" from last week's dream matched a name and a face from the past. Instead of seeing it as reassuring and astounding, I still find it frightening. It fits hand and glove with my childhood fear that I was born into the world searching for someone that I lost. I feel like I'm wandering around the world in a huge game of "blind man's bluff", calling and being called to by someone I don't quite catch up to. The whole world becoming a giant "funhouse" with floors that give way, windows that open then disappear, doors that move and darkness and distortion everywhere. I haven't quite settled in and left the fear behind. I haven't learned to "fox walk" as my friends "S" and "V" do. I'm still "she who walks in the dark". I bumble along with the blindfold of fear on all my senses. Part of me knows that if I remove the fear I could navigate this mystery almost as easily as I walk through my own home in the dark at night. I'm in the point of suspension between the present and the past. I'm hanging like the "Hanged Man", suspended in God's grace and will. The only way past is through. The only way through is to surrender. I've been moved by divine discontent, guided by God, and called through spirit every step of the way over the last two years. The Moody Blues said it best in my good luck song, "The Voice". "With your arms around the future and your back up against the past" Where's my Jame's May reference in this one you ask? I don't even have a Top Gear or car reference thrown in here today to fall back on. Well I'm going to tell you the only reference I have is that I don't have a reference. Give me a break, I'm having an existential melt down! |
<$Tuesday, August 19, 2008$>
Liar Liar Pants On Fire?
| My mom and my best friend constantly remind me that men are a different species. As such, men don’t operate the way we do. Things men do amongst themselves for a lark in public would get a woman shived in the ladies room in even the best country clubs. A case in point would be James May’s “airport shopping dare”. It involves convincing a friend to buy a piece of clothing that is truly hideous. James May and fellow presenter Richard Hammond developed the game to kill time in airports between flights. May brags about being exceptional at cajoling his friends into looking like idiots. He also confesses that Hammond talked him into a bad leather jacket as payback for a pair of bad sunglasses. May took the game up a notch with Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson in the new car showroom. Later on May laments that he helped talk Clarkson into an unsuitable Lamborghini and Clarkson doesn’t trust him anymore so the game is ruined. In the woman’s world I live in, if you allow a friend to buy a pair of bad sunglasses karma will insure that you get at least two months in purgatory and a bad haircut. If you convince your friend to buy an ugly leather jacket, when they figure out you tricked them they will set about revenge. This revenge will not be limited to airport shopping concourses. Take that friend wedding gown shopping with you and you are guaranteed to go down the aisle looking like an extra from a vampire hooker movie. Shopping advice is a sacred duty amongst female friends. Men wear trousers and shirts from the time they get out of diapers until they go into the grave. Nothing much changes for them. When middle age attacks them, they just lower their trouser waistbands below their tummies and motor on. Women are trapped in a fashion world were the clothes are designed for twelve year olds and look bizarre when they are in style. So how do you know if you’ve got this year’s appropriate look? You have to rely on your friends. They are your first line of defense against warped changing room mirrors and commissioned sales people. They also hold in sacred trust your actual size. Men would rent a billboard and list your size, age, and sexual history in a convenient location in front of your workplace. Then they would be dumbfounded when you rummaged your purse for your trusty .44 and put a bullet between their eyes. This gap in sense of humor makes it difficult to deal with the opposite sex. Since I haven't decided to join the Sisters of Sappho, I'm still trying to find a peaceable median. But it’s not so much the sense of humor I have trouble getting around as the lying with a sincere face. The very trait that makes an expert at “airport shopping dare”. I don’t mean the little fibs about missing birthdays, denting the car, and forgetting to pay the gas bill. I mean the whoppers. But more then that, I mean the run-of-the-mill bull. The crap they throw at you to “get a leg over”. Remember I was raised by a woman born in 1926. I had that “love” crap drilled into my head. I’m not one of the generation that has “hook ups” or “friends with benefits” or “f**k buddies”. I’m a throwback stegosaurus who doesn’t include “casual” in her repertoire. Unless you are Johnny Depp, I’m not likely to come out of the stone ages for you. If guys would just come out and say, “Hey I'm not really interested in getting to know you. I just thought we’d go out for some laughs, I’m looking for a quick bit, nothing past next week.” I’d really appreciate it. I’d have the opportunity to say “No thank you.” up front or accept knowing exactly what I was wandering into. It would be a hell of a lot easier then dealing with mistaken assumptions and anger. If I get called a “frigid lesbian” one more time, I’m liable to take a hasty action with a firearm. If we are out to save the baby seals and the red crested snookie bird, how about throwing a life line out to the middle aged daters? I’ll admit I’ve been living under a rock for the last six years. I’ll admit I have no clue what’s hip, I’m happy to go to the opera. And before you jump on the “evolution” speech, remember I’m out of the breeding pool. I’m not looking to pass my traits on to anyone else; I’m just looking for a little somethin’ somethin’ to get me through to my dotage. At this stage of the game I’m like a vintage car, I’ve got my secret starting procedures and my rust spots beneath the carpet. But, I’ll guarantee there’s not another one out there just like me and I’m not quite ready for the junk yard yet. For better or for worse, the glitch in my ignition is lies. I can’t seem to get around them. They tick me off and make me walk away before a guy’s even gotten well into play. It’s my personal tick. Earned thru years of experience. When I was nine years old I watched my father pack for another of his business trips. He patted me on the head and told me he’d be back the following week. After he left, my mother told me that he wasn’t coming back, ever. He’d found a new family and we weren’t in it. Dad was the most fantastic liar I’ve ever seen. He looked like a young Robert Wagner. He had the sly, sharp charm, and the all encompassing grin. He never failed to let me down. He forgot birthdays, forgot middle names, forgot to tell me he remarried, forgot child support payments and he lied about it all. All he had to do was talk to me for five minutes and I’d forgive him anything. Somewhere along that line my “lie detector” instincts got a bit tangled. When I layered on boyfriends and fiancés over the years, my instincts became spotty at best. I finished up the “Alice in Wonderland Trifle” of experience with the males of the species with a full tilt sociopath. Sociopaths are the best liars in the world because their reality changes second by second. They always believe they are telling the truth. It’s your fault if their “truth” changes thirty seconds later. They will say or do anything to get exactly what they want in each and every moment. They are Tony Award winning quality performers in the craft of lies. You’d think that my self-defense mechanism would pick up some lie-detector ability after all these years. Hell, even at work my boss just confessed that he lied his boney ass off to get me to take this assignment because he couldn’t get anyone else to do it. Now I’m making decisions about career, job, mom, and that infamous “other species”, all premised on the belief that anyone who tells me anything is lying. “W” and I were chatting earlier this week. The conversation was littered with the underlying subtext of each of us trying to figure out if the other was lying to “get a leg over”. We did the verbal dance, we minced words, and we left things unsaid. “W” used to say that I caught him in every lie. It was a slick way for him to get out of being caught with his foot in a fib. I don’t doubt there were some doozies that sailed past me like the breeze. "D" says that you can tell if a man is lying because his mouth is moving. When he's quiet, he's thinking up his next lie. My mom says that women love their children and they love their pets but there’s never been a man yet who loved anybody but himself. I’m becoming more and more afraid she’s right. When me and my fellow stegosaurus romanticus sisters die, perhaps we’ll leave a stronger generation of women in our place. Maybe this whole love bullshit business will be pushed to the back of their minds and they’ll build there lives on something more then fairy tales and lies. James May's Airport Shopping Dare Columns Can Be Found At These Links: James May Dares, Wins Truth Card |
<$Monday, August 18, 2008$>
Closetland
| Closetland. That was another word that had dropped out of my consciousness. More sinister then “moggy” and more meaningful. It was a quietly kept move with Alan Rickman and Madeline Stowe. Sponsored by Amnesty International, it dealt with oppression and physical and psychological torture. I found it on video and only then because I’m a aficionado of Alan Rickman’s work. My friend Carolyn and I camped out in front of the television to watch. It took us three hours to watch a ninety minute movie. It was too intense. We kept having to pause it and take a break. The horror of the movie is driven by Rickman's performance. It's in what he says, how he says it, and how he moves. He stays in a tight, concise character that resonnates unstoppable energy. There are no graphic scenes of violence, no blood, and no heroes. It's just Rickman's character interrogating a woman in a nightgown and it is nauseatingly horrific. “Closetland” came out a few months after my stepfather died. My mom was fighting his children to keep her home and possessions. Work was downsizing and I was always two steps away from the noose. On the recommendation of my physician I went to see a family counselor. On our second visit I handed her the video of “Closetland”. I’d rubber banded a slip of paper to it that said “Can you understand?” It was the first time I was able to admit to myself that my childhood had not been the same as everyone else’s. When the house I grew up in was sold, I was the last one out. I set the door locks, took a last look around and whispered, “Goodbye Closetland.” Twenty years on I still have to remind myself that “I got away.” For information on the movie “Closetland” Click here. |
This one's for you. . . .
| Cousin Tuesday, this blog’s for you. Well, with the exception of the obligatory James May reference. Hmm. Do you suppose James has ever had a Schlitz chilled by hanging it in front of a window air conditioner? That, my friend, is quality entertaining. I’m still looking for the “green mustang” picture. I though I had it attached to my scrap book, but it isn’t in there. It must be in my old photo album, the white one with pics from the 70’s in it. Of course neither of us was old enough to be out without our parents back then. Ahem. Let alone own a car or get up to mischief. We being only 4 or 5 years old at the time. Every once and a while during the remodel, a red telephone light button would fall out of a box of bric-a-brac. I’d have to stop until I quit laughing. I remember the “grilled cheese” incident. It was during my first tentative attempts at being a hostess at home there in “Closetland”. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was about as domesticated as a Snow Leopard. Ok, so maybe I’m a Snow Leopard that knows how to manage a household. But I’m not up to hosting a dinner party. If I have to figure out the mechanics of being a social butterfly, I’m going back up the mountain and sit in the snow! All this reminds me that it’s time to stick a claw in the AC filter and pull it down for replacement. Yes, I buy the more expensive filters and for one simple reason; it cuts the dust. The less dust on the flat shiny bits of décor then less money you spend on cleaning staff. That’s right, cleaning staff. I have a maid service that comes in every few weeks and does the scrubbing. I work a zillion hours a week at a grizzly job to pay the mortgage and there’s a few pennies left to pay for cleaners. It’s cheaper then doing it myself. Odd as that may sound, if I add up how long it actually takes me to clean and then multiply it by my hourly rate, the maid service is one third cheaper. Plus having a service buys me back my Saturdays. You know Saturdays? It’s the day you take care of the car, take the mom out for lunch, do the laundry, open the mail, pay the bills, go to the bank, go to the grocery store, take a nap, and watch the DVR’d episodes of Top Gear? Most of the time I combine the nap with the Top Gear so it’s a good thing they scream and blow things up a lot or I’d be dead sound asleep for the evening by 5:30 p.m. If they drive a Bugatti Veyron I will wake from a sound sleep at the mention of the name. Drool trickles from the corners of my mouth and I feel my heart break with yearning. In one episode Jeremy Clarkson says that he is distraught because his time behind the wheel of the Veyron is over and he’ll never have that joy again. How maudlin do you think I feel? I’ve never had the joy at all! Meanwhile Cousin Tuesday you have owned a Mustang. “W” is currently sporting around in a Mustang GT. I am rambling through town in a door bashed Sable that has a good sized engine for a commuter car. It also has all the comfort you need when you spend three hours a day in a car and haul around an 82 year old. I have that sad sweet longing to make enough money to be impractical. Cousin Tuesday, at this point I will point you to a column by Jeremy Clarkson on why it is better to rent a dog than a prostitute: Jeremy Clarison Times UK You will appreciate the fine logic. Jeremy thinks a bit like we do. I flipped through Mr. May’s columns as of late. They all make him sound like an alkie and not a clever one at that. So no recommendations for his work online. He varies from the alcohol theme on a post at TopGear.Com but in it he talks about conning Jeremy into buying a car that he doesn’t really like. Sounds like a sweet man. May I suggest at this point you visit this “Walk Down Memory Timeline” from out good friends at: http://riunite.com/timeline/  |
<$Sunday, August 17, 2008$>
Sunny Sunday
| Sunday morning. Woke up to a bright sunny eight a.m. Immediately went back to sleep until just shy of noon. Much better. The laundry is perking along, the stereo is thumping, the plants are watered, and the grocery list is coming together nicely. No bizarre nightmares last night. As long as it took me to fall asleep I could have gone to the drive in to catch “Hellboy II”. I want to see it on the big-big screen and it’s up third on the bill so it starts at 1 a.m. You get a discount if show up for the third feature. Oh well. The Rhapsody player is serving up new albums by Cindy Lauper and Rick Springfield. The past seems to be on the spin cycle and it keeps looping to the top lately. But perhaps it’s not riding the steel belted radial of memory but the sweet fresh blacktop of continuity. I chatted a bit with “W” last night. He was a bit rattled with the idea of “Glory Days” goggles. They’re like beer goggles but they strike when you’re stone cold sober and nostalgic. They help you forget little things. Little things like when your ex-fiancé showed up at your house wearing another woman’s track suit. Or when you caught him getting a "hummer" from the neighborhood race car groupie. Little things that keep you from remembering the relationship with a fond glow. I don’t think “W” has a set of “Glory Days” goggles where I’m concerned. He remembers our time together more as a Texas Cage Match. I seem to have forgotten everything but feeling warm and loved. I imagine we were both hell on wheels . He reminded me that I was in constant pain back then. I’d blocked that out. It wasn’t until four years ago that I met up with a medication that keeps the pain down to “occasionally”. God, it was a wonder anybody could put up with me then. “W” deserves a combat medal. What really surprised me about our convo was that he had read my blog. He used to avoid anything I’d written like the plague. The obvious question might be, “Will I stop writing so openly now that I know he’s reading?” The answer is “No”. I didn’t behave myself a decade ago, why should I start now? “W” is used to the unvarnished me, so I don’t think he’ll mind. Besides, now isn’t the time to start being “mysterious” and “duplicitous” anyway. I get the feeling he thinks I’m a bit loopy when I say that I do still love him. But that’s ok. I didn’t expect anything when I said it. It was just important to say. People need to know they are loved. I learned the very tough lesson that love for someone can exist perfectly well without reciprocation. Sometimes it’s much better to love someone from a very great distance. There is a thin line between sacrifices made for love and self-immolation. If you allow that which you love to destroy you, then you are a broken instrument in the world and then you cannot do what you’ve been sent to do. Just loving someone or something is enough to keep you human. But boy sometimes that lesson sucks like a Hoover! Since I have a grocery list and I need to go get some more of that great pain med from the pharmacy, I’ll toddle off. Where’s my James May reference you may ask? Well I’ll include the picture of my desk below. J2 has sent me plenty of goodies in the Royal Mail. Some of the treats are on my desk.  |